Sentinel-Guide Research Project

Fanfiction
Title:	Sentinel-Guide Research Project
Author(s):	Sorka
Date(s):
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Sentinel
Relationship(s):
External Links:	on AO3
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Sentinel-Guide Research Project is a Jim/Blair story by Sorka.

Reactions and Reviews

Another one in the genre of "what if sentinels were known", and the author says it was written in reaction to Susan's GDP series, but IMO it works better than that one. What it would have needed is a more thorough proof-reading for typos etc. (at least the version I read at the archive) but I can overlook such problems for a captivating story, and this one certainly held my interest.

Guides are in control in this one, while sentinels are considered extremely dangerous and their lives are very restricted. When Jim emerges as a sentinel late in life, he's dragged off to a center where they handle sentinels, drugged and very nearly killed. Blair is a professor at the center and he rescues Jim, in the process coming to realize that all of his ideal theories about sentinel treatment and guide training bear little resemblance to how things are actually done.

Set in a universe where sentinels and guides are known, Blair is an unbonded guide, a professor in the sentinel-guide unit at Rainier. One day, Blair's attention is drawn to a sentinel - Jim - being brought in in restraints.

I like stories that go in the opposite direction to fan - well, 'norm'. There are quite a lot of stories where Society considers sentinels more valuable, so guides have pretty well lost their autonomy, have to register and become little more than servants, with no other purpose than to ground their sentinel. In this story, the attempt to prevent that has left the sentinel liable to defer all the time to his guide's wishes, so that people are inclined to think that the sentinel has few, if any, rights; that they function more like trained pets than people with minds of their own.

I also like stories that show a very strong Blair. This story has that in spades. It's well written, well developed and incorporates an episode (which is always a bonus).