The Awakening (Sentinel story)
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Awakening |
| Author(s): | Keira Marcos |
| Date(s): | 31 March 2009 |
| Length: | 69,152 words |
| Genre(s): | slash, m/m, AU, Sentinels and Guides are Known |
| Fandom(s): | Sentinel |
| Relationship(s): | Jim/Blair |
| External Links: | The Awakening (author's page) |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
The Awakening is a Sentinel story by Keira Marcos. It employs much fan casting. And won two 2009 Light My Fire Awards: Best Novel (Slash) and the Different Worlds Award for Alternate Universe (Slash). Fanart inspired by the story is included on this page on the author's site.
Summary:
Detective Jim Ellison doesn’t want a Guide. What he wants is peace and quiet and maybe for his ex-wife to disappear. Dr. Blair Sandburg, a successful profiler with the FBI, has nearly given up on finding his Sentinel. Then the night came where one’s pain drew the other across the country – neither will ever be the same.
Reactions and Reviews
2009
[anonymous]
As the genre goes, this is actually quite a bit better than most. In it's favor it doesn't have sentinels enslaving guides or vice versa, nor does it have all of society shunning them. It focuses on a case which takes up a lot of the story, but it also has a lot about the interaction of sentinels and guides and Jim and Blair's newly formed bond in particular. I think if you like the genre you will absolutely love this story and want more.
I can't stand most of the genre, a lot of it because of things like unequal treatment between sentinels and guides or their treatment by society. Because that wasn't in here, I was able to read it all the way to the end. However, to me it suffers from a lot of other things that I dislike about the genre and the story in particular.
First, the genre's treatment of women. Almost always women are treated in a bad light, many times it's Naomi or Carolyn. This is no exception.
[...]
Second, I dislike power differentials in *any* universe. I don't like sentinels and guides as second class citizens. The same for people who are not sentinels and guides. I lost count of the number of times she used the word "mundanes" to describe those people. Not only are they described as such, sentinels and guides treat them as such. They are not allowed to talk harshly to, approach, touch, have a better opinion than any guide or latent guide or sentinel or latent sentinel. Their rights are subsumed to sentinel or guide rights. It's no wonder than the "mundanes" don't trust or like sentinels and guides. If I were treated that way, I wouldn't like them either. Imagine your parental rights immediately severed because your child was gifted? Total strangers take over your child's life and education and you *might* be allowed to see them if you are very very good. The way this is justified in the story is that the horrible mundane parents are all terribly prejudiced when they find out about their gifted kids, so they are not worthy of having sentinel or guide children. So, since that was an enormous part of the story, it was a real turn-off.
Third, this suffers from a lot of other "sentinels are known" AUs in that her universe-building leaves a lot to be desired. It took me until the last part to figure out whether this took place years in the future or present day. It takes place present-day, because Blair says he's met Maya Angelou. Yet they talk about hundreds of years of record keeping of families who have sentinels and guides popping up in their families. How would they know? The Pacific Northwest hasn't had an alpha sentinel in how long? A hundred years? What was the Pacific Northwest a hundred years ago? A few settlers and indigenous tribes. They talk as if they have careful records that were kept and that sentinels and guides were plentiful enough *to* keep track of. They didn't know about genes and DNA back then. No way could those statements be backed up. This is the foundation upon which their sentinel guide program is based, but it's a house of cards.
Fourth, Blair Sandburg is just too good to be believed, yet is so flawed that he's no longer the Blair Sandburg we know and love. He's so competent it's a wonder he needs anything, including Jim. From the get go he's telling Jim what to do, which isn't a surprise since Jim's only been online for ten months. Not only is Blair an FBI profiler extraordinaire with an almost 100% solve rate, he's a master in martial arts, a gifted and natural alpha guide (and how would he become that unless he hooked up with an alpha sentinel, which he does only a week or so before he takes over everything). He's also a gifted shaman who studied two years with *Incacha* for goodness sake. He can do no wrong. Oh, and *everyone*, male and female alike, lusts after him because he's just so irresistable.
