Category Archives: Fiction

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

by Anna

By Genevieve Valentine

Book CoverI’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of Genevieve Valentine. I love both her blog and her fictional writing, but am continually surprised by how different they are. She is so funny on her blog; her recaps of the television show “Penny Dreadful” were as much a delight as the show itself. Her books and short stories, however, are almost unrelenting melancholy. Her novels are not hugely long or densely worded, but she somehow gives everything a sort of portentous double-meaning which gives the narratives a heavy tone. It is such a vague feeling in the text that I’m struggling to describe it.

Anyway, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a retelling of the folktale of the twelve dancing princesses, set in New York City during Prohibition. (The titular Kingfisher Club is the dancing girls’ speakeasy of choice.) The Twelve Dancing Princesses was not a favorite story of mine as a kid, so I only vaguely recalled it. What is just sort of casual misogyny in the original story (of course the king locks up the twelve princesses in a tower – that’s just what you do with princesses in fairy tales), gets fleshed out here into true cruelty in the utmost neglect in a real-world setting. This builds up a strong sense of suspense throughout the novel, as the consequences are suddenly more real.

It made me cry several times in the privacy of my home, but it also, embarrassingly, made me laugh out loud on the metro.

—Anna

Rose Under Fire

by Anna

By Elizabeth Wein

Book CoverShortly after Kinsey notified us all about the sequel to Code Name Verity, I checked out Rose Under Fire, with some trepidation, I have to admit. Code Name Verity was excellent, but also completely devastating in parts, and Rose Under Fire had the potential to be even worse. The majority of the book is set in a Nazi concentration camp for women, with extra focus given to the victims of the ‘medical’ experiments. I just wasn’t sure I could take it.

However, Elizabeth Wein is a genius and knows exactly how to tread the line. Most of the book is mercifully told in flashback, so readers can continually reassure themselves that at least these few characters have necessarily survived. This doesn’t mean it isn’t heartbreaking, of course; just not unbearably so. I would even say, all things considered, that overall it was more upbeat (not the right word at all) than Code Name Verity. (It also is not a direct sequel, per se; it has some shared characters, but features a newly introduced main character.)

Several weeks later, I followed this up with watching “Judgment at Nuremberg,” a 1961 film recounting one of the trials at Nuremberg, this one against four judges for crimes against humanity. Spenser Tracy stars as the retired American judge who agrees to oversee the tribunal for this trial, and wrestles with his own conscience in trying to reconcile the crimes that were committed in the past with the current devastation of the country.

The movie explores to what degree individuals are responsible for the actions of a government. Outside of the courtroom testimony, some of the more painful scenes are of regular citizens looking dazed and insisting they had no knowledge at all of the actions of the Nazi party. It inspires an unsettling mixture of pity and anger in both the judge and the viewer, and raises tough questions without easy answers. It was a good companion to “Rose Under Fire,” and now I’m ready to turn to some lighter books and movies.

—Anna

Longbourn

by Kinsey

Pride and Prejudice is my very favorite book. It says so right in my bio for this site. I’ve read it dozens of times and love every bit. But I’m not overly precious about adaptations or modern takes–I really like seeing how someone takes such classic material and uses it to say something new, or just puts their own spin on a good story. Now, some re-purposings of the Bennet family have worked better than others. Bridget Jones’s Diary is another of my favorite books and I think it is absolute genius, and the Bollywood movie version Bride and Prejudice is completely delightful. And of course we are all big fans of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries here on Biblio-therapy. But I deeply, deeply disliked Austenland and I don’t even want to talk about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I tell you all this so you understand that I am a discerning consumer when it comes to the Jane Austen industry, as it were, and I am heartily recommending Longbourn by Jo Baker.

The one sentence summary sounds very Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey—Longbourn is about what the Bennet family servants were doing during the action in Pride and Prejudice–but Baker has taken what could have been just a cute idea and turned it into a really thoughtful story about complex, layered people.

