REC: The Man Who Would Be Nyder

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Story: The Man Who Would Be Nyder
Author: mary_pseud
Rating: Adult
Author's summary: The story of Security Commander Nyder's youth, training, suffering and achievements. A boy born on Skaro during the Thousand Years War grows up to be Davros' feared second in command.
Characters/Pairings: Nyder, Davros, lots of Kaled OCs
Warnings: graphic violence, rape, character death

Recced because: This is a difficult fic. I won't lie to you. Reading it made my stomach hurt and more than once I thought of turning back, but I stayed with it because it's very good, although it's utterly heartbreaking. Mary_pseud tells the story of Nyder, Davros' lieutenant. It's coming of age story and a brutal one. But then, Skaro is a brutal place and Mary_pseud fleshes her setting out in admirable detail. It's a place that you really can believe has been at war longer than anyone remembers.

The Man Who Would Be Nyder is part of Mary_pseud's Damnatio Memoriae alternate universe, but it functions quite well as a standalone story. All of the stories in Damnatio Memoriae are very well done and I'd recommend the series as a whole, although you'd want to have a good deal of free time in which to read it, as it's quite long. (The Man Who Would Be Nyder is itself about twenty-five thousand words long.)

If you have trouble reading about painful subjects, please turn away now. If, however, you enjoy a good tragedy from time to time, this story is definitely the one for you.

Comments

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Eeeep. Yes, I confused hundreds and thousands there. I should have wrote the number out! Forgive me, do.

Also, thanks for the Kaled correction! (Yeah, I should have known better. No H in Dalek after all.)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

No worries, heh.