And yet, he's terribly flawed. He's proud to a fault and his gifts make him think he has the right to use his power over other people, most specifically the "mundanes". When he's confronted with an odious but basically harmless asshole, he gives him a psychic heart attack as punishment for daring to insult himself and his sentinel. Way to protect the tribe, Shaman! Then he basically tells his fellow guides, who are looking up to him, about it and so they can learn how to totally misuse their power on people who can't possibly meet them on a level playing field. Why can they do this? Because they are gifted with the guide gene, not because they have any right in the world to do it. Another example of his flaws is his lack of shamanic ability in the face of crisis. There is a girl in danger and pain who is, because of an incompetent "mundane" going to be killed horribly. Since he can't get the tribe of guides together, what the hell is stopping him from doing a little spirit walking to find her? Didn't he learn that basic skill from two years with Incacha? How can he call himself a shaman when he doesn't practice any of the rites?
I think the reason that Blair doesn't do these obvious things is that the writer wanted to use that horrible death as a plot device to move things in a specific direction. That the sentinels and guides were doing their best and the mundanes were just roadblocks to getting it done. Blair should have been kicking his own ass at not discovering things sooner. He knew that every minute the girl was in the kidnappers hands was torture, yet he blithely goes along securing his place as alpha guide as if they have all the time in the world for networking. And even *I* figured out that Elizabeth would be the next victim. And I'm just a lowly mundane! I really had a hard time liking this Blair, despite his obvious charms. And the fact that he made his world revolve around what he thought sentinels should like, such as permanent removal of his body hair except for his head and eyebrows was repulsive.
Jim was basically acceptable. In fact he was more agreeable in the story than a lot of times in canon. But, again, she doesn't do any universe building to explain this Jim. He knew he was latent and came online (and hid it) ten months before because he didn't want a guide. He obviously didn't go through any training to learn about what sentinels and guides do, because Blair has to educate him. Yet, a week or so after they bond, he not only is the alpha sentinel for the entire Pacific Northwest, he actually knows what that means, how the hierarchy works and is practically drunk with power as he wields it left and right because he just knows best. And everyone who *isn't" a bigoted SOB because they don't think that sentinels are the greatest thing since sliced bread, thinks that it's perfectly okay for him to behave in this way.
Finally, it suffers from the same problem as the genre generally. No matter how wonderful you think sentinels and guides are, they are portrayed in an animalistic way. Look at the terminology she uses: "pride" (as in group of animals such as lions), "feral", "primal" and the way that it's perfectly understandable that if they get upset they would behave like instinctual animals instead of human beings who are ruled by their brains. No wonder the poor mundanes are afraid of them.
I think the thing that gets me most about the genre is that this really seems to be a metaphor for racism. Whether it's one group being subjugated by another, whether classes of citizens are treated "separate but equal" or whether equality is forced upon the populace but not really practiced by the people, the microcosm you see is the same you see practiced in real life. People don't trust others who are "different" than themselves. People are bigoted about things they don't know or understand. And, in a clinch, people will band together with their own kind for no other reason than because the person they are fighting is not one of them.
What's really sad is that it means that canon Jim was right in wanting to hide his abilities and Blair was dead wrong. If Jim had revealed his abilities, he probably would have been shunned and mistrusted by even his best friends. At least, that's what I get from this genre. And "The Awakening", while entertaining, is no different. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they like the genre to begin with. I certainly didn't like it, although I didn't absolutely hate it as I have others in the genre, specifically a lot of the GDP universe stories.[1]
[anonymous]
I loved this story. It has everything I like: interesting police case (even if quite a violent one, but we're talking Major Crimes here), sentinels and guides are known au (neither are treated like dirt and they're equals in their relationship) and - the icing of the cake - it's novel-length. Too bad she isn't doing a sequel too soon.[2]
2014
[Kelsey]
This is a great example of someone within fan fiction taking a concept from the original, and running a mile with it. Kiera does amazing work with the sentinel/guide concept and not just in this book. Her "Sentinels of Atlantis" is simply amazing to read and reread. What am I saying, everything by her is great to reread.[3]
References
- ^ comments from Prospect-L, quoted anonymously (October 3, 2009)
- ^ comment on Prospect-L, quoted anonymously (October 2009)
- ^ Review on GoodReads, Archived version, accessed 30 March 2023