Earlier in the year, I decided to start reading self-published fanfiction in order to broaden my literary horizons. After all, I thought to myself, how many amazing pieces of writing may be hidden away in the archives of fanfiction.net? Naturally, I started with a fan written Waltons novel. At the time, I thought The Waltons was a good choice because there wasn’t going to be any more of it, but now we’re getting a new movie, so what do I know? Either way, I still think I chose a good place to start.

What drew me to A Walton Story (other than it being a whole new novel-length Waltons story for me to consume) was the fact that it follows John-Boy after Season 6 of The Waltons. At this point in the series, he leaves to travel around the world as a war reporter… but he is broken hearted as his relationship with Daisy has come to an end. When the novel started with John-Boy alone and miserable in his New York apartment, I was kind of confused, because I thought “He shouldn’t be in his apartment, he should be travelling the world right now!” and then I realised that this story was taking a different path to the series – a “what if”.

Here, John-Boy and Daisy do break up, but they afterwards decide to try to give their relationship a second try. I always thought that John-Boy and Daisy were a good couple, so I was happy to see a story where the two of them get a second chance together… but things don’t work out. On the show, of course, Daisy doesn’t tell John-Boy that she’d had a child before they were together and the author seems to take this as a defining feature for Daisy’s character. She consistently hides things from John-Boy throughout the story and is genuinely not very good at communicating with him, which is sad to see.

But it’s not all one-sided. I was disappointed with John-Boy in this story. As much as I always admire him, I felt that he was very quick to anger and unsympathetic towards Daisy. At times it was uncomfortable, because it was very much like a real relationship that had turned toxic – on the one hand, this was really well written, on the other, I did think it was a bit unfair to both characters, who came off worse than they ever did in the show… but then I do appreciate different creators reinterpreting existing characters in new ways.

On the other hand, John and Olivia were both written perfectly. I think there voices were captured really well and I thought that they acted exactly as they would if they’d encountered this situations in an episode. The same is true for most of the other characters, really, and throughout the story there are plenty of fun little references to other Waltons episodes which, as a fan, I thoroughly enjoyed. You can tell that the author is very familiar with the show. An unexpected character shows up towards the end, which was a nice treat, but I won’t say who, because I don’t want to spoil any of the later developments.

I should also mention the character Millie. Millie was never on The Waltons and is completely unique, but I thought she brought a lot to the story. She’s a neighbour of John-Boy’s and she is a very kind, caring and likeable person. I could easily have seen her fitting into the show as a recurring character and it’s nice to see the author introducing some characters of her own.

Overall, I do prefer the version of events that actually transpired on The Waltons from Season 7 onward, but it was interesting to see another fan’s vision for how things could have gone. I know that some people don’t enjoy the final three seasons of the show, so maybe they’ll like this as an alternative – John-Boy certainly plays a bigger role here than he did in Seasons 7, 8 and 9. I think, for me, the biggest drawback was that the author interprets John-Boy and Daisy very differently to me, which didn’t quite sit right, but, all in all, I’m certainly glad I read it and it’s good to have this extra Waltons story out there.

Rating: 6.5/10

Read it here.

Though she’s better known for writing fiction, Jane Austen did also write the occasional piece of non-fiction, particularly when she was a teenager. The History of England is one of these, but it’s not what you think. Rather than a serious summary on the history of England, it’s a very satirical piece which gives a summary of each monarch from Henry IV through to Charles I. In her own words, it was written by “a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant” historian.

It’s genuinely quite a funny piece of writing, with her making very sarcastic remarks about pretty much all of them. It’s always funny when one of them is suspected of having had somebody killed, for example, and she’ll make it very obvious that she believes that they did, without saying it outright. Although, I have to admit that the archaic language use does occasionally dampen the humour (on the other hand, other times it strengthens it!).

The History of England is very short and can easily be read in one sitting. In my edition, it was published alongside Lesley Castle – an unfinished novel that Austen wrote as a teenager. From what there is of it, it’s hard to make out what the overall story would have been, but it’s made up of various characters writing letters between one another – they’re all very flawed and superficial characters, but that’s the point of it. Though it does feel a little aimless (just talking about upcoming weddings or social gatherings), the back and forth between them is amusing and entertaining. You may not read it in a single sitting, but it is also very short and you’ll get through it quite quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed both of these short pieces of writing. It’s nice to get a glimpse at the short little bits and pieces Jane Austen wrote when she was young and I think most fans of classic literature would enjoy reading this, though it certainly isn’t as substantial as a full novel (or even most short stories).

