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Comment by comex | Hacker News Reader

Hmm... I wouldn't agree with the people in this thread hailing it as a great work of literature. The main character is a complete Mary Sue - somewhat like Ender, but, in my opinion, considerably worse, although it's been toned down a bit in the later chapters.

But I only say that to counter those people - it's indeed a delightful and addictive read. The only problem is that it updates quite infrequently and is nowhere near done - I had been suspecting that it'd been abandoned. Reading 90 or so chapters (at high speed, due to the addictiveness) only to come to a screeching halt and have to wait months for a few more chapters is not that fun!

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While Harry is ridiculously overpowered, his enemies are correspondingly scary.

Eliezer won't abandon this fic. If I recall correctly, there is one last arc left after the current one one. Though I would't count on it before next year.

Not just his enemies. For me, a number of the most memorable flourishes of the book are how formidable it makes some of the other people, at least in some respects --- the defense professor especially, but at various points in the story he turns the formidability firehose on people like Hermione and Aurors and the prankster brothers. It's a bit of a dramatic problem, actually, because it leaves people who haven't been sprayed looking so ineffectual that it's hard to understand why they take up so much dramatic space. E.g., I think the story would work better if Draco got more formidability to justify his apparent importance. At least Draco could have gotten a chance to win big by applying some of the applied organization theory tips from his father, perhaps by being the one to deploy effective staff/delegation/incentive techniques in the war games. Or the unimpressive frontline support security provided by his father could be backed by a second-line security specialist chosen by his father who shows up on call and gets some of the formidability and formidabilitytrainer love that the story gives to Aurors and defense professors.

Err, Draco sounded pretty formidable to me. He came close to overcome his education, and even did overcome it to some extent. Crabbe and Goyle are very apt bruisers, formidable broomstick riders, and once showed a rather sophisticated education (being able to change the level of politeness at will without sounding fake is quite a feat at that age --"Da boss want to speak with ya" vs "Mr Malfoy requests an audience with you").

Your suggestions do sound good, though.

On Harry being a Mary Sue: That kind of depends what meaning you use.

If you mean the self-insertion, I think that's not too bad. Yes, Harry's reasoning is similar to Yudkowski's, but that's kind of the whole point of the fic. It's not like Harry is a copy of EY himself.

If you mean being idealized and overpowered, I agree. The only part so far where things went wrong because he didn't think fast enough or consider all the possibilities is in the most recent chapters.

On it not updating often enough: Totally, but up to chapter 96 will be released over the next few days, so you may want to stick around for a little longer.

> If you mean the self-insertion, I think that's not too bad. Yes, Harry's reasoning is similar to Yudkowski's, but that's kind of the whole point of the fic. It's not like Harry is a copy of EY himself.

FYI, Eliezer has explicitly stated that Harry is sometimes wrong and that he disagrees with him. He hasn't given specifics AFAIK.

I wouldn't call it a "great work of literature" - but I would call it a work of literature, and, as you put it, a delightful and addictive one.

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