The Fifth Wave

by Kinsey

A podcast that I was listening to recently (Extra Hot Great, which I mentioned in my post) was dividing post-apocalyptic/end-of-world stories into two categories: those that focus on what it’s like as the world is falling apart and those that focus on how people live after things have fallen apart. I had never quite thought of it this way before, but it is a great way to describe the differences and it helped me figure out why I love some end-of-the-world novels and find others way too stressful. Apparently, I like reading about post-disaster life and how people keep going–Station Eleven and The Hunger Games are examples, where most of the story is about people living in the “new normal” of a world after life as we know it has ended. I guess these books feel far enough removed from my own life that I can maintain some emotional distance? But I am an anxious enough person that I find stories that show the process of civilization breaking down to be almost unbearable–when the author’s goal is to show you how close we are to this new post-apocalyptic word, that’s too close for me! I really enjoyed David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks, but there was one section of it that so powerfully described a world in which the Internet had gone down and international borders were closed . . . I don’t even like to think about it too much.

All of this to say that The Fifth Wave is one of those as-the-world-is-falling apart books that I found really anxiety-inducing, but may be right up your alley! This is the first in a YA trilogy in which aliens have come to earth and are in the process of exterminating humans/cleaning up the planet. The story follows a couple of different teenagers who are trying to survive on their own in a world where virtually all other humans are dead. There’s a teeny bit of teen romance that I found somewhat unrealistic (I think all these kids would have too much PTSD to do much other than huddle in a ball on the floor, but whatever) but most of the book is about them fighting, running, and trying to figure out the right next step in a world where everything seems doomed. The main story is set a few weeks/months after the aliens have arrived, but there are lots of flashbacks to them arriving and starting the whole “no humans” process, so you really see the whole process play out. It’s a plot-intense book–the action moves fast and I was frantically turning pages to find out what happens. And while this is definitely not my preferred type of end-of-the-world story, it was compelling enough that requested the next book in series from the library.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Immediate post-apocalyptic adventure

You might also like: Any of the books I mentioned above, or the movie Children of Men, if you feel the need for a little cry about the state of the world. But we’ve all seen enough depressing things–go read something funny! Some of my laugh-out-loud books include Let’s Pretend this Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, Can You Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella, and I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron.

Shadowshaper

by Anna

By Daniel José Older

ShadowshaperThis is the third book from the bitchesgottaeat bookclub, where Samantha Irby recommends a book that she’ll be reading, with the idea that we could read it at the same time but never actually discuss it at all. I’d already read and loved the first, Carry On, and was surprised and delighted by the second, Everything, Everything. Even after a 2-for-2 record, I didn’t really want to read her third recommendation, Shadowshaper. There’s just not much that I can relate to with magically talented teen artists living in Brooklyn, quite frankly.

The protagonist, Sierra, is a high-school senior focused on painting a large mural on the side of an abandoned building in her neighborhood. She notices  other murals in the neighborhood fading unnaturally quickly, and then things get stranger from there. The writing seemed a bit uneven to me, which kept me from getting fully involved in the story, but the story itself is really unique and interesting.

A strong theme in Shadowshaper is immigrant culture, and the elements of one’s old country that one brings to one’s new country, in music, dance, food, and spirituality. Sierra’s family and most of her neighborhood is Puerto Rican, most of her friends are either Hispanic or African American, and her love interest is Haitian. There is a subtler theme, too, of misappropriation of cultures that aren’t one’s own. The book additionally asks questions about what kind of role academic study can play in understanding if it is necessarily on the outside, looking in. My favorite element of the story is how these themes are carried through in the supernatural elements, as well, but I can’t really elaborate without extensive spoilers.

Author Daniel José Older writes extremely visually, describing all the colors of the murals and the neighborhoods and the spirits themselves. As a reader, I get a bit bogged down in large descriptive paragraphs, but I kept thinking what a phenomenal movie this would make with animated murals traveling through the New York cityscape!

—Anna

Comic Book Catch-Up

by Anna

Sigh, another long hiatus from a busy spring and a lazy reading schedule. I’ve been finally getting around to checking out a couple of comic book series that Tumblr has overall just completely fanned out over.