Rating: 7.3/10

Little House in the Big Woods was a book that hooked me from start to finish. I read it all in a very short space of time and, of course, it left me eager to read the rest of the Little House series. Farmer Boy is the second book in the series, but it’s a very different experience to the first.

While Little House in the Big Woods was about Laura’s childhood, Farmer Boy was instead about the childhood of her husband, Almanzo. Maybe it’s because these weren’t experiences that she had lived herself, but this book seems to lack the magical sentimental feeling that the first book was able to convey. The first book describes a really beautiful life, whereas the life Almanzo leads feels pretty bleak.

For example, Almanzo does gruelling amounts of hard physical labour around the farm he lives on (even as a child) and this is described in a lot of detail. No doubt, this is a highly accurate look at the difficult lives people led back then and I wouldn’t want to fault it for that, but after the first book, I went in expecting something very different.

The early chapters describe how a teacher was recently murdered by a gang of violent teenagers who didn’t like being told off at school and the fact that teenagers may do this to their teachers is just treated as a fact of life. Nobody even thinks about doing anything about it. The world in which Almanzo grew up was a particularly nasty one.

Nonetheless, there were several bits I really liked. At one point, there’s a really hard winter, with heavy snowfall and it describes everything that they had to do to ensure their lives weren’t too seriously disrupted. It was all so vivid and left such a strong impression that you can almost imagine what it would have been like to live through it.

Overall though, I had one big problem with this book: throughout it, there was a pervading “work is life” message. Yes, it may be true that people living in that time will have had to dedicate so much of their time to working just to survive and that the options for other things to do in very rural areas were limited, but I feel like that can be highlighted as a “look how hard their lives were” kind of way, rather than “it’s right to spend most of your existence working” because it made it all seem even more depressing.

The weird obsession with work seems to come most strongly from Almanzo’s father, who I thought seemed like quite an unlikeable person. Though he wasn’t all bad, he seems to spare no love or affection for his wife and children and instead seems to be more interested in just making sure they learn the hard lessons of life. He’s such a cold man and I honestly just felt sorry for Almanzo having to live with him most of the time.

This book is definitely a curiosity and I am glad I read it, but I enjoyed the experience much less than I did the first book. The first book was a nostalgic account of someone’s childhood in a long gone age, while this book is about the misery of poverty in 1860s America. Fans who loved the first book should brace themselves for quite a change. Also, as it has no real connection to the first one, feel free to read this one if you haven’t read the first yet.

Rating: 6.4/10

Buy it here.

Fan fiction has a bad reputation, which is a shame, because I’ve read some really great pieces of fan fiction before. Of course, it’s not all good and, indeed, some of it is just as bad (if not worse) as the reputation that precedes it. My Immortal is a perfect example of that: it embodies every negative stereotype of bad fanfiction, but is “so bad it’s good” and I have to admit that it had me laughing out loud tonnes of times throughout.

Set in the Harry Potter universe, the story focuses on a new student at Hogwarts called Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, whose name the author frequently misspells. Ebony is a big fan of everything related to goth culture, but has very strong feelings against anything she deems as ‘preppy’. Ebony is a vampire and she looks down on all the other students. I think she was probably partially inspired by Bella Swan from Twilight, as Ebony is a lot like a highly exaggerated version of Bella.

The story focuses on Ebony’s day-to-day struggles as a teenage girl, with Voldemort’s presence looming in the background… except the way I’m described it makes it sound much less silly than it is. Seemingly written completely seriously (though some believe it may have been a satire) the book contains Harry Potter changing his name to “Vampire”, Tom Riddle being called “Tom Bombadil”, Snape videoing Ebony in the bath so he can blackmail her, a sexual relationship between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, a sudden cameo by a gothic Marty McFly and the time travelling DeLorean, Good Charlotte coming to perform at Hogsmead, Dumbledore constantly shouting and swearing, etc. It’s all utterly bizarre, but at the same time strangely alluring. You can’t look away.