Now the hook for the reader, of course, is how the story in this book will line up with the action we’re all familiar with, and how Baker writes about well-established and -loved characters like Jane and Lizzy. And don’t worry, the Pride and Prejudice fan will find plenty of things that mirror the classic. For example, when Mr. Collins comes to visit, the servants are all very concerned that they make the best impression possible, since when he takes over Longbourn he could chose to fire them all. And a few of the Bennets who don’t get the most sympathetic treatment in the book (including Mrs. Bennet and Mary) have an opportunity to show the reader a softer side. But what I found most impressive is that the heart of this story is the entirely new characters Baker creates from the ghostly background characters that Austen mentioned in only in passing and generally not even by name.

While the Bennet girls are sorting out their marital futures, the Longbourn servants are dealing with their own dreams and struggles. Sarah, the maid, dreams of life beyond the structured, never-changing Bennet house. Hill, the cook, has built her whole life at Longbourn, but struggles with what she has given up to create a peaceful space for thew family she’s assembled and how fragile a life spent serving others can be. And James, the mysterious new footman, wants to escape his past and fit into his new household. The beginning of the book describes a life so peaceful and prescribed that it cast a spell over me, lulling me into the quiet rhythms of an English country house. But as Lizzie’s story picks up speed, so does the action below stairs, and the fates of these characters ended up feeling as dramatic and important as anyone’s should be. While the plot of the book hangs on the structure of Pride and Prejudice, Baker’s story takes on its own life. I enjoyed her take on the behind-the-scenes in the Bennet household, but her characters stuck with me after the book was done and Longbourn is worth reading for their sake.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Contemplative modern take.

You might also like: Well, Pride and Prejudice obviously, if you haven’t read it. It really is lovely. But there was also something about Baker’s writing–the deliberate calmness, maybe–the reminded me of Ann Patchett, so you might want to try Bel Canto or State of Wonder.

Fanfiction: the Winter Soldier edition

by Rebecca

On my last fanfic post, it was pointed out that the characterization of Bucky Barnes in one story felt a bit off. One of the great things about fanfic, though, is that there are a gazillion different takes on any given character. On AO3, at the time of writing this, there are 9323 fics that have Bucky Barnes as a character.

Since I’ve gone a bit crazy recently with how many of these I’ve read, I figured I would share with a selection of stories covering a range of different Bucky-recovering-from-Winter-Soldier characterizations.*

All of the following stories are fanfic based on Captain America: Winter Soldier.

 

Bucky Characterization: Fragile

[untitled Bucky-on-a-bus fic]
by WinterSoldierFell

Summary (aka the first line of the story): It’s hot on the bus, and Bucky’s trying hard to keep away from the people next to him.

Why I like it: The story is a reminder that along with all the other evil things that were done to him, his surgery and prosthetic were also done without consent. And yet, this story is hopeful. Bucky is still very much lost but there’s hope that even if he doesn’t manage to discover himself, he will be able to create something new.

 

Bucky Characterization: Cold-blooded

Stone Cold
By Sassaphrass

Summary: There had maybe always been a part of Bucky Barnes, that was a stone cold killer… the history books may have forgotten that, but Steve hasn’t.

Why I like it: A lot of Bucky-recovering-from-being-the-Winter-Soldier stories stress the differences between Bucky and the Winter Soldier, reassuring everyone that Bucky was in no way responsible for his actions as a brainwashed assassin. Fair enough. This fic, though, focuses on the way Bucky and the Winter Solider are the same. This is also a character study of Steve Rogers as much as it is of Bucky Barnes.

 

Bucky Characterization: Long-suffering

Too Late to Apologize
By Verity

Summary: Bucky goes to the big Trader Joe’s in Union Square for toilet paper and peanut butter cups. When he gets out, his minder is across the street, conspicuously reading a newspaper in the middle of the sidewalk. Bucky has to squint to make out the headline, which is CAPTAIN AMERICA ARRESTED IN ZUCCOTTI PARK. “Oh, come on,” he mutters beneath his breath.

Why I like it: The whole super hero business takes a back-seat in this story, to just the tasks of regular life. Bucky is still piecing together his life but he’s always going to be there for Steve. (And Steve is still going to get himself in trouble standing up to bullies.)

 

Bucky Characterization: Determined

Soft Spot for the Hell Raisin’ Boy
By ifeelbetter

Summary: The Winter Soldier takes an interest in Sam Wilson. Bucky Barnes wants to tell him how to be Steve Rogers’s best friend.

