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I have just finished reading this wonderful book. It is a nice intriguing murder mystery set in an alternate universe which is very nicely drawn and detailed. One of the things I really liked about Northern Lights was the 'a bit like ours but quite different really' universe and the same is true of this. I think this may be partly why I like historical novels as well - the past is another country and all that. Back to the point. The central characters, Nico Rathe and Philip Eslingen are believable and appealing. I admit that I really only took this out of the library because the blurb on the back said 'Rathe must once again recruit the help of his soldier lover, Philip Eslingen'. And no matter how reprehensible that is so far it has found me several gems I probably wouldn't have read otherwise, including this one.
This is the sequel to 'Point of Hopes' which my library are unable to get me so I'll have to rely on Amazon. I have had two disappointments in connection with this book though. Firstly when I googled the authors to see if there were other books in the series as well as finding out about 'Point of Hopes' I discovered that very sadly Lisa A Barnett died from cancer about 18 months ago. She and Melissa Scott had been life partners for 27 years and Melissa's weblog is really very moving. Whilst I feel tremendous sympathy for her selfishly my main concern however is that this almost certainly means that there will be no more Rathe/Eslingen books. Melissa Scott is an accomplished author in her own right but I imagine it would be much too painful for her to try and write about these particular characters without the input of her partner even if she felt confident that she could recreate them by herself.
My second disappointment is that there is no fanfiction! Imagine! Accepting that there will be no more canon I went looking for fanfics to the fill the gap and I found one. I searched by google, at Skyhawke and even at fanfiction.net and the only fic I found was a series of 5 linked drabbles by unkindkit. There is a little note at the bottom saying that she thinks it is the only fanfic in existence for this pairing and it seems she is right. I am gutted. I want to get hold of the authors of all my favourite fics and say "read this, its fantastic, then write me some fic, please!" Oh well I'll just have to live in hope.
Completely unrelated to this last week sometime I read a transcript of an interview with Alan Rickman. I saw it at the leaky cauldron but the link went to someone's lj only now the link isn't working! The interview was to publicise 'Sweeney Todd' but inevitably touched on HP. In response to a question about obsessive fans he said something like "there are sites on the internet where I'm told, I've never looked, but I'm told that grown, mostly women, write porn about those characters. And they're not covert about it, they hold conventions." I can't help wondering who told him about the fics and I wish I could have heard the tone of voice he used for that last sentence, was he amused or indignant? I guess if he knows they all know. Weird.
This is the sequel to 'Point of Hopes' which my library are unable to get me so I'll have to rely on Amazon. I have had two disappointments in connection with this book though. Firstly when I googled the authors to see if there were other books in the series as well as finding out about 'Point of Hopes' I discovered that very sadly Lisa A Barnett died from cancer about 18 months ago. She and Melissa Scott had been life partners for 27 years and Melissa's weblog is really very moving. Whilst I feel tremendous sympathy for her selfishly my main concern however is that this almost certainly means that there will be no more Rathe/Eslingen books. Melissa Scott is an accomplished author in her own right but I imagine it would be much too painful for her to try and write about these particular characters without the input of her partner even if she felt confident that she could recreate them by herself.
My second disappointment is that there is no fanfiction! Imagine! Accepting that there will be no more canon I went looking for fanfics to the fill the gap and I found one. I searched by google, at Skyhawke and even at fanfiction.net and the only fic I found was a series of 5 linked drabbles by unkindkit. There is a little note at the bottom saying that she thinks it is the only fanfic in existence for this pairing and it seems she is right. I am gutted. I want to get hold of the authors of all my favourite fics and say "read this, its fantastic, then write me some fic, please!" Oh well I'll just have to live in hope.
Completely unrelated to this last week sometime I read a transcript of an interview with Alan Rickman. I saw it at the leaky cauldron but the link went to someone's lj only now the link isn't working! The interview was to publicise 'Sweeney Todd' but inevitably touched on HP. In response to a question about obsessive fans he said something like "there are sites on the internet where I'm told, I've never looked, but I'm told that grown, mostly women, write porn about those characters. And they're not covert about it, they hold conventions." I can't help wondering who told him about the fics and I wish I could have heard the tone of voice he used for that last sentence, was he amused or indignant? I guess if he knows they all know. Weird.