Originally, My Immortal was published in instalments via Fanfiction.net and it’s very obvious that there was no overall plan and that the author just made it up as they went along. During its original publication, somebody hacked the account and published their own chapter which ties up the story and the author just left it up along with their actual chapters. Ironically, even though the hacker seems to be a better writer than the main author, I enjoyed this chapter this least. It lacks the off-the-walls insanity that the others provide.

The biggest problem with the book for me was the fact that it was genuinely hard to know what was happening sometimes, because the spelling was just so bad and the plot so incoherent. Sadly, it also remains unfinished, as the author suddenly stopped updating it after a while.

Of all the books I’ve reviewed, this is probably the hardest one to give a ranking out of ten. I loved it as a piece of comedy and enjoyed discussing it with friends… so maybe it deserves a high score? On the other hand, I don’t believe that it was intended to be a comedic piece of writing, so can I give a good score to something that’s failing to do what it sets out? For that reason, a square down the middle 5 out of 10 seems the fairest way to score it.

Read it here.

The Twits was one of the very few books that I actually read as a young child (even if it was with the rest of my class). At the time, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I came back to it again around the age of fifteen and that time it didn’t really do anything. It felt childish and infantile. Then, recently, I decided to read it again as an adult so that I could write a review of it… turns out my love for it had returned!

It’s a short and simple novel about two people (Mr and Mrs Twit) who are basically just really awful towards each other and all-round disgusting people. Many of the chapters are just about nasty things that they do to one another (for example, Mr Twit goes out of his way with an elaborate prank to make Mrs Twit think that she’s dying of a terminal illness) and it’s just so over the top and so absurdly ridiculous. I laughed out loud many times. The quirky illustrations from Quentin Blake certainly help in that department.

Later, you’re introduced to a character called the Roly-Poly Bird, who has been imprisoned by Mr Twit and this ultimately leads to a storyline about the Twits finally getting their comeuppance. The ending is comically bizarre, but I don’t think I liked it quite as much as the early chapters where the pair of them were just being awful people. It’s a book you’ll get through pretty quickly (easily finished in one or two sittings) and I think it’s likely to be entertaining to most people – particularly younger readers. Then as an adult it kind of has an extra layer of humour because you know that the things they do are actually really, really terrible (and it’s treated so casually). Though I can find Roald Dahl a bit hit and miss, this is definitely a hit.

Rating: 8/10

Buy it here.

This was another of the novels included in the Reclaim Her Name collection. Originally, Indiana was published under the name George Sand (the penname by which Amantine Auror Dupin is better known), but this project sought to republish works by female authors who originally had to use male pseudonyms due to the negative attitudes to women when they were originally writing – and that’s exactly what they did.

Set in France around the time of the revolution, the story follows a woman named Indiana. She’s married to an older man named Delmare and is perpetually unhappy because of her marriage. It was essentially something she was forced into and her life is miserable. However, she tries to find happiness through an affair that she has with a man named Raymon de Ramiere – but he’s a pretty scummy character and she soon finds out that he treats women absolutely awfully, creating even more misery for her.

The novel does a great job of highlighting how difficult the lives of women could be during this period of history (well, upper-class women, at least). Aside from Indiana, the other major female character is her maid, Noun and the two of them both have pretty horrible lives. I felt perpetually sorry for both of them. To make matters worse, the reason for all of their misery comes down to men. Even the one seemingly nice man, Ralph, ultimately turns out to be just as bad. But, hey, “nice guys” usually pretty are quite unpleasant once you scratch under the surface.

It’s a very bleak novel overall, to the extent that it can occasionally veer into melodrama. It is all horrible things happening to people without any real respite, which I imagine could be quite off-putting for some readers, but I found myself reading on, curious to see where it went. I was rooting for Indiana all along as well, hoping that she’d get at least some kind of happy ending.

Speaking of the ending – I have mixed feelings. I won’t spoil it for anybody who’s planning to read the book, but I thought that the ultimate ending was really horrible… but it’s kind of portrayed as if it’s a happy ending. I couldn’t tell if the author was genuinely trying to display this horrible outcome as a good thing or if she was trying to highlight the awful values of the time which would have lead some to consider this awful outcome to be a good thing. At first, I thought it was the former, but imagining it to be the latter does help me to appreciate the book more.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed it and I do respect it for highlighting the historic struggles of women, but its doom and gloom vibes can get to be a bit overwhelming at times. I think I’ll definitely be trying more of her work in future though.

Rating: 8.2/10