Talk:Yanibar Tales/Cloak and Datapad

I Readz. I Reviewz.
Shocking, I know, I read it. Honestly? It was because it was up against my story in the "best story" category of the Short Story contest and I wanted to see what I was up against, seeing as this story was a genuine Ata-RU. :p

AT ANY RATE! My review. :D

I liked the story. I thought it was well-paced, well written, captured the characters very well, the dialogue was good. Other than a few sniggly wording or formatting mistakes here and there, I don't think there was a problem with it. It was a very good story.

But not for Yanibar Tales.

You start to read the story, thinking that Sarth and Cassi are going to be the protagonists. You don't mind almost "skimming" some parts of the Wraith parts to get what you think is the "real" story with S&C. Then about a third of the way through, you get it.

This isn't about them. They don't even matter. You could change their names and tweak the circumstances just slightly and delete about three-quarters of the text devoted to them and nothing about the core story would change in the slightest. Yanibar Tales is exactly what it says on the tin - stories about Yanibar or about people associated with Yanibar. NOT the Wraiths. While I thought the parts with the Wraiths were excellently done - in fact, captured their essence and what made them lovable - it still is part of a collection called Yanibar Tales. But the story was about the Wraiths.

What sounds like was going on was that this story was a wish-fulfillment kind of story, the author really loves the Wraiths (and I know you do :p) and wanted to see his chars interact with them - but he wanted them to interact in a realistic way. That meant by happenstance. Thus, his own chars degraded in importance to make it realistic, and in the process made the chars inconsequential.

In conclusion, if the story had not been apart of a collection of stories called Yanibar Tales and were just a short story about the Wraiths, I definitely would have enjoyed the story more. I actually skipped some of the Wraith part in the beginning because I wanted to get to what I thought was the real meat of the story...but it was just something that felt like a decorative excuse to include Sarth and Cassi.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, I'm just giving my opinion. :D - Solus (Bird of Prey)  13:43, October 22, 2009 (UTC)