What I am reading Wednesday

I have never kept track on my reading before and I find this a lot of fun. I seem to read a book a week on a normal pace, which is largely due to the hour I spend on a train every workday.

What I am reading: Prudence by Gail Carriger.

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold.

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Fanfic recs

Just a list of all the fics I have recommended.. As for now recs can be found for Deadwood, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, The Historian and The Lord of the Rings.


Deadwood

Title: Offerings and Acceptance
Author: fragratfields
Length: Multi-chapter
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Warnings: Explicit sex
Characters/pairings: Al Swearengen/Alma Garret
Summary: Alma makes an offer Al Swearengen had promised to accept. Awkwardness abounds as two complicated people try to find a way to come together without their usual facades.
Why I rec it: Well, this is smut, but very well-written such. Again, the characters are spot on, which really makes this fic for me. If you haven't seen Deadwood you have missed something!

Doctor Who
Title: The Benevolence of Dragons (AOU)
Author: snowgrouse
Length: One-shot; 789 words
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: None stated
Characters/pairing: The Master(Delgado)/Chin Lee
Summary: A Mr. Emil Keller arrives in Beijing, and for Chin Lee, nothing is the same as it was before.
Why I rec it: I re-watched The Mind of Evil recently and I have kept thinking of Chin Lee after that. In the Master’s second outing he has acquired a pretty young companion. I don’t know if it was intentional to mirror the Doctor or something that was considered to be more frequent, but Chin Lee is rather unique among the Master’s minions, at least until Lucy Saxon. Anyway, I went in search for fanfic about Chin Lee and found exactly one, this one. I think it’s very good. The Master manages to be superbly threatening without actually acting on it. I love how Chin Lee sees him as a dragon, it works very, very well. And using the weather to set the mood is a nice touch as well.


Title: A Car With Character
Author: Memory Dragon
Length: Oneshot
Rating: PG
Warnings: None stated
Characters/pairings: Bessie, The Third Doctor/The Master (Delgado) implied.
Summary: Bessie loves her Doctor, but some things were taken too far.
Why I rec it: Just for sheer fun and because a yellow car named Bessie simply must have character.


Title: Friends In High Places
Author: nostalgia
Genre Humor
Length: 1753 words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None stated
Characters/pairing: The Third Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Liz Shaw, Jack Harkness, Donna Noble, the Tenth Doctor, The Master (Delgado), River Song, the TARDIS
Summary: In which Torchwood completely fail to locate the Doctor while he's pretty much on their doorstep.
Why I rec it: A couple of short scenes with various characters that are described spot on and why they want to find, or hide, the Doctor, and of course, the Doctor himself. I laughed out loud several times while reading it.


Title: The Master and Mrs. Pond
Author: Memory Dragon
Length: Multi-chapter
Rating: PG
Warnings: None stated
Characters: Amy Pond, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton, The Third Doctor, The Master (Delgado)
Summary: Still waiting for her proper Doctor and Rory to find her again, Amy meets the Doctor's best enemy and gets chased around by a giant purple monster. So much for hearing embarrassing stories of the Doctor's childhood over chocolate!
Why I rec it: Because it is fun, I laughed out loud several times! Because the voices, of all the characters are spot on and that is something I always look for in a fic. It's part of a series, really part 2, but I read it before I realised it and didn't suffer


Title: The Master’s Companion
Author: JulisCaesar
Genre Humor
Length: 2103 words
Rating: General audience
Warnings: None stated
Characters/pairing: The Fifth Doctor, The Master (Ainley)
Summary: For some reason, there is an elephant in the Master's TARDIS. He would like to register his displeasure with this.
Why I rec it: I laughed myself silly when I read this one. The elephant is very elephant-like, which the notes explains and the Master tries very hard to not enjoy having an elephant. Or an elephant having him, perhaps. The elephant reminds me of an elephant called Mini in one of Diana Wynne Jones books, an animal capable of walking between worlds- clearly a relative to the Master’s companion.


Title: Queen and Mistress
Author: LilacFree
Genre: Drama
Length: Oneshot
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Graphic sex, BDSM
Characters/Pairings: Peri Brown/The Master (Ainley)
Summary: So what's Peri up to? What's it like being Queen of a bunch of space barbarians? It's no bed of roses. The King is dead and she's in charge. It's all the Doctor's fault. And guess who is darkening her doorstep?
Why I rec it: A story that does a great job balancing consent with real danger.


Title: Threads
Author: Vali
Length: Oneshot
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of sibling incest off stage.
Summary: Who am I? Romana demanded. What am I? Am I anything at all?
Characters: Romana I, The Fourth Doctor, K-9
Why I rec it: I love Romana, especially in her first incarnation and I love how she evolves in this fic.


Title:: Two Hours/Eventually
Author: Daystar Searcher
Genre: Angst
Length: Oneshot
Rating: R
Warnings:References to violence and sexual assault
Characters/Pairings: The Third Doctor, Josephine Grant
Summary: Take place in the very dark alternate universe from Inferno where the Doctor has been imprisoned by UNIT and Jo becomes his assistant after being sentenced to lifetime in prison.
Why I rec it: A rather bleak story that still manage to get the voice of the characters pitch perfect. It has an even darker sequel, Two Birds In A Cage, which I also highly recommend.


Harry Potter
Title: As To A Portrait, Gently Drawn
Author:
Length: Oneshot
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None stated
Characters/pairings: Luna Lovegood, Severus Snape
Summary: Snape patrols, and finds Luna precisely where she is not meant to be. Bathed in light, chalk in hand
Why I rec it: This story is just lovely. Rather sad, but lovely. I also thing Luna is beautifully portrayed and Snape is good as well.

The Historian
Story: Among Some Talk of You and Me
Author: Hokuto
Length: Oneshot
Rating: PG-13
Characters/pairings: The Narrator, Vlad Tepes (Dracula)
Summary: Reader, I pray that you will have the strength to walk with me a little longer.
Why I rec it: The Historian is one of my favourite books, but it does end rather open and with far too little of Dracula in it. This is a perfect koda.

Lord of the Rings
Title:: Escaping Isengard
Author: Zoop
Genre: Drama, angst
Length: Multi-chapter
Rating: R
Warnings: Non-con
Summary: At the end of despair, when all hope has faded, a woman facing the last moments of her life finds the will to survive rekindled by one whose kind robbed her of it to begin with. Now she must decide which evil is the lesser: stay with the beast, or risk worse by leaving him. She soon finds that the horrors she faced in Isengard were not reserved for those in the breeding pits alone.
Why I rec it: A really hard read about a woman who has been used to breed Uruk-hai and is saved by one of them when Isengard falls. There is no cosmetics to make rape and rape recovery anything else than horrible. It’s also very well-written with great character evolvement.