This is gorgeous and intelligent and effortlessly readable -- I didn't want it to end, not simply because I didn't want to face the loss of Amelia but because I was positively basking in the decency and damage of Amelia and Alastor. Every scene was compact and carefully whittled and perfectly paced. I love how they lose their virginity to each other in an act of friendship and a rite of passage; how it takes a while for junior Auror Amelia to twig to the fact that she's not being kept out of the field due to sexist double standards or doubt about her abilities, but precisely because she's considered more valuable. The rescue of Alastor from the Soviet prison after he's been ruled expendable is sharp and smart and a triumph -- witches being kick-ass, hurrah! Then Mafalda's surprising steel, and the justifiable beginnings of Alastar's paranoia. Not to mention the compelling and complex tarnish of political cynicism that puts the unsuspecting idealists in jeopardy.
This is so economically written, packing so much into a comparatively short narrative -- a whole life, two lives, equally vivid and picked out in perfect detail (as just one example, I love that it's Amelia who buys Alastor his magical eye, both a curse and a blessing, and that it occurs to her because it's where she buys her monocle -- and how endearing that crusty, battle-scarred Alastor should be so flustered by Muriel Beamish's lack of knickers).
I could go on and on, but it's past my bedtime and I must be sensible and stop. But I have to add how enormously touching and right it was that you should wait to bring Mafalda back until the end, when it matters most -- because it adds an extra shock of loss. You have such a gift for creating life-sized, flawed, appealing, tragic, admirable characters who live beyond the page, and perhaps best of all you've incarnated loyalty in a way that's not easy or dull, but sinewy and unsentimental and deeply moving.
Good night, and thank you for such a thought-provoking, masterfully constructed, and heartfelt story. It made me ache for the characters, and feel privileged to meet them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-10-26 07:59 am (UTC)This is so economically written, packing so much into a comparatively short narrative -- a whole life, two lives, equally vivid and picked out in perfect detail (as just one example, I love that it's Amelia who buys Alastor his magical eye, both a curse and a blessing, and that it occurs to her because it's where she buys her monocle -- and how endearing that crusty, battle-scarred Alastor should be so flustered by Muriel Beamish's lack of knickers).
I could go on and on, but it's past my bedtime and I must be sensible and stop. But I have to add how enormously touching and right it was that you should wait to bring Mafalda back until the end, when it matters most -- because it adds an extra shock of loss. You have such a gift for creating life-sized, flawed, appealing, tragic, admirable characters who live beyond the page, and perhaps best of all you've incarnated loyalty in a way that's not easy or dull, but sinewy and unsentimental and deeply moving.
Good night, and thank you for such a thought-provoking, masterfully constructed, and heartfelt story. It made me ache for the characters, and feel privileged to meet them.