Fanfiction: Let Your Heart Guide You
Rating: 9/10
Review:
This is the first of Fyn16’s fanfictions I have read, but chronologically it is apparently at least the third in a series involving his characters, so it’s likely that I was unable to fully appreciate some elements of this story due to being references to its predecessors. I don’t believe that mattered much in the long run, however, as I still found this to be a positively outstanding story.
The author is spectacularly good at setting the scene; his descriptions of the environment, the atmosphere, and the feelings of the characters are vividly detailed and full of life; if there was ever a LBT story that made you feel like you were there, this is it. He also has an incredible knack for building anticipation which further magnifies the drama, whether it involves an impending catastrophic meteorite shower over the Great Valley, or the gang of seven coordinating an ambush on Fyn Fyn to surprise him for his star day.
I am also impressed at how the author has drawn from his own life experiences in order to create a story that feels as “real” as possible. This is especially evident when Fyn undergoes “starfall”, a strenuous day-long training ritual intended to test whether he is fit for leadership (something like a much tougher, more logical, and better-written version of “The Big Longneck Test”), which I strongly suspect was based on/inspired by the author’s military training.
The story is remarkably well written. There are a few minor punctuation errorsónamely hyphens in the place of colons, semicolons, and em dashesóand personally I found it a bit odd that the author chose to capitalize all “LBT speak” terms (including “tree sweet” and “rockslide”), but overall the text contained very few mistakes.
The story has some inconsistencies with the LBT films, such as the characters not knowing that flying rocks could be dangerous despite their experience with a meteorite shower in LBT III, and Littlefoot stating that the Rock That Looks Like A Longneck was the last landmark he had to find on his way to the Great Valley, when in fact it was the Mountains That Burn (with the additional discrepancy of the aforementioned Rock being seemingly much closer to the valley than it was in the original movie). There were also a few things that didn’t make sense to me, such as Grandpa Longneck referring to Petrie’s mother as “Mama Flyer”, and Fyn forgoing sleep to watch over his sick father the night before he is expected to lead a herd into the Mysterious Beyond in search of a new temporary home (a loving and noble gesture to be sure, but perhaps ill-advised?). On that note, I wondered why the Great Valley dinosaurs did not consider returning to the seaside oasis they discovered in LBT V; perhaps an explanation should be added in.
Having said all of that, I still feel that this story’s merits far outweigh its flaws, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. It is a fantastic example of a true LBT story with no added outside elements, that also feels fresh and interesting. I had little difficulty deciding that it deserves a 9/10.