Rat Queens

Rat_QueensSo, I could absolutely see why this is Tumblr’s cup of tea – it is feminist, queer, violent, and bawdy – but it just wasn’t quite my thing. I think I’m a bit old for it, honestly. The titular Rat Queens are a diverse group of mercenary women, and what the comic does especially well is highlighting the distinct personalities and backgrounds of each of the four women, and their varying relationships with each other. In the collected first volume, they and several other mercenary groups are offered a quest as an alternative to jail time for a bar brawl that got out of hand.

It is clever and funny, and I can’t quite put my finger on why I don’t really like it. It is pretty juvenile humor (though not in subject matter or artwork), but I’m usually all about juvenile humor. I asked Rebecca whether she’d read it, and she couldn’t actually remember whether she had or not, so I guess that corroborates my own lack of enthusiasm.

Saga

SagaSaga, on the other hand, was immediately engrossing. It opens with an extremely rustic birth scene, and unfolds from there, moving forward with the gripping plot and filling in the backstory as it goes. Our two new parents are such a hopeful, almost innocent Romeo and Juliet pair, though with much more personal agency than the Shakespeare couple, that I was immediately rooting for them.

They are from different planets, one of winged people and one of horned people, that have been pitted in a seemingly never-ending intergalactic battle incorporating many other planets as well. Winged Alana and horned Marko are opposing soldiers that fell in love and abandoned their posts in order to start a family together, and thus just about everyone wants them dead, including an aristocratic tv-faced robotic person, and two different feuding mercenaries, one a beautiful spider woman and the other a strictly-human-seeming man that travels with a giant lie-detecting cat. Can you see why I loved this so much?

In addition to just all the oddness, the motivations and emotions behind the characters still feel so real. Also, the art is perhaps the best that I have ever seen in a graphic novel – it is really spectacular. When I went to track down volume 2, I discovered that Saga is written by the same author as Runaways, which Rebecca raved about a while ago.

—Anna

Sleep No More

by Anna

sleep-no-moreI’ve been reading a lot of books previously reviewed by Kinsey and Rebecca on this blog, so haven’t had much to post about, but I’m going to piggyback on Kinsey’s review of a play, and tell you about a performance I saw on a recent work trip to New York City.

I ran across Sleep No More when looking for a hotel to book near the training session in the Chelsea neighborhood, and Google lists The McKittrick Hotel as sleeping quarters, when in fact it is an elaborate set piece, in which the performers travel through the various rooms while the audience follows. Sleep No More is described as a noir-style take on Macbeth, which are two of my very favorite things, so I was pretty quickly sold on it, though it took me a bit longer to pull the trigger on the $85 ticket price.

My general impressions:

When I was waiting in line, a couple of teenagers behind me were psyching themselves out, wondering how scary it would be and if they would scream, and I was annoyed at them for treating it like a haunted house (this comes back to me later).

All audience members are given white masks (not unlike the Scream mask) that we must wear throughout the performance, and we must not speak. I was first let into the space, masked, with maybe 5 or 6 other audience members and we sort of wandered around empty rooms for a while. I had a sudden fear that I would manage to go through the entire space and manage to somehow miss any live performance, just because that seems like the sort of idiotic and embarrassing thing that would happen to me. I was trying to convince myself that I would be satisfied with just how cool the various room settings were, but I have to admit that I was relieved when I finally saw a performer.

Once you have run across one performer, they will usually lead you to others, and you can chose to stay with your original or switch off with a new one. I found Macbeth himself first, and then Lady Macbeth, for the dramatic scene in which she coaxes him to kill the king and become king himself. When Macbeth ran off set, I decided to stay with Lady Macbeth, and only realized later that I’d missed the killing of the king.

However, I actually ended up in the same scene again with the Macbeths, probably about an hour later, so I followed Macbeth this time, and got to see the pivotal death scenes of both Duncan and Banquo. (Though I hung out for a while in the graveyard set, I never got to see the three witches, who I was sure would eventually appear.) I also got to watch a spooky tailor stitch up the worst seam I have ever seen in my life. I had a small impulse to try to intervene, at least with the sewing itself.

