Tag: GLBTQ fiction

Review of Weekends by Edward Kendrick

Rating: 3.25 stars

Marcus Hampton is secure in his habits, secure in his job as an accountant, and secure in his identity as a confirmed bachelor. He has his cat, Daisy, and his routines. Each and every day rolling with the same predictability, and he likes that too.  Until he meets Demitri Costas, a young photographer who snaps a picture of him.  Demitri is immediately attracted to the older man, and not just because he is wonderfully photogenic under his lens. Dimitri asks Marcus to pose for him, and to Marcus’ surprise, he agrees.

One photo session leads to another and Demitri develops a crush on Marcus but does nothing, believing Marcus to be married and straight. Marcus is neither. When Demitri discovers Marcus is both gay and available, he pursues  the older man but Marcus gently rebukes Demitri as Marcus thinks he must represent a father figure for the young photographer.  Through holidays and weekends, the men struggle with their feelings towards each other, family  expectations, and their pasts as well as insecurities.  Marcus’ self image of himself as a confirmed old bachelor is one Dimitri must shatter if  they are to have a future together.

Weekends charts the relationship between two very different men from its beginnings to that of an established couple.  Each chapter represents a different weekend in their lives, a neat format for the story.  The first chapter is titled The Weekend Before Thanksgiving.  In it, we establish a “base line” for each man before they meet.  We see their lives, their  routines, and in Demitri’s case, his hopes of becoming a photographer.  I like that Kendrick chooses the weekends around the holidays to move the story forward, as that is a time of vulnerability and introspection for most people, especially those alone.  With Marcus, it is particularly affecting, as Daisy is his only companion and his aloneness comes into stark focus for the reader.

Kendrick delivers two very believable people in Marcus and “Mitri” as he is called.  Also authentic is the manner in which Mitri  slowly brings Marcus out of his rigid notions of himself as “old and settled”.  Mitri is fighting against his father’s expectations for him to finish college with a degree in Engineering as all he longs to do is take pictures and make a living do so.  Even with a marked lack of communication between the two, they slowly make their way into a relationship.

So. Believable characters, creative story format, happy ending.  Why the long face, girl, as they say.  Interest. For however nice Marcus and Demetri are, they are boring.  And I am not talking about a lack of angst here.  I have never felt that angst is a necessary part of a story, although it helps to balance out a story.  I have read other novels that I loved whose  plot also revolves around the same storyline.  Men meet, get to know each other, fall in love, and live happily ever after or at least for now.  The big difference is that I found those men compelling.  They endeared themselves to me in multiple ways, it could be a sense of humor, an engaging outlook on life, something that says wow, I am so happy to got to know you.  It is like that in real life.  Sometimes you click with someone, sometimes you don’t.   Some people are beige to other’s rainbow.  Unfortunately for me, there was a whole lot of beige and very little clicking going on here. There is much to admire in Weekends but in the end, the main characters make it far too easy to forget them once the story is over.

Cover: Cover art by Reese Dante.  I normally love Dante’s covers but here I am of two minds.  One, I am the only person who sees George Bush in the man in the front? I am not sure if I find that hysterical or scary. The other says “great job”, love the relevancy of the mens ages and great design. But boy, does he look like George Bush….

Review of Alien ‘n’ Outlaw by K. C. Burn

Rating: 4.25 stars

R’kos is the youngest child of the Emperor of Ankylos and the most different.  Unlike his brothers and sisters, he has an adventurous nature and no desire to enter into the standard triad marriage of their species. As the time for his arranged marriage draws near, R’los commandeers a family shuttle and heads out into space, eventually landing on Elora Ki.  R’kos is in search of human male companionship.  Just their smell so intrigues R’kos that he ends up in a bar, sniffing each human who comes in.  But the Ankylos sense of smell is so acute that he can smell hate, fear, corruption along with kindness, love, lust and happiness.  So far, no one smell has agreed with him.  Until Darien enters asking the barkeep for help.

Darien Lancaster is the son of a wealthy industrialist.  His father shipped him off to become a miner when he found out that Darien was gay but  he escaped, traveling the galaxy under assumed names and trading illegally to make a living. Darien hates what his father’s businesses have done to people, including inflicting an incurable disease on miners.  To counteract his father’s actions, Darien has become something of a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and buying goods for the poor and sick.  Now he owes money to an infamous drug dealer who is hunting him down. Just when he thinks he is cornered a hooded stranger comes to his rescue.  The stranger?  R ‘kos whom Darien calls Ricky.  It takes both their efforts to get off planet where Ricky  accompanies Darien on his trade routes.  Ricky is having the time of his life and Darien is coming to depend on Ricky for friendship and then so much more.  It’s not just passion they feel for each other but love.  Then Ricky is injured and Darien must contact the people  who  seek to lock him up. Darien will risk everything to save Ricky and he must convince Ricky’s father and the Alliance that Ricky was not kidnapped, a crime which could send Darien to prison for the rest of his life.

