Behind the Throne and sequels by KB Wagers
May. 5th, 2020 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsBehind the Throne, After the crown, Beyond the Empire, There Before the Chaos, Down Among the Dead
4/5. Haha, okay. This is some quality badfic with a good beta, is what this is. Badfic being an entirely different and much more delightful beast than bad fic, you understand.
Oh, right, this is about the runaway princess turned gun smuggler dragged reluctantly home to her matriarchal space!India empire to rule on the brink of war. It's scifi in the way Star Wars is scifi – that is to say, it's actually epic fantasy in scifi clothing. It's also tropey as all get out. Like the AO3 tags on this sucker would be something like loyalty oaths, loyalty kink, royal AU, bodyguard kink, matriarchy, the best ships are friendships, thieves with hearts of gold, found family, so much hugging, also crying, POC main characters, bisexual main character, gender politics, foul-mouthed princess.
They're not great literature or even particularly good, but they're full of queer people of color and heaps and heaps of feelings (though too much crying, TBH), and they gleefully start jumping various sharks by book four, and I can't wait for the next one.
Content notes: Up close depiction of a psychotic break, loss of fertility, grief.
4/5. Haha, okay. This is some quality badfic with a good beta, is what this is. Badfic being an entirely different and much more delightful beast than bad fic, you understand.
Oh, right, this is about the runaway princess turned gun smuggler dragged reluctantly home to her matriarchal space!India empire to rule on the brink of war. It's scifi in the way Star Wars is scifi – that is to say, it's actually epic fantasy in scifi clothing. It's also tropey as all get out. Like the AO3 tags on this sucker would be something like loyalty oaths, loyalty kink, royal AU, bodyguard kink, matriarchy, the best ships are friendships, thieves with hearts of gold, found family, so much hugging, also crying, POC main characters, bisexual main character, gender politics, foul-mouthed princess.
They're not great literature or even particularly good, but they're full of queer people of color and heaps and heaps of feelings (though too much crying, TBH), and they gleefully start jumping various sharks by book four, and I can't wait for the next one.
Content notes: Up close depiction of a psychotic break, loss of fertility, grief.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 01:14 am (UTC)Edit: Huh. Interesting. Eliding a single-person referrant to produce "sounds like fun" is okay in my idiolect, but actually eliding a plural person referrant to get "sound like fun" doesn't work at all.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 01:51 pm (UTC)Fortunately there is a mini-boom of Star Wars-flavored stuff out there now, when I am next in the mood. (Though _Bonds of Brass_, the thinly-veiled Finn/Poe, also did not do it for me, unfortunately, so my track record is not great.)
no subject
Date: 2020-05-06 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-07 12:11 pm (UTC)