The other night I fired up my ebook reader and took a trip down memory lane. After finishing a story I've read a dozen times before and still enjoyed, I figured this would be a good time to bring back the XIPPY Awards and morph it into Story Of The Week.

The XIPPY Awards were born when I wanted to highlight great fiction that the Xenaverse bards were creating. I stopped the awards some time ago due to lack of time but that doesn't mean great fiction has stopped. It's time to revive them and change the format a little.

If you would like to nominate a story to be featured on AUSXIP, send your story choice to me - the story doesn't have to be on AUSXIP. It can be anywhere on the net.

Please let me know the name of the story, the author, WHY you enjoyed it and the URL. I will then post your mini review/comments along with the link to the story.

This week's featured stories are two of my all time favourites and I've read these so many times, I still enjoy them every time.

CLASSIC FICTION

Darkness Falls by Melissa Good
Alt

The rift in the series between Xena and Gabrielle was traumatic enough and I was dreading reading fanfic about it but Missy came through with my favourite post rift story. She dealt with the issues that Xena and Gabrielle endured and crafted it into one of my all time favourites. Darkness Falls is about that journey back from Tartarus that Xena and Gabrielle took -- a look into a relationship that withstood the angst and the bitterness. An exceptional story

UBER FICTION

Lucifer Rising by S. Bowers
Uber Alt

This story was my first foray into reading Uber fan fiction - A friend recommended I read Lucifer Rising and what a revelation it turned out to be. This story is packed with adventure, intrigue, love that knows no bounds and a good dose of mystery thrown in. This is the story of Jude Lucien, an ex DEA agent and Liz Gardener a nosey reporter. This is a fantastically richly woven story that you will not be able to turn away from this xenaverse Uber classic.