Title: The Unending Wake
Author: harellanart (kabeone)
Rating: Not Rated, I think T
Genre: Romance, AU, Time Travel
Status: Completed
Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Pairings: Female Lavellan/Solas
Summary: Solas has won and his long time enemy, the cold and ruthless Inquisitor Vir Lavellan, has been defeated. However, as he begins to rebuild the world for his people, he discovers that the world he destroyed was not exactly what he had thought.
Link: A3O

There is no shortage of Lavellan/Solas fanfics, but this one is certainly my favorite. Well written and engaging. It's a romance but has a plot, and it is certainly not one of those "characters get together" type of plots.

Author got characterization pretty much spot on. In Dragon Age inquisitor is basically an OC, so a usual weak point of many fanfics. This one is strong and clever and has minimal amount of "why me?" angst. Solas characterization is good too, neither a monster nor completely forgiven for trying to destroy the world. 5/5.

 

Solas is one of my favourite characters in the franchise, but he's never done well, so I'm eager to take a look at this. He has an incredibly difficult legacy to live up to, and all those fluff romance authors have no desire to explore that side of his character beyond its sex appeal, it seems.

Will check back in with a review after reading. BUT @Dasha you didn't say: how would YOU rate this fic? Thread rate as well, please. Little stars. Top right hand corner. Click. Mouse. Etc.

Edit: This was an exercise in frustration. Some really interesting things happened: travel between alternate worlds in a nice meta-nod towards gameplay, the razing of Minrathous, elder gods being purified and freed from their prisons, an Inquisitor feigning ruthlessness to become a monster for Solas to fight so that Solas can become a hero rather than a monster.

And yet all this is summarised in the background, because the focus is just on Solas moping around through time and space after the Inquisitor. It's half a step above him scrolling through her social media history, just against a more interesting backdrop.

This could have been great had the author actually bothered to write the story which happened off-screen. Instead we get hollow fluff and mediocre pencil sketches which very likely took up five times as much of the author's time as the story content. Apparently this was originally posted on Tumblr. I can believe that.

3/5

 

This encompasses some of the best and worst things about Dragon Age as a fandom and the fan fiction that has sprung from it.

It's well written, has been thought out, contains interesting characters with human motivations and failings. Thedas is a world of magic, of elves, dwarves, kossith, and humans, of Fereldan, Orlais, the Free Marches, Tevinter, and Rivain. It's a world with huge potential, but it's made by the characters that fill it and give it life.

And yet we have a fairly depressing angst drabble exploring just two of those characters (one basically an OC, as the player character) with barely any true magic or exploration of the surrounding lore. Some of it's there, but it's relegated to a secondary concern behind old Fen'Harel.

Don't get me wrong, the author clearly has interest in the world of Dragon Age, and the series is after all made by the characters that fill it, but we saw almost nothing of them. I'd have preferred it if, perhaps, the little scenes he goes back to see were instead Lavellan's interactions with her advisers and party members through the different lifetimes, exploring how her choices have changed her over her thousand lifetimes. Then you get character progression in a similar manner to before, but with more characters coming and going as foils to maintain a reader's interest. Because the only reason I was able to finish this is because I love the world and the lore.

3/5 for being technically competent and engaging with the questions surrounding the lore and the ending of Trespasser.