Ponyfic Roundup 564B: Spotlight on Nine Days Down, part two

Okay, as you'll have noticed I took a little bit longer getting over my bug than I'd hoped to do, but here I am again with a few spoilery thoughts on Nine Days Down, which I awarded five stars to last time out. First, though, here's the slate for next time and I'm going to be having a quiet week with a fairly low word count:

The Dusty Trail by unicorncob
Breezing to New Heights by Shaslan
Father's Pride in a Daughter's Stride by sweeT2010Tooth
Thanks, Mom by Oroboro
Chapter One by Estee

Okay, past the jump break (if you're reading the desktop site, anyway) come a few spoilery thoughts about Nine Days Down.

 My goodness, but this story was full of stuff, to the extent that I can't even remember all of it despite having read the fic so recently. Just now I remembered the whole thing about "birthing" swords, which as Luna (I think it was) said, you really don't want to think about too hard! Interesting little snippet earlier in the fic, though, about how swords were basically just museum pieces in the Equestria of the day.

Bait was the guy I alluded to last time as getting a slightly underwhelming ending. He'd done so much, not least biting Cretes in the bollocks, and then he just... went. It was certainly a relief that he turned out not to have been destroyed by Tartarus, but I would have liked something a little more heroic for the wight. He might even have been the bravest character in the entire story.

Ben was great, and for a character who couldn't even speak (well, okay, he could scream) he had a lot of personality. Early in the fic I was a bit concerned that he might end up betraying Twilight eventually, Luna link or no, but fortunately not. He too faded out of things a little later on in the story, but that was probably unavoidable given everything else that was going on.

I was surprised to find myself so interested in the "great goddesses"-style stuff with Terra and Typhon and so on. That's often a sticking point for me even in stories I otherwise adore (iisaw's Alicorn Adventures series, for example) but somehow not here. I'm not sure why. Briareos and co were fascinating creatures, and it was nice to read about their inspiration in the extra "chapter" at the end of the story.

And the TwiLestia? Well, it's not my favourite thing, and the scene in the cave did teeter on the edge of eye-rolling for me, but fortunately this didn't throw itself into becoming a full-on shipfic. That I might have found irritating. Even the presence of Luna didn't make it so, despite her usual mischief. (JoeShogun mentioned basing Luna largely on her IDW comics personality, which I think was a good move.)

Tartarus itself was a fascinating concept, and there was just enough of Its strange (and probably eldritch, or some other form of quadrilateral) nature to stop It becoming just another "dangerous magical land". Celestia being mostly mortal there was surprisingly not as much of a big deal as I'd imagined, since she could get killed and wake up again later. Quite a handy feature for an alicorn, I guess.

Finally, the nature of alicorns was sort-of explained, but then I suppose us ordinary ponies can't really explain it. Even Twilight was struggling, and she was an alicorn. Luna's nyxie guards seemed to be about the closest non-godlike creatures to grasping it, which is fair enough. Oh, and the use of sonar in medicine? Brilliant idea. That was one of the little world-building touches I liked the most.