Why I like it: This is kind of ludicrous but I like it, because while Steve Rogers is desperately trying to find Bucky Barnes, Bucky thinks Sam Wilson will make a better best friend to Steve than he will. Sam is clearly a saint to put up with this.

 

Bucky Characterization: Laid-back

Four times an Avenger met Bucky and didn’t know who he was, and one time they were all introduced
By Odsbodkins

Summary: What it says on the tin. In which Tony is kidnapped, Clint is a fangirl, Bruce sees echoes of the past and Thor is Thor.

Why I like it: All of these people have had seriously messed up lives and for any of them to be functioning at all, they have to have learned to just roll with it. Here is a Winter Solider/ Bucky who basically fits right in with the rest of the Avengers.

 

Bucky Characterization: Robot

Clint Barton’s Home for Wayward Mind Wiped Assassins
By roguewrld

Summary: “Where ever you were, whatever you did and whoever you did it for, it’s over. You need to pretend to be a person now, okay?”

Additional comment: This is the Clint Barton from the recent Hawkeye comic books. You don’t actually need to have read them to enjoy this, but it does add depth to the story if you have.

Why I like it: This is almost more of a Clint Barton character study than a Bucky Barnes ones, and yet, I do think it does a wonderful job of showing Barnes’ recovery from being a brainwashed assassin to being a human being who gets to make choices and have friends.

 

Bucky Characterization: Feral cat

That Kind of Day
By Neery

Summary: Carolyn Brown’s having one of those days. Her truck’s been stolen, she’s about to lose her job, and now a crazy Hydra assassin has broken into her apartment to ambush Captain America.

Why I like it: First of all, it’s an outsider perspective which is always hilarious because regular people have a very different take on the craziness that is superheroes. Second, the Bucky in this is like a really dangerous feral cat. He wants to come in, but he’s not quite sure how to.

 

And finally some complete crack,** just in case you didn’t think any of the previous characterizations were too ridiculous:

Bucky Characterization: Domesticated maybe? Flirtatious definitely

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn
By suzukiblu

Summary: Captain America is not in New York, so the Winter Soldier is.

Additional comment: The other main character in this is Darcy Lewis from the Thor movies. I’m not sure how comprehensible this fic would be if you don’t know Darcy Lewis or Jane Foster.

Why I like this: A story doesn’t have to have good characterizations in order to be a whole lot of fun. This story is absolutely ridiculous but still makes me grin.

 

* It was really hard to narrow this down. I kept on wanting to recommend ALL THE STORIES!!!

** In fanfic circles, “crack” describes the really ludicrous stories that no one is even going to pretend is likely or makes-sense, but it still a whole lot of fun. I’m not sure where it came from, but I’ve also run across the phrase “[the author] smoked crack so you don’t have to” in reference to some stories.

The Cuckoo’s Calling

by Kinsey

I’m a little late to the party here, because although I followed all the revelations* about J.K Rowling writing a mystery novel under a pen name (Robert Galbraith), I just now got around to actually reading the book. Which was a shame, because The Cuckoo’s Calling is really a cracker of a mystery novel.

I like mysteries and have read a trillion of them, but I tend to get disillusioned with how much they blend together. Yes, I realize that most mysteries are going to have a formula, but I have read enough “death in a quiet English village” books and “death in a major American city” books to last me a lifetime. Rowling’s book may not stray far from the formula, but it is so well done that it definitely doesn’t blend in with anything else–it has it’s own distinct voice and feeling. The basic story is that a down-on-his-luck PI in modern-day London is asked to investigate the death of celebrity. The police have ruled it a suicide, but her brother is convinced it was murder. So far, so formulaic. But the details and the characterizations in this story are fab. All of the characters are crisply drawn–my favorite was the PI’s temp assistant, a great, smart female character who is not the typical genre girl assistant. The details about life in London make the city feel like a character itself, and the mystery was twisty enough that I didn’t see the solution coming.

As I was reading the book I was asking myself, as I’m sure everyone was, whether I would have ever guessed it was by Rowling without being told. And the answer is . . . of course not. It’s a mystery novel written for adults and it’s not like any of the characters suddenly start casting spells. But once you know she’s the author, there are definitely elements that feel familiar. Like, the character names have a Harry Potter-ish ring to them: the murder victim is Lula Landry, and the PI’s name is Cormoran Strike. And, as many reviewers have pointed out, the plot leads to a lot of musings about celebrity culture and the paparazzi; one has to imagine that Rowling’s thoughts on this come from personal experience.

