Oh wow. I avoided reading the first one, I can't remember why, but now it feels like two for the price of one and that's awesome.
I think my favourite part is Rose's failures. I mean, you have the whole 'helping people and not intefering with their deaths etc etc.' thing that was dealt with in the first story, but here she didn't want these people to die, it wasn't their time, she did take an active role. And yet it didn't work. I mean, some of them, sure, but in any other story the only person to die after Rose arrived would have been Dinah, because there was set up for that. In any other story, sure, the two who died before she arrived would be dead, because that lets you know that this is SRS BZNS, but then awesome hero Rose would have saved the day. But here, instead? She wakes up and three more people are gone. And there's nothing she could have done about it.
That. Is. So. Goddamn. Cool.
Even better? She has sympathy, but none of that beating herself up, if-only-I'd-done-such-and-such angst and internalisation that seems particularly characteristic of any detective/action movie protag who's described as 'driven'.
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Date: 2010-02-16 08:47 am (UTC)I think my favourite part is Rose's failures. I mean, you have the whole 'helping people and not intefering with their deaths etc etc.' thing that was dealt with in the first story, but here she didn't want these people to die, it wasn't their time, she did take an active role. And yet it didn't work. I mean, some of them, sure, but in any other story the only person to die after Rose arrived would have been Dinah, because there was set up for that. In any other story, sure, the two who died before she arrived would be dead, because that lets you know that this is SRS BZNS, but then awesome hero Rose would have saved the day. But here, instead? She wakes up and three more people are gone. And there's nothing she could have done about it.
That. Is. So. Goddamn. Cool.
Even better? She has sympathy, but none of that beating herself up, if-only-I'd-done-such-and-such angst and internalisation that seems particularly characteristic of any detective/action movie protag who's described as 'driven'.
In short: Two thumbs up. This is funtastic.