rec: Salt by Cathica

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

One to make up for Wednesday, which I most shamefully missed.

Story: Salt
Author: Cathica
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 1,284
Author's Summary: Tears always leave an aftertaste.
Characters/Pairings: Rose Tyler
Warnings: none

Recced because: Salt has a beautiful, cutting quality to it. It's a miniature mystery, though one that's entirely about Rose's inner world, and worth reading for the prose alone: It achieves a timbre that's at once matter-of-fact-and opulent, hyperreal and slightly absurd. It has edges where you don't expect them.

Salt captures a room in the TARDIS from what's at once an inside and an outside perspective flawlessly. Does a fine job with the inside of Rose's head, too.

( Excerpt )

Rec: Torus

[kseda.livejournal.com]

Story: Torus
Author: dblauvelt
Rating: none given, I vote Teen
Word Count: 13,154
Author's Summary: The crew encounter an ancient toroidal planetoid. A Jim M/Andy Lane style piece set between Mawdryn and Terminus.
Characters/Pairings: Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough
Warnings: none

Recced because: This story is unique on several fronts, none the least of which being its placement in canon. There are precious few fics which take place in the gap between "Mawdryn Undead" and "Terminus," and it is always interesting to see a take on how this TARDIS team would have worked, given more time. The result is much more fantastic and bizarre than the summary gives it credit for, with the crew taking very divergent paths. Each of them is given their own set of motivations, their own journey, but they all want the same thing: home, whatever that means for them. Brilliant world building, poetically trippy prose, and Nyssa goes parasailing in the first chapter. Just a lovely little gem.