Though Sleep No More is described as a play (or immersive event or whatever), it is really a dance performance. The actors do not speak, but rather have highly physical choreography they perform. (Also, audience members are never pulled into a participatory role, so you can be reassured on that point, if that’s not your thing.)

So, it was very novel and entertaining, but I had a realization about an hour in that really made the performance for me. There were probably about a hundred or two masked audience members wandering the three (or four – it gets a little confusing at times) stories of the hotel in all, and in scenes where there are multiple performers interacting, all of the audience members following each one all combine into quite a crowd of blank white faces drifting about and coalescing around the various characters. It really did start to seem exactly like a haunted house, only you, the audience member, are one of the ghosts.

You and the others sort of drift aimlessly around with only each other, who you cannot speak to, and as soon as any “live” character appears on the scene, you all immediate glom onto the person, surrounding them when they are still and trailing after them when they are moving. In fact, for a couple of scenes, characters had to sort of gently wave ‘ghosts’ out of their way, which they did very professionally, exactly as one would sort of wave away a mist or cobweb.

Once this occurred to me, the whole thing took on a more delightfully spooky dimension. Seriously, how many times in your life will you be able to experience being the one haunting an old hotel? This works perfectly for the story of Macbeth, too, which is all about hauntings, both literal and of the conscience.

One caveat to the whole thing, though: the experience itself is a lot of fun, but it is all very scattered and nonlinear to the extreme, so if you prefer more plot-driven theater, this might not be for you. I knew beforehand that it was loosely based on Macbeth, which is my favorite Shakespeare play and one I’m fairly familiar with, so I recognized some scenes, force-interpreted others, and was completely puzzled by still more. (The inept tailor was given a tiny rat skull, which made him despondent? I don’t remember that from Macbeth.)

—Anna

Podcasts and a Scrappy Little Broadway Show I Have High Hopes For

by Kinsey

I wish I had some good books to recommend here, but I’ve been in an odd rut lately of reading things that weren’t bad,, but ended up being vaguely disappointing. (I’m looking at you, Bradstreet Gate, because if your whole plot is centered around a murder mystery, you need to TELL ME WHO COMMITTED THE MURDER.)

But that doesn’t mean I’m not consuming media, because my lengthy commute to work means that I listen to A LOT of podcasts. Sometimes I feel as thought half the things I say start with, “So I was listening to this podcast . . .” But I just hear so many interesting things on so many different topics, told in such a personal way–it feels like I have very smart friends riding along with me in my car as I negotiate the DC highways. I do listen to a few of the big, famous podcasts that I don’t feel the need to plug–the Nerdist, Serial, and Pop Culture Happy Hour are all great, but if you listen  to podcasts at all you probably knew that already. But there are some smaller podcasts that keep me sane and entertained:

Read it and Weep calls itself a good podcast about bad books, movies, and TV, and the general model is that three friends (plus rotating guests) read or watch something and then get together to make fun of it. It started when these guys decided to read the Twilight books so they could mock them in a knowledgeable way, but has expanded to them watching and reading the occasional good thing, or a childhood favorite, and they even take sponsorships/suggestions from listeners. Although the episodes where they review something bad are still the most fun–you’ve never heard anything as sad as these 20-something dudes trying to find something nice to say about Fifty Shades of Grey. I like it because the commentary is truly funny, but also smart–they’re good at breaking down what does or doesn’t work about a particular piece of media and they’re happy to admit when they actually enjoyed something. They are also quick to call out sexism or racism or other things that make them feel gross, so I can rely on them getting upset about the things that make me upset. But in a much more funny way.

Another favorite pop culture podcast is Extra Hot Great, a podcast about TV by the people who run previously.tv (and used to run Television Without Pity). This is another funny one, with smart criticism about TV. They do different features, including one I love called Is This Worse than Jazz, where they debate whether a particular pop culture item is worse than jazz (maybe this only works if you hate jazz). They also do a lengthy quiz each week, which allows me to shout answers out loud in my car.