I will admit that R’kos and I got off to a shaky start.  I mean really, a lavender Mr. Clean? With purple eyes and a nose in overdrive? And yes, there’s that misunderstood thief with a heart of gold, who just needs someone to love and believe in him.  Cliche territory seemed to surround me. And then, none of that mattered. Both R’kos ne Ricky and Darien got to me, I fell in love with both of them, found some really nice plot details  and ended up being swept away on the journey with them. *shakes head*.  Usually I go on about great characterization, or personas flatter than a frozen pancake but here I am just going to say I loved these two, not really sure why they captured my heart. I only know they did.  I cared for them despite his oddball coloring which was never completely explained or why a herbivore has a hive structure for their species.  Interesting details though they didn’t make sense to my naturalist mind.  Didn’t matter.  See what I mean?  I loved that big hairless Ricky who wanted more from life than any other Ankylos and went out to find it.  And ended up meeting Darien who is trying to make up for the pain and suffering his father inflicted on his brother and others. Darien is so alone that he captures both our understanding as well as compassion.  Loved him too.

I appreciated how Burn gave us an updated Robin Hood in space as well as a horrific reason that Darien chose to become an illegal trader.  The creation of a disease that so alters the human minors that they become gnarled twisted mindless beings called Chimera is horrific.  Black lung, asbestos, leprosy and more jumped immediately to mind.  Burn took those and then added even more symptoms to give us an interplanetary disease of nightmares. And then made it personal to Darien and the reader.  Great job.  Some science fiction stories only tweak one or two things, put it on a spaceship and expect it to be real science fiction.  No that does not make a story credible science fiction.  Give us world building, new species and make it seem realistic or possible.  And that definitely occurred here.  So believable that I am with Darien about living on Ankylos.  I felt his panic along with him.  It was just too alien, the complete lack of privacy unnerving and Darien knew he would not be able to adjust.  I found that credible too because I wouldn’t either.

To me, there is really only one substantial mistep.  KC Burns tells us of the big rift between the speciies over a mineral called Wolframite, in fact, the very lack of the mineral caused a protracted war between the Alliance (humans) and Ankylos with huge losses on both sides.  It is a major plot point in this story so imagine my astonishment upon finding out exactly what the wolframite was needed for.  I won’t tell you but to me it showed an amazing disregard to prior story elements, especially considering the  substantial impact on the characters and interspecies relations the war had and all for a throwaway bit of humor.   Why  that was not caught and pointed out to the author who hadn’t shown too many errors up until then I will never know.  Getting past that plot pothole, than my one last quibble is one of backstory.  Darien’s brother became a Chimera and Darien has been looking for him as he has travelled.  I would have liked more of that history. Perhaps KC Burns will give us a sequel and another journey for Darien and Ricky.  I would love a second visit to their universe.  But no more overly “cutsey” elements, they aren’t needed.  You have a good story, trust that to be enough.  So I do recommend this but let me know what you think.  Can you fall in love with characters just because? Either way, I hope to see these again.

Review of Suicide Point by Georgie Leigh

Rating: 3.75 stars

Surfer boy Charlie and police officer Ness have a one-night stand and part, not to meet up again until the night Charlie crashed his car.  Until that traumatic day Charlie has only been interested in casual relationships and days spent at the beach while Ness has been fighting with the nightmares and scars that remain from a past relationship gone horribly wrong. But on that day when Ness and his partner come across Charlie’s twisted wreck of a van, the lives of both men change forever.  As Ness holds onto Charlie, the emergency team must amputate Charlie’s arm in order to free him from the twisted frame of his van.

When Ness visits Charlie in the hospital, a relationship is struck up between them. Charlie needs Ness in so many ways.  To help him adjust to his new body and loss of his arm, to provide emotional support as Charlie works to accept the reality of his disability.  Ness also needs Charlie’s love and faith to conquer his insecurities and doubts in starting another relationship and reaching out  again after such a long time alone.  But it is not just their fears and uncertainties they must overcome, but Charlie’s foster brother, Joey whose possessiveness and instability threaten all around him.

