The Lyorn's Den

Over Easter, I took a break from reading fanfic at the computer and instead read fanfic tie-in novels and miscellaneous fanstuff in dead-tree format.

( Gary Russell: The Torchwood Archives (2008) )
( Peter Anghelides: Pack Animals (Torchwood tie-in, 2008) )
( David Llewellyn: Trace Memory (Torchwood tie-in, 2008) )
( Dan Abnett: The Story of Martha (Doctor Who tie-in, 2008) )

Both with their very strong moments, but both rec'd with reservations, because of structural problems and character issues.

( Patrick Rothfuss: The Name of the Wind (2007) )

Now the fanfic:

Title: Now We're All Going Under
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: definehome
Length: 36,000 words
What it's about? In a regular paper trail check, Jack finds himself with the complete life outside of Torchwood that Gwen could not dig up a few months earlier... and more dark secrets than even he would have suspected.
Why read it? Great idea, some moments of great dialogue and characterisation.
Why not read it?( This will take a little longer... )

A probably doomed attempt to catch up...

Note: I'm way behind on my reading. Everything I rec here has probably been rec'd all over the internet and back already. But I can live with not being avantgarde.
Note 2: If you want ratings, or warnings for spoilers or anything else, you'll find them on the fic.

Title: 'Tell Beauty How She Blasteth'
Fandom: Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey Novels
Author: tree_and_leaf
Length: 3,900 words
What it's about? "Strong Poison" AU.
Why read it? Beautifully and sparsely written, good Harriet voice.
Why not read it? It's AU, it's dark, and if you do not know the books it will make no sense at all.

Title: Never Doing That Again (Also on Teaspoon)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Author: becky_writing
Length: 4,900
What it's about? Remember Jack's first monologue in "Everything Changes"? "Never doing that again.". It's about the first (and, he really hopes, only) time he got pregnant.
Why read it? It's non-fluffy mpreg within the possibilities of canon.
Why not read it? It's mpreg.

Title: Just Impediment (Also on Teaspoon)
Fandom: Doctor Who/Blackadder II
Author: Doyle
Length: 4,800
What it's about? Why Queen Elizabeth hates the Doctor. (She does. You saw it in "The Shakespeare Code').
Why read it? It's hilarious.
Why not read it? The "Blackadder" style of humour might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Title: Boiling a Frog
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: apiphile
Length: 4,700
What it's about? Jack/Ianto, and Jack being haunted by fish.
Why read it? It's well-written and really weird.
Why not read it? Not much of a plot.


Title: Be Not Without Hope
Fandom: Doctor Who
Author: jadesfire2808
Length: 1,800
What it's about?
Why read it? It's "Turn Left" fic.
Why not read it? It's too short, more "tell" then "show", and, well, just not enough of it.

First things first, the new trailer for Spare Time Images' Highlander fan film is online now here.

( News from the to-do list )

I've also been reading fanfic and found something to rec:

Title: This Is How The Universe Ends
Fandom: Discworld/Torchwood
Author: googlebrat (Laura Walker) and perryvic
Length: 3900 words
What it's about? Death comes for the universe, but he can't do so while someone's still alive, and he cannot take Jack...
Why read it? It's brilliant and funny and sweet and strange and downright philosophical.
Why not read it? Not very good as a Pratchett pastiche.

Title: Sunshine on Skin
Fandom: Doctor Who
Author: snowwhiteliar
Length: 2300 words
What it's about? It's a coda to "Gridlock", using the "Face of Boe" line from the end of "Last of the Time Lords".
Why read it? It gives a reasonable explanation to the whole idea, plus it is full of hope and wonder, and like going out into the first sunny day of early spring.
Why not read it? You hated that line even more than I did and refuse to contemplate it further.

Title: Today's Not Over Yet
Fandom: Doctor Who
Author: misscam (Camilla Sandman)
Length: 1000 words
What it's about? The Doctor, on the eve of the last battle of the Time War.
Why read it? It's a very in character answer to "What would you do if you knew the world would end tomorrow", associative and jumpy like time travel, and full of joy and appreciation for the world.
Why not read it? You like your stories with a little more plot.

