Book #3
Title: Per Ardua
Author: Jessie Blackwood
Pages: 212
Genre: Historical Romance, LGBTQ Fiction
Summary: Jack and Ianto… oh, sorry, Arthur “Jack” and Ifan… this is a Torchwood fanfic AU changed up a bit and published as a book. It is WWII and Jack flies for the RAF. Ifan is the family butler who works for Jack’s cousin, Gw-Bronwen. Jack’s plane gets shot down, he gets hurt, and Ian-Ifan takes care of him once he gets home from the hospital. Did I mention this is a romance?
Stars: ** (2)
Review: I gotta get this out of the way first… I love fanfics! I especially love my Jack/Ianto fics. I love Torchwood Jack/Ianto AUs too. So I was so excited to see that something that started as a fanfic was good enough to be published. And this is where my excitement ended. The names were changed of course but some of the changes were missed so Gwen’s i.e. Bronwen’s last name was Powell, yet in some instances the Williams (married to Rhys-Hugh) remained. On top of that there were blatant grammar errors (which are acceptable in fanfics published on LJ but not when you actually publish a book thinking people will pay money for it). Basically, the editing was horrid. The plot… I have read better plots in unpublished fanfics than this one. It was so cliché and straightforward. The characters were minimally developed and if I didn’t have a preconceived idea of Jack and Ianto’s personalities, the characters of Arthur “Jack” and Ifan would have been really shallow. In the end this would have been a pretty good fanfic but lacking so much when presented as a novel. It got two stars because in my mind it was still my lovely Jack and Ianto (Ifan) set during my favorite time period, WWII. However, I was disappointed that aside from Jack’s plane crash, there really wasn’t much of a war setting. The terminology about homosexuality was modern and not how it would have been talked about back then. Also, the emotional component was lacking. I was only able to connect with the characters because I kept imagining Jack and Ianto (who I have a strong emotional tie with through my own fanfics). It was an easy read, a couple of hours during a hurricane power outage.
