This story is just... sweet.  Warm and gently funny, and affectionate toward all the characters without getting sappy about it.  Norrington brings his new fiancee to Port Royal, and Elizabeth isn't quite sure what to make of her.  It's nice to see a Norrington story that also does justice to Will and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, as the POV character, comes across very well, with both her strengths and her insecurities on display.  Will is sweet and a little lunkheaded and very much the way I imagine him to be when he's not being hounded all over the Caribbean by zombie pirates.  Norrington is gentelmanly and smart and very believably in love, and Jack is his usual charming self.  But what really made the story for me was Genevieve, a charming and engaging OFC who fit in perfectly among the canon characters, interacting believably with all of them and claiming no unwarranted importance for herself despite being the title character. 

The story is short and oriented toward character interaction rather than plot, but there's a definite character arc that I enjoyed.  The focus is actually more on Genevieve and Elizabeth than on Genevieve and Norrington, and I like the way the two women slowly build toward an understanding.

And yet another Hermione story that breaks my heart.  I must be a masochist that way.  But really, if anyone had tried to tell me that I'd be this affected by a story in which Hermione learns to skateboard and ponders joining a girl band, I'd have laughed in their faces.  Which just goes to reinforce the common wisdom that a sufficiently talented writer can make any scenario work.

All Too Sweet to Last gives us Hermione, in the summer after a particularly traumatic sixth year, trying desperately to remember what it means to be a sixteen-year-old girl.  She watches some perfectly ordinary, and perfectly real, Muggle teenagers in a park and finds herself drawn into a world that's commonplace to the reader but utterly alien to her.  I really admire the way annakovsky lets the story build at a quiet, unhurried pace, setting one convincing little detail on top of another until a lovely structure forms, solid enough to make me believe in Hermione doing a number of things that, at first glance or in the hands of a lesser writer, would've seemed completely out of character.  I also really appreciated getting a little insight into Hermione's relationship with her parents, a subjects that's been sadly neglected in fanfic.

Remus/Hermione is my favorite het pairing in HP fandom.  They're perfectly suited to each other in many ways, and totally wrong in others, and bringing them together can lead to just about any scenario, from lightest romantic comedy to darkest tragedy.    Sometimes Salvation is on the tragic side of the spectrum, but not in an overwrought or heavy-handed sort of way.  musesfool gives us the aftermath of OotP from Hermione's point of view, and Hermione is clever and brave and logical, but she's still a teenage girl, and so very blind in so many ways.  musesfool has a wonderful ability to get deep into the characters' psyches without losing the outside perspective, and it works particularly well here.  There's a slow, creeping sense of wrongness that pervades this story, and it's all the more effective for Hermione's complete unawareness of it.  The whole thing builds to a conclusion that's inevitable and perfectly in character, yet still feels like a punch to the gut.  Rereading it now to write this review, I found myself aching for the characters all over again.

And another new fandom -- Once Upon a Time in Mexico.  I'm obviously in a Johnny Depp frame of mind, and who can blame me, really?  The Mariachi movies are particularly well suited to fanfic, I think, because most of the problems that plague talented but unpolished amateur writers -- purple prose, over-the-top characterization, melodrama, angsty wallowing, gleeful character-torture -- are all present right there in the canon, and you have to embrace them if you're going to embrace the fandom at all.  This is not a fandom where one goes looking for subtle psychological insights and delicately crafted prose.  This is a fandom where one goes looking for things that go boom.

Things go boom real good in Sons of Mexico.  El Mariachi and Lorenzo take on yet another cartel and it all goes horribly, violently wrong.  It's all Sands' fault, of course, but Sands is having problems of his own, and being blind and psychotic is the least of them.  There are gunfights and explosions and big nasty villains, and I could totally see Robert Rodriguez filming it all in my head.  And in the middle of all the boom, there's actually a really interesting characterization of Sands and the way he and El relate to each other.  The writing is a bit clunky in places, and the villains are totally two-dimensional, but it's all part of the charm.  Just relax and enjoy it.

