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rec50 recs now - with apologies for the delay (oh and since these were purposefully kept short for rec50 extra comments/thoughts on the fic would be gratefully received!)Title: Harlequin Airs
Author: Ellis Ward
Link to story: at Circuit Archive or at the Hatstand
Zine: Harlequin Airs, Uzi Press, 1993.
Permission to archive the rec/review at Palely Loitering: Yes
Short review: Review at
rec50 and There are so many fabulous Pros alternate universe fics to choose from that this was a particularly hard prompt to try and match, but in the end it had to be Harlequin Airs. As soon as I flicked on the link and re-read the first sentence I was sucked right back into the universe. Doyle works for CI5, having had a previous career as a trapeze artist, and so when Cowley needs someone to go undercover at Circus Sergei he is the obvious choice. He meets Bodie, who also works the trapeze, and has to decide exactly where the man fits into the IRA operation he has been sent to investigate. The author writes beautifully, the plot is brilliantly conceived, the characterisation spot on, and the whole thing reeks of sawdust and magic…
This is a novel-length fic with art by Suzan Lovett. The art is also included at at Circuit Archive
July 26 2006, 10:40:58 UTC 5 years ago
July 26 2006, 13:31:10 UTC 5 years ago
What a combination - part Doyle part Don DeMarco... *g* I'm actually missing that movie right now, I really fancy seeing it again and it's packed up home in Ak! I wonder if EW had DDM in mind when she wrote it? I mean, surely she must have...or am I just assuming?
I also love the first "section" where we see Doyle at the cemetery and there's a sort of wondering for me of where and who and what he's going to turn out to be - and then with a lovely kind of rush we're back in CI5 and it's partly familiar again, there's just a sense of wondering what will happen next, and where we'll be taken. And the motorbike ride north too has for me that feeling of oooh, what's gonna happen?! As you say, it completely draws you in this one!
July 26 2006, 12:30:14 UTC 5 years ago
July 26 2006, 13:28:25 UTC 5 years ago
July 26 2006, 13:35:13 UTC 5 years ago
July 26 2006, 13:49:04 UTC 5 years ago
And it's not that I don't like Ellis Ward's work. Her Trial Run and The Return are at the top of my re-read list.
Suzan Lovett's artwork is superb and half the fun of Harlequin Airs.
July 26 2006, 14:19:13 UTC 5 years ago
I sometimes wonder about some of Helen Raven's fic like that for example - I adore Heat Trace, but I can see that the lads aren't themselves, as such. And yet they're not so far out, or perhaps they're different in a way that I can still relate to on some other level. Hmmn - not sure what sense that makes! And yet in... um... oh, perhaps some of Jane's fic they might still be in the CI5-verse even and yet not be close enough for me to deal with... And then again in Harlequin Airs, even though they've the different backgrounds and so on, I get them as them.
And then Hostage to Peace (Wally) and The Cook and the Warehouseman (Helen Raven) are I think identical stories written differently, and yet the former I've not been able to finish, and the latter I'm thoroughly enjoying because I do see the lads in there, despite the alien AU setting! (Mind you, I'm only halfway through C&W at the moment, and I was never able to finish HtP, so I'll have to go back to it to be sure).
Perhaps that's why there can be so much Prosfic - there was enough scope left in the series that everyone can see their own pieces of personality and so on, and then if all of those people expand just a little bit outwards, well we're still close enough... but then every little expansion moves just a step further away from someone else's idea of the characterization, like some huge, glitter-y web of personality assets and defects and quirks. Hmmn, maybe that's a metaphor too far and I should get back to work!
July 26 2006, 20:37:40 UTC 5 years ago
Hostage to Peace? No, I couldn't finish that one either. I'd originally tried to read it because I thought Cook was a salute to it, almost a recommendation, but I now think that Helen Raven wrote Cook because of the shortcomings she saw in Hostage to Peace.
July 27 2006, 09:21:31 UTC 5 years ago
I can't see Bodie being able to recover easily from what Raven put him through either - was in very contrast to Doyle's slow slide through despair in some ways, although I think she left it open enough that we're not really sure what stage he's at recovery-wise when he and Doyle meet up again. Oh, this just makes me want to read it again now!
July 27 2006, 13:11:25 UTC 5 years ago
Yeah, I sort of assume that's why Raven wrote Cook as well. Though I do wonder how that worked out author-rights wise etc. I assume it was with permission... but then I've assumed that with other things and been wrong...
