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An Echo of Thunder by anotherlostsoul (R)

  • Mar. 25th, 2014 at 2:17 AM
Title: An Echo of Thunder
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Categories: Action/adventure, SuperXan
Length: Long (30,900 words)
Warnings: Minor character death, parental abuse

Author Website: NotDeadFred
Author on TtH: anotherlostsoul's author page

Summary:
What if Buffy wasn’t the only one of the Scoobies with a destiny? Xander Harris finds a destiny all his own that has nothing to do with hyena possession, Halloween or road trips...

Review:
I'm in two minds about this story. It's an award-winner — the 2007 Crossing Over award for best Buffy/Smallville crossover — but the crossover elements are limited to setting up for the next story in the series. It's well written with good grammar, structure and phrasing, but it doesn't quite grip me. It features a well drawn Xander, except that his good humour is dialled down, and he's the only one of the Buffy cast to fare well; Giles is written as infuriatingly obtuse, and the others aren't even present. It's got a good grasp of the Norse myths that form the basis of the story, but sometimes seems inconsistent about what people know.

It's a good story, don't get me wrong. I like the writing style, I like the story, I like the Xander who isn't yet too far from an Everyman to lose me. It's just that for every aspect of the story that I want to pick up and praise, a niggle leaps to my attention. This is going to be one of those stories that you have to read and decide for yourself.

There are two sequels, Thunder Over Smallville: Book One (the Smallville crossover proper) and Tales of the Thunderverse: Champion of Themyscira. Both are incomplete and haven't been worked on in a while, and I prefer Echo to both of them. Thunder Over Smallville in particular suffers from the high power level of the superheroics going on; nearly everyone, it seems, ends up with powers that let them operate on a par with Clark, and it quickly becomes very hard to rein in that much power and present an interesting and credible challenge.

It's a bit of a Curate's Egg in my view. What's your opinion?

An Echo of Thunder

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