Wow, it's been ages since I posted a review, hasn't it?  Well, better late than never I suppose.  I'm back now, and venturing into a couple of new fandoms, to boot.  First up: Pirates of the Caribbean and Letter of Marque by Dee (cupiscent).  This story achieves something that I wasn't sure was possible -- a convincing first-person Norrington voice.  I love Dee's Norrington.  He is snarky, intelligent, honorable, competent, and permanently exasperated.  All the things he was in the movie, really, except that here these qualities take center stage instead of being relegated to the background.  The quick-paced plot involves a very suspicious Norrington joining forces with newly-comissioned privateer Jack Sparrow for what's supposed to be a quick and simple reconoisance mission in Spanish territory.  Of course, nothing is ever quick and simple when Jack Sparrow is involved.  But the plot is secondary, really.  What makes this story work is the banter between Norrington and Sparrow, which is delightful.

There is a slashy sequel to this story, and a third installment promised, but it works perfectly well as a stand-alone.

Does anyone know where I could currently find the stories "Scrabble" my Martian Housecat and "Under a Dark Star" by Medusa? The links in my reviews for these fics are broken, and I'd like to find them if possible.

Also, if anyone comes across a broken story link while reading this LJ, please let me know and I'll do my best to fix them.

Stories written from James Potter's POV are relatively rare. Long, plotty, nearly-epic stories written from James Potter's POV are so rare, they're almost non-existent. So Redeeming Time scores a lot of points with me on that basis alone. But I wouldn't be reviewing it if it wasn't also a funny, touching, clever and extremely well-written portrayal of James and his friends during the year following Sirius sending Snape to the Whomping Willow. I really like this portrayal of James and his slow, halting steps toward decency and maturity. I like that he doesn't just wake up one morning a totally different person. I like that Lily doesn't just fall into his arms the first time he behaves half-way human toward her. His transformation is gradual and convincing, and the factors that cause it are all there for the reader to see.

Sirius, Remus and Peter are also written extremely well, as are Lily and Snape and various supporting characters. There's lots of great bantering dialogue, and some very revealing character interactions. The story is focused on a group of adolescents working out their personal relationships, but it doesn't feel insular the way so many MWPP-era stories do. The fact that there's a war going on outside the school is not ignored or glossed over. It's important to the characters and affects the way they think and behave.

This was a really satisfying read for me, the sort of story that makes me happy every time I scroll down to the end of the chapter and find that there's another chapter coming. If you have any interest at all in that era of canon, do check it out.

I'm reviewing these two fics together, even though Preferences does work as a stand-alone. I just happen to think that reading it with its sequel, 2001, gives a more powerful effect.

"Preferences" was written for scribbulus_ink's Classic Canon Challenge, and is based on "Bartleby the Scrivener," which happens to be one of my all-time favorite stories. eumenides1 does an impressive job of capturing Melville's style (I realize that not everyone might consider this a virtue, but you gotta appreciate the technique, if nothing else). She also makes particularly effective choices in the world she creates and the canon characters she chooses to parallel Melville's players. In the original story, the reader doesn't know what's making Bartleby act the way he does, and is forced to share the narrator's helpless frustration and confustion. In "Preferences," the reader does know, but the narrator still doesn't, which adds an extra layer of resonance to the story. The characterizations, viewed obliquely from an outsider's perspective, are strong and convincing, and the ending packs a quiet punch.

"2001," written in a more accessible modern style, picks up shortly after "Preferences" leaves off. It expands on the first story, giving a wider view of the characters' world and situation and filling in some details on how everyone got to where they are. Like "Preferences," it's chilling in a quiet, unobtrusive way that sort of creeps up on you and grabs you by the throat when you least expect it. It lacks the wonderfully clever structure of the first story, but it makes up for it with a deeper exploration of the characters. The two stories complement each other, building a combined effect that's greater than the sum of its parts -- even though the parts are pretty damn terrific individually.

(And as a side note, do check out the Classic Canon Challenge archive. It has many fantastic stories by various authors.