I've just tried looking out my very old, secondhand copy of Hostage to see if HR had written anything, but do you think I could find it? No. But I've got a feeling that somehow she wouldn't have bothered as she almost says the same thing at the beginning of Heat-Trace: that she was inspired by Brother's Keeper, that she should have asked the author's permission to write a follow-up but she didn't as she was going to write it anyway! (Or something like that).
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July 26 2006, 21:15:40 UTC 5 years ago
This was more 'the movie starring' than an episode of Pros, and I didn't buy what bits of the characterisation I did read. (No I did not read all of this. Just about the first 10 pages.)
Not my speed. Except to drool at the art.
July 27 2006, 09:25:08 UTC 5 years ago
I had a strange feeling you might not like Harlequin Airs actually (*g*) - out of curiousity, if you were reccing a favourite Prosfic, what would it be?
July 27 2006, 12:15:49 UTC 5 years ago
Its not so much a tendency to feminise Doyle as it is to morph him into Starsky... But that's a Suzann thing.
I had a strange feeling you might not like Harlequin Airs
LOL, see you know my taste already ;)
A favourite Pros fic.
Cause for Concern always pops to the fore, followed by Injured Innocents and Fruit of the Spirit.
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July 26 2006, 21:40:59 UTC 5 years ago
July 27 2006, 09:27:28 UTC 5 years ago
July 27 2006, 12:38:31 UTC 5 years ago
An
July 27 2006, 13:21:08 UTC 5 years ago
Hmmn - I never really thought that about Doyle in HA, but that was probably because, as you said, EW built it into the background so well with Chandra etc. And that's pretty much how it works for me too - if I can see that a certain background might have had a certain effect on their characters, then it works for me in an AU (or whatever). If I can't see them reacting in a that way to something ever then I can't see that reaction building into a later character trait...
*but sighs happily too over Harlequin Airs*
July 27 2006, 14:24:32 UTC 5 years ago
So far, the only AUs I've managed are ones where CI5 is at least somewhere in the background - I'm thinking Rainbow Chasers and Rediscovered in a Graveyard by HG, which I thoroughly enjoyed. (This is also why I haven't tackled any aliens or elves yet..) But Ellis Ward is a terrific writer - her 'Breaking Cover' is in my top ten - and this thread has certainly peaked my curiosity, so I'll go read and get back to ya.
On a side note, am I odd in that I absolutely don't like pics and drawings with my fics, no matter how talented the artist?
July 27 2006, 14:58:50 UTC 5 years ago
July 27 2006, 15:20:22 UTC 5 years ago
lol - perfectly described, just how I was! But I started getting through all the other long fic too fast, and came a day when I was casting around for something to read, and... *g*
And I liked Rediscovered In A Graveyard alot - I think that was one of the ones that eased me in to AUs actually...
I'm fairly ambivalent about pics and drawings with fic actually. I sort of take them as a (hopefully!) nice bonus if they're original art, and an excuse to look again if they're photos. Now photo manips I find hard to look at, especially when they're quite explicit. I think it crosses a bit too far into infringing on the actors somehow... Can't help but wonder how they'd feel if they saw an actual photo of themselves like that - drawings seem less real somehow, but maybe I'm just being old-fashioned about that...
July 27 2006, 15:34:21 UTC 5 years ago
So did I. Although I must admit I tend to read each age together rather than jumping back and forth.
Now photo manips I find hard to look at, especially when they're quite explicit.
I agree. Most manips are frighteningly awful. The good ones are delicious but there aren't too many of them.
I'm also not too keen on, as one friends says, seeing the last chicken in the shop.
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August 4 2006, 03:38:21 UTC 5 years ago
Thank you for the excellent recommendation - it was a very engrossing and enjoyable piece of writing. I don't really have anything to add, just a few nods to some of the other comments. DDM? Absolutely! That's who and somehow where I pictured while reading the story. The artwork? I chose not to include it as I read, and didn't look at it until I was finished. I think that it's brilliant and seductive on its own, and I love the myriad of details and surprises she includes, but I somehow wanted the story by itself, and then the treat at the end of seeing the drawings, of seeing how someone else pictured it. Canon? I think that the B and D of this universe were presented so successfully that in the end I didn't want them to be in the CI5 universe - I wanted them to go back to the circus world...
Again, thank you for the great rec, and I'm going to have to go through all 50 - I was just over to peek at a few categories to see what you'd chosen - On Heat! Yes!
August 4 2006, 16:09:14 UTC 5 years ago
Hee - I wasn't really sure whether to just post the whole table up here or what, but they'd be harder to find in the tags if I did that, so... separately it is!