Party Peace by Sally Manton (gen)

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Blakes 7
Pairing: none
Author on LJ: no
Author Website: none
Why this must be read:

Hi. Season of mists and mellow angstfulness: yes, it's Hafren again, reccing for B7 in September. It's getting harder to find good ones that haven't been recced but I don't recall much by this author. In one way that isn't odd, because she isn't very prolific, but she's a seriously good, underrated author who does a wonderful line in autumnal moods.

This isn't a fandom for conventional happy endings. Even when they're basically positive, they tend to be hushed and downbeat, and even if the revolution succeeds, things are never that simple. This is a post-Gauda Prime fic, set some time after the final episode, in which most though not all of the rebels have survived and the rebellion looks like winning – is in fact holding victory celebrations, though there are still pockets of resistance from the old regime. Avon is central to it, and trying to come to terms, as are others, with the traumatic events of Gauda Prime and his own part in them. And an old enemy unexpectedly turning up doesn't help. What I like about this fic is its autumnal, elegiac tone, which reminds me of the later parts of the Musketeers cycle. Right from the start, this tone dominates:

It was a lovely day.
Avon sat alone at what had been the steps of Residence One and now were broken steps to nowhere but a pile of rubble. An ugly pile of rubble - it would be decades, maybe centuries, before this burned-out shell gained a patina of beauty, if ever.

From where he sat, he could see down into the valley, towards where the unofficial VE-Day celebrations were being held. Unofficial, of course, because the President and the remnants of his High Council had not yet surrendered, along with what was left of the Eighth Fleet and the skeletal, desertion-thinned ranks of the troops on Earth. Also unofficial, he reminded himself ironically, because most of the people celebrating were still officially on one or another - or several - wanted lists, and there were still bounties posted on far too many.

They shouldn't have come. He knew that, they all knew that, but none had refused the chance. It had been a long time...

And now he could hear the music - haunting, deep-souled music from Earth's past, Deva's choice, he would wager - and see the holographic display, crystals of pure rainbowed light falling like confetti over the canal bank. Vila and Dayna would be somewhere down there, among the lights. Jenna would be with them, despite still being officially dead: Deva and Blake's other people as well. But not Soolin, who had died on Gauda Prime only slightly less of a mystery than she had been from the start; nor Tarrant, who had survived that debacle, only to die a hero's death, in a muddy trench on a small planet near Helotrix.

Anti-angsters might care to note that despite the gut-twisting wrench of the ending, it does hold out a possibility of redemption.

Party Peace