World’s longest pub crawl: An Interview with Alex Beecroft

Back in midwinter, I asked Alex Beecroft for an interview. We agreed to meet over virtual pints and spent the rest of the winter happily trading rounds along with questions and answers. Now that the lilacs and azaleas are blooming (in my corner of the world, anyway) it’s time to share our adventure with all of you. So belly up to the bar, the next round’s on us!

Lee Benoit: What inspired you to undertake Captain’s Surrender?

Alex Beecroft:The honest answer would be ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl’. While everyone in the world was swooning over Jack Sparrow, I was transfixed right from the beginning with the lads of the Navy. That fabulous great ship (which I now know was a twin of HMS Victory) emerging out of the fog. Those gorgeous young men in wigs and stockings, looking well scrubbed and well pleased with themselves in their fancy coats and their gold braid. I forgot about pirates in an instant and went away and bought ‘Master and Commander’ on DVD. After which I had to read the book.

Except that it turned out there were twenty books in Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring series about Captain Jack Aubrey. I went through them at a rate of two a week, feeling utterly transported. When I’d finished I found I had to move on to even harder stuff - text books about the 18th Century Navy, biographies of Admiral Lord Rodney, Lord Cochrane, Anson, Nelson and Collingwood, non-fiction about 18th Century society, etc. I had ended up with an 18th Century fixation. After that it was inevitable to want to tell a story in that setting, and as my mind naturally comes up with m/m love stories, it ended up as a m/m love story in the Age of Sail.

I’d also stumbled across Rictor Norton’s website about homosexuality in 18th Century England and was pondering what it would be like to be a fairly sensitive young man, living amid so much hatred. That’s why my character Josh turned out so angsty and so conflicted!

LB:Can you tell us a bit about how Captain’s Surrender came to be published by Linden Bay Romance?

AB: Oh, that’s one of those amazing flukes where you feel that someone up there is looking after you. I had known for a long time that what I really wanted to write was m/m fiction, but I thought there was no market for it at all. So I’d been writing a series of short stories for my friends just for our own enjoyment, when one day one of them discovered Ransom by Lee Rowan.

She reviewed it, saying how much she’d enjoyed it and how delighted she was to find that there were actual published books of the kind of fiction we enjoyed. And then Lee dropped by to say thank you for the review. I mentioned to her how exciting it was to find this new genre, and how I hoped one day to get involved myself. Then she said, “Well, my publisher is running their annual competition to select a new writer. If you can get something together in the next month, why not try entering it?”

At that point I didn’t have a book at all, I had a linked series of short stories. But I thought “nothing ventured, nothing gained”, and spent the next month sitting up to all hours writing the bridging material needed to turn the stories into a novel. I entered it into the competition one day before the deadline. And it won! Unbelievable! I was sure that such things didn’t happen to me. But this time they did.

LB: That’s not unbelievable at all to those of us who’ve read and relished Captain’s Surrender. It sounds like your involvement — coming to the genre first as a reader, then as a writer — reflects the experience of many, including writers, who crave rich plots and fully-realized characters with their smex. Could you tell me more of your thoughts on this?

AB: Thank you! And yes, I know that there’s an initial rush when you discover m/m fiction or slash fic or whatever, and you read whatever you can get your hands on, the smuttier the better. It doesn’t really matter at that point about good writing, because it’s all so new and you’ve been starving for so long — and for the first time in your life there is enough of the stuff. But once that initial rush wears off, I think you start to want the same things you want in mainstream fiction too — namely good storytelling. There’s no reason why we can’t have m/m fiction *and smut* and quality writing too.

LB: You clearly know your era well. You mentioned Rictor Norton’s web site as a reliable source for information; can you tell us more about how you conducted your research? What advice would you offer someone who’s considering writing historical fiction? Any special advice for those writing gay historicals?

AB: My advice would be to set your book in a time that you love. When I fell in love with the 18th Century Navy I knew nothing about it other than that the uniforms were gorgeous and the cannons sounded cool (if the films could be believed). But it was sheer enthusiasm that drove me to read every book I could lay my hands on about the time. Because I was powered by an infatuation with the historical period, I emptied libraries and read textbooks for fun, going ‘oh wow, that’s so cool!’ all the time. As a result, I learned an awful lot, while enjoying myself at the same time. But I can’t imagine what it would be like to dispassionately decide on a period and to research out of obligation. I think that would make the research feel too much like work, and you would be tempted to skip it in order to get on with the story.

Because I loved the world first, it became fun for me to drop in little details like Emily’s fashionable ’sack’ dress, or the ostentatious meal Captain Walker gives to Reverend Jenson. But if it had been miserable labour to look up the menus of the time, the proper set of a toga or whatever, I think the detail would be sparser.

