guanin

Fandom 50 #22

Day by Day by surprisepink
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Ship: Stede Bonnet/Izzy Hands
Medium: Fic
Length: 1361 words
Rating: Teen
My Bookmark Tags: slice of life, romance, humour, happy ending, established relationship, izzy lives, future, flirtation, compatibility, service
Summary: A typical raid for Captain Bonnet and his new first mate.

Excerpt:

“I’m getting the hang of this, if I do say so myself,” says Stede, cheerily.

“And you do.”

“What’s that, Izzy?’

“Say so yourself.” The man looks entirely unimpressed, but it does take a lot to impress Izzy. Stede has accepted it by this point, and knows not to take it personally. Knows, too, that if Izzy actually wasn’t at least a little happy with him, he could leave the ship just about anywhere and find another pirate crew to join. And yet, port after port, he doesn’t.

And all Stede had ever wanted was for people to stay.

This is everything I love about the idea of Stede and Izzy together on the Revenge, with Stede captaining and Izzy serving as his first mate. The way they rile each other up is perfect, tempered to just the right heat by a better understanding of each other. Izzy's ways of trying to serve Stede while keeping his ego in check are moving, and so is Stede's growing sense of what he's doing and what it means.

The story's funny, with a comedic moment early on that made me laugh out loud, and the sexual chemistry between Stede and Izzy absolutely crackles. This one really made my day.

✓ kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Non-Human POV

Mirror Lake is the third book in the Shady Hollow series by Juneau Black. The series' titular town is occupied by a cast of anthropomorphic woodland animals who keep getting embroiled in crimes. In this one, a picturesque autumn is disrupted when a rat from neighbouring Mirror Lake suddenly declares that her husband has gone missing and has been replaced by an imposter.

...okay, is it weird that I wanted the story about a fox named Vera Vixen solving playing sleuth to be more twee?

I think when I heard "cozy" and "anthropomorphic animals" and saw the book cover, my mind went to things like The Wind in the Willows and Frog and Toad Are Friends, and the addition of a mystery made me think of the Dimension 20 campaign Mice & Murder. Which was to say, I went into this expecting something a lot more stylized, with the animal conceit either adding a lot of whimsy or providing the counterweight to a darker or more satirical story.

Then again, maybe I would have also found The Wind in the Willows disappointingly contemporary if I'd read it in 1908? I definitely think it's true that imaginary Edwardian!me would bounce off the country squire stuff as hard as present!me bounces off the idealized generic upstate New York type village vibe going on here. (And the thing where the only character with a non-WASP name is a panda named Sun Li, which felt like it should have been in the early 20th century book and not the 2020 one.)

All in all, the mystery ended up being what kept me reading this one, since it had an additional twist beyond just a murder whodunnit. It's a short book, but it still dragged a little for me—I think because of the presence of a lot of conversations and very basic/straightforward descriptions that are probably intended to be the thick icing on a cupcake if you're someone who's going to fall in love with the setting. I also didn't really click with the protagonist, but I recognize that I'm coming into this series on the third book and there might have been developments in the first two instalments that would have given me a better sense of her.

But if you are someone this setting appeals to, or if you devour a lot of cozy mysteries and are always up for a new gimmick, or you're someone for whom anthros are an automatic bonus, this might be your thing.

(Also, now I really want fic where Frog and Toad have to solve a mystery. Or where Mole is framed for murder and Rat has to prove his innocence.)

( An Excerpt )