Yuletide recs, Part I

[rachelmanija]

A quick set of recs before I drive off to spend the rest of the day socializing with my family. I look forward to reading much more when I return! These are all short stories, as I didn't have time to read any of the longer ones.

I got dragons for Yuletide! My inner thirteen-year-old is thrilled to pieces. My gift stories were:

Partners, in which Mirrim fights Thread, reflects on her life, and gets some bonding time in with her dragon Path and her best friend Menolly.

Beginnings, a sweet story about how shy young Brekke is transported from her small but familiar world to a completely new one, filled with dragons.

While browsing the archive, I found:

Friday Morning at Nine O'Clock She Is Far Away. Based on the Richard Thompson song "Vincent Black Lightning," it tells a new story that both grows out of and sheds new light on the original. All the characters seem very real, even in this snapshot of their lives. Also, love the sneaky stealth crossover.

Rationalizing Animals. From Lauren Beukes' Zoo City. The premise is that when someone is responsible for or possibly just feels guilty over another person's death, they get a companion animal and a psychic talent. If their animal is killed, they are swept to their death into an Undertow of nothingness. The novel had a bunch of excerpts from newspaper articles, movie reviews, etc, dealing with this phenomenon, and this story is a collection of the same sort of thing. Really, really clever and well-done.

Journey to the Southwest. Monkey meets Br'er Rabbit. This is the sort of high concept that's either going to be great or a disaster; I thought it was great.

Comments

[derien.livejournal.com]

But, um... Briar Rabbit? Br'er is supposed to be short for 'brother,' not 'briar.'

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

This is bizarre, but I am so used to him being Br'er Rabbit that I actually read it that way, and had to go back to the story to see what you meant.

Maybe it's a reference to something I'm not getting? Because otherwise, you're totally right. Maybe the author has never seen it written down.

[larryhammer]

Briar Rabbit and Briar Fox did make me doubletake. But since it was a gift to me, it would be churlish to attribute it to anything more than a spellchecker run rampant.

---L.

[derien.livejournal.com]

well said. :)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Friday Morning at Nine o'Clock is so perfect - especially given that Tick-Tick actually quoted that song to Orient!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I would be quite happy if we got a Mirrim Being Awesome story every year forever.

[larryhammer]

BTW, according to a anon comment on Journey to the Southwest, after the reveal the author will add a chapter about Wily Coyote ...

---L.