As for advice on writing gay historicals — I think it’s important to check the specific shape of the prejudice at the time. For example, the later 18th Century was fairly modern in that there was already a dawning understanding that it might be an innate trait, whereas earlier it was seen as entirely a matter of choice. In Biblical times it was disliked because it was seen as a waste of seed (which was regarded as killing a potential child), whereas in Roman times it was all about status. No one cared if a Roman citizen buggered a boy or a foreigner, but it was an enormous shame for a Roman to allow himself to be buggered. So check which form the prejudice takes!

Also, try to keep away from the two extremes of ‘oh, everyone knows and they’re ok with it, despite the fact that it’s a crime that warrants the death penalty’ and ‘oh, it’s so dreadful, their lives are not worth living.’ Gay people seem to have managed to live full and defiantly happy lives under the worst conditions. As an author it’s a fine balancing act to keep both the dread and the happiness of gay love in a time when it could get you killed.

LB: Tell us about your writing process. Where and when do you work? Do you outline? Write each scene in order? Work on projects one at a time or concurrently? Have any special rituals or idiosyncrasies?

AB: I have a computer desk tucked in the corner of the dining room. (At least, the estate agent called the room a dining room. We have two computers, three bookshelves and no table in there). It’s not organized enough to be an office, though. It’s true that an office doesn’t need to be organized, but this isn’t even organized enough to contain useful books. I have to wander all over the house to find my research.

I try and write between 10am and 2.30pm (when I have to get the children from school) each day, though I’ll admit that I procrastinate a lot.

My process is to fly by the seat of my pants for the first 5 chapters or so, by which time things will have sorted themselves out in my mind enough for me to outline the whole thing. After that I do write each scene in order until I get to the end — and only start revising and editing when the first draft is finished. I prefer to work on one thing until it’s finished, not to do multiple things at once.

Heh, and I will admit that I have a special writing hat. I email and netsurf and so forth on the same computer I write on, so putting on the writing hat is a way to signal to myself that it’s time to stop all that and concentrate on the writing now.

LB: A special writing hat? What’s yours like and where do I get one?

AB: I bought myself a special beanie with scratchy glittery bits, so that I would be able to tell by feel that it was not a normal hat (I wear hats quite a lot, and didn’t want my subconscious to get confused).

LB: What’s surprised you the most about your own writing?

AB: I don’t know if I’m allowed to say so, but it still surprises me that anyone thinks it’s anything special. I look at Patrick O’Brian or Ursula Le Guin, and I still have a very long way to go!

LB:What has surprised you the most about being published?

AB:I never imagined it would be so much work! If I’m lucky I spend four hours a day writing, but now the rest of my life has gone under in trying to promote, keep up with chats, write reviews, deal with Facebook, MySpace, etc., write to Amazon, sort out tax etc., etc. If I do four hours writing a day, I then do another 10 hours trying to keep up with my various groups. It’s insane - but kind of fun.

I save up reviews or interviews or excerpts for a Monday (which is promo day on most of my lists) and then send the same thing simultaneously to five or six lists. I can’t keep up with commenting on everyone else’s promo, though I try to say something nice once in a while, whenever I have five minutes to spare. That’s about as much as I can manage. But then I don’t expect anyone to comment on mine – and very few people do, so that’s OK!

LB: If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, where would you go and why? If you could bring one item or idea from the present to the past with assurances that your action wouldn’t disrupt space-time, what would it be? And, if you could nick something from your historical destination, what would that be?

AB: It’s quite boring, I’m afraid. I probably would go to mid 18th Century London, just to see how it really was. If I had to go as a woman, I’d take sanitary towels with me (oh and pants — is that underpants in America? Because they didn’t wear underwear in those days, and I think I’d feel a bit uncomfortable with that.)

I think the best thing to bring back would just be the experiences; no matter how you try to imagine things, really living them brings it home like nothing else. However, I wouldn’t mind bringing one of these fantastic coffee-percolators home with me.

LB: Not boring at all. Underthings are an inspired choice!

I’ve just picked up The Witch’s Boy, though I haven’t read it yet. It looks to be very different in theme and structure (as well as plot and genre) from Captain’s Surrender. I’d love to know how working on the new fantasy novel was different from working on your first, historical piece. Did you have any trepidation about shifting genres?

AB: Ah, well, curiously enough, The Witch’s Boy is the earlier written of the two books. I wrote it when I was first at home with my newborn daughter. She would sleep for an hour and a half a day, and I seized that chance to write. It took me two years to finish the book, but because it was slow and steady work I had plenty of time to think about the plot when I wasn’t actually writing it. It allowed me to make the plot quite complex — I was able to work out where all those loose ends could be sewn back in to achieve an effect that seemed inevitable.

I’ve always been a big fan of Fantasy; I grew up on Tolkien, and it seemed natural for my first book to be a fantasy. I have to admit that I love what I think of as ‘the appeal of the strange’. I like to open a book and be caught up in a different world, where everything makes sense, but it’s not the same sense as our ordinary, commonplace life. I like to take a holiday in a book, so that when I come back my own life is more welcome and homely — as it would be when you’ve just returned from somewhere exotic.

