Let's Read: Book Club 19

[Kakashi Hatake]

An Alchemist’s Task: Damsel in Distress

I had never read anything that you had written as Ed until now (shame on me). The first thing that needs to be said is that I think you’ve captured Fullmetal’s personality and dialogue perfectly. I, myself have a bad habit of warping a character that I’m writing to be more similar to my own personality and you seem to have a much easier time with this than I do. Having watched both FMA series, I also really appreciated the little references to past tales. They were well done, as they catered to those that are familiar with the source, but were described enough that those who are unfamiliar can still understand the character’s motivation. The milk line cracked me up. =D

Another thing that I think you did well was the combat. The fighting was, again, Edward to a tee; diving in fists flying, taking on a creature many times his own size to help a new friend at the expense of his own well-being. The hydra scene reminded me of the first fight in God of War, which is a very good thing. I got the same kind of ‘ohshitohshitohshit’ feeling, which is probably what Ed’s inner monologue was xD. Also, the sodium reaction was equal parts unexpected and awesome. I was wondering how those two were going to fight off an angry Hydra. I had expected to see him use the pocketwatch to boost his strength, and I'm glad you opted for a solution more in-tune with the character instead of just brute-forcing through it. I’m sad that I didn’t get to read Choprot using that awesome cannon-arm, though. Or at least pistol-whipping with it. =P

If I had to be picky and make a few suggestions, my biggest issue would be with the formatting. Some of the paragraphs are rather large and could maybe be split to make reading a little easier. Likewise, some of the dialogue paragraphs look a little odd squished together and it can make the material hard to read. Though, from what I’ve seen in your Minato posts you seem to have already rectified these two points. Otherwise, I’d be sure to look the post over once or twice before posting, as I did notice some typos and spelling/grammars, nothing that distracted too much from the story, but worth noting. Lastly, I’d try to work on choosing different descriptors for the characters. You’ve more or less just repeated the characters names when referencing them, which is completely fine for readability, but changing it up every now and again with ‘the adolescent alchemist’ or something can give it a nice flair.

Aside from that, great job! Overall I’m excited to see where this goes. I’m hoping that Al magically shows up somehow (hint hint) because the Elric brothers busting heads with alchemy’d spears sounds epic. I don’t want to ruin the narrative that you’re working on, just an idea haha. I look forward to the next installment. =D