Courts of Honor now online
The fist two pics are the covers (illustrated by Sat Nam Kam and Suzan Lovett respectively) of Courts of Honor by Syn Ferguson, a Kirk/Spock slash novel with lavish black-and-white interior illustrations by Suzan Lovett. Yes, novel. It’s over 300,00 words long! The last two pics are sample interior illustrations by Suzan.
Originally published in zine form in the 1980’s, it’s widely considered one of the best pieces of writing in the entire K/S fandom. Its plot features Kirk and Spock’s epic quest to save the inhabitants of several Romulan-controlled planets from brutal slavery. Along the way, they explore Romulan culture and the nature of brutality as well as getting involved in a revolution, re-encountering the Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident , and of course figuring out what their relationship means and how to make it work.
The novel begins with Kirk and Spock having to face the consequences of Spock’s return to seeming asexuality after the events of the preceding novella The Price. In The Price, Spock comes roaring back into pon farr and Kirk makes the choice he always makes in slash fic: he has sex with Spock to save his best friend’s life, but ends up deeply in love with his First Officer. The novella abruptly ends with Spock no longer feeling any sexual desire or even ability to love at all after his pon farr is over, although Kirk’s feelings remain present. When Courts of Honor opens, Kirk and Spock are both avoiding each other because of the painful, seemingly unresolvable situation this has created. Things EVENTUALLY get better, but they absolutely have to earn their happy ending.
I highly recommend both The Price and Courts of Honor, but I would suggest reading them in the correct order, downloading them onto an e-reader of some sort due to the massively huge amount of text, and being in an emotionally balanced state before reading them, as they can get very dark in places, with murder, slavery, rape, violence to children, etc., as part of a plot that is ultimately optimistic but absolutely does not flinch from depicting horrific events.
You can learn more about the history of Courts of Honor and The Price,their author Syn Ferguson , and their illustrators by going to Fanlore.org’s pages, which you can access by clicking on the preceding embedded links.