The First Rule by Brenda (NC-17)
It's Action/Adventure week, and for me that my first fandom: The New Professionals.
Title: The First Rule
Fandom: CI5: The New Professionals
Categories: Gen, action/adventure
Length: Epic (60,600 words)
Warnings: Adult themes, past sexual abuse
Author on LJ: brenk (it hasn't been posted to for ages, though)
Author on CI5 Operational Control: Brenda
Summary:
Curtis and Keel are in East Africa. Both of them must deal with events in their past, as well carry out a mission that is not all that it seems.
Review:
This is a proper action story in true Professionals style. It has majestic African scenery, a good-looking cast (trust me!), unstable politics and a herd of charging wildebeest. What more could you want?
OK, the writing's good too. That's something that is generally true of New Pros fandom, but Brenda is one of the better technical writers in the fandom. What she has put together here is an adventure story that fits the genre well, into which the exotic scenery has breathed a different life. The characters are well depicted, each with more background developed than on the show but with the same subtext there for you to read what you want into. It's very well done.
Harry Malone has a lot of rules he expects his agents to live by, but the first and most important is "Don't get emotionally involved." Brenda takes this gift to slash writers, and interprets it in the widest sense. Different characters are put through the wringer in different ways, and have to find their own different ways to survive. Through it all, the impossibility of really staying emotionally uninvolved is what keeps coming through, and Curtis, Keel and Backus succeed because they play smart. Even when they are on the back foot in plot terms, they find ways to hit the opposition where it hurts.
This is well considered plotting that would have done very nicely as an episode, or possibly a sequence of episodes given the length. I can't recommend it enough.
The First Rule
Title: The First Rule
Fandom: CI5: The New Professionals
Categories: Gen, action/adventure
Length: Epic (60,600 words)
Warnings: Adult themes, past sexual abuse
Author on LJ: brenk (it hasn't been posted to for ages, though)
Author on CI5 Operational Control: Brenda
Summary:
Curtis and Keel are in East Africa. Both of them must deal with events in their past, as well carry out a mission that is not all that it seems.
Review:
This is a proper action story in true Professionals style. It has majestic African scenery, a good-looking cast (trust me!), unstable politics and a herd of charging wildebeest. What more could you want?
OK, the writing's good too. That's something that is generally true of New Pros fandom, but Brenda is one of the better technical writers in the fandom. What she has put together here is an adventure story that fits the genre well, into which the exotic scenery has breathed a different life. The characters are well depicted, each with more background developed than on the show but with the same subtext there for you to read what you want into. It's very well done.
Harry Malone has a lot of rules he expects his agents to live by, but the first and most important is "Don't get emotionally involved." Brenda takes this gift to slash writers, and interprets it in the widest sense. Different characters are put through the wringer in different ways, and have to find their own different ways to survive. Through it all, the impossibility of really staying emotionally uninvolved is what keeps coming through, and Curtis, Keel and Backus succeed because they play smart. Even when they are on the back foot in plot terms, they find ways to hit the opposition where it hurts.
This is well considered plotting that would have done very nicely as an episode, or possibly a sequence of episodes given the length. I can't recommend it enough.
The First Rule