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Title: Cheerilee’s Garden: a Metallic Touch
Writer: The Blue EM2
Genre: Horror, AU
Read: Completed at 7078 Words, 5 Chapters
Rating: 5/10
Recommendation: Skip unless you really want to see Silver Spoon be heroic in a dark setting and you don't want to read the other garden related story in which she is just that.

This is a partial retelling of the infamous Cheerilee's Garden, by Unahim, from the perspective of everyone’s favourite minor villain, Silver Spoon - which is why I decided to read this, I like Silver. Anyhow, the story’s plot follows Silver as she investigates Cheerilee’s plot and attempts to put a stop to it, or die trying…

I like the allusions to events that happened in the original fic; like the titular teacher’s literal garden and broken-apart house. They aren't necessary but things like that add a sense that this could be a real, breathing world, and EM2’s descriptions go a long way here. He isn’t as proficient with imagery as Unahim is, not enough enough to make me feel physically ill yet, but he gets the point across pretty well nonetheless.

The story is written in first person, and I appreciate that EM2 put the effort in to give Silver a unique voice, she’s smarter than most and fairly classy and this comes over well in the narration. She’s also shown to be fairly observant and pretty snarky for her age, which goes a long way to making the story enjoyable.

However, the rest of the story doesn’t really do Silver justice, in my opinion. The dialogue itself is often stilted, and the clumsy syntax gives me the impression that English is not EM2’s first language or, if it is, he isn’t the best at it. Furthermore, the twist later in the story, Cheerilee's evil twin isn’t handled as well as it could be. We as the readers aren’t given sufficient explanation of how this twist came to exist in its current state, or why the villain has such a convoluted scheme here. Flatly evil villains can work, but it literally falls flat here; an evil Cheerilee just isn’t written entertainingly enough here to make the plot work as well as it ought to.

The climax is also a bit of a let-down; Diamond and Silver race to stop the play and all, basically alone. As Cheerilee did mention the fact that there was an actually competent Royal Guard in this universe, it is a bit confusing as to why nobody called them. Yes, they were on a time limit, but they were also two unarmed children trying to fight a ponified version of Jigsaw, which is a fight I did not envision ending with them on top.

Furthermore, the conclusion is a bit lackluster, as is the pacing that leads up to it. Events happen too quickly to process, and the villain is defeated without that much effort, when she stumbles into one of her own traps. The heroes escape the burning theatre with no trouble and then they just live happily ever after. The end. More detail could definitely been added here, and the actual final chapter feels like it had been written in a hurry.

Plot: Struggles in the climax. 2/5
Characters: Likeable but, other than Silver Spoon, they’re totally unmemorable. 3/5
Style: Entertaining narration, but mediocre dialogue, hamfisted references and poor grammar all let it down. 2/5
Execution: Can definitely be improved 3/5
Overall Rating: 10/20 = 5/10

To The Blue EM2: A retelling of Cheerilee’s Garden could’ve been really good, but I found that it was paced too poorly for me to really get into. As well, with Silver and Diamond outwitting most of the villain’s plots and traps very easily, there wasn’t enough tension for this to really be that horrific. I’d recommend that you go over this again, and flesh out the finale and maybe rework it into two chapters. You do write Silver Spoon very well though, and that was enough alone to keep me reading until the end, even when she started to lose a bit of her distinct voice.