Tower of Air provides a short, wrenchingly powerful insight into the heart and mind of Albus Dumbledore -- a character that seldom gets a sympathetic portrayal in fanfic these days. After OOP, many readers -- including myself -- have tended to classify Dumbledore as "manipulative bastard, 1st class" and leave it at that. cluegirl doesn't shy away from showing the toll Dumbledore's strategies take on the people in his sphere, but she also shows the toll that such a life must take on the man himself, and it's a difficult, painful thing to see. The image of Dumbledore's infinitely large portrait gallery, populated by the faces of his failures, will stay with me for a long time. The voices of the portraits, each one given a distinctive and vivid personality with only a few lines of dialogue, give the story depth and texture. This is the sort of story I expect to re-read many times, finding new nuances to think about each time. Highly recommended.

One thing I've always particularly admired about Nym's writing is her ability to take plot ideas that I would normally dismiss as being too contrived and cliched to work, and to make them work, by gum. Shattered is a perfect example. The plot is that oldest of fanfic chestnuts: a spell cast in a desperate moment creates a magical bond between Harry and Snape, and Nym made me feel as if I was encountering this concept for the first time. What makes it work is Nym's meticulous attention to characterization. Snape and Harry, stuck in a situation that neither one of them wants, and neither one of them can avoid, remain recognizably themselves as they learn to deal with it, and with each other. Like Rowling, Nym makes great use of third-person limited POV, giving a great picture of Harry, and of the other characters as seen through his eyes. Snape comes across as prickly and infuriating, and slowly grows sympathetic without losing his edge. Harry himself is confused, sometimes thick, sometimes uncommonly perceptive, always likeable. Sirius, Remus and Neville are also wonderfully portrayed in supporting roles. And there are some wonderfully humorous insights into the details of domestic life in the wizarding world.

This is a nice, long, satisfying story, the sort you can get lost in for hours or ever days. Enjoy.

Breathe Out Anger is penknife's take on Remus Lupin's life during the first few years after the Potters' deaths and Sirius' imprisonment. The story has not so much a plot as a character arc, taking Remus from the initial stages of grief through the slow descent into depression to the first tenative steps toward recovery. Being Remus, he does it all in a quiet, self-contained way, without self-pity or melodrama, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

Penknife's characterization of a twenty-something Remus seems perfect to me. He's not yet the person we meet in the books, but he is clearly in the process of becoming that person, slowly acquiring the self-sufficiency, the endurance, the emotional defence mechanisms that will eventually define him in canon. The other characters shine, too. My favorite was Moody's brief appearance, but I also really appreciated the way Dumbledore and McGonagall's personalities came across so strongly without either character actually appearing "on stage." I've reread this story several times now, and I keep picking up new favorite bits and new things to think about each time.

I spent months trying to decide if I wanted to review Skin Deep, and finally decided that anything that occupied my thoughts for this long deserves a review. The reason I've thought about this story so much is that it frustrated the hell out of me. It's so, so, so close to being a great story. It's really well-written. It has really hot sex scenes that don't sound like the same fanfic sex scenes I've read a million times before. It has a very good characterization of Snape and a suspensful plot that takes two of Snape's best-known canonical talents -- potions and Occlumency -- and puts a clever and original twist on them. All it needed for greatness was an equally good characterization of Lupin, and that, I'm afraid, is where the story fell down for me.

The opening scene has Lupin showing up at Snape's doorstep late one night. His excuse is that he's returning a book, but within seconds, he announces that he's lonely and wants to talk. Snape responds with some typical Snapish nastiness, not particularly extreme, and Lupin immediately loses his composure. He swears, he turns red in the face, he hits the furniture, he says things like "You thoughtless bastard," and generally sounds more like fanon Sirius than like himself. Later scenes aren't quite as OOC, but still, the Lupin in this story is completely missing the emotional reticence and near-pathological self-control that define him in canon.

I probably wouldn't have minded it much in a short PWP, or in a story that was mediocre overall. But in a long, plotty, otherwise quite wonderful story, a single flaw sticks out that much more noticeably. At least, it stuck out for me. There were whole stretches where I'd be zipping along in my reading, totally engrossed, anxious to see what happened next, and then Lupin would say something that didn't sound at all like him, and my dispelief suspenders would just snap.

