Sentinel-Guide Research Project by Sorka

[bluewolf458.livejournal.com]

Time flies when you're having fun. Seems like almost no time at all since I was last behind the wheel!

I seem to be leaning on AUs a lot this month; also on writers who have rarely, if ever, been recced here.

To begin -

Fandom: THE SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Length: 40886 words
Author on LJ: not known
Author Website: http://www.852prospect.org
Why this must be read: -

Set in a universe where sentinels and guides are known, Blair is an unbonded guide, a professor in the sentinel-guide unit at Rainier. One day, Blair's attention is drawn to a sentinel - Jim - being brought in in restraints.

I like stories that go in the opposite direction to fan - well, 'norm'. There are quite a lot of stories where Society considers sentinels more valuable, so guides have pretty well lost their autonomy, have to register and become little more than servants, with no other purpose than to ground their sentinel. In this story, the attempt to prevent that has left the sentinel liable to defer all the time to his guide's wishes, so that people are inclined to think that the sentinel has few, if any, rights; that they function more like trained pets than people with minds of their own.

I also like stories that show a very strong Blair. This story has that in spades. It's well written, well developed and incorporates an episode (which is always a bonus).

Sentinel-Guide Research Project

Comments

[finlaure.livejournal.com]

How did I possibly miss the Wonderful story (plows through notes)?!?! This story has it ALL! Have you found if the sequel was ever written? I have done some preliminary looking but couldn't find one. Great rec! I look forward to the rest of the month!

[bluewolf458.livejournal.com]

Glad I could give a rec you found good! (Incidentally you introduced me to a few crossovers I didn't know, thanks!)

I never came across a sequel to this. If I had, I would have given a link to it as well. Most of the stories by Sorka I have saved date from around 2004 - 2006, so I suspect she stopped writing in Sentinel seven or eight years ago :-(

[magician113.livejournal.com]

She has started putting her stuff up at AO3 under Sorka42
http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorka42/profile

AND her profile says she's looking for a beta reader and that she's writing in several fandoms, including TS! I know you do quite a bit of beta work--perhaps you'd be interested?

[bluewolf458.livejournal.com]

It's a pest when you have to add a number... I had hoped that searching AO3 for 'sorka' would throw up any name that included 'sorka' (the way part of a name works on 852) but it didn't.

[magician113.livejournal.com]

Yes, I tried searching for just "sorka" as well, and came up flat. In the end, I did it by searching for her story titles. I know AO3 is still in beta stage. Hopefully their search feature will improve.

[bluewolf458.livejournal.com]

There's so much there, I think it would need to improve otherwise there's too much risk of things getting lost in the crowd.

Add to that - yes, Sorka asked for betas, but I couldn't find anywhere on the page to reply to her. Making a comment on one of the stories didn't seem to be a suitable place to say anything about betaing.