SPN/Haven: Hunter's Haven by briarwood (Gen Audrey Parker, John Winchester R)
Title: Hunter's Haven
Author: briarwood
Artist: bdrixhaettc
Fandom: Supernatural/Haven
Pairing/Characters: Audrey Parker, Reverend Driscoll, Duke Crocker, Nathan Wuornos, John Winchester, Gabriel
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Spoilers for Haven up to 2.10: Who, What, Where, Wendigo and for Supernatural up to 5.22: Swan Song
Word Count: 24,500
Summary: Haven, Maine is a town full of mysteries, but even among the weirdness, John Winchester is a puzzle. At first, Audrey Parker is only intrigued. When a series of strange deaths appears to involve him, she decides she needs to solve the puzzle soon. But John, too, is trying to solve one of Haven's mysteries, and this one involves Audrey herself.
Link to masterpost: http://john-w-bigbang.livejournal.com/8028.html
Download Report: Six posts on LJ. One post on Dreamwidth. Also on AO3.
[This review was written for a Supernatural community, and therefore presumes familiarity with Supernatural. I'm sorry if that bias makes this review less useful for fans of Haven.]
First, a disclaimer: I know two things about the show Haven, and they are Diddly and Squat. I can't, therefore, comment on how in-character the people from Haven are, or how the story works in the show canon, or if the author got the atmosphere of the town right, or any of those things. I had to read those parts as OCs and original settings.
I would also add one warning: There's a brief but graphic torture scene near the beginning of the story, while John is still is Hell. It involves both dismemberment and vivisection.
With that in mind, I'd totally recommend this. I'm sure my reading would have been enhanced by knowing the Haven backstory, particularly knowing more about the Troubles, but the author was good at filling in those details in the course of the story. I found the Haven characters interesting and fleshed-out, despite the author having to presume that some of her audience would be familiar with them. Audrey especially was a compelling, well-rounded character. I really enjoyed reading about her, and reading the parts that were from her point of view.
Despite this being a crossover that fully involves both canons (at least as far as I can tell), and despite there being parts of the story from Audrey's perspective, this was definitely a John-centric story. The premise is John and Gabriel have known each other for years, long before the start of the series. They've been working to try and stop the Apocalypse, but so far their plans haven't gone well. After John's escape from Hell in "All Hell Breaks Loose," John returns to Earth, alive. Gabriel tells John that they can't--shouldn't--stop Dean from breaking the first seal, that Dean will have to go to Hell and suffer what John suffered. He exiles John to Haven while Sam and Dean carry out their parts, making sure that John is physically unable to leave.
There isn't one big plot to this story, not really. It's more that both John and Audrey have a number of questions and problems that they're trying to solve, and the story is about how they each find out what the other has to do with their own problems. The canon of Supernatural marches on outside of Haven, meanwhile, and John frets and worries about what's happening to Sam and Dean (Adam sadly, is Son Not Appearing In This Story. It's one of the few problems I had with it, that Adam ended up being important to the thing John was supposedly worried about, and yet John never asked about him. Gabriel could have deliberately kept John in the dark about Adam, but it still bothered me that John never apparently even tried to find out about his other son.)
Bottom line: This is a darn good story. The characters are good, the writing is solid, and the plot-lines are interesting and engaging. Even if you're not familiar with the canon of Haven, I think you can enjoy this.
This review was originally posted to the spnanonhaven Fiction Discuss post
Author: briarwood
Artist: bdrixhaettc
Fandom: Supernatural/Haven
Pairing/Characters: Audrey Parker, Reverend Driscoll, Duke Crocker, Nathan Wuornos, John Winchester, Gabriel
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Spoilers for Haven up to 2.10: Who, What, Where, Wendigo and for Supernatural up to 5.22: Swan Song
Word Count: 24,500
Summary: Haven, Maine is a town full of mysteries, but even among the weirdness, John Winchester is a puzzle. At first, Audrey Parker is only intrigued. When a series of strange deaths appears to involve him, she decides she needs to solve the puzzle soon. But John, too, is trying to solve one of Haven's mysteries, and this one involves Audrey herself.
Link to masterpost: http://john-w-bigbang.livejournal.com/8028.html
Download Report: Six posts on LJ. One post on Dreamwidth. Also on AO3.
[This review was written for a Supernatural community, and therefore presumes familiarity with Supernatural. I'm sorry if that bias makes this review less useful for fans of Haven.]
First, a disclaimer: I know two things about the show Haven, and they are Diddly and Squat. I can't, therefore, comment on how in-character the people from Haven are, or how the story works in the show canon, or if the author got the atmosphere of the town right, or any of those things. I had to read those parts as OCs and original settings.
I would also add one warning: There's a brief but graphic torture scene near the beginning of the story, while John is still is Hell. It involves both dismemberment and vivisection.
With that in mind, I'd totally recommend this. I'm sure my reading would have been enhanced by knowing the Haven backstory, particularly knowing more about the Troubles, but the author was good at filling in those details in the course of the story. I found the Haven characters interesting and fleshed-out, despite the author having to presume that some of her audience would be familiar with them. Audrey especially was a compelling, well-rounded character. I really enjoyed reading about her, and reading the parts that were from her point of view.
Despite this being a crossover that fully involves both canons (at least as far as I can tell), and despite there being parts of the story from Audrey's perspective, this was definitely a John-centric story. The premise is John and Gabriel have known each other for years, long before the start of the series. They've been working to try and stop the Apocalypse, but so far their plans haven't gone well. After John's escape from Hell in "All Hell Breaks Loose," John returns to Earth, alive. Gabriel tells John that they can't--shouldn't--stop Dean from breaking the first seal, that Dean will have to go to Hell and suffer what John suffered. He exiles John to Haven while Sam and Dean carry out their parts, making sure that John is physically unable to leave.
There isn't one big plot to this story, not really. It's more that both John and Audrey have a number of questions and problems that they're trying to solve, and the story is about how they each find out what the other has to do with their own problems. The canon of Supernatural marches on outside of Haven, meanwhile, and John frets and worries about what's happening to Sam and Dean (Adam sadly, is Son Not Appearing In This Story. It's one of the few problems I had with it, that Adam ended up being important to the thing John was supposedly worried about, and yet John never asked about him. Gabriel could have deliberately kept John in the dark about Adam, but it still bothered me that John never apparently even tried to find out about his other son.)
Bottom line: This is a darn good story. The characters are good, the writing is solid, and the plot-lines are interesting and engaging. Even if you're not familiar with the canon of Haven, I think you can enjoy this.
This review was originally posted to the spnanonhaven Fiction Discuss post