Title: Good and Faithful Servant by Kat M.
Fandom: Hamlet
Pairing: Hamlet/Horatio
Categories: Romance
Length: Medium (3938 words)
Warning: None
Rating: Author rates as 'M' ... I'd go for a PG-13 myself

Author on LJ: Unknown
Website: Also unknown. A link from her Fanfiction.net profile produces an error message.

Summary: "I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth." Horatio loves - and loses - his Prince.

Review:

Horatio meets Hamlet for the first time at Wittenburg and knows him only just long enough to fall in love with him - in a totally faithful and unassuming way - before the letter comes which tells of Hamlet's father's death and sends them both hurrying back to Denmark. From this point forward the story re-tells the plot of Hamlet, rather sketchily to be honest; granted most people know it inside out, but telling it from Horatio's point of view should have yielded slightly more insight than it does here - especially as Horatio is shown as a thinker who has Hamlet's interests very much to heart. This, however, is more the result of author-in-a-hurry syndrome than inadequate abilities; Kat M certainly knows how to turn a phrase:

Was it Aeschylus or Aristotle that cracked like a whip in the rough hands of Hamlet's intellect[?]

and there is an extremely creditable attempt at rendering Shakespearean repartee, capturing the lightness of the Bard's text whereas so many other fan authors only succeed in capturing the heaviness.

The relationship between Horatio and Hamlet develops into a full-scale affair only after the death of Polonius, when the two men spend their one and only night together. It is obvious that the author can see this very clearly and has a strong grasp of the emotions involved, but again it is rather under-written and would have benefited from being explored much more closely. If one is being critical, there are perhaps too many (ingenious though they are) descriptions of the colour of Horatio's hair, and Horatio suddenly manifests a sister from somewhere who isn’t mentioned in the play. (I actually wondered if the author had mixed him up with Laertes at this point.) Also, although her choice of the Branagh film interpretation is an excellent one, it might have been more reassuring if she'd realised it was set in the nineteenth century rather than the eighteenth; there is a railway engine in it, after all!

But this is nit-pickery. On the whole this is an impressive story from a writer who for the most part knows her subject, although I have the feeling that with a little more time and effort invested it could have been even more impressive. It is certainly one of the best and most haunting Horatio/Hamlet stories to be found.

Link: Good and Faithful Servant

Grateful thanks to illustrious mod Jane for stepping in and posting on my behalf last weekend.