Reviews FanficRecs / HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality

FanficRecs Not worth reading

It's bad, no sugarcoating it. Sure, it's a Mary Sue story, and sure, it's written with average quality but that's not what makes it bad. It's simply not a rational story. Through the fic Harry keeps being unscientific and irrational. He makes one theory and then tries to find biased evidence to support it, instead of making a proper hypothesis and testing it.

Almost all of the explicit in story science references are incorrect, as well as being overly-jargon filled. And implicitly, the method Harry relies on for the majority of his problem solving is Aristotelian science. He looks at things, thinks real hard, and knows the answer. This is horrifyingly bad implicit pedagogy, and it only works because he's a Mary Sue and therefore never wrong.

A largely forgettable, overly long nerd power fantasy, with a bit of science (most of it wrong) and a lot of bad ideas.

FanficRecs Try it anyway

I loved all of it!... or most of it!... or some of it...! Some parts of it are good. Really, really good. But there are occasional bits that just are really jarring to me for some reason, such as the first 4 chapters, or Harry and Snape's first meeting, or the bit from the last Quidditch match of the year to the aftermath. That being said, I recommend this wholeheartedly. It could be better, but it could be a lot worse.