The cats are happily forming a heap of cat on the sofa. My motorbike has passed the technical inspection. The ficus benjamina which was in the way all the time has a new home. I have a new fandom (that I might write about soon), which is probably responsible for me dreaming about demonic chain saw murderers going after the unwary inheritors of a hundred-year-old curse (which was not as bad as it sounds). I have fanfic, tea, and chocolate cookies, and it's still Sunday.

So I think I'll catch up on reviewing books. Today: Three doorstoppers.

( Kit Whitfield: Bareback (2006) )
( Scott Lynch: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) )
( Jaqueline Carey: Kushiel's Scion (2006) )

Five days of freezing rain so far, sometimes making a half-hearted attempt at snow, but never getting around to it. Remnants of a storm over the North Sea rattle the trees and the windows and try to steer cars and bicycles off the path. I don't even try riding my motorbike in this weather.

cyrna and her husband are off for a three-or-four week health cure. At the moment, I'm caring for their cats. Those cats are very sweet and low-maintenance, nothing like my monsters. I come by every two days, feed, water and clean, and spend an hour or so on the sofa petting the black-and-white big cat who purrs loudly and always has this baffled look on his face. Thin white-and-tabby looks at me from a safe distance and seems to be considering the situation.

Yesterday I went to J___'s birthday party. We were sitting around, talking like old people, about old times and jobs, and kids these days, while the children played and screamed in the next room. On R___'s request, I had brought a salad of chicory, oranges, red onions and mint leaves, with a chili'd vinaigrette strong on the mustard. The leftover smell from the peeling, cutting and mixing in my kitchen is enough to banish evil spirits. It's fresh and harsh, coolish but fierce, a very "awake" smell. The mellowing element in the salad is chicken breast, fried and then let soak in a slightly caramelised soy/balsamic vinegar/orange juice sauce. Because of the vegetarians I serve the chicken on the side and leave the salad's unforgiving temperament unmellowed.

On the party, I met A____ who I hadn't seen in ages and who's now working practically around the corner from me. I had heard her name in some meeting, but as it's not a very rare name I had been wondering.

I came back from the party feeling out of sync with the world, with the rain hammering against the windows. It would have been a great moment to get some writing done -- writing in that state of mind needs editing, but it tends to produce plot and strong images -- but I was just too damn tired. I went to bed, slept for 13 hours and awoke with a headache.

The mood fits the season, graveyard season, with vendors of wreaths and grave ornaments opening seasonal stalls at the entrances of the graveyards. Day of mourning next Sunday, when all the old women go to the graveyards to remember their fathers, brothers, husbands who died in the war. Not sons, not anymore, and in my lifetime the women have gone from oldish to ancient. Oh well, with the adventure in Afghanistan they might get some new blood onto the graveyards. Won't the vendors shivering in their stalls be enthusiastic about it. And the Sunday after next is Eternity Sunday, or Dead Sunday, and after that the Christmas lights come on, and it will still rain.

The week-before-last I visited Tiassa. We did a lot of RPGing, as usual, and in between I managed to re-write an old vampire story. The interesting thing about the re-write is that what used to be our world in the first version isn't anymore -- it's now a world with no LeFanu, no Stoker, no Rice. No Báthory, no Vlad Tepes where this story takes place, no Christian mythology, no ready metaphors. Only the narrator, who has made a study of alien life-forms and human ghost stories once even associates a nocturnal, blood-drinking undead being with the legends, and even she, sceptic that she is, gives equal plausibility to the theory that the dead person was sent back by the patron spirit of righteous anger to settle a score.

We also watched "Stardust" and agreed that it was the most fun and light-hearted fantasy movie we had seen in ages. I had read the books only a few weeks earlier -- I bought them in '97 when they first came out, but somehow forgot to read them. The movie takes everything that works in movie format from the books, leaves out what doesn't, and changes what is necessary yet won't look good on the screen. Very well done. I didn't expect to love the pirates, who are, in the book, respectable and pleasant fishers of lighting-bolts, but I did. The one change I disliked was the one-week-limit that Tristan had in the movie. No way he can change that much in one week, and it cheapens the great adventure is it's done in what feels like a rush.

