Sure, I think I'll be at Galacon next year.
Maybe we can meet up then, or perhaps even sooner (you're not that far away after all).
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Leoshi Reviews:
The Glass Blower
Author: Cold in Gardez
Stories can be described in a variety of words, but Cold in Gardez's The Glass Blower truly sits as a masterfully haunting tale. Taking place within the Canterlot bazaar, the story stars a master glass blower earth pony with a passion for art, who falls madly (in every sense of the word) in love with Rarity after a chance meeting. Captivated by her grace, he rises to her challenge to win her heart, and crafts her four incredible glass works of art, each of them empowered with his own unique magic. After each craft is shown, she adds a further challenge to him, promising her heart as the prize each time.
The glass blower works tirelessly across the months, unaware that Rarity's challenge is a farce, something only to boost her own status in the high society. And after four attempts to win her heart, and finally earning only a broken heart for a prize, the glass blower learns to never love again. After the final meeting, Rarity is never again seen in the Canterlot bazaar, due to the horrifying image she saw within the glass blower's masterpiece. The truth of that image is a mystery to everyone but Rarity, who never speaks of it.
The Glass Blower, like all of Cold in Gardez's works, is written in exceptional prose and loving attention to detail, with near-perfect characterization and textbook-perfect progression. The amount of detail he writes to describe the glass blowing procedure leads one to believe he has worked with it for all his life, leaving little room for imagination as the glass blower crafts his art. With each new masterpiece, the reader is easily able to see it as though it were before them, from the simple oval mirror to the living glass hummingbird. And the emotion at play in Rarity, the glass blower, and his friend Sticks is a hook that any reader will not notice until they're already put in the eyes of the characters, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.
The tale weighs in at over nine-thousand words, and is my personal favorite fanfiction of all time, MLP or otherwise. It embodies the essences of fairy tales from some generations ago, describing mistakes made and lessons learned. To best describe it, this story left me with a very specific chill...as though someone had removed a steel knife from a pile of snow, and held it near, but not on, the back of my neck, just close enough so I could feel the chill without knowing the source. The Glass Blower is a tale that will leave an impression on you for many weeks to come, and the story within is as hauntingly beautiful as the final masterpiece crafted.
Bottom line: The Glass Blower, with all the detail and superior prose, is one of the best MLP fictions written, and is accepted by the community as such. 9.75/10
TheComet
