Wait, what?

*boggles at that second paragraph*

Chalchi?

AHAHAHA! (Please tell me you were kidding about that!)

Man... I've got a bajillion of the Star Wars tie in novels (and some of those definitely read as crack!bad fic... "The Courtship of Princess Leia", I'm looking at you here!)

But that one sounds like it would be entertaining in the *throws book against the wall, hard* kind of way. But I just know it would have the potential to hit my Sam/Jack smooshy kink and I'd be all over it like a romance novel that had pirates (and a Duke)

Heee! Although I'm sure that's a legit-esque Aztec name it sure looks like the author just bashed away at the keyboard there. :D

In fact that's a great idea for coming up with obscure alien names:

ofdshosdfer
powqpo4
alepoelpo
djksjtrpwoert

add a few random apostrophes and presto! Instant culture :D

Aztec gold! (There better be some kind of curse associated with that!)

Powk'poffa

hehe... must be a sort of cousin to Apophis.

I'll admit I was like 12 when I read it for the first time and I squeed over all the Han/Leia like the sad sad fangirl I was (still am, actually)

But re-reading it is painful to say the least! Han is such a neanderthal bone head, and the amazon women!! GAH!

You've found *some* good Han/Leia stuff, haven't you? I mean, it used to be a huge section of SW fandom...

*rubs hands in glee*

I have some recs for you. Your milage may vary, but I do know a couple of authors you should check out--most of them on the angsty side of things. But you're right--Han/Leia (at least the good stuff) really started out before FFN became the major archive online, and even then a lot of it was probably done offline. I've thought about that a lot.

On FFN, you might want to check out Limelight. "The Not Quite Love Letters" is half angsty hell and half completely ridiculous humor. (She has an odd pairing of Janson/Mothma that...should totally not even work but somehow kinda does in a weird way.) It's NOT finished, which is a major bummer, in my opinion.

Knightedrogue, also on FFN, is a good friend whose NRI series is an AU where Han and Leia are spies. It's not as funny as it sounds (I've written the fluffier side of this universe), but KR works really hard at imagery and symbolism. (Some of KR's older fics make her cringe, and you can quite clearly see her progression as a writer.)

Ivylore (her name on FFN) wrote Renewal, which is the post-RotJ staple of angsty Han/Leia romance fic. I HIGHLY recommend it, and anything else she's written--though her latest fic is er...dark. Really dark. And twisted. (but so good!)

I second Trout's Ivylore rec. Her Han and Leia (and Luke) are complex grown-ups. Renewal is my favorite as well, but they're all good.

In fact it might be time for a reread ...

I despair at the fact that we don't have a bookstore near where I work, 'cause you can be sure I'd be picking that up at lunch. I was just thinking that I needed a break from the somewhat dense and heavy books I've been slogging through lately. This sounds ideal. : )

That's okay. All those strange names will just get muddled and my mind will just gloss over them anytime they appear. Hmm, that's probably why I wasn't so great at learning foreign languages.

Heh! I forgot about the hot springs part!

Yeah, I think the names made it harder for me to keep track.

My boggle? Daniel and the Marines (or whoever the SG Team that accompanied them was) dressing in feathered costumes - which they then continued wearing for much of the rest of the book! I wondered if Daniel was wearing a loincloth too, which *should* have been a cool visual? But really wasn't - it sounded really silly.

Oh, and the little dog.

The whole book sort of felt a bit... strange.

I dunno if I agree with the "well-written" part, just the "badfic" part. ;-)

Okay... I'm being mean. It's just that this novel is, IMO, one of the two worst to come out of the Fandy SG-1 series of novels. (There are several that I *love*; and the majority of them, I enjoyed, and don't regret having spent the money on them, even when I was paying to get 'em from the UK.) You're correct that it's well-written, in comparison with what we *know* is out there in unedited, unbetaed fanfic-land.

It wasn't the S/J itself that bugged me. (Some of the other novels have a slight S/J gloss, though it's a lot more subtle, as befits novels trying to be "gen"/canon.) It was the anviliciousness of the S/J-cliches, plus, the dumb!Jack. I cannot forgive dumb!Jack that feels *genuinely* dumb to me.

(If I'm not mistaken... that was the first of the novels in which it *sounded* like the writer was *not* an SG-1 fan before she wrote it. It sounded like another of the novel-writers -- who *is* an SG-1 fan, and who was primarily known in fandom for S/J -- enticed her into it, and she was a published writer of some sort elsewhere. I have no doubt that she got at least SOME of the series to watch it before doing the novel. :P But I deeply suspect that her intro to SG-1 was more along the lines of reading a lot of straight-up S/J fic that her friend gave to her.)