Big Cat is snoring on his favourite place, which is kind of above the radiator. I have made a hot water bottle for Little Cat who feels that November means snuggling up to something warm and doesn't understand why Big Cat wants to be left alone.

This time, two books that got recommended to me as "light and fun reading", both roughly around 300 pages, both from the 1990's, one SF, one Fantasy, both with a mystery at the centre.

( Polar City Blues, by Katherine Kerr, 1991 )
( When Demons Walk, by Patricia Briggs, 1998 )

***
Other news: I finally managed to get my bike home. I had left it at work after the unpleasant visit to the dentist in July, and then, for two weeks, I was physically incapable of riding it (everything that drove up my pulse or blood pressure was a very bad idea), and for the next two weeks, I hadn't the bloody time to walk to work. Anyway, yesterday I took the bus and rode my bike home. Small triumphs.

After not being to the cinema for about a year, I went twice last week, once to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End", then two days later for "Ocean's 13".

Other people have written far more interesting and intelligent things about PotC:AWE than I ever could: If I become a little less pissed off with my current LJ addiction I might even link to them.

( Cut for mildly spoilerish talk )

Bad dreams, again, but this time, at least, they clearly came from too-enthusiastic reading (if there is such a thing). I awoke frantic, with a long list of things I needed to do at once to prevent a bad situation from devolving into all-out catastrophe, started mentally working through the list and discovered that all of the problems were someone else's, who, author willing, would be well on top of it soon.

Which is not the worst way to wake up, all things considered.

And because I did nothing but reading this weekend (it's raining), and I haven't heard from any of you folks at home, I'll just talk about books again. I read these in November and never got around to talking about them.

( Kitty Goes to Washington, by Carrie Vaughn, 2006 )
( Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, 1951 )
( Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman, 2006 )

I have asked myself why I am writing those reviews. It's not as if there is a lack of book reviews in the world. My first idea was that I needed something to fill the pages of my LJ. Which might be true. Or that I'm obsessive. Which is true. But mostly it's, I think, that over the years I read a lot of books and forgot them. Forgot that I read them, or forgot what was in them. And every time someone (like mad_freddy in his comment here) talks about them I can only say, I read it when I was in school, but I can't remember. Which I feel is embarrassing, and I do not want that to happen anymore if I can avoid it.

In short, yes, I'm obsessive.

Just so that I find it again...

Books:

21.11.
"The Guns of August", by Barbara Tuchman
"Elsewhere", by Will Shetterly
"Darwinia", by Robert Charles Wilson
"Hangman's Holiday" by Dorothy Sayers (Short Stories)

5.11.
"Ill Wind", by Rachel Caine
"Making Book", by Teresa Nielsen Hayden (Essays)
"1491", by Charles C. Mann (Non-fiction)

27.10.
"Summer Knight", by Jim Butcher
"Kitty and the Midnight Hour", by Carrie Vaughn
"Snake Agent", by Liz Williams

18.10.
"Grave Peril", by Jim Butcher
"The Privilege of the Sword", by Ellen Kushner

11.10.
"Fool Moon", by Jim Butcher
"The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club", by Dorothy Sayers

13.9.
"Shadows over Baker Street" (Anthology)
"Teckla", by Steven Brust
"The Poison Master", by Liz Williams

21.8.
"Storm Front", by Jim Butcher.

10.7.
"We who are about to...", by Joanna Russ

25.1.
"The Iron Council", by China Miéville
"Dragon", by Steven Brust
"Kushiel's Chosen" by Jaqueline Carey


Fanfic:

24.7.
Midnight Blue: "The Mirror of Maybe" (HP)
Rorschach's Blot: "Make a Wish" (HP)
Ishtar: "Fidelius" (HP)
Le Rouret: "Pottymouth" (LotR, NC-17)

25.1.
After the Rain: "Running Close to the Ground", "The Vanishing Cabinet and what Montague Found There", "Happy Birthday, Mr. Dark Lord", "Remedial History" (all HP)

ETA: 21. Jan 07 - Found some more book entries.