:: 2/13/01 - Þ!åçkjåçk ::
Short Plot Summary (spoiler-free):
The Kadeshi Crusade is the story of what would happen if the Kadesh Defenders (eveyone's favorite intergalactic environmentalists) began their own Return to Hiigara. The story begins with a conflict between the mighty Kadeshi and a Kiith Nabaal force, kicking it off immediately with a huge amount of action - and death too ;). Everyone loves death. From there, the story continues to the complete usurping of the old, stagnating Kadeshi government, replacing it with the faction that wants to return to their ancestral Homeworld.
We then meet up with Seejuk LiirHra and Zha Khor - an odd match of a brilliant enigmatic Hiigaran engineer and an ambitious, arrogant Turanic princess. The two work together, collecting various salvage using Zha's personal modified Lord-class carrier, the Mule. Then they stumble onto the marauding Kadeshi main fleet - and it becomes up to them to warn the Hiigarans of the threat... lest both of their races face extinction...
Evaluation of plot:
The plot was incredibly powerful, epic, and amazing. The Kadeshi Crusade is only the wartorn backdrop to the much greater part of the story - the character interaction, which I'll be coming to in a minute. The general plot is complex and slightly confusing at times, but still amazing both for its complexity which crobato manages to weave into an incredible crescendo (no spoilers! ;)). Such things are what only begin to raise this story far above and beyond what nearly any of us can accomplish. In my opinion, this plot is second to very few, and I must award it nine points out of a possible 10.
Evaluation of characters:
Once again, crobato's characters are some of the most amazing, realistic ones that I have seen in a Homeworld fanfic. Crobato goes all out in his characters - they act, interact, and think like real people... the way that he shows their emotions and thoughts is uncanny. While he never launches into especially physical descriptions of his characters, you get the idea, and the ability that you get to see into their thoughts is amazing. You get to understand, like, hate, or at least feel compassion toward a character - something with is understatingly hard to do. So once again, I give cro a 10 of 10 in this category.
Evalutation of writer's skills (grammar etc.):
While crobato is certainly an ample writer, I occasionally found a few misspellings or grammatical errors, but nothing major. None of them really detracted from the writing itself, and they were very easily correctable. Crobato's writing style is quite fluid, so skipping over a tiny mistake is nearly impossible not to do. Overall, the style was very good, with few total errors and a very complete descriptive style. It deserves an 8.5 of ten.
OVERALL: 28.5 out of 30 possible points
Some small side comments:
I was in awe of this story the minute I started reading, and when it kept going, I just got more and more in awe. I have to strongly reccomend this one, as well as its sequel, "The White Beast", which is developing nicely over on the Relic Fiction Boards.
