I spent a lot of time while reading this book attempting to figure out exactly what it is. It's definitely fanfic, in that the story is based on another novel from the late 19th century (The Prisoner of Zenda) only told from a different perspective. But it's also a bit of a backstage comedy, because while the reader's focus is always on the characters and events that the narrator cares about, the "main" story is on the other side of the wall, so to speak. It's also a fanfic that doesn't expect or even require the reader to know the original story at all, the details of which are more or less hand-waved away. There's a bit of the novel The Princess Bride to it, in that the version of the story we're getting is told as being the "good parts" or at the very less the true account of what actually happened, with all the built-in commentary that how a story goes depends almost entirely on who's doing the telling.
So, the story here is that there are these henchmen, and from the outside they're all evil, but we learn through following the tale of Jasper Detchard that most of the henchmen are in fact evil but that he and Rupert von Hentzau in particular are not. They both work for Michael, a Duke and the brother of the future king of Ruritania, and Michael is in fact quite evil. However, both Jasper and Hentzau have other plans in play: Detchard is there at the request of Antoinette de Mauban, Michael's mistress and Detchard's longtime friend. Michael wants the throne, Antoinette wants to escape Michael and find her daughter, Detchard wants to help her do that and escape with his own life, and Hentzau's motives are unclear at the start of the story but are revealed over time. What is never unclear is his interest in Detchard sexually, and the developing relationship between the two of them is entertaining if not particularly passionate.
The book does a pretty compelling job of explaining the actual motives for lots of things that happen in the original story which change how that story is perceived, even for those readers who don't actually know the original story. The one odd thing though is that I as a reader never actually cared what the result of the overall narrative would be, because Jasper clearly survives in this telling since he's the one writing it. It's another way in which it's obviously fanfic, except that it's also a story that doesn't expect anyone to know the original story, so as a result the actual plot to the story is more or less irrelevant. It's cleverly done, and I am somewhat curious about how the original novel told the story, but it never made me fully invested in the tale. I'm always here for gay hi jinx and adventures and things not being what they seem and all that, but I could never quite lose the feeling of being behind the scenes and not in the central narrative, which of course we're not, but it should feel like the main narrative to the characters themselves, at least. It felt like a story that was weighed down a bit too much by its own narrative framing, in the end. I was happy enough while reading it, but it never flowed on its own as a story, for me.
Grade: B
So, the story here is that there are these henchmen, and from the outside they're all evil, but we learn through following the tale of Jasper Detchard that most of the henchmen are in fact evil but that he and Rupert von Hentzau in particular are not. They both work for Michael, a Duke and the brother of the future king of Ruritania, and Michael is in fact quite evil. However, both Jasper and Hentzau have other plans in play: Detchard is there at the request of Antoinette de Mauban, Michael's mistress and Detchard's longtime friend. Michael wants the throne, Antoinette wants to escape Michael and find her daughter, Detchard wants to help her do that and escape with his own life, and Hentzau's motives are unclear at the start of the story but are revealed over time. What is never unclear is his interest in Detchard sexually, and the developing relationship between the two of them is entertaining if not particularly passionate.
The book does a pretty compelling job of explaining the actual motives for lots of things that happen in the original story which change how that story is perceived, even for those readers who don't actually know the original story. The one odd thing though is that I as a reader never actually cared what the result of the overall narrative would be, because Jasper clearly survives in this telling since he's the one writing it. It's another way in which it's obviously fanfic, except that it's also a story that doesn't expect anyone to know the original story, so as a result the actual plot to the story is more or less irrelevant. It's cleverly done, and I am somewhat curious about how the original novel told the story, but it never made me fully invested in the tale. I'm always here for gay hi jinx and adventures and things not being what they seem and all that, but I could never quite lose the feeling of being behind the scenes and not in the central narrative, which of course we're not, but it should feel like the main narrative to the characters themselves, at least. It felt like a story that was weighed down a bit too much by its own narrative framing, in the end. I was happy enough while reading it, but it never flowed on its own as a story, for me.
Grade: B
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