Title: Fate: Hard Knocks
Author: Fell The Tempest
Rating: T
Genre: Fantasy/Tragedy (From what author says)
Status: WIP
Fandom: Dresden Files + Fate/Stay Night
Pairings: Harry/Murphy
Summary: When Nicodemus stole the Holy Grail from Hades' Vault Seven, he missed a few items: a scrap of cloth, a knife, an ancient wood placard, a thorned circlet... and a finely crafted scabbard.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11614219/1/Fate-Hard-Knocks

Found this while favorites list hopping around. Takes place right after Skin Game. Premise is exactly as it sounds, Harry Dresden lifts Avalon from Hades' vault and sets out to figure out what the hell it is.

Relatively decent length at just under 59k words over 14 chapters, a pretty good clip for something that was first published in November 2015.

Has some minor grammar issues and typos here and there, but nothing huge.

The story starts off heavy Dresden and all the characters feel in-character. The author's very good about keeping the pacing high and the reader interested in what Harry's doing at every turn. The action sequences are dramatic and the author is very good at the "show, don't tell" when it comes to displaying personality and "oh shit" moments.

4/5 due to keeping my attention throughout with no section that felt really boring or dragging. Depending on how the Fate angle plays out, rating could go up or down.

Last update Oct 5, 2017
Changed status to Abandoned. If its not, someone let me know. --Zombie

 

I quite enjoy it so far, but am holding my breath on how this will handle the other Servants and further Dresden - Saber interaction, which is why I haven't put this forth so far.

On one hand, I do like that this kept the Dresden spirit, reading very much like on of the books and how it built up the summoning, not blowing its load in the first chapter, which is a problem with most HGW fanfics, where people summon the Servants just too fast without the sufficient build-up. Saber herself was written nicely and so far, the integration of the Fate stuff into the Dresden stuff was handled nicely.

On the other, it's still in the build-up phase and it can tank severely.

So, tentative 4/5 for now. Story definitely has potential.

 

I definitely enjoyed this story (after spending most of the morning reading it). I haven't read a lot of Fate/Stay Night fanfiction, but the Dresden Files elements are well done and the integration of the Holy Grail War seems to be handled well so far. I'm wondering how the physical grail that was stolen in the Dresden Files meshes with the version found in Fate/Stay Night though. Should be interesting to find out.

Overall, I think it was well written and it seems to have the appropriate flavor for both universes. I'm giving it a 4.5/5 (rounded up to 5) since it made it onto my favorites list in addition to being worth following. That could go down eventually depending on where the story ends up, but for the moment it's definitely worth reading. (The .5 was knocked off for the errors I caught which probably should have been addressed with some proofreading.)

 

Very strong start here. So far has managed to avoid a lot of the pitfalls both Dresden and FSN crossovers tend to be subject to - annoyingly self-righteous Harry, overuse of Shirou, etc. I'm really happy Dresden didn't pull his chauvinistic bullshit on Saber (because it was annoying enough when Shirou did it and it's right up Dresden's alley).

As Nemrut pointed out, it's got a good build up to the summoning that is very Dresden style.

It'll be interesting to see what elements of FSN come across. Obviously Kuzuki exists here, but who else?

So far as a 4/5, because we're still early in the plot and there's a lot of stuff which can go poorly from here, but I remain optimistic. If the quality remains at this standard, it can easily go up.