Sam Starbuck

I enjoy the author's other work, so I was excited to read his first book. I was surprised to find it slow and boring.

A few years back, Christopher Dusk moved from Chicago to a little town named Low Ferry. He sets himself up with a bookshop and settles down to a quiet life. Then a shy young man named Lucas turns up, asking for a special book about masks--and nothing happens. Nothing ever, ever happens. The entire book is basically Christopher walking into the diner, everyone greets him, walking back to the bookshop, where all the kids think he's so worldly, walking over to Lucas's, where sometimes he'll talk to him for a few minutes and sometimes he won't. There's no romance, there's no excitement, there's no character growth. Just a boring young man being helpful and wise and right for an entire novel.… (mere)

Roman Senator Marcus Brutus is a patriot, devoted to the Republic. Many of his days are spent actively working for the Republic, protecting the system he believes in. His main respite is the occasional trip to his country villa in the company of his dearest friend, and lover, Cassius. But his tireless work may not be enough, not when the consul Julius Caesar is taking more and more power to himself. When Cassius first proposes a drastic solution, Brutus rejects the idea, but as the months go by, it becomes ever more obvious that given enough time, Caesar will overthrow the Republic and make himself emperor.

I bought this because I love Sam's fanfic, and expected him to do a good job of original fiction drawing on historical fact. I wasn't disappointed. This is one of those novels where I think it can be enjoyed both by readers who know nothing about the historical characters, and by readers familiar with the historical story, or with Shakespeare's play. There's a solid story here that fleshes out the basic facts and brings Brutus to life as a real person, a decent, honorable man faced with a choice between evils. His decision is not a simple one, and is made over the course of months, as more and more evidence accumulates of what Rome's future could be if Caesar is not reined in.

And it's not just Brutus who's brought to life here. There's a good exploration of Cassius and his motives. In addition, there's a brief but lovely portrait of Brutus's wife Porcia, and a marriage that is a loving partnership and friendship, not just a useful front for a gay man. Along with the historical characters, there's original character Tiresius, a teenage runaway taken on by Brutus as a horseboy. Tiresius has secrets to hide, but as Brutus discovers more about the boy's troubled relationship with his father, it provides him with insight into his own troubled relationship with Caesar, a man who may or may not be his biological father. The interactions between the characters create a rich portrait of a situation where there is no easy right and wrong.

One of the problems with writing historical fiction is that historical people could have very different moral values and beliefs, often ones that don't sit well with a modern reader. In trying to make a lead character synpathetic, it's easy to slip into the trap of turning him or her into a twenty-first century person in fancy dress. This book does a superb job of presenting the characters in their proper context, with believable explanations for their attitudes and beliefs about various issues.

It's not a romance, because it follows Marcus Brutus and his relationships with Cassius and others in the months leading up to the assassination of Julius Caesar, and anyone who's familiar with either the history or Shakespeare's play will know that Things Do Not End Well for the conspirators. But well researched as far as I can tell, beautifully written, and I'd recommend it to someone looking for historical fiction with an LGBT theme.… (mere)

[2010-04-12] This is a slightly unusual entry in the book log — it’s fanfic. But it’s novel-length, and it’s very good, and as far as I’m concerned it belongs in the book log.

A while back Sam Storyteller posted a Whoniverse short story about Jack Harkness, I Were The Heavens, Rating: PG for language, Summary: A sixteen-year-old boy from Boeshane is going to win the war. The Time Agency has a vested interest in children like him — and so does the Admiral of the Fleet.

Now he’s posted a novel-length story about what happened next. And it’s set both just after that short story — and just before Children of Earth. But this is no simple fix-it fic. This is a carefully crafted consideration of time paradoxes, and the potential for damaging your own past/future. It’s difficult to discuss it in much detail without heading into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that Jack Harkness’s convoluted timeline gives a distant future Jack a pressing reason to pull Ianto Jones into the 51st century — and it’s nothing to do with saving Ianto from an untimely death in the 21st century. Jack not only barely remembers Ianto, but to preserve the timeline will have to put Ianto back where he got him from once the job is done…

You’ll need to have at least some familiarity with the Torchwood universe to follow this story, but it’s a fine example of how good fanfic can be in the right hands.

Sam’s description:
Rating: R (more sex than you can shake a dick — a stick! I mean a stick! More sex than you can shake a stick at.)
Summary: Lo Boeshane has a promising career ahead of him as he enters his first year of Fleet Officer Training, but the war is still with him and life at Quantico Station can be difficult. Meanwhile, Ianto Jones is just trying to figure out why the Doctor kidnapped him to the fifty-first century and why Jack abandoned him at a school for the Fleet’s military elite. He suspects it may have something to do with Lo, but his attempts to help the troubled young veteran may damage his own timestream beyond repair.… (mere)

From the back of the book: He could tell your fortune by looking in your eyes. He could steal your soul if you let him draw you. They said that he was a ghost who'd just disappeared one day, straight out of his cell. They said he'd come back.

I don't really know how to review this book. I am a fan of Sam Starbuck as a fan fiction author first and a novelist second, and the story in this book started out as fanfic (which he discusses in the afterword). So, having read that fic, I already knew a lot of what was going to happen, and I also couldn't quite separate Sam's characters from the TV show characters used in the original story.

However, it was an excellent story as fanfic and it's an excellent story now that it's been adapted to original fiction.… (mere)