While the book wraps the central mystery up quite nicely, lots of threads are left hanging with the characters, who clearly have lots more to do. I found myself curious about how the PI would handle his disastrous love life, and whether the assistant would get do some real sleuthing of her own. Which is convenient, since the second Cormoran Strike novel, The Silkworm, was just released, and I am definitely looking forward to it.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Twisty, modern mystery

You might also like: Case Histories, or any of the Jackson Brodie mysteries by Kate Atkinson, or the Duncan Kincaid mysteries by Deborah Crombie. Both of these are series set in today’s Great Britain, and both have an of-the-moment, edgy feel. I’ve also heard fabulous things about Denise Mina’s books, but I have been defeated by my to-read list and haven’t gotten to these yet–someone else should read some and report back!

*I know that Rowling is doing perfectly fine and there’s really no need for me to feel sorry for her, since I’m sure she’s perfectly happy somewhere counting her piles of money, but it does seem sad that it’s apparently impossible for her to trust the people around her with even a fairly unimportant sort of secret. How can one hope to have any sort of normal life like that? As Bill Murray says, “I always like to say to people who want to be rich and famous, try being rich first. See if that doesn’t cover most of it.”

More fanfiction!

by Rebecca

So I recently discovered that Naomi Novik (author of the Temeraire series) presented to congress about the importance of the fair use exemption, to foster creativity. Go her!

Since I was at work when I discovered this, I read the written testimony rather than watched the video, and narrowly avoided bouncing around like a crazy woman.

Anyway… it made me want to post another set of fanfic recommendations.

After my last fanfic post of massively-long stories, I’m back to recommending some short fun fics:

 

Infinite Use
by Elizabeth Hoot

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Summary: I’ve always wondered what exactly went on when Lady Catherine told Darcy about her meeting with Elizabeth. There are a lot of versions of that scene, but none hit quite right. Mostly, they took a serious approach to a scene I’d always imagined as absolutely hysterical. So, with no further ado…

Why I like it: It cracks me up. Just, she really highlights the ludicrous nature of the situation. In a romance with all the serious emotional development and fraught revelations of Pride & Prejudice, this story looks at one of the off-screen scenes and shows just how hilarious it must have been. Hee.

 

Beautiful Ideas
by metisket

Fandom: BBC’s Sherlock.

Summary: Mike knew what would happen if he introduced John Watson to Sherlock Holmes. He knew exactly what would happen, and he did it anyway.

Why I like it: First, because it’s wonderful. More specifically, though, it takes a minor character who essentially fulfills a plot point and then never appears again and makes him a full character. That is always a wonderful thing. Even more wonderful, though, is the character, who is shown to be wickedly funny and well aware of what he’s doing.

 

Because Superman Is Not Evil
by Brown Betty

Fandom: Superman with a bit of Batman

No summary, but the first line is: Clark spent, perhaps, seventeen minutes when he was fourteen thinking super hearing was a cool power.

Why I like it: For those of us who are not big Superman fans, one of the primary reasons is that Superman comes across as just too perfect and good and serious in his virtue and it just not particularly sympathetic. This take on Superman, though, makes me grin. He’s still a good and virtuous person, but he’s still a person. And possibly he has his own issues with his reputation for virtue.

 

A Good Fight
by togina

Fandom: Marvel movies/comic books. Mostly Captain America and Avengers.

Summary: “You remember that pub in London?” Steve went on, and Tony thought that someone should have made a note in the SSR records on Captain America. Something like, ‘Subject is a brawler. Do not, under any circumstances, take him to a bar unless you’re carrying brass knuckles and possibly an RPG.’

Why I like it: This highlights a side of Captain America that is often ignored. He tends to be shown as straight-laced and obedient to authority, with a side order of naive farmboy thrown in, even though his actual backstory has him growing up poor but scrappy, in very urban Brooklyn, during the Great Depression and Prohibition. His first military action (to save Bucky) was completely rogue action on his part. He was (and is) scrappy as anything. Sure, he has a strong moral compass, but that just meant he got into more fights than he might otherwise. This is a celebration of the good guy, Steve Rogers, who also just likes to brawl sometimes.

