Due to the holidays, the end of NaNoWriMo, an upcoming vacation, and all the other assorted nuttiness involved in my life, updates are going to be intermittent over the next few weeks.  Everything should settle back down in mid-December, so look for lots more recs coming then.

Title: Moonhunt
Fandom: The Sentinel
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Categories: bonding!AU, angst
Length: long
Warnings: n/a

Author on LJ: dolimir_k
Author Website: n/a


Review:
I tend to waffle when it comes to bonding AUs, primarily because they often come very close to slavery and/or non-con, both of which are big squicks for me unless they're handled very delicately. Fortunately Dolimir is a great writer, and she approaches her premise with intelligence and care. As a result, what could have been a thinly veiled slave AU instead becomes an interesting metaphor for relationships in general.

The titular Moonhunt essentially turns Cascade into a giant singles bar for sentinels and guides. During the hunt, anyone who wants to become a guide walks the streets with the hopes of running into an interested sentinel. Blair isn't interested in being a guide after a nightmarish bonding (read: abusive relationship) he shared with Alex Barnes when he was a teenager, but he inadvertently finds himself outside when the hunt starts and it turns out that not only is he a guide, but he's the Helen of Troy of guides. He damn near starts a riot before getting away, and it doesn't take long for Jim, the alpha sentinel of Cascade (read: big cheese), to track Blair down.

There's a lot of things I like about this story, but I think my favorite aspect is the way that the Sentinel/Guide relationship parallels real-life relationships (albeit highly accelerated) with similar issues about compromise and sharing power. Most importantly, it's clear that authority resides neither with sentinels nor with guides, but is shared, just like in real life. Frankly, if more bonding!fic took this approach, I'd be much more enthused by genre as a whole. In fact, my only problem with this fic is that (say it with me) it's too short. If only she wrote a sequel...

Moonhunt