Suicide Point is interesting and successful on several levels but ultimately falls short in my opinion due to too many plots within one book.  The main issue I see here is that the author has two great stories here.  One story is that of Charlie’s traumatic accident,  from his amputation,through his journey from  shattered self image to one of self reliance, recovery and acceptance of his body. That plot line alone, along with starting a relationship with the man who helped rescue you and was present during the amputation, would have elevated Suicide Point into the 4 star category easily.

The second book contained inside Suicide Point is that of a thriller.  Two men brought together by a life changing event are threatened by a person close to them, who not only plays cruel mental games with them but physically sets out to harm one or both men, a la Gaslight.  The level of anxiety the author creates increases exponentially until the reader is constantly waiting for the next horror to occur. Separated, the stories are fine but together intwined, each fights for the reader’s attention and empathy until both suffer from an overload of angst and anxiety and a really satisfactory ending is lost.

The other issue here is that of characterization.  Charlie is easily the most realistic character Leigh created.  I really believed him, from the cocky surfer to the depressed amputee.  Charlie grabbed my attention and my compassion.  Ness Anderson was part of the problem though.  He was weighted down with too much backstory.  He had an unstable lover who shot him and then committed suicide.  He is a police officer who works on RBDU, Rescue and Bomb Disposal Unit.  And yet even as Ness recognizes the dangers that Joey poses, he disregards his gut and intellectual feelings?  I just never bought that.  Ness came across as a much less authentic character and that took away from the story.  I think he was most successful as a character during the time he was helping Charlie adjust to life as an amputee, after that the realism faded.  Their layered relationship seemed to have a realistic foundation as Charlie went through the known stages of grief for his past life and body.  Joey, however, made a very credible damaged kid.  A unstable child, his fixation on his foster brother turns him into a menace that no one wants to recognize, a personality often seen in the news today in shattering detail.

To recap, there is much to admire about Suicide Point and the author’s ambitious goals for this book.  Sometimes less really is more and Suicide Point could have used a divider so that both stories could have gotten the attention they deserved.  I look forward to more from this gifted author.  I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Cover:  Reese Dante’s cover is fine except for the font.  While I get the idea of a red (bloody) messy font, it’s not necessary and a cleaner font would have been much better.

Olympics Addiction Continues, the week ahead in Reviews and a new Summer Cocktail

It’s August, it’s hot and dry here in Maryland.  Normal right?  Well, except for the 100 degree days, but the dryness?  That’s becoming typical too.  We are down about 8 inches here from our normal rainfall, but compared to some of the other states now experiencing record drought conditions, that is nothing.  As we hear of farmers and ranchers selling off stock they can’t feed and the Mississippi is down 20 ft in places,  along with Lake Michigan recording a water temperature in the 90’s,  I think Maryland is getting off easy comparatively speaking.  But we will feel it, make no doubt about it.  Higher food prices, higher costs in transportation, we are all woven together.  A small ripple here becomes a tidal wave there.

So I would like to think that the Olympics in Great Britain are generating tidal waves of good feelings that are crashing upon the shores of many nations.  I love watching athletes from all over the world competing and (mostly, what was with those badminton teams?) giving it their best.  Did you see that rower from Niger?  Never been in a boat, never rowed  before, came in dead last and grinned like crazy! And then there is Michael Phelps putting on a show of remarkable  physical ability, great team spirit and a happiness that I will remember for some time to come.  So many wonderful moments this week from the women competing whether it was gymnastics, swimming, Judo, weightlifting, or women in head scarves running like the wind.  I am just glued to my set and don’t see that changing until the very last whistle is blown and the torch goes out.  How about you?  Are you watching?

So this is what I have been reading in between watching the Olympics:

Monday:                       The Druid Stone by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane

Tuesday:                        When Forever May Not Be Long Enough by Mychael Black and Shayne Carmichael

Wednesday:                  The Florist by Serena Yates

Thursday:                       Priceless by M.A. Church

Friday:                            Suicide Point by Georgie Leigh

Saturday:                        Brook Street: Thief by Ava March

Now on to this Sunday’s Feature Cocktail.  In a nod to the British Olympics, here is the recipe for a Pimm’s Cup.  This recipe is  for one drink. Make as many as you like!

 

 

 

 

 

Pimm’s Cup Ingredients:

About 1 cup ice cubes
1/4 cup (2 ounces) Pimm’s No. 1
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) ginger beer or ginger ale
1 cucumber slice
1 sprig fresh mint (5 to 6 leaves)
Directions:

Fill highball glass with ice. Add Pimm’s, then top with ginger beer, garnish with cucumber slice and mint sprig, and serve.

Now I am off to watch the Olympics and finish Megan Derr’s Poison, the 4th book in the Lost Gods series.