Starting with
Thin As Paper, this story was recommended to me, and I had to go back to read chapter one to catch up. I'll start with my (non)criticisms first to get that out of the way. Nothing wrong with the story itself, but I read this coming off the heals of The Internship, and having two office stories like this, that share a lot of similar elements, seems to result in the two stories getting jumbled in my head. Not a fault of the story itself, of course. It was another enjoyable entry, with some really fun scenes. Well written, and I'll be keen to see where the story goes going forward. Hopefully I'll be able to keep the two straight next week!
I had missed reading
Black Swan when it originally came out, for whatever reason. I'm not a particularly fast reader, so even to myself I'd say it's rather surprising that I read what ended up being almost 50k words for one story in a week. But it was another story that I read that was recommended to me. I suppose since I didn't review any of it before, my following review will cover the entire story, instead of just the alternate ending that was posted.
I loved the first six chapters. It was a wonderful tale of a group fighting against an organization, only to be tripped up time after time. The cast was pretty big, but the characters were engaging, and it wasn't hard to begin rooting for them almost right away. The threat of people turning on the group added some nice suspense, and hell, betrayal is one of my favorite things in a story. So really this was all kind of right up my alley.
Which... left me a bit surprised with the way the story turned in the following chapters. Honestly it kind of felt like the story ended with chapter 6, to me. There were some minor world building revelations, but the bulk of it felt a bit copy-paste with the next three chapters. Chapter 10, and the subsequent alternate chapter, did feel a touch different, and I'll go over those in spoilers, as the alternate is new. Just some other quick thoughts, first.
Others brought up the instant induction method, and I'd say I'd have to agree, I wasn't bothered by it. What the characters did afterward was the meat of it anyways, so I don't feel like anything was lost by the methods of the drug itself. One thing that did kind of take me out of the story, though, was how the enslaved people were automatically 'programmed' to be obedient to one person. I think personally I would have preferred perhaps some sort of imprinting used once the person woke up (I think it would have opened to wonderful possibilities) to enslave them to Moreau.
As for the ending:
Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.
All in all, like I said, I enjoyed the first half of the story a lot more. Those that love serial recruitment, near-hive-mind scenes of enslavement, would probably love the later, if not all, chapters. The quality is great regardless, and I'm glad to have read through it. Despite the few issues I had, it was still great fun, and I'd recommend it myself.