The Last Hearth's Warming Gift by Ninjadeadbeard

I come to you today against my will. I would have prefered that this review came out tomorrow, but the boss said otherwise, so that was a thing. SO, The Last Hearth's Warming Gift, a Christmas story being reviewed in February, because that makes sense. In the story we are introduced to our main character, Honest Apple, as he experiences the big feels because Twilight felt the need to reminisce about the past over a questionably alcoholic barrel of apple cider. Because of this, he feels the Christmas spirit and decides that family might be cool to be around after, presumably, not chilling with them since moving away in a huff of ‘you don't know me, mom’, also called teenage angst.

In terms of what I liked, this was a story with feels. It was a short, emotional little glimpse into the world of MLP after the end of the gen. In terms of what the author aims to accomplish, I feel they reached this goal. If you are inclined towards sad-ish stories with a happy ending this is a good one to read. As for the writing, it was about what I want to see in a story. There was the odd sentence that didn’t flow quite right, but overall, nothing was here that made me roll my eyes or make me want to gouge them out. In general, this was a fairly inoffensive little tale about the loss of life and having to deal with the after effects.

For me, my preferences in depicting remembrance lie more towards melancholy over joyful catharsis. This story, while having sad themes, doesn’t lean into them as hard as I would have liked nor justify the sadness as much as I would feel warrants the sadness. This might just be me showing my level of sociopathy, but with how long it has been since the death of the character in question (and the fact it was a natural death), it just feels a bit off that everyone is so depressed. It is stated that this story is occurring three generations (biological) after the end of the show, and with how sad everyone is, it feels more like the pony died last Tuesday. Now, mark this day well for I will actually criticise the length of this story and the amount of details that it uses. There are just, so, many, WORDS. I get what the author was trying to do, and I am probably the last person that should say this, but there just wasn’t a need for the story to be this long. In my experience with playing games, watching movies, and reading books, you want to leave a lot unsaid when trying to elicit empathy and sadness. Personally, this story would have been a lot more powerful if it would have just been the main character meeting with Princess Twilight and the two of them just talking/being in each others proximity. I say this because their inclusion does next to nothing for the story and ultimately detracts as they distract somewhat from what the author was going for.

[now, the irrelevant gripes with the story. Random factoid, my first story would have been a HIE story about me going to Equestria but older and better (Que surprised pikachu face by all of you for my 100% original idea). As part of that story, I would have started up a distillery. This is relevant because after researching this, living right next to a major winery area, and going through a college level microbiology class, I have quite the knowledge on how to get those good proofs. As such, I was more than a little irked at the ‘tradition’ barrel scenes. Now, in this authors universe, not all cider could be alcoholic, fair enough, but what would happen would be a leaching of tannins into the cider from the wood. The cider might be super sweet, but even if they would have prevented any yeast from getting in to produce alcohol, the amount of chemicals from the wood that would have gotten into the cider after all those years (based on the wear seen on the label as it was described as faded) it would have tasted slightly off. Imagine a non-alcoholic Crown Royal Regal Apple and that would be about the taste you would get.]

Final scores;

Writing: 8/10, While there isn’t a huge issue with misspelled words or grammar that violates the rules, the read for it is very odd. You get several sentences, particularly at the beginning, that just make my editor senses tingle. It isn’t to the point that I want to demand access to the source document, but it strange enough that I kept saying ‘this could have been worded better’ and trying to figure out why it was written this way.

Pacing: 8/10, This might just be me, but the pacing is slightly janky. As I noted, there are quite a few characters that could have been cut without issue and the overall structure runs a little counter to the goal of the story. The pacing is fine, things progress in a way that makes sense and at a rate that feels alright, there just seems to be just a little too much here that it compromises the story.

Characters: 7/10, We get a good idea of who Honest is, and the canon characters are who they should be, but as I said before, why are 75% of them here? While this would have only resulted in a loss of two points for simply bloating the cast and not using them in what amounts to the slightest, the third point was taken away for shallowness. While I would not usually be so critical of characters in a story this short, the problem is, there was almost a promise here, and I got blue balled. We follow one character for the entire story, but besides a few moments, we don’t really get a feeling for what makes him tick. My problem here is just that the climax for the story, the last few paragraphs basically rely on you developing a liking for the guy. The thing is, I know so little about him, seeing him do the thing that’s meant to make the smiles looses a lot of weight as there was nothing to go off of to say one way or another how this relates to his character.

Atmosphere: 7/10, Now, the issue here is that this is meant to be a highly emotional story, but with how it is set up, a lot of the ‘oompf’ is lost. The breaking out of the ‘sacred’ barrel and subsequent ‘party’ is a bit confusing, but I’ll let the idea slide. The issue comes in how it affects the main character. He is given a cup or two of some good cider from his family and this is cause for a reevaluation of his holiday/life? The story looks to be meant to evoke a feeling of somber joy, but how it progresses doesn’t play to this idea.

Cuteness: 9/10, It’s a Christmas story about the passing of the years, the ephemerality of life, and the importance of knowing where you’ve come from. You don’t get much more cute than this without risking being put on the Hallmark movie channel and risking giving every human above the age of 7 diabetes from pure saccharin.

Total Score: 39/50 or 7.8/10, This was a well done story that is mostly held back by either what I can best attribute to a lack of focus or pruning. There is the majority of a really good story here, but a strange focus and inclusion of too many flourishes holds it back from hitting the mark.

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I come to you today against my will. I would have prefered that this review came out tomorrow, but the boss said otherwise, so that was a thing.

After cleanig your personal folder of a story that stuck there for 72 weeks, yes seventytwo-weeks, I thought it was a good idea to tell you to do your job in time once in a while

Yeah, I can see now this story has quite a bit of bloat getting in the way of telling a good story. I wrote it in a flurry of emotion, and that’s where my mind was the entire time I was composing it. Hopefully, the next time I tackle something like this, I’ll remember your advice and do better.

Thank you for the review!