Fan Fiction Recommendations: Marissa and Briallen

[inverarity]

So if you're really pining away while you wait for me to finish AQATDR, and you like feisty heroines like Alexandra, I have a couple of recommendations for you.

The first is Marissa and the Wizards, by JCCollier. JC has only posted this on Mugglenet Fan Fiction, to my knowledge, so you might not have seen it before.

If you liked Alexandra Quick, or Hogwarts Houses Divided, I am sure you'll like Marissa and the Wizards. Marissa is a homeless girl living on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil, when she receives an invitation to attend Witness Stone school. So, it's another cast of OCs in an original setting -- Brazil in this case. In addition to all the adventures you'd expect as a Muggle-born homeless girl discovers magic and makes friends and enemies at her new school, there is a larger crisis threatening the entire wizarding world.

Marissa's story is sad, funny, imaginative, and touching. The author has created an original Brazilian wizarding world at least as detailed as my American one.

The only negative is that it's a WIP, and JCCollier writes very long chapters, very slowly. Yes, it's been over six months since the last update. I've talked to the author, so I'm sure the story hasn't been abandoned, but I'll admit, at this rate I'll probably be writing AQ4 before Marissa and the Wizards is finished. Still, if you all go over there and show JC some review love, maybe s/he'll be motivated to get that next chapter up. :)

The second recommendation is pcharmed86's Briallen Bevin and the Snatcher's Cave, and the sequel, Briallen Bevin and the Clocktower Guard. To be perfectly honest, I can't recommend Briallen Bevin's stories quite as strongly, for two reasons. The first is that although I love Briallen and find her to be quite an engaging heroine, pcharmed86's writing is a bit unpolished. Her American setting is, in my opinion, a little too derivative of Hogwarts, and her story isn't plotted as tightly as it could be. The second, and more serious reason, though, is that I'm pretty sure that it's been abandoned. I emailed the author many months ago, she promised an update was imminent, and then... nothing. It's been almost a year, so I'm not hopeful that book two will ever be finished. Still, I stumbled across this when I was looking for other American wizarding school fics, and it's one of the few that I actually liked, so you might enjoy it as well.

Comments

Stupid-Fabio time

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I take it back. If I read the opening note to the second chapter correctly, Dave O'Brien is the father and his daughter Katie, of whom he speaks in the past tense, is the one who did most of the writing. It seems you are right. And I feel like I felt when I discovered that Trine Michelsen was an exceptional human being only after she was dead. I hate it when people I admire die before I can properly thank them.

Re: Stupid-Fabio time

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That sounded rather self-centred. The life and passing of a truly good person or of a person of genius is something that is far beyond my own poor self. What I hate is losing the opportunity to add a little pebble to the mountain of thanks they are owed before it is too late. Admiration is one of life's greatest pleasure, and to be able to express it to someone's face is even better. I had the pleasure of doing so to two of the most important influences in my life - Jack Kirby and Georges Dumezil - before they passed away, and the memory of my brief communication with two such great men is one of the proudest things in my life.