Completion Alert! After Midnight by Sonny

[sukimcshu.livejournal.com]

Title: After Midnight
Author: theantisonny (yeah it's Sonny)
Length: 14 Chapters
Status: Complete
Rating: M 
Link AFF: http://original.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=600101920
Link FP: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2799732/1/After_Midnight

Summary: In a post-apocalyptic future, Gordon Frost can't get a break. He lives on the fringes of society, doing what usually illegal things he can do to get by. But taking life one day at a time takes on a whole new meaning when he meets a deadly stranger.

Sonny has just completed After Midnight and it’s perfect. I feel very passionately about reccing this one though I don’t think I can do it justice. If you haven’t been following it –and desperately awaiting updates like me- now is the time to head over to FP and devour it. I think it’s fair of me to say you can do that, devour it, despite its length, in one sitting. 

After Midnight is an In the Company of Shadows spin-off but I honestly started reading it without realising that and loved it all the same. All the world-building and dystopia from ICOS is in there, in some ways a little more “magnified” because you really get to see post-war Lexington and all its glamour and seediness and normality from a host of characters that are normal survivors.

Sonny writes really candid and intense and tight and each chapter is a slice of compartmentalised awesome –horror, humour, action, which somehow leads naturally from chapter to chapter. Things are real and gritty, never too dark, never to light. There ;s never any fillers or fanservice or dead-end dialogue, everything contributes to the plot in some way -characters you initially set-aside as filler-types slowly worm their way into your love and love-to-hate character appreciation.  

I don’t want to gush too much about the main characters because it’s fantastic how you can build your own perception of them, depending on how much of Adam you want to know from ICOS, or what sort of person you think Gordon is (he’s not a passive character that just draws your attention). But they’re perfectly played out as well, and their development never turns into something predictable or comfortable.

And I think it’s pretty uniquely hot too, and that’s important of course.

Overall I just really loved the emotional rollercoaster and drinking up all the brutally good prose, and I can honestly say that I’m going to miss every part of that world and Sonny’s characters.

The good thing is he’s starting up another project Mist –which is bloody awesome already even though it’s a completely different genre.

Go read : )
Original rec: http://the-slash-pile.livejournal.com/132948.html

Comments

[dumplingyum.livejournal.com]

I really like this story too--maybe even more than ICOS only bc ICOS feels a little drawn out. I love the gritty setting and Gordon is so refreshing for a main character (with all of his flaws). Didn't realize Sonny is writing Mist--will def check that out next!

(I'm surprised this story hasn't been recommended yet! Thanks!)

[potatoe1988.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was thinking someone should do a completion alert for this, but wasn't feeling in a mental state to do it justice with my praise. It deserves much praise. If you haven't read it, hop to it folks.

[potatoe1988.livejournal.com]

Also: +1 for mems.

[bloodyxunicorns.livejournal.com]

Add my vote too! Def. deserves to be in mems. Loved this.

[sukimcshu.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah my vote too. This deserves to be there.

[potatoe1988.livejournal.com]

Bam! Added.

[lisa-thecat.livejournal.com]

I'm also a big fan of the story - I am very happy it's completed!!!

[whotevar.livejournal.com]

That was fantastic, thanks for rec'ing :D The only flaw in the whole bit was probably Scott's background story and his reaction to Adam. It doesn't really make sense to me that a medical graduate and an seemingly caring person had such a sadistic bullying streak as a kid.

At any rate, awesome read. Loved that there was no lovey-doveyness to the romance.