First off, it's movie week at real_world_recs. I'm kicking things off with "The Abyss", which is not only a kick-ass sci-fi adventure, but is also the movie that is responsible for my eternal crush on Ed Harris (yum).

Secondly, I've already recced this over at epic_rants, so figure I should share it with you as well. Prepare for a solid week of reading:)

Title: Resonance by GreenGecko
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: essentially gen (as the author states, the hints of romance are primarily there for color), but all the romantic relationships are het
Categories: angst, hurt/comfort, action/adventure, drama, AU (deviates from canon after book 5)
Length: Ridiculously Epic (~500,000 words)
Warnings: n/a

Author on LJ: darkirony
Website: http://www.darkirony.com/

Review:
Harry defeats Voldemort and is adopted by Snape. And that's just the very beginning of the story.

Wow, the list of things I like about this fic is long indeed. I'll do my best to break it down into coherent chunks.

First, the author mentions that this story is her attempt to make a Snape-adopts-Harry storyline realistic and she does a brilliant job with it. Their relationship is slow-building (did you see the word count?) and developed over time (the story timeline stretches nearly two years) and by the end of the fic I had a tough time remembering that this isn't really what happened in canon.

I'm also thrilled by the very premise of this story. In my experience, the vast majority Harry Potter stories that include Voldemort fall into two categories: either the story ends with the defeat of Voldemort, or Voldemort was defeated long before the story began. This fic kills off Voldemort in the first few chapters and spends the rest of the time detailing what happens next. How does Harry handle all of that fame? How much fame is there, really? What about all of the less pleasant fallout, like the remaining death eaters? And, most importantly, how does a teenager with an abusive past, an uncertain future, and a murder on his conscience ever manage to fully recover from, well, his life?

While answering the above questions, GreenGecko thankfully manages to avoid most of the major cliches: Harry is not rich, Ron is neither a bastard nor a mindlessly loyal friend, Draco is screwed up but not pure evil, and life after Hogwarts is just as confusing for Harry as it is for every single new graduate on earth. The lack of cliches are made even better by top-notch writing and great characterizations, especially of Harry, who grows so much as a character in this fic that by the end you can hardly believe they are the same person, and yet the growth is so natural and organic that you barely notice it happening as you read.

Speaking of characterizations, I should note that the Snape you see in this fic is not necessarily the Snape you usually see in canon or fanon. Less randomly nasty (nor quite as witty as he often is in fanon), this Snape is brisk, pragmatic, and utterly lacking in empathy. Frankly, this is the version of Snape that would happen in real life, all things being equal, and the end result is one of my favorite variations of Snape I've ever seen.

Also as part of the realism, GreenGecko has fleshed out her story (especially the post-Hogwarts sections) with a bevy of OCs. The ones that come later in the book are especially well developed and by the end of the fic I was very emotionally invested in several of them.

Finally, you have the pacing of the story, which is unusual in that it's remarkably laid back. Every moment of the story is enjoyable to read, but there were very few times when I felt like I just couldn't put the fic down until I finished it. Considering the length of the story, I actually consider this slower pacing to be a bonus -- as much as I enjoy fics that are too gripping to put down, it would take a solid three day weekend without sleep for me to finish this all in one sitting. Instead I had something to look forward to in my free time for nearly a week and for someone who reads as fast as I do, that's not something to take lightly.

Final verdict: a beautifully written, wonderfully characterized, vastly entertaining, and amazingly epic story with a mellow pace. Perfect for anyone who likes well-written epics and slow-building relationships (albeit not romantic ones).

Resonance

ETA: I finally got around to reading (well, okay, I'm about halfway through) the sequel to Resonance, called Revolution.  It's much more Harry-centric than Harry-and-Snape-centric and thus isn't going to get a rec from me.  However, lots of folks from this comm have read it and loved it, so you might want to give it a shot.