MacXavier

The Sister (Highlander)

Reviewed by Kathryn A on 27th April 2002 (3)
Tags: Novelette
(57K)

I was looking at the new arrivals section of the Seventh Dimension HL fiction archive, and I noticed a Highlander/Buffy/Sentinel crossover, and I thought that perhaps it might be interesting, but I also noticed that it was like 9th or so in a series, so I decided to track down the first one in the series first, because I hate reading things out of order. So I did; it was this story, "The Sister". The summary reads: "Richie's little sister comes looking for him. Too bad he's dead and she's about to be. Sort of."

There are two major problems with this story, and I'm not sure that they don't exacerbate each other. The first is the style; it's a telling-not-showing sort of style, in which you get clumps of dialogue separated by lumps of narration, or so it feels like. It opens like this:
    Joe looked up from the glass he was polishing when a girl stepped up to the bar. She returned the look with steady gray-blue eyes. With a deep breath she asked a question guarantied to blast through every defense that the old Watcher had up against pretty girls asking questions.
    "Have you seen my brother? His name is Richie Ryan."
    The glass fell to the floor in slow motion until it shattered.
    Joe wasn't just looking at her any more; he was staring out right. "Richie never said anything about a sister."
    "Why am I not surprised? Please, have you seen him?" There was a desperate pleading look in her eyes.

And so on in the same vein. That might have been bearable if it hadn't been for the eponymous sister of Richie Ryan, who, as we can see above has "steady gray-blue eyes", knows all about Watchers and Immortals, carries a Bowie knife, has Methos fall in love with her, can out-angst and out-fight Cassandra, oh, and by the way, she is the One, too. Needless to say, despite the potential of interesting crossovers further down the line, I had absolutely no desire to continue reading a series starring Mary-Sue Ryan.

Addendum 28/4/2002: Apparently "The Sister" isn't the first story in the arc I was looking for, but I'm not entirely sure which story is. (later) Okay, "The Sister", introducing Jenny Ryan, is the first story, followed by "Twin Quickenings", followed by a few more stories, followed by a series called the "Wishes" arc, which is the one which had the new story which originally caught my eye.

And apparently Jenny Ryan bears absolutely no resemblance to the author. Well, I didn't mean that she did, actually. I meant that Jenny Ryan was far too good to be true.