Fandom: LORD OF THE RINGS

Pairing: none

Author on LJ: altariel1

Author Website: http://www.qresearch.org.uk/personal/tolkien.htm

Why this must be read:

Death by Water, written from Faramir's POV, explores the reactions of father and brother to Boromir's death. The author uses absolutely gorgeous prose and an impressive knowledge of canon (including The Silmarillion) to evoke the genuine pain of the very strained and odd relationships between the last of the line of Stewards of Gondor. Altariel captures Faramir's honor and Denethor's harsh slide into madness perfectly. This story is highly recommended.

You can find it here: Death by Water

Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Ray Kowalski/Benton Fraser
Author's Websites: http://gatefiction.com/hth/ and http://gossipflambee.freewebspace.com/create/index.html
Author on LJ: hth_the_first
Why this must be read:

Hello again! I'm thrilled to be back for my second round of due South recs. My tastes in dS fic haven't changed since my first go-round - what I like, as I said then, is the Fraser/Kowalski pairing, good writing, deep emotion, stories that capture the magical surrealism and wacky humor of the show, the guys being indisputably guys while still revealing a degree of sweetness and tenderness, good smut, and happy endings - by which I mean the guys end up together forever. I often like a bit of hurt/comfort, and I'm okay with angst if the payoff is sufficient. I'm unlikely to recommend depressing or "edgy" fics, I have a fairly low tolerance for schmoop or long, un-guy-like conversations about feelings, and you can pretty much count on all the fics I rec to have a more-or-less explicit sexual relationship.

With that out of the way, on to my first rec for the month .... the Happily Ever After series, by Hth, which has two things that normally send me screaming for the hills: a kid, and reference to Ray K as "Stanley" (though in this case it's only Fraser who refers to him that way, and for a specific reason). Yet it is among my very favorite dS fics, and it never fails to move me and astound me with its amazing characterization and gorgeous, haunting, masterful writing. And it is for me just about the ultimate Fraser/Ray K love story.

Happily Ever After is a series of three post-CotW fics, each from the (incredibly distinctive and in-character) first person POV of a different character: the first, East o'the Sun, West o'the Moon, from Fraser's; the second, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, from Ray V's; and the third, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, from Ray K's. It begins with Fraser and Ray K in Canada where they've been for six years, their roles in the series reversed with Ray now the liaison, partnering with Fraser to patrol vast expanses of the Northwest Territories. An unexpected phone call from Ray V, married to Stella and living in Florida, stirs up all sorts of feelings that Fraser has never dealt with or faced and results in a visit to Florida that ultimately changes their lives in a way they never asked for or anticipated.

Ray, perhaps predictably, responds to the changes better than Fraser. Hth's Fraser is tortured - he just can't seem to clearly see, either himself or others; he often chooses to ignore what he cannot face, and he is stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, unable to accept being wrong, or losing. Ray ultimately is forced to confront Fraser with his failures, and he fears that Fraser will not be able to forgive him for making him face unwelcome truths to which he has been almost wilfully bind. Ray turns out to be wrong, but his judgment of Fraser is an accurate reflection of history - it's just that Ray has underestimated himself, his own influence over and importance to Fraser.

Hth's Ray K is simply ... amazing. She perfectly captures his prickliness, his pride - "raucous, aggressive, exuberant, fiercely resilient Stanley, who found himself when he slipped the leash of the civilized world"; "urban and wild, flexible and instinctual, gentle and predatory" - and also his vulnerability, his gentleness, the depth of his feelings. Her descriptions of Ray's struggle in STS, the brutal honesty that compels him to do what is necessary to protect someone who cannot protect herself even at the risk of losing what he himself values most, and his pain at the thought of that loss and amazed joy when it doesn't materialize, are simply gorgeous.

Their relationship ultimately weathers the storm, of course, and is stronger for it. That relationship - odd, subtle, mystical, almost magical - is the thing that draws me back time and again to these stories. On her site Hth says the series strikes her as kind of a ghost story, and I think I know what she means, even if there are no ghosts. There is something almost otherworldly about Ray and Fraser, starting with how their physical relationship begins. In STS Ray remembers that hearing Fraser sing the Northwest Passage song was:

that one, incredible, smack to the head that had me seeing stars that never went away. I closed my eyes, and I listened to him - tracing one more line through a land so wide and savage, to make a Northwest Passage to the sea . . . - and I thought, Oh, God, I think I'm in love with Fraser, because this is the world like it was made to be, before this I only knew what to save the world from, but this is what you save the world for.

Their relationship has an air of inevitability, of fatedness, that pushes all my buttons. In EotS Fraser remembers how one night out on the snow Ray touched him and that was it - no talking, no questioning, no analysis, and no feeling of "newness." The relationship was already there, unacknowledged, so that night was not a beginning for them but a coda, a "happily ever after." A mystical aura surrounds them, and Hth captures the kind of magical promise hinted at by Fraser in his voice-over at the end CotW, when he describes himself and Ray sledding off together into the North, the two of them alone against the world.

The way Hth portrays the years they've spent together since then - the years when they "went to the edge of the world and back twice a day," with "the two of us, invincible, flying across the toughest place on earth, getting better and stronger every time" - is simply breathtaking. Fraser's description of them during this time is one of the most stunningly evocative and beautiful such passages I've ever seen:

Our passion is a power that makes the impossible unavoidable. It overturns civilization, it subdues the wilderness, and we live it, day in and day out, embedded in the constant, essential now of the two of us. We will be here, just like this, forever, with sun and moon circling around us, north and south and east and west arrayed about us, and Stanley and I in the center of it all.

Of course, this turns out not to be true, and at the end of STS it just hurts my heart, right along with them, to know that those years are over for good, that it's not just the two of them anymore in the center of it all. Yet - there's another adventure on the horizon; in a sense they're yet again sledding off into a sunset at the end of STS, just a different one this time, and even though we can't know for sure, Hth makes us just believe it's going to work because of the magic they carry with them.

The outstanding characterization, the passion and heat and magic between Fraser and Ray K, the sympathetic and excellent portrayals of Ray V and Stella, and the utterly, unbelievably, stunningly gorgeous writing make these stories deeply moving and simply unforgettable, truly a sensual joy to read and re-read.


East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
The Steadfast Tin Soldier

Fandom: FIREFLY
Pairing: Jayne/m
Author on LJ: No
Author Website: Ana'sFiction

Why this must be read: This story is written from the second person POV of someone not a part of the Serenity crew. The observations about the crew are spot on and the observations about Jayne are, for the most part, correct. And I love that it's not all correct or maybe it could be. The point is that there is room for error on the part of this stranger. Just like in real life, a book judged by its cover can be judged wrong.

So for all you Jayne lovers out there take a look at him through the eyes of a person dealing with the boredom of being a prostitute on a dusty planet. Oh and the sex is hot too.

You're talking to the bartender when he makes his move. You don't see the big one leave their table, but you feel the not-so-subtle shift of air behind you. You turn, smiling a little.

He doesn't waste time with preliminaries. "How much?"

You look him up and down, liking what you see even more now that he's close up. He's taller than you, not that you're particularly small, and you have to tilt your head to meet his eyes. You negotiate a price and he pays you half up front. Then you help him carry the drinks he ordered back to his table.

He doesn't ask your name. You don't offer it.


Prospect

Oh and the author wrote a sequel too.

ProspectII