"The Beautiful Lie" - Dracoqueen22

Title: The Beautiful Lie
Author: Dracoqueen22
About the Book: Fiction, Fanfiction, Slash, Romance, Psychological (I don't know what else to call it)
Warning: Gay sex?...
My rating: 9,5/10.
Fandom: Bleach

This is a gem of a story and no doubt about it. The first chapter was published on the 24th of April '09 and the last on the 3rd of November '11, spanning controversies and stronger spirits in between, while the author danced most wonderful pirouettes above and beyond her readers' expectations.

It's slow-paced and leisurely as far as the actual actions of the characters are concerned, but inside their psyches many, many, many things happen. And that, among other things, makes it impossibly exciting.

"When Ichigo comes home from classes that afternoon, there is a dead man sitting at his dining room table," says the first sentence. The dead man is Aizen Sousuke, presumed dead after the shinigami war that Ichigo had won for the shinigami. Now he's very much alive and kicking, but powerless. And he wants Ichigo to take his place and try to conquer the world. Meanwhile, Ichigo, scarred and tired after the war, has wrapped himself up in a lie: that of living a normal, ordinary life.

The story follows Ichigo as he finds himself pushed more and more towards just that course of events, Aizen who tags along, and Urahara Kisuke, who become fugitives. It shifts from POV to POV with grace, giving insights of the three's psyches: Ichigo at the middle, Aizen on the one side, hating Urahara, Urahara on the other side, hating Aizen. At times, interludes about other characters are written by a different hand than Draco's: Lady Azar, a very good writer herself, gives insights into others' lives.

This is where the controversy springs: Urahara and Aizen are so entirely opposed to one another that it's hard not to take a side. The greatness of Draco's writing is that she manages to balance their good and bad traits so well that the two parties of story readers are pretty much evenly split.

From one point of view, Aizen is a ruthless tyrant, who caused a war that got many people killed and who tried to instate himself as the king of the world; he is unapologetic, cold, detached, still pursuing his goal even if he projects it on Ichigo. Urahara is a faithful person, who stuck by Ichigo, helped him in trouble, fought on the right side of the war and never had dreams of grandeur. During the war or after, he has been there for Ichigo.

From the other point of view, Aizen is a strong, determined character. On realizing that Soul Society was corrupt and rotten to the core, he challenged it through lies, deceit and betrayal, trying to take it over to make it better. If he does not apologize - and indeed he would do the same again - it is because he truly believes in his cause; if he used lies and deceit, that is because those are among his methods. In this version, Urahara is weak and unable to face the harder truths of reality. He is unable to get over his feud with Aizen (more visibly than Aizen is unable to get over the feud with him), he doesn't say or do the right things at the right time. He was part of the corrupt society that Aizen fought against, an unquestioning part that killed when it was told to and asked no questions, probably not willing to face the answers.

Both are true, both are false, and there's something to be said about the middle.

Draco plays reader expectations like Edvin Marton plays his Stradivarius violin: skilfully, gracefully, with talent and determination and awesomeness.

While I don't want to spoil the ending, I would like to say that I think it's marvelously crafted. I have strong opinions about the solution she proposes and I applaud it when I see it is well done, with delicacy and very satisfying psychological reasoning in getting there.

Another aspect I'd like to mention is that Draco is one of those writers whose erotica is excellent. Not only does it do what erotica is meant to do - titillate (I like that word) - but it also serves a purpose in the text. If Draco has an erotic moment in her writings, you can be assured that it means something. It is an expression of the characters, a communication between them, something that adds to the relationship. You don't feel it's there for the gratification of the reader: it's there because you cannot omit it without losing part of the story. Elegant, with a point, with feeling.

If there is one aspect that made me not give it a perfect mark, it is that towards the end the story seemed to lose some of its texture and become slightly more sketched. However, 'slightly less good' in the case of awesomeness is decidedly still very good.

You can find it here.