I first found You Must Remember This through her series on Hollywood and the Manson murders, but I’ve found all of Karina Longworth’s podcasts about Hollywood history fascinating. She tends to do “seasons” that focus on a specific topic, such as Manson, the studio system, or the current series on the blacklist. One of the disappointing books that I read in recent weeks was about a scandalous Hollywood murder in the 1920s, and I think I didn’t like it because was drier and less sympathetic than Longworth’s calm, gentle storytelling. My other big take-away from this podcast is that almost everyone in Hollywood seems to have been a miserable depressive that drank themselves to death; I almost cried in my car listening to the story of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable.

I do occasionally branch out from pop culture and Hollywood, and Rex Factor is one of my favorite history podcasts. Two British guys (Graham and Ali) reviewed the history of every king and queen of England, ranked them on qualities such as scandal and “battle-iness,” and then held a bracket-style showdown to determine the ultimate monarch. They do a thorough job of reviewing the history, while also getting to the interesting trivia and being funny along the way (Ali is always so hilariously concerned when first cousins get married). I was a little worried that they would stop podcasting after they finished all the English rulers, but they’ve recently started up again with the kings and queens of Scotland. A word of warning–the early Saxon kings are a bit of a drag since they all have similar names and there’s not a lot of existing information, but things get more interesting as history moves along (there was definitely way more sex with nuns than I was expecting).

And finally, on a different note, I have talked here more than once about how I tend to recommend things that everyone already knows about. The Goldfinch?  The Martian? You didn’t really need me to tell you about those. But now I’m about to tip over into parody here: have you guys heard about Hamilton? I mean, seriously folks, it’s really good. I was lucky enough to see it on Broadway at the end of March (I bought my tickets back in September and then tried not to think about them too much since I was convinced a meteor would crash into the theater before I got to go) and it was AMAZING. But I can also wholeheartedly recommend the cast album. Because the whole show is sung–there’s really no spoken bits of the story–listening to the cast album really does let you hear the whole show and it’s just genius. It’s also awesome music to listen to in the gym. I think this Hamilton thing is really going to take off! (Hamilton also won a Pulitzer prize this week, and Lin-Manuel Miranda posted a hilarious picture on Twitter of the celebratory Pulitzer pies.)

 

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

by Rebecca

61ku6qro0cl-_sy344_bo1204203200_Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
by Lois McMaster Bujold
2016

Bujold is one of the few authors who I absolutely trust. I enjoy every single thing she has ever written. Some more than others, of course, but everything is good. One of the amazing things about her is that she clearly refuses to let herself or her writing stagnate. She’s constantly exploring new styles and genres.

This is particularly obvious in her Vorkosigan series, which is currently at sixteen books (of which this is the most recent) plus a number of short stories and novellas. They’re all in the same science fiction universe and to a large extent about the same characters and yet they are often written as wildly different genres: light science fiction, hard core science fiction, murder mystery, psychological exploration, comedy of manners…. Bujold has tried it all and succeeded at it all.

Most of the books follow Miles Naismith Vorkosigan in his various adventures around the universe, getting himself into and then out of a variety of troubles. The first two books that I read, however, are about his mother, Cordelia Naismith, before and immediately after having Miles. This book returns to Cordelia, giving an interesting perspective on what has gone on before that Miles just never noticed, but focusing on where she is going now.

In some ways, it’s reminiscent of Memory, the eleventh book in the series, in which Miles, age 30, must confront a drastic change in his life and decide how to deal with it (while investigating shenanigans in the capital city!). Except that this time, it’s Cordelia at 76 who is looking at changing her life while in the center of small town life. Admiral Jole, who has previously been an extremely minor character, is also brought into focus as he is confronted with a crossroads of his own as he is swept up in the changes she is making.

One of the really amazing things about this book is that it reads more as character-driven non-genre literature than science fiction. While it’s set in this science fiction universe, it’s also set in what is essentially a backwater boomtown. There are a large number of moderately eccentric but utterly relatable characters. Our two main characters are both mature adults with successful careers. This isn’t high adventure, it’s living your life and making choices and dealing with other people.

It’s beautiful and I loved it.

The Good Death

by Anna

By Anne Neumann

The_Good_DeathThis book was way more depressing than I’d anticipated, and I already knew it was called The Good Death. Author Ann Neumann was inspired to research and write this book after she spent a year caring for her dying father. After he passed, she wondered whether he’d had a ‘good death,’ and what that even means in our world. I was interested to read it, of course, because I have some questions about that, myself.

I was looking for a more personal, introspective look at what death means in our lives and how we judge other people’s death, but Neumann is a journalist, and quickly veers off into wider-scope political and institutional controversies around end-of-life care.

After a brief personal introduction of Neumann’s inspiration, the book begins with looking at end-of-life “comfort care,” and how the health care and legal industries define the boundaries of palliative care vs. medical intervention. Because her father had mentioned it as he declined, she discusses assisted suicide, analyzing the arguments made by advocates and protestors. This leads Neumann to further explorations on forced feeding, capital punishment, and disability activism. There are clear linkages between the topics, but the book feels a bit loose and tangled as a whole. It asks a lot of questions and inspires a lot of thought on difficult topics, but doesn’t reach many conclusions.

She does weave personal stories throughout, initially from her experience caring for her father and later as a volunteer with Hospice, and those parts were the most interesting to me, her witnessing the ends of different lives, but also the least deeply explored. I imagine that the journalism experience that benefits her when untangling legal documents and political arguments perhaps hobbles her in more personal reflection.

I was glad to read it because it inspired me to really explore some of my assumptions around life and death, but I finished the book feeling that everything was just in a bit of a mess, and there was no clear way to fix things in the future.

—Anna

DCEagleCamOn a more cheerful note, I am completely entranced (possibly to an unhealthy degree) by the DC Eagle Cam, live-streaming an eagle family of two adults and two eaglets nesting in the National Arboretum. The adults are such good parents, and the eaglets are completely precious and growing quickly!

The Girl From Everywhere

by Kinsey

girl

Okay, this one is going to be complicated to describe but hang in there, it’s worth it. The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig is this crazy mix of time travel and fantasy and a coming of age YA story that constantly spins off into unexpected directions.

Nix is a teenage girl who lives on a time-traveling pirate ship. (I know!) She was born in 19th-century Hawaii, but her father has the power to sail a ship into any original map he has–even maps of fictional places. Nix’s mother died when she was a baby so Nix has grown up on the ship with a crew of sailors collected across times and places. She has developed a knack for raising the money they need for new maps through elaborate time travel import/export schemes, and is happy on the ship that is the only home she’s ever known. But her father is obsessed with finding a map that will get him back to Hawaii before Nix’s mother died, and Nix doesn’t know whether she will even still exist if they make it there. Despite not knowing how the rules of time travel might affect her, Nix still agrees to help her father try to track down one last map of Hawaii, but to get it they’ll need to pull off an elaborate heist and not get caught by the police, local crooks, or the winds of time itself.

How does time travel work? What are we willing to sacrifice for love? What is the difference between history and myth? What do we have to give up to make our own lives apart from our family? What would Ocean’s Eleven look like in 19th-century Hawaii? There are all kinds of things happening here, but the story still feels very grounded. And even through most of the book takes place in colonial Hawaii, Nix’s father was originally from the modern-day U.S. so both Nix and the story have a very modern sensibility.

Also, how pretty is that cover?

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Fantastical historical caper

You might also like: Time and Again is a classic time travel story, and I’ve already talked about how much I love When You Reach Me. Kindred by Octavia Butler is a dark take on the subject, and I’ll always recommend Connie Willis for time travel stories. But a lot of this book dealt with Hawaiian history and Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell is a comprehensive but snarky look at that sad story.

The Bible: Chronicles 2

by Rebecca

I am fast approaching the two-year anniversary of when I decided to read the bible within a year. And this is the 15th book (out of 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament). So, you know, kudos to all those amazing people who actually manage to make it through the whole thing in a year. In contrast, I (very, very slowly) trek onwards.

You know how sometimes two books will be published as a book and its sequel, but in reading them you realize that they were actually intended to be one book and the publisher just cut that book in half for reasons of their own? So, yeah, Chronicles 2, the second scroll of Chronicles. It’s the same thing as the first one, with an extremely nominal break.

King David is dead, and his son Solomon is now king of Israel. After the funeral and 1,000 burnt sacrifices, God appears to Solomon asking what he wants. Seriously. (Chronicles 2 1:7) Solomon asks for the wisdom and knowledge needed to lead the people of Israel, which is actually a pretty good answer. God says that since Solomon didn’t ask for wealth, honor, death to his enemies, or long life, God will give Solomon not only the wisdom and knowledge he asked for but all the other stuff as well. Sweet!

Now recall how, in Chronicles 1 16-22 and 28-29, there are detailed descriptions of the temple that King David really wanted to build? Well, in Chronicles 2 chapters 2-4 Solomon has the temple built, with more descriptions, and in chapters 5-7, the temple is consecrated and God enters it as fire from heaven and there’s a lot of descriptions of how the temple is to be used, mostly in the form of “If X, then Y” statements.

And then we switch over the wonderful successes of Solomon:
In chapter 8, he builds a lot of towns and was generally so religious that he built a special house for his wife, the daughter of Pharaoh because he didn’t want his own house tainted with her presence.
In the first half of chapter 9, the Queen of Sheba comes to visit and inspect the situation and is so impressed that she gives him all sorts of presents and he is so taken with her that he gives her anything she wants, and then she goes away. (Verses 1-12)
In the second half of chapter 10 (verses 13-31), a bunch of other important people give Solomon a bunch of expensive presents because he is just that amazing. And then he dies.

Chapters 10-12 follow the next king, Rehoboam, son of Solomon, generally being an ass (essentially telling the people: don’t complain to me, or I’ll give you something to complain about)

Chapter 13: King Abijah reigned for three years, and there are battles and rousing speeches, and much calling out to the Lord. Also, he took fourteen wives, and fathered twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters.*

Chapters 14-16: King Asa did what was good and right, mostly by destroying the items of any other religion, including casting out his own mother. However he still ended sinful by relying on political allies at wartime and physicians when he got sick rather than on the Lord.

At this point we’re have caught up with the timeline told in the second book of Kings and there is a lot of repetition. Do you remember the list of the Kings of Judah, as recounted in Kings 2? Well, here they are again in Chronicles 2. Enjoy:

Chapter 17-20: King Jeshoshaphat
Chapter 21: King Jehoram, who died in great agony from a bowel infection and no one mourned him. Ouch.
Chapter 22: King Ahaziah dies, his mother Athaliah tries to kill the rest of the family in order to rule herself
Chapter 23: The downfall of Athaliah: there was a mutiny, she called treason, they decided it wasn’t right to kill her in the king’s house, so had her removed in order to kill her.
Chapter 24: King Joash
Chapter 25: King Amaziah
Chapter 26: King Ussiah
Chapter 27: King Jotham
Chapter 28: King Ahaz
Chapters 29-32: King Hezekiah
Chapter 33: King Manasseh and King Amon**
Chapters 34-35: King Josiah
Chapter 36: King Jehoahaz, King Jehoiakim, King Jehoiachin, King Zedekiah, and generally the downfall of the kings of Judah, with a bit of a teaser at the end for King Cyrus of Persia building the house of Jerusalem again.

Almost all of these chapters start with something along the lines of
“_____ began to reign when he was ____ years old; he reigned _____ years in the city of (Jerusalem/David).”***
and end with something along the lines of
“____ slept with this ancestors and they buried him in the city of _____. His son ____ succeeded him.”

Summary: Oh the repetition: there are a lot of kings who got up to a lot of things, but really, there aren’t any more kings than previously mentioned.

Moral: All things come in cycles, the rise and fall of kings, the good and evil of kings, and there’s no particularly good way to tell the difference between good and evil.

* Let’s pause a minute for the math: 22 sons + 16 daughters = 38 children. 38 children / 14 wives = 2.7 children per wife. And all of this in three years? It’s possible, but the timing is certainly tight. Especially given the number of battles and ambushes, rousing speeches and sacrifices to the Lord. And apparently his other behaviors and deeds were written up in the story of Iddo. So Abijah may not have lived long, but wow did he live intensely.
** Poor King Amon got four versus as a tag at the end of his father’s chapter before his son’s chapter. On the other hand, he was apparently evil and only ruled for two years, so screw him anyway.
*** A surprising number of times, it also includes “His mother’s named was ____ daughter of ______” which is kind of cool.

Next up: Ezra

Fanfiction: Star Wars edition

by Rebecca

It has been a while since I’ve posted, mostly because I’ve either been reading books already recommended on this site (wow, was Bone Gap awesome!) or mainlining a whole bunch of fanfiction. Thus, it’s time for another fanfiction post, this time all in the Star Wars fandom.

One of the things I really enjoy about fanfiction is that there are a lot of common plot ideas that different authors will try their hand at writing. So you wind up with these sets of stories that are variations on a theme.

One recent theme that came out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is to look at how Finn’s escape from the First Order effected those Stormtroopers left behind. These are all amazing and in many ways deal with variations on stories themselves, since the Stormtroopers hear about Finn through rumor and word-of-mouth.

Cautionary tale by Aviss:
summary:
After the Starkiller, Finn becomes a cautionary tale among the troopers.
This doesn’t always work in the First Order’s favour.

Tomorrow (there’ll be more of us) by dimircharmer:
summary:
“FN-2187 was real, right?” She sounds very young again. “Please tell me he was real.”
“I’m real,” said Finn, who was on his first patrol since his back healed. “And my name’s Finn now.”
Her eyes widened. “You have a name?
*
Or: The resistance is starting to get stormtrooper defectors. Finn helps them out.

The Story of Finn by LullabyKnell
summary:
The story they hear is that of FN-2187.
He’s a defector – a traitor to the First Order. He’s not the first, nor will he be the last, and the First Order expects to retrieve him and end him quickly.
But that’s not what happens.
The only thing Stormtroopers own are stories.

have you heard by peradi
summary:
“I heard FN-2187 was a Stormtrooper.”
Finn Sparks a revolution

 

Explorations of how Stormtroopers react to the events of the movie is both awesome and very closely tied to canon. There’s no reason to believe that those stories couldn’t happen. And I really want have you heard to be the plot for the next movie because it is just that perfect.

In contrast, sometimes the themes that gain multiple writers trying it out are a lot more random: such as the idea that maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi could travel back in time and ensure the tragic events of the past-now-future don’t happen. It’s such a wonderful idea that really speaks to the foundation of fanfiction: let us fix this thing so the world is a better place.

Negotiator by Esama
summary: Obi-Wan dies, wakes up and decides to live a whole different life

Waking Dream by flamethrower
summary: A simple injury during what should have been a routine mission brings shocking changes to the lives of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and may alter the future of the Jedi Order.
note: this is awesome, but also nearly 50K words long and the first in a series that runs 550K words long. Still worth reading!

this is unexpected by marbleglove
summary: a self-indulgent response to the many, wonderful time-travel Star Wars stories that send a more experienced and more knowledgeable Obi-Wan Kenobi back in time to change the many tragedies to come
note: this is quite short (little more than 1K words) and more playful than plot-ful.

As much as I love the variations on a theme that sometimes happen (and I really, really do love them!), I am also incredibly impressed with the authors who find a perspective or concept I haven’t seen before. Thus I am incredibly impressed with Fialleril who wrote a series of gorgeous short fic delving into the slave culture of Tatooine, into which Anakin was born and near which Luke was raised.

The Tatooine Cycle by Fialleril

Chosen: When Shmi Skywalker was thirty seven years old, she went out into the desert.
Seductio: He learns that he must be free of attachment.
Patriarchy: Fathers always desire the destruction of their children
Children of the Desert: They were the children of the desert, born for squalor and mystery
Amakurra: Tatooine wasn’t home for her in the way it was for Luke. But for Leia, who would never go home again, Tatooine – at least, this part of Tatooine – was strangely comforting.