Recs!
I haven't done any fanfic recs in a while because most of the people reading this who would be interested in the fics that I've read are also reading the same fics already thanks to IYFG and interlocking flists but for the last month or so I've been reading a lot of really good non-Inuyasha stuff that the rest of y'all might appreciate.
Oathbreakers
by Thundera Tiger
Lord of the Rings, canon, rated K
It's the night before Aragorn leads the march through the Paths of the Dead and Elladan and Elrohir (Elrond's sons) witness the confrontation between him and Eowyn then talk about what is to come.
I don't think I've ever read anything from their point of view and the author shows a lot of insight into the characters and their history. It's a nice vignette that doesn't take long to read so go do it.
Resonance
Revolution
Resolution (WIP)
by GreenGecko
Harry Potter, AR continuation, rated T
If you start these bring a lunch. And dinner, breakfast, and lunch again. These are each novel length and like the original books each covers roughly a year in Harry's life. The divergence point is year six. Things are set up by events earlier in the year that lead to a pivotal event during the Spring holiday that leads to Harry defeating Voldy before the deaths in books six and seven.
It also leads, to the astonishment of everyone except Dumbledore, to Snape becoming Harry's legal guardian freeing him from the Dursleys at last.
And based on that when I first followed a recommendation to this story I was prepared for the worst, and HP fanfic can be very bad indeed. In fact the first chapter of Resonance is one of the weakest of the whole series and after reading it I put the story aside and didn't get back to it for months. When I started reading it a few weeks ago and got past that first chapter I got hooked and had to read the whole thing even though the last book is still a WIP and you know my policy on WIPs.
The author learns and improves as she goes as we all do so there are a lot more flaws in Resonance than there are in Resolution. Mainly she has a problem at first in handling her original characters as more than props for Harry and Snape and there are a few too many fan service moments that don't advance the plot but the same can be said of Rowling at times so I'm cutting her slack. Her short stories are much stronger in a lot of ways so once you're done with these you'll want to go read those too.
The thing that hooked me was her understanding of the characters of Harry and Snape. How alike they are in many ways and how Harry has more dark in him than some fans would like to admit while Snape has more light in him than even he thought. BUT he's still a bastige. Even when he's doing something nice he's still snide about it and I have to love him for it.
Blood Magic
by GatewayGirl
Harry Potter AU, rated M
This is another long one with 84 chapters including the epilogue. Like Resonance and its sequels this story has Snape becoming Harry's guardian but other than that it is a very different story. In this case the twist is that Snape is Harry's biological father but for reasons that are way too complicated to go into in this review a spell was used so that Harry looked like James and could be passed off as his son.
Put those sharp pointy things away, the author doesn't have Lily do anything wrong and James knew exactly what was going on. What is going on? Well, read and find out I'm not going to spoil it for you.
This is very much a guilty pleasure even though it's pretty well written. Snape gets a sub-plot with a nice slashy romance with an unexpected character that is fun to watch progress.
It's an older story written after Order of the Phoenix came out but before Half-Blood Prince so there are bits that contradict canon stuff that hadn't been established yet but it's AU so it's not a fatal flaw.