"Thread of Destiny" is, at its base, a rather complex and involved story. It begins with SG-1 visiting a planet whose culture is Asian in origin. This is a rather pleasant surprise, given the abundance of Egyptian cultures we've seen on the show and in fan fic. The element of the "Red Thread of Destiny" is introduced and the story goes on its merry way. It then turns into a conspiracy story, and ends with a revenge motivated plot to kill Sam. I liked the way the "Red Thread" is a constant theme in this story, and I enjoyed the way what could have been two different stories - the visit to the planet and the revenge plot - were meshed together. There were a few things that bugged me about this story, however. A good portion of it is written from Jack's first person point of view. This can be a very difficult way to write, especially for a story of this length and.occasionally it slips into a third person omniscient point of view, which can be a bit jarring. This does give the reader more insight into what is going on, yet it is odd to mix those two points of view in one story: it sets up the conspiracy, but removes an element of the suspense. The characterizations were a bit off for my taste. Jack is considerably more emotional than I'm used to seeing him on the show, and Daniel is an energetic "anthropuppy" with the enthusiasm of a six year old on Christmas morning: "Daniel as always is bouncing and dare I say wigging his tail like a little puppy every time we encounter a new civilization." However, Sam, Teal'c and Hammond's characterizations are closer to my interpretation from the show, which does help. My main quibble with the story is the language. I would assume that the author is not a native English speaker, as the story is liberally peppered with verbs in the wrong tense: "let Daniel rambles along" and "I look at Daniel, he got this look that say", for example. There are also several awkward phrases, such as "Carter's voice came out from the radio," that, along with punctuation errors, at times make the story difficult to read. More than once I caught myself going back to re-read a sentence to fully understand it. These errors do detract from the story and, honestly, if I were reading it for pure pleasure, I likely would not have finished it. At its most basic, "Thread of Destiny" is a good story with a decent plot that is hampered by its execution. The author has a lot of potential and I think she could benefit greatly from seeking out a native English speaking beta to give her a hand. The language errors are the main obstacle to the story's readability and if she is able to fix those, I believe she will find a willing audience eager to read her stories. |
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