FimFiction Link - Short ID: 252269/the-witch-of-the-everfree
Published: Mar '15
The witch of the everfree is a 50k word story starring sunset shimmer in the time period leading up to nightmare moon's escape.
Instead of going to a mirror world in Canon!Equestria she attempts to escape canterlot by train and a combination of paranoia, poorly thought out plans and suspicious coincidences has her tumbling down the mountain into the everfree where she gets her title and where she stays for the rest of the story.
This story keeps a unique mix of heart, humor and drama that kept me invested all the way through and reminds me of my time when I just joined the fandom.
It manages to avoid many of the worst tropes that would normally muck up this, its focused on its one narrative and does a good job
The main drama of the story revolves around spoiled brat with mommy issues and more power then God sunset shimmer dealing with her mommy issues and tutoring celestias next student giving her arguably bad advice.
Twilight is a nervous neurotic wreck and stands as a great contrast to shimmers bravado
Celestia comes across as a grieving mother at her wits end and the story does a good job of having her make mistakes without making her a retard
The minor characters have their own spot and I liked apple family wordlbuilding.
The humor is also something to write home as it consistently made me audibly laugh, and didn't even touch on romance which is excessively common in this medium
All in all The Witch of the Everfree is a fun little story with excellent humor, characters, and heart and the only bad thing I have to say is that its ending suffers a bit from being told only from sunsets perspective since its largely twilight who beats the big bad. Wholeheartedly recommend 8/10