Warning: It’s a sad state of affairs that I need to warn about a homosexual relationship, but such it is. While there’s nothing too graphic in this story, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are most definitely in a relationship. (In addition, while being gay was illegal at the time of their youth, it wasn’t exactly uncommon, and they actually grew up in pretty much the center of gay Brooklyn. I would say it’s extremely unlikely that wasn’t intentional by the original creators.)

The Goldfinch

by Kinsey

Yet again, Kinsey is here to tell you to read a book that everyone on earth already knows about! This time, I’d like to refer you to the novel that just won the Pulitzer Prize, Donna Tartt’s new book The Goldfinch.

Actually, I am not here to tell everyone to read this. I ultimately thought it was great, but it also took me a month to read and was long and weird and I completely understand the people who didn’t like it and why the reviews were sort of all over the place. It’s an odd book–better, and more focused I think, than The Little Friend but not as streamlined or hard-hitting as The Secret History. I think you SHOULD read this book if:

1) You like long, rambling epics. This book is something like 800 pages long. (I read it on my Kindle so I didn’t see a page count, but man did those percentages go by slowly.) And it feels long–and like several different books, actually. It starts off in New York City as an urban, city kid story, but there’s a long stretch in the middle where the main character (Theo) is in high school in Las Vegas, and then another looong stretch as him as an adult. It was as if different stories with very different atmospheres all mushed together into one superlong story. So be prepared to make an investment.

2) You’re okay with a sense of dark foreboding. It wasn’t just the page length that made this book go so slowly for me. I kept setting the book down for days at a time because while I was desperate to find out what happened, it was so tense and all seemed so destined to end badly for Theo and the other characters that I couldn’t stand to keep reading. At one point, I was on an international flight, trapped in an seat for hours with plenty of time to finish the novel, and I was so dreading what might happen that I chose to watch a bunch of episodes of Two and A Half Men instead. I KNOW.

3) You like art (specifically Old Masters kind of art). For the two people who don’t know, the book centers around a painting that Theo accidentally takes from the Met when he end up in the middle of a terrorist attack on the museum (this sounds preposterous when I say it, but it makes sense in the book). There is A LOT of description of this painting, and other paintings that Theo ends up coming into contact with. And further, there is a lot of discussion of “art,” and of what art, and paintings, and this painting in particular mean to people’s lives and to their souls. I didn’t find this until I after I finished the book, but someone put together a genius Pinterest board that shows all of the various art work mentioned in the book–it’s a huge help to be able to actually see what Tartt is describing.

4) You don’t mind a useless/immoral main character. I certainly had sympathy for Theo  after spending so much time with him, but he’s frustrating and (especially as an adult) not a particularly admirable character. There were any number of points when I just wanted to throw my hands up and tell him that if he didn’t stop making such bad decisions I was going to have to give up on him.

So, don’t go into this book expecting a beach read, is what I’m saying. But I did like the book, and a number of the supporting characters were so great that I wish I could read 800 more pages about them (Boris!). Also, I will give away the tiniest spoiler, just because know my audience: nothing bad happens to the dog.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Sprawling modern saga

You might also like: Three Junes or The Whole World Over by Julia Glass, which are also dense, chewy books with New York City settings.

 

 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

by Rebecca

Fangirl-Rainbow-Rowell-Cover-677x1024Fangirl
Rainbow Rowell
2013

Rainbow Rowell is an amazing author and I really enjoyed her two previous books: Attachments is a delight and Eleanor & Park is amazing and also amazingly tense, because dear god, those kids!

Given my own love of fandom, I was particularly delighted to see her publish a book about fanfic writers, or at least a fanfic writer. And I did enjoy this book. The characters are delightful and the plot was interesting.

That said, there was just something off about the book and it took me a while to pin down exactly what. The main tension of the story is whether or not Cath (the main character) can deal with the real world or will focus herself exclusively on fandom. This is a real crisis for many college students. However, I found two main problems with the implementation of this plot, one with the timing of the plot arc and the other with the writing style interacting poorly with the tension of the story.

