schneefink

This is basically The Three Musketeers genderswap space AU and I love it, it's so much fun. All of the lovely friendship and loyalty tropes with bonus awesome women and queerness and spaceships.

I'm glad I didn't remember all of the plot details from when I read the original novel by Dumas many years ago, so I was still surprised by some things instead of knowing everything that was coming because as far as I can tell it follows the plot pretty closely. The pacing is slow early on but around chapter 14 or so I got very invested. I like everyone and ship everything. Fortunately the book feels the same. (And one of my favorite things was that while adultery is legally problematic, everyone has a lot of sex and there is zero slut-shaming.) I was a bit surprised that Athos was still male, I'd kind of looked forward to an all-female Musketeers, but I did end up liking him a lot.

And there were aliens! Of course there had to be aliens. A bit weird that the Sun-kissed apparently only re-started the war to get "Winter" when they sent him and the others as preparation for a war years ago, and that they did not communicate this immediately – it could be an excuse they used when the war didn't go as they hoped.

Stories I want: fix-it! Stories where Conrad Su survives and stories where Buck survives and gets Winter out of her head (this could be combined and would be quite easy to arrange); or stories where Olivier finds out later and/or can't kill Auden (okay arguably that does not really fix things but could be fun.) I also want Ro/Dana future fic with lots of rivalry, and I kind of want Buck/Winter noncon because the set-up is just so good, sorry Buck.
And Conrad Su&Prince Alek and Conrad&Alek&Chev pre-canon, and Alek (and Chevreuse) finding out not only Buck but Conrad is dead… that last one especially, especially after Alek and Conrad's last meeting, after Alek rescued him from where he was imprisoned because of his connection with Alek and Conrad thinks about his relationship with Alek and how they're friends but not exactly equals and he always worries about Alek, and Alek seems ready to make sacrifices for his duty and also tells Conrad to survive because he needs him, and then they never see each other again :( I read the prequel novella "Seven Days of Joyeux" and enjoyed that too and now I pity Prince Alek even more than before. …this is a story with so many awesome women and I want to write a gen story about two guys, what's up with that.

I read the ebook, but the novel in its original serialized form is free to read online :) (The novella too but you have to use the Wayback Machine.)