nathandouglasdavis

The story covers Mavis and feir companions as they aim to retrieve the Sirius Orb from the Blue Skull guild. We see them meeting each other, forming a tenuous alliance, traveling and camping, gathering information, and then charging into battle both to retrieve the orb and to save the town of Magnolia. I actually found myself getting pumped as the truth-telling game was building up steam, but honestly its conclusion was a bit underwhelming. This segment as well as some others are primarily there to show off Mavis's tactical abilities, and they do an adequate job of that, of presenting fem as insightful and clever. The magic training segment felt overly short--like, they learned things far too quickly. Especially Mavis.

There's a plot twist that I didn't see coming at all, but which made perfect sense once I thought about it. My default is to be critical of stories that rely on unexpected turns for their primary appeal, but this story is appealing enough even without that twist. And the twist being a twist actually serves a purpose, since it leads the reader to empathize and share in the emotions.