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crack_van2006-09-30 09:23 am
st-crispins.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2006-09-30 09:23 am
Entry tags:
Solo's Luck by Vicky Loebel (PG-13)
Fandom: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: none; it’s Gen
Author on LJ: No.
Author’s website: Vicky’s Man From U.N.C.L.E. Fanfiction
Why this must be read:
So why is Napoleon Solo so damn lucky? This story provides an answer of sorts and it will surprise you.
Like most of Vicky’s pieces, this one is fairly long and intricately plotted, with gritty action and memorable OC characters. Solo and Kuryakin’s task is simple: retrieve a package containing an extremely dangerous nerve gas before Thrush can get it. Waverly’s orders are direct and ominous: accomplish the mission whatever the cost.
But the way the story is told is complex and it jumps around in time and POV, with a mix of narrative voices. If you stick with it, however, you’ll see that everything eventually falls into place like a jigsaw puzzle.
What I like best about this story is its edgy, take-no-prisoners’ tone, the satisfying denouement, and best of all, its layered literary quality. For example, here we're privy to Solo’s ambivalent thoughts and feelings as he romances an Innocent purely as a means to an end:
But she was already half in love with him and the heat and the summer air were clouding her judgment. Her mind had already closed to the truth. They undid one another’s shirt buttons, slowly, and Napoleon gathered her to him in earnest, tasting youth, drinking the heady aroma of clean laundry and soap.
It had been a long time since he’d held a woman who didn’t douse herself in French perfume, and for a moment he was sixteen again and madly in love. Then the illusion shattered and he was just another field agent using sex as the fastest way to get what he wanted. A textbook case for Jules Cutter to paste into his files.
Or here, the philosophical musings of a dead man:
One by one I count my sins down, from here until the end of myself. One by one, I watch and regret, wait and remember. Through the mist I still see Manhattan pressed flat against a gray dawn sky. I slide the tip of my finger along the curves of a beautiful woman, hear the splash of taxis against traffic cops in the rain, smell July garbage, October egg-fu-yung, and the scent of new-mown hay as I creep through tall grass with a gun in my hand.
And I still feel the ants marching over my body, reducing skin, blood, and muscle to dust.
Life is gone, yet it’s here at the edge of my grasp.
Pity me. Touch me. Take me back.
Who is he? Read the story and find out.
Solo’s Luck
Pairing: none; it’s Gen
Author on LJ: No.
Author’s website: Vicky’s Man From U.N.C.L.E. Fanfiction
Why this must be read:
So why is Napoleon Solo so damn lucky? This story provides an answer of sorts and it will surprise you.
Like most of Vicky’s pieces, this one is fairly long and intricately plotted, with gritty action and memorable OC characters. Solo and Kuryakin’s task is simple: retrieve a package containing an extremely dangerous nerve gas before Thrush can get it. Waverly’s orders are direct and ominous: accomplish the mission whatever the cost.
But the way the story is told is complex and it jumps around in time and POV, with a mix of narrative voices. If you stick with it, however, you’ll see that everything eventually falls into place like a jigsaw puzzle.
What I like best about this story is its edgy, take-no-prisoners’ tone, the satisfying denouement, and best of all, its layered literary quality. For example, here we're privy to Solo’s ambivalent thoughts and feelings as he romances an Innocent purely as a means to an end:
But she was already half in love with him and the heat and the summer air were clouding her judgment. Her mind had already closed to the truth. They undid one another’s shirt buttons, slowly, and Napoleon gathered her to him in earnest, tasting youth, drinking the heady aroma of clean laundry and soap.
It had been a long time since he’d held a woman who didn’t douse herself in French perfume, and for a moment he was sixteen again and madly in love. Then the illusion shattered and he was just another field agent using sex as the fastest way to get what he wanted. A textbook case for Jules Cutter to paste into his files.
Or here, the philosophical musings of a dead man:
One by one I count my sins down, from here until the end of myself. One by one, I watch and regret, wait and remember. Through the mist I still see Manhattan pressed flat against a gray dawn sky. I slide the tip of my finger along the curves of a beautiful woman, hear the splash of taxis against traffic cops in the rain, smell July garbage, October egg-fu-yung, and the scent of new-mown hay as I creep through tall grass with a gun in my hand.
And I still feel the ants marching over my body, reducing skin, blood, and muscle to dust.
Life is gone, yet it’s here at the edge of my grasp.
Pity me. Touch me. Take me back.
Who is he? Read the story and find out.
Solo’s Luck