The writing style is almost fairy-tale like, with a focus on significant events and turning points without getting into much of the day-to-day activities of the characters. This is a writing style I often enjoy, but when the plot tension is about whether or not the main character is doing her regular day-to-day activities, then it becomes pretty important for those activities to be explicitly addressed. There’s a real question of whether or not Cath is attending her classes, and she says she is, but we only ever see her in one of her classes. In addition, there’s a major plot point about one thing that Cath doesn’t do. But since so much of what she does do isn’t described, there’s no way to tell when she doesn’t do something. That plot point comes out of nowhere when it’s finally revealed.

The timing is also problematic. Like most stories, this one is structured with the climax at the end of the book and the end of the time period being described. It certainly makes sense to structure a story like that. But the kind of crisis that Cath is dealing with isn’t one that waits until the end of the year. When I went to college, there were members of my cohort who struggled with online and fandom obsessions. I was only introduced to fandom in college, and started being active in it in my later years, after I had gotten the hang of college itself. From what I saw, though, with others, was that the crisis came early on. They made a choice in their first month of the semester, if they could balance fandom and real world or not. If they couldn’t balance the two, and if they picked fandom, then they flunked out fast. The crisis point doesn’t wait until the end of the year. At most, it might wait until the end of the first semester.

So, the end of the book focuses on this crisis of priorities, but I had actually judged the crisis point to have long passed, and I had to play catch-up a bit when the story referenced a turning point that I didn’t even notice. It was a fun book about wonderful characters, but the timing and the tension of it weren’t very well done. I still enjoyed it, but it’s definitely no Eleanor & Park.

The Signature of All Things

by Kinsey

Lots of people make fun of Eat, Pray, Love. Of the overly earnest writing, of the privilege of a rich white woman writing about solving her problems by taking a year-long trip around the world, of the (admittedly terrible) Julia Roberts movie version. But you know what? I like Eat, Pray, Love! I have read it more than once! And I love Elizabeth Gilbert, who in interviews always seems fun and realistic about her crazy self-help book success. Also, her TED talk is pretty amazing. But I admit that I was a little wary of her latest book, a novel about a female scientist in 19th century America. Gilbert’s voice is so distinctive, and in her non-fiction novels is so specific to her experiences, that I was not sure how that might work in a period fiction piece. But The Signature of All Things worked for me.

It’s a long, sweeping book that tells the story of Alma Whittaker, a Philadelphia heiress in the early 1800s who bucks convention by not marrying and focusing instead on her study of mosses. The books her life from the day she’s born (and actually starts off with a really lengthy but about her father, explaining how the Whittakers got to Philadelphia), but most of the big action in the book takes place when Alma is in her fifties and her previously predictable life suddenly sends her in new directions (literally). A woman studying moss doesn’t sounds like a rip-roaring story, but Alma’s story takes all sorts of turns and did not end up anywhere I expected.

The story itself is interesting and twisty and detailed, and Gilbert clearly did lots of research on the time period and the science involved. But my favorite thing about it was the voice–it sounds like Elizabeth Gilbert. If you’ve read her non-fiction, you’ll know that she’s funny and a little irreverent, and all of that is right there in The Signature of All Things. The book reads like a period piece with characters that seem of the time, but there is still this slightly wry undercurrent the peeks out. I recently read The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, another piece of historical fiction that has gotten rave reviews. I didn’t write about here because it felt like a slog and I couldn’t quite articulate why, but reading The Signature of All Things helped me make sense of it. The Luminaries felt very straightforward, as if it could have been written in 1800, and it didn’t have that sense of humor running through it. That irreverence that Elizabeth Gilbert brings made all the difference for me and kept me hooked through Alma’s whole, incredible story.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Chewy, three-dimensional tale

You might also like: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, which is historical fiction about a female scientist (although it is based on a real person) or State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, about a modern day woman consumed in her scientific work.

Long Fanfictions

by Rebecca

In preparation for writing my review of Rainbow Rowell’s most recent book, Fangirl (expect the review soon), I decided it was time to recommend a few more fanfiction stories. What makes this selection stand out from my prior recommendations is that, in honor of Rowell’s main character’s fanfiction epic, all of these are recommendations are really incredibly long.