This sounds like I'm being very harsh on the story, but I really don't mean to be. I know lots of smart people who loved it, and I can see why they did. Characterization is a horribly subjective thing, and Emotional!Lupin shows up in otherwise good fanfic often enough for me to know that lots of people like to see him written that way. I think a lot of readers, Snape fans in particular, would find this story very satisfying. I wish I was one of them.

Another great merry_smutmas entry. I admit, I'm partial to Sirius resurrection fics, but I like to think I can still tell a bad one from a good one, and this is a particularly good one. The Blaze of Noon opens ten years after the events of OoP. Sirius reappers in the Department of Mysteries again, all his senses crippled by ten years of sensory deprivation beyond the veil. Harry and Snape, now lovers, take him home to recover. Such a scenario could so easily have devolved into a soggy h/c angst-fest, but Nimori avoids all the cliched traps. Sirius, damaged as he is, refuses to be either an invalid or a victim. Harry tries desperately to do the right thing, and sometimes succeeds, and at other times messes up in believable and sympathetic ways. Snape, while obviously much mellowed from the canonical bastard we know and love, can still turn on the snark when it's needed. Harry/Sirius stories tend to squick me, no matter how much Harry is aged up before the relationship begins, but here nimori actually manages to set up a new dynamic between them in such a way that a sexual relationship did not feel like a horrendous breach of trust on anyone's part. I hadn't thought such a thing was possible, and am quite happy to be proven wrong on this occasion.

There were times when I wished that this story was longer and more detailed, but on the whole, I think the short, episodic structure worked in its favor. It allowed the action to focus on a single aspect -- the way the Snape/Harry relationship shifts and changes to accomodate the presence of Sirius -- without getting mired in distractions. Yes, it would've been interesting to find out exactly how Snape's character had changed so much over the years, but that would've been an entirely different story. Here, it was enough that the characters acknowledged the change. I was willing to take it on faith.

Warning: the link for the story will take you to a page that has a very NC-17 piece of Harry/Snape fan art at the top. Enjoy, but be careful where you open it. :-)

The merry_smutmas fest produced a great deal of high-quality fic and art, but I think this is my favorite of the lot. Snape/Black has always been a difficult pairing to write convincingly, and the revelations in OOP made it even more difficult. Stories that come up with unexpected yet believable ways to bring them together are hard to find, but oh-so-satisfying when I do find them. In Morte O Merce, cluegirl succeeded in surprising me, horrifying me, and turning me on all at once.

The story opens in medias res, as Snape confronts Sirius about the discovery that Sirius has been paying a Metamorphmagus prostitute to impersonate Snape. The gradual revelations about Sirius' reasons for doing what he does, and Snape's reaction to it all, comprise the rest of the action. It's dark and violent, and quite devastating in its portrayal of what twelve years in Azkaban have done to Sirius. At the same time, there's a really interesting and inventive backstory for Snape, which puts an interesting twist on his character and works nicely into the plot. The ending is ambiguous, and refreshingly free of pat solutions or unrealistically simple reconciliations. The writing is beautiful, and full of rich sensory description that pulled me into the story universe right from the beginning and kept me totally immersed until the very end.

I understand this is going to be the first installment in a series. This makes me happy, as I'm anxious to see how this particular version of the Snape/Black relationship develops.

I've sorted all the reviews in this journal into the Memories section, grouped by fandom and pairing category. So if you're looking for a particular type of story, or just want to see what my reviewing habits are like, check that out.

Christmas-themed stories are a long-standing fannish tradition, and I generally enjoy them quite a lot, but it's often a guilty pleasure, as they tend to overdose either on the fluff or on the angst. In The Christmas Sitcom, Morgan manages to find the right fluff-to-angst proportion. The overall tone of the story is sweely humorous, but there are a couple of serious moments that are worked in smoothly and without melodrama.

The plot, such as it is (this is really a slice-of-life story), has Sirius, Remus and Peter gathering at the Potters' house for Harry's first Christmas. They banter, bicker, make jokes, worry about each other, and abuse many innocent vegetables. This is a dialogue-heavy story, and the dialogue is what really made it stand out for me. Lily and James sounded exactly like a married couple. James, Sirius, Peter and Remus sounded like guys who'd been best pals forever. I particularly liked the way all the characters cheerfuly abused Sirius to his face, but said kind and concerned things about him when he wasn't around to hear. It felt and sounded very real to me. The characterizations were sharp and believable, and all the characters had equal time for development. The ending felt a little rushed, but up to that point, the pacing was good. This the kind of story I like to read on a snowy evening with a nice cup of hot cider and a cookie.

