CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #39 — The Last King · 8:29pm Feb 5th, 2020
I’m continuing my critiques of the entrants into the Imposing Sovereigns II contest; more specifically, the “finalists” I marked as being worthy of a top spot. Today’s story is the fourth-best story I read in the entire contest. I would like to stress, however, that I only ranked them because FanOfMostEverything made me; they are all excellent.
Title: The Last King
Author: Antiquarian
Found via: That contest what I judged.
Short summary: We all know that King Guto was the last king of Griffonstone. But why was he the last?
Genre(s): Adventure, Character Piece, Drama
The Title/Description: The title is fine: it certainly gets to the heart of what the story is about.
The description is underwhelming. It’s definitely concise, but the first sentence is constructed awkwardly. The second sentence is a bit beige and undersells the main conflict of the story. The third sentence is tell-y and superfluous.
The Critique:
This story presents its characters excellently. It is, in many ways, a character piece about its protagonist as much as anything. The King fills in his role as the central character wonderfully; torn between duty and ideals and common sense. The secondary characters also display concise—but effective—personalities. King Guto’s stupid, violent sons make for good hate sinks; Gilda’s ancestor attempts to be a sane counterpoint, but is still hampered by cultural expectations. And certainly not least, Ashmane portrays the Cassandra archetype very well: accurate and wise, but belittled and ignored.
The prose flows smoothly. The descriptions and sentence-level prose are all very easy to read. Yet they still take time to make interesting asides and create some engaging descriptions. The description of King Guto’s dreams in the very first chapter, for example, goes on a bit long, but is still interesting. The same could be said of countless other moments; Ashmane’s appearance, for example.
This doesn’t extend to every part of the story, sadly. There are times which are a bit too blunt, or a bit too tell-y, or too verbose. The description of the wind constructs in the final chapter, for instance, is both too long and phrased inelegantly. There's a lot of moments where we are told something twice, or where we are told something that could have easily been inferred. Little things like "Guto himself frowned at Ashmane, offended by the hermit’s declaration.", but they add up.
King Guto’s inner thoughts are also often inserted at inopportune times. These thoughts often make comments that the reader could easily have inferred already, or are redundant with other descriptors.
The scenario, however, is well-constructed. This story does that difficult balancing act of blurring the line between headcanon and canon. We as readers know that King Guto is the last king, but we don’t know why he was the last. The story plays up this ambiguity to great effect. And the moment when that mystery is resolved; it hits the reader that much harder for all the buildup. The story also uses this fusion of headcanon and canon in smaller ways—playing up le éléments Français from the show, or the naming convention of the characters. There is a blend of the familiar and the surprising that is difficult to create in a lot of fanfic.
In a single sentence: A careful balance of headcanon and canon, as well as some great prose, make this story into a wonderful read.
Verdict: Upvote. The characters are well-drawn. The prose is snappy and fluid, although it does falter at some points. The story expands on what we know from the show, but never contradicts it. It’s easy to read, but also has several moments of great tension and a single crushing reveal.
FanOfMostEverything marked this as their honorable mention, and I definitely agree. Because of how judging worked, it only took two judges liking a story to give it an edge over the others. There is a reality where this story won first place instead of Fang and Flame.
Thank you kindly!
This one is definitely up there in my personal favourite stories from the contest—maybe second or third overall. The characters were so sharply written and fun to watch, and the whole story has the feeling of a fable, full of mystique and magic. The ending really packed a punch, too. Happy to see that you enjoyed it to a similar degree!