Previously I’ve recommended short fics, because they’re intended to lure unwary readers into fandom or maybe point out a hidden jewel to someone already in fandom. The longer stories tend to be well known to those already in fandom and be a bit daunting for those outside of it.

The following stories range from 109K to 757K long. To give you some context for those numbers: A harlequin romance (one of those romance books often sold at the check-out line of grocery stores and titles things like The Billionaire’s Baby or The Tycoon’s Virgin Mistress or some such) is generally 10K words. Anyone who has completed the NaNoWriMo challenge to write a novel in the month of November, has written 50K words.

The following recommendations are a demonstration of not just the skill that some fanfiction writers have in weaving together words and worlds and characters, but also the dedication they have in continuing a story line that has gotten immensely rich and complex, and keeping at it until they can bring the story to its intended conclusion.

These stories have required a serious commitment by some fan to write. They take a reasonably serious commitment from some fan to read, too. But they’re worth it!

So, from shortest to longest:

Into the Rose Garden
by Dryad13
Fandom: Labrynth
109,232 words long
first chapter posted: June 10, 2004
last chapter posted: January 8, 2006

Summary: Sarah has good grades, a circle of friends, and a cute boyfriend. Life’s great…right? So why does she have the strange feeling that something’s missing? Fairy tales show that magic will make you or break you. Which category does she belong in?

Why I like this: This is a gorgeous story that does an incredible amount of world building regarding both magic and society, to how the Underground works and where exactly Jareth’s place is, in it and the consequences to Sarah for having defeated him.

 

The Least of All Possible Mistakes
by rageprufrock
Fandom: BBC’s Sherlock
118,096 words long
first chapter posted: January 31, 2012
last chapter posted: February 20, 2013

Summary: If ever a people deserved tasering, it’s Holmeses.

Why I like this: Lestrade doesn’t get much attention in the Sherlock Holmes stories and it’s a shame given how awesome she (the author decided to make Lestrade a female for this story) is. She’s not brilliant, but she is smart and, more to the point, she’s also practical and pragmatic and with enough self-confidence to know when to ask for help and when to call that help out for being an ass. And she is not at all the sort to put up with kidnappings by the mysterious older brother of her consultant (see the summary.) 😀

 

Divided We Stand
by KouriArashi
Fandom: MTV’s Teen Wolf
156,742 words long
first chapter posted: July 10, 2013
last chapter posted: October 4, 2013

Summary: Derek is being pressured by his family to pick a mate, and somehow stumbles into a choice that they didn’t expect and aren’t sure they approve of….

Why I like this: This uses a fairly common trope of fanfiction, but one that I enjoy immensely, and says what if this secret society is actually common knowledge? They’ve been around forever and all sorts of their cultural oddities have just been incorporated into society at large. In this case, everyone knows werewolves exist. And then we get to an immensely fun and satisfying romp of a story in which there is romantic drama and mysterious conspiracies and an eventual happy ending. It’s pretty much a perfect comfort story.

 

Pet Project
by Caeria
Fandom: Harry Potter
338,788 words long
first chapter posted: March 3, 2005
last chapter posted: June 9, 2013

Summary: Hermione overhears something she shouldn’t concerning Professor Snape and decides that maybe the House-elves aren’t the only ones in need of protection.

Why I like it: This is a brilliant story focused on Hermione Granger as she matures enough to realize that teachers are people, too, and starts to notice some of the complexities and tricks of the adults around her, with a focus on Severus Snape in particular, and his role as a double agent. As she begins to delve into the mystery of Severus Snape, she and the author really delve into the magic and magical culture of the Harry Potter world. (Plus, I am completely in love with the house elves of this story, even though I never much cared for that plot line in the original books. “Ears are flapping!”)

 

Embers
by Vathara
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
757,222 words long
first chapter posted: September 24, 2009
last chapter posted: January 18, 2014

Summary: Dragon’s fire is not so easily extinguished; when Zuko rediscovers a lost firebending technique, shifting flames can shift the world…

Why I like this: So many feelings! This is an amazing story delving into Zuko’s character as an exiled prince and abused child and doing amazing world building while also delving into the causes and repercussions of genocides and world wars and cultural clashes and children loaded with responsibilities and adults loaded with secrets.