John adjust to fatherhood on the city of the Ancients while his son, Sebastian, develops a connection the city that leaves everyone scrambling to keep up.
**************** Fandom: Stargate Atlantis Pairing: McKay/Sheppard Word Count: ? (Complete)
Sebastian is a likable and sympathetic genius who's still a kid (i.e., neither angel nor brat), and there are some great character moments with him and/or the canon cast (which includes developing McKay/Sheppard, but the story isn't mostly romance — it's family), and original touches such as the cute Atlantean penguin and the final reveal (which I won't spoil). I should mention, though, that it's very anti-Dr. Carson Beckett.
Re. length: Part 1 = "93 minutes" (73-pg. PDF) Part 2 = "97 minutes" (78-pg. PDF) Part 3 = "98 minutes" (78-pg. PDF) If standard reading speed = 200 wpm (hence approx. 57,600 words total), and standard word count = 250 wpp, then (VERY approximately!) this is 230 "standard" pages total — which nearly matches my PDFs. 👍
11/'22 is less than a year since my last reading, I notice, but it's a favorite, and I'm not about to skip it when I'm on a Keira Marcos binge. (I didn't record another reading date for the SHORT prequel, though, because that would feel like cheating on the reading challenge. Assume every Read date automatically also includes the short.)
ETA: N.b., there's a different version of Sebastian (he's put into worse circumstances after his mother's death, before meeting John) in the author's What Might Have Been novella series. I decided not to shelve that one as "kidfic" because he only enters the picture in part 7 of 10, but I was hunting around madly trying to recall which 'verse it was, titles being not my strong suit.
1/2026: This really has become an annual "feel-good read to warm my heart in the cold of winter." (LOL, my list of "Dates read" has now become long enough to display a "See more"! I thought for a minute that the first had somehow been lost/omitted.)
This was wonderful. I really liked Sebastian but he definitely wasn't a regular 10-year-old. But that was explained away pretty well with his boy-genius status.
Also, how Keira Marcos keeps all her Stargate: Atlantis fanfics straight is a baffling mystery.