Stories set in a future where Voldemort wins the war are fairly common in the fandom, but believable portrayals of such a future are quite rare. Most of the time, the scenario is just used as a pretext for a lot of kinky Death Eater orgies (not that that's a bad thing). But the Voldemort in canon is not a sex maniac looking for naked slave boys -- he's a racist fanatic with a social and political agenday to push, and in The Bloody Stare of Mars, Yahtzee presents a bleak and chillingly convincing picture of what the world might be like if this agenda was actually implemented.

The story begins with a desperate but determined Hermione taking a job with Severus Snape. From there, the plot takes a number of surprising yet logical twists, none of which I'm about to spoil here. The action is well-paced, with the suspense slowly building to an exciting conclusion, and the character interactions are subtle and believable. The relationship between Hermione and Snape develops organically from the plot, and develops in a way that makes sense for their situations and personalities. The supporting cast is used well, too; I particulalrly loved the characterization of Luna, and Hermione's encounter with Draco.

Yahtzee's writing style is elegant and atmospheric. The feel of the story made me think of all those classic suspense movies of the 1940's -- I could see it all playing in my mind, in stylishly lit black-and-white with a moody jazz soundtrack. I love this kind of writing, where every detail means something and every word counts. And I love this story.

I'm always on the lookout for stories that give a convincingly sympathetic portrayal of Peter Pettigrew without whitewashing him. It's a difficult thing to do, given the scope of his betrayal and the number of lives he's destroyed, but when an author does it well, the results are well worth the effort of searching. Before the Cock Crow is set in the early stages of Peter's fall, and it succeeds in showing him as simultaneously tragic and pathetic, a man who will betray not from malice, but from a combination of his own human weakness and an inability to make allowances for weakness in his friends.

The story also provides a sympathetic and believable personality for Regulus Black, a charismatic and politically astute Voldemort, a convincing scenario for what might've sown the seeds of discord between Sirius and Remus, and some interesting theories about the consequences of pureblood inbreeding. The plot has a political dimension as well as a personal one, and makes the two come together in interesting ways. The tension and uncertainty of the characters' post-Hogwarts lives in a time of war come across really well.

According to Isis, this is the second story in a planned trilogy, but it can be read perfectly well on its own. The prequel, "First Piece of Silver," is also well worth reading, but it's more of a short character vignette, and my personal preference is for medium-length stories with plot, which is why I'm reviewing this one.

It's rare to see a Sirius/Remus first time story set post-Azkaban, and even more rare to see one written after the publication of Order of the Phoenix. I suppose most writers want to put as much chronological distance as possible between the hopeful beginning and the tragic end. It's a hell of a challenge, too, to take the older, more damaged versions of the characters, with all that difficult history between them, and bring them together in a convincing way. Ephemeris rises to the challenge beautifully with graceful writing, insightful characterisation and wry humor. It's set between GoF and OOP, during the Order's early days at 12 Grimmauld Place. Penknife does a great job capturing the tug-of-war of opposing forces in Sirius and Remus' relationship: the awkwardness of a long separation, the long-standing affection, the resentment of past betrayals, the fear of the future, and the need of two isolated people to reconnect to each other and to memories of a happier past. It's a hauntingly realistic portrayal; no glossing over of the characters' flaws or the potential difficulties they face. Remus' POV sections, in particular, perfectly convey that breathless sense of what it feels like to take a massive leap of faith against your better judgement. His conversations with Molly Weasley are priceless. (This is one of the best characterizations of Molly I've come across by the way. And there's a great cameo appearance by Hermione, too.) It's stories like this that help maintain my affection for the pairing.

I've edited all the reviews of stories from the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest to link to the Fest's main archive page rather than to individual stories. It's quite easy to find the story you want from there, and linking to the main page will prevent broken links if the site owners move any files around.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading.