![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yuletide Recs 2017, Part Two
Dec. 31st, 2017 07:03 pmOnce again, this is woefully incomplete, thanks to the vast number of stories I haven't read yet. I maintain that this has been an especially awesome Yuletide.
Invisible Banquets: A Tasting Menu (Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino). I almost passed this up because it had been so long since I'd read the book, but then I remembered that it seemed like a likely candidate for a canon-familiarity-optional fic, and while I'm sure this is an even richer experience if the Calvino is fresher in your mind, this is absolutely gorgeous nonetheless, sumptuous and sometimes unnerving food porn that excels in both strangeness and in the quality of its descriptions.
Friend Servilia (Rome). Exceptionally hot and exceptionally well-characterized Atia/Servilia, all about two women, manipulation, power, and scorchingly hot sex; if you like the idea of characters bringing their political and personal orchestrations of power into the bedroom, under just the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability, and a woman bedding her uncle's mistress, and also cunnilingus, well, this is the fic for you.
Not Bitter, Not Sweet and all the nameless that keeps us rising despite are both IT stories written to the same prompt--Richie, Bev, and Stan play Spin the Bottle--and they're both terrific, nuanced and incredibly true to the internal feeling of being a teenager, full of feeling and melancholy. "all the nameless" is more explicitly OT3esque.
Needle Through the World and The Ophelia Todd Map Company are both for Stephen King's great short story "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," and are both great. "Map Company" is a look at Homer in the aftermath of the story, getting used to his new life, and "Needle" is a terrific, well-textured look at Ophelia Todd herself, finding new routes and responding to them.
In the Wings (Curtain Up/Theater Shoes) is a warm, thoughtful look at Adelaide Warren and her path to becoming Adelaide Forbes, and it has all the Streatfeild glory of performing arts detail and family complications and also all the Streatfeild restraint that keeps everything smooth.
The Locust ("And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" - James Tiptree) is a flat-out phenomenal bit of historical science fiction, entirely in-tune with the original story but also making something new from it. Can be read without knowing canon, and should be read, if you at all like the idea of Jesuits, sexy aliens, theological ruminations, and the worrying feeling of cosmic insignificance. And, as we go into the New Year, who doesn't?
Invisible Banquets: A Tasting Menu (Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino). I almost passed this up because it had been so long since I'd read the book, but then I remembered that it seemed like a likely candidate for a canon-familiarity-optional fic, and while I'm sure this is an even richer experience if the Calvino is fresher in your mind, this is absolutely gorgeous nonetheless, sumptuous and sometimes unnerving food porn that excels in both strangeness and in the quality of its descriptions.
Friend Servilia (Rome). Exceptionally hot and exceptionally well-characterized Atia/Servilia, all about two women, manipulation, power, and scorchingly hot sex; if you like the idea of characters bringing their political and personal orchestrations of power into the bedroom, under just the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability, and a woman bedding her uncle's mistress, and also cunnilingus, well, this is the fic for you.
Not Bitter, Not Sweet and all the nameless that keeps us rising despite are both IT stories written to the same prompt--Richie, Bev, and Stan play Spin the Bottle--and they're both terrific, nuanced and incredibly true to the internal feeling of being a teenager, full of feeling and melancholy. "all the nameless" is more explicitly OT3esque.
Needle Through the World and The Ophelia Todd Map Company are both for Stephen King's great short story "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," and are both great. "Map Company" is a look at Homer in the aftermath of the story, getting used to his new life, and "Needle" is a terrific, well-textured look at Ophelia Todd herself, finding new routes and responding to them.
In the Wings (Curtain Up/Theater Shoes) is a warm, thoughtful look at Adelaide Warren and her path to becoming Adelaide Forbes, and it has all the Streatfeild glory of performing arts detail and family complications and also all the Streatfeild restraint that keeps everything smooth.
The Locust ("And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" - James Tiptree) is a flat-out phenomenal bit of historical science fiction, entirely in-tune with the original story but also making something new from it. Can be read without knowing canon, and should be read, if you at all like the idea of Jesuits, sexy aliens, theological ruminations, and the worrying feeling of cosmic insignificance. And, as we go into the New Year, who doesn't?