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221b_recsTitle: You'll never be alone in the bone orchard
Author: SarahT
Pairing: Gen
Length: 9114
Rating: Mature
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: John Watson meets Mycroft Holmes one day early. The world tilts slightly on its axis.
Reccer's comments: The premise of this fic is that Mycroft approaches John, newly returned from Afghanistan, before John meets Sherlock. Mycroft offers him a job: be an assassin for the British government. John takes the job and various adventures begin.
I have to start by saying I've always found John Watson to be one of the most boring characters in fiction, and the way the character is done in Sherlock (and virtually all fanfic I've read) has never challenged that opinion. In this fic, SarahT accomplishes a rare feat: make John interesting in his own right. The absence of a relationship between John and Sherlock gives John the room to develop as a character as he confronts the consequences the war had for him.
The author also accomplishes an in-character (and in-canon character) Mycroft: slippery, dangerous, pragmatic, terrifying, and entirely believable as the kind of man who would get to the top of the pile without any thought to the cost to anyone else, while retaining his unhealthy and over-protective relationship with Sherlock.
The professional relationship that develops between John and Mycroft is fascinating and quite unlike anything I've come across in the fandom. And the fic has quite simply the best plot twist at the very end. A fic that follows none of the conventions of Sherlock fanfic, and is all the better for it.
Author: SarahT
Pairing: Gen
Length: 9114
Rating: Mature
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Author's summary: John Watson meets Mycroft Holmes one day early. The world tilts slightly on its axis.
Reccer's comments: The premise of this fic is that Mycroft approaches John, newly returned from Afghanistan, before John meets Sherlock. Mycroft offers him a job: be an assassin for the British government. John takes the job and various adventures begin.
I have to start by saying I've always found John Watson to be one of the most boring characters in fiction, and the way the character is done in Sherlock (and virtually all fanfic I've read) has never challenged that opinion. In this fic, SarahT accomplishes a rare feat: make John interesting in his own right. The absence of a relationship between John and Sherlock gives John the room to develop as a character as he confronts the consequences the war had for him.
The author also accomplishes an in-character (and in-canon character) Mycroft: slippery, dangerous, pragmatic, terrifying, and entirely believable as the kind of man who would get to the top of the pile without any thought to the cost to anyone else, while retaining his unhealthy and over-protective relationship with Sherlock.
The professional relationship that develops between John and Mycroft is fascinating and quite unlike anything I've come across in the fandom. And the fic has quite simply the best plot twist at the very end. A fic that follows none of the conventions of Sherlock fanfic, and is all the better for it.
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-31 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-31 07:13 am (UTC)It's glorious what a good writer can do by giving canon just a little twist and then following the logic of the characters' personalities in the situation.