d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

The Golden Throne by Vespin [Pokémon]

The Golden Throne is a Pokemon fanfiction centering around Hilbert Black, the hero of Unova. After the events of Pokemon Black and White, Hilbert decides to go off on a new adventure, and he ends up getting a lot more than he bargained for when he winds up shipwrecked in unfamiliar terrain.

 One of the things I liked most about this book was the realism of the main character. From the very beginning, we see that even though he's the hero of Unova, admired by all for defeating Team Plasma and becoming the Unova champion, Hilbert has a very human reaction to his fame and success, a reaction that is also very believable for someone who has actually accomplished all the things that he has. To focus in on just one piece of that, Hilbert became who he is because of a love for adventure, and, now that there appears to be nothing left for him to do, he misses it. Even better, we see that this love for adventure can be a very good thing but also a source for internal conflict and even a potential flaw, and I think that's awesome. It also gives Hilbert motivation, but it is not the only source of it. He has many different factors influencing his decisions, and that also adds to the realism, even while it also fits the bill for a traditional hero character.

Another thing I enjoyed were the plot developments. After the first couple that I was expecting simply from reading the description, I started getting hit with the surprises. Not to give anything away, of course, but some of these were really well handled. There were more than a few times where I could definitely feel the plot ramping up a peg. The author is definitely doing his job well in that regard.

There were lots of other things I liked as well, like the way the fictional history felt so much like actual history or the great details that show just how much the author must have put into designing the Odara empire and how much it's paid off. I also liked seeing the many close relationships that the main character has and how even the characters that were depicted for just a short while seemed real and distinct.

The prologue is something that threw me off a bit because it's so different from what directly follows and doesn't really come into play in the story for something like ten chapters. It did catch my attention, but it also left me with many questions and initially led me to believe that what it portrays was fairly normal for this conception of the Pokémon world rather than a disturbing aberration.

One of the things that annoyed me the most were the typos and errors, including many examples of incorrectly formatted dialogue and occassional words in the wrong form, among others. Editing for this one is something that I would definitely recommend because it was enough to distract me even though it wasn't awful. I also had several smaller and mostly isolated concerns, like the fact that a boy named Alex seems to make progress just a bit too quickly to be believable in chapter 2 or that the exact effect Zekrom might be able to have on a storm wasn't clearly explained or that a few isolated sentences or paragraphs were just a little off. I also had moments of "how did he sleep through that?" and "why aren't they running right now?".

Other than that, though, I was impressed with this one. I would recommend it to the Pokémon lovers out there, particularly since part two is set to start up again very soon. Now would be a good time to check it out, and since, as of the time I'm writing this review, it only has 830 reads, I know there are a lot of you out there who haven't. Go ahead! It definitely deserves some more.

** Published in October 2014 **