To be honest, it's been so long since I read that book (when it came out; never wanted to reread it) that I'm ill-equipped to get into a discussion of specific things that pinged me in it and made me dislike it (or dislike, say, the portrayal of Jack).

Even though J/D is my OTP now -- I'm speaking as someone who, when she got into the fandom, read gen, S/J, and J/D equally. (Indeed, read the first two before reading J/D.) I have my fav S/J writers, some of whom have become friends over the years. My position is just... that particular book took the ship farther than I was comfortable with, for a series of books of which my impression has been that 'ships more or less should be left at the door. (Please to not be trying to go farther than canon; and I felt that book was pushing it.) I was more comfortable with the level of S/J in Sally Malcolm's duology, which I liked. (But I can do without any other writers using the "Jack puts everyone else in danger" trop -- even if that is somewhat of a welcome variation on blaming it on Daniel. Ehn. That's a whole different discussion, though.)

And yeah, IIRC (always a question!), the writer of "City" thanked Sally for pulling her in, or something. (In fanfic, Sally is a S/J writer whose stories I've liked, although she's not my very-favorite.)

I liked "Sacrifice Moon" a lot, too; it's high on my list. :)

I kind of liked "Trial by Fire", but it has the World's Most Irritating OFC. That can be make or break. It makes the book hard for me to reread. (But I'll say this: she reminded me of some OFCs from the show itself. She's a classic Gateverse comic-relief OC, IMO. So my problem is: some of those, I can stand, some I can't, and some I'm just ehn on.)

"Relativity" is the other book that, with "City", I consider the worst to have been put out so far. (Or... okay, let's be fair, here. Those two are the ones that I *disliked*. "Worst" is a value judgement, and I'm not sure it can be made to stick in either case.) I'm not sure it's a coincidence that I got the sense that the guy who wrote that book wasn't necessarily a big SG-1 fan beforehand. It's hard to tell, but it's clear from the blurb that he's not a fanfic writer who submitted a proposal and was then given a contract. He's a tie-in novel writer who's written for other media properties. Now, heck, he may genuinely be an SG-1 fan *too*, but... different path.

"Siren Song" -- my most-favorite so far. That pair of writers has another book (unrelated to this one, I believe; "Hydra") coming out "soon". (Fandy's publication schedule sometimes gives me fits; they don't update reliably. They also don't respond when you complain about it. :P)

I also rather enjoyed "Roswell". I thought it was fun and twisty. (It was co-written by the "City" writer. All I can say is, it felt like she calmed-down a bit, maybe got to know the chars better, and maybe was positively influenced by her co-writer?)

I liked "Survival of the Fittest" a lot. I recall thinking "Alliances" was okay, but to be honest, it doesn't stick in my head very much. (Even reading the synopsis of it doesn't make it come back to me! That can't be a good sign...) I feel like my verdict on that one must have been, "it was okay, but not a must-reread".

And I've just been reading "Barque of Heaven"; I'm not finished it yet, but I quite like it thus far. It gets reasonably high marks from me.

I'm cautiously looking forward to "Do No Harm", even though it's by the writer of the forgettable "Alliances". I keep hoping, because I loved her fic back in the day.

Generally speaking, I've found that the fanfic reputations of the folks doing the novels have held up. The weird comedic OFC in the first novel surprised me, because that writer had never been known in her fanfic to do much with OCs, or indeed comic-relief. And already knowing the writer of "Alliances", I was therefore surprised to find my reaction to it being "ehn". The rest, I've tended to like/love more or less in proportion to my like/love for their fanfic. And... yes, the books I gave the lowest marks to were first-time efforts from non-fans (as far as I can tell), so you can tell what sort of expectations I have for the novel series in general.

Oh, man. This novel sounds adorably terrible.

*reads through the rest of the comments and snickers*

God. I HAVE to buy this book.

I also have a little bit of introduction to Aztec-y and Central/South American myths, so I read some of those names and go, "Oh! I know that one!"

It's quite exciting.

I cannot make heads or tails of the mythological structure, if it makes you feel better. We didn't have a whole lot of time in my classes to concentrate on it, so I just know the names and maybe whether or not they demanded human sacrifice. ;-)

That sounds like crack of the delicious kind. :)

And I've been meaning to give the tie in novels a try. I'll have to hit up the library and the second hand book shops and see what I can find.

I've never been tempted by the SG1 novels -- too many scars from ST:TNG novels -- but this one I have to try. OMG.