And that’s the link, I think, between Fantasy and Historical. Both are books about other worlds; strange, exotic places where people think and act differently. It’s just that in the historical that world was once a real part of our past. The only real difficulty with Captain’s Surrender was that it had a strict word-limit of 60,000 words, which I found a little too short. I wanted to pay more attention to Josh’s time with the Anishinabe, but I couldn’t manage to cram more than the bare minimum into the word count.

And thematically, they’re both about the triumph of love, whether that’s Sulien’s attempt to save Tancred from the consequences of his own evil actions, or Peter’s refusal to bow to the expectations of society and condemn Josh. So I didn’t really perceive much of a difference in any basic technique in writing them. I tend to feel that a story’s a story, no matter the genre. Though having said that I am a bit intimidated by the demands of the strict murder mystery. I haven’t tried one of them, but I’m keen to try at some point just to see if I can do it.

LB:Now I really can’t wait to read it! What’s next for you (besides a cab home)? I meant, what’s next on your writing agenda?

AB: I’m just entering the home stretch on the second draft/rewrite of another m/m Age of Sail novel, currently under the working title of ‘False Colors’. It’s 80k words at the moment, but needs a couple of extra scenes and a bit of expanding at the end, so it may end up 85-90,000. And I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with it! It’s exciting, but of course external forces are now conspiring to stop me doing that final twenty pages. Still, I should have a new novel to hawk around by August, touch wood!

LB: That certainly is exciting! What can you tell us about False Colors? Is it a sequel to Captain’s Surrender?

AB: It isn’t a sequel to Captain’s Surrender, as it has different characters, but it will be similar in tone — lots more nautical action, heroism and forbidden love.

LB: Something for us all to look forward to, then. What else is on your horizon?

AB: I have a short story called ‘90% Proof’ (when I say ’short’ I mean 10,000 words) which is due out fairly soon from Freya’s Bower in a m/m anthology called ‘Inherently Sexual’. I’m looking forward to that one coming out because, from the summaries I’ve seen of the other stories included, it should be a really good read.

I’m also busily writing another m/m short of about the same length, tentatively called ‘Away With The Faeries’, and when that’s finished I’m going to settle down and write a short, lighthearted contemporary novel, just for a bit of a break.

LB: I’m sure I have lots of company is wishing you best of luck with your new projects. It’s been a real pleasure, Alex. Thank you.

Alex Beecroft is the author of the novels Captain’s Surrender and The Witch’s Boy, along with several stories. She is currently at work on False Colours, a new Age of Sail novel. She’s also the founder of The Macaronis, a blog dedicated to writing gay historical fiction.

Lee Benoit reviews fiction at Uniquely Pleasurable and Rainbow Reviews, and Speak Its Name, and is the author of several stories published through Torquere Press.

Historical submission call - gay welcome

Lace and Blade
Closing Date August 1, 2008

Lace and Blade is accepting submissions for its second anthology of “elegant, sensual, romantic fantasy, emphasizing sharp verbal repartee as much as sharp pointed weapons, rapier rather than broadsword.”

Editor Deborah J. Ross is interested in “characters - both men and women - with vibrant personalities, complex, dashing, and very sexy. I’m particularly interested in stories that have magic and action, but in which conflict is resolved not by violence but by insight, creativity, and compassion. I’d love to see “win-win” endings, sense-of-wonder, plot twists and turnabout.

Alternate sexuality is welcome; eroticism a definite plus; exotic, non-Western European settings also encouraged. Please read the first volume to see what I’m looking for.” The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2008. There are no minimum or maximum lengths, though Ross says longer stories must be “extraordinary.” Ross will pay a 2 cents a word advance against royalties. The book will be released Valentine’s Day, 2009.

Complete guidelines are available at http://www.norilana.com/norilana-lb-guidelines.htm

Review: The Vesuvius Club (Graphic Novel) by Gatiss and Bass

Review by Hayden Thorne

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Mark Gatiss presents the first adventure of Lucifer Box rendered in every detail. Lucifer Box, the greatest portraitist of the Edwardian Age and England’s most dashing secret agent, investigates a series of bizarre disappearances and plunges headlong into low life and high society. Who is killing Britain’s most prominent vulcanologists? What secrets lie beyond the grave? And which tie goes best with a white carnation? See him confront the purple undead, instruct the mysterious and beguiling Bella Pok, disguise himself with a false moustache, face an ominous evil in the depths of a volcano, and come to grips with his new manservant, Charlie Jackpot.

REVIEW:
When I purchased Mark Gatiss’s book, I learned that it was also transformed into a graphic novel, and the long-slumbering manga/comic book fan in me stirred, bleary-eyed and pawing instinctively at the computer screen. I’d already seen previews of Ian Bass’s art style since Bass did the illustrations for Gatiss’s novel, and on that basis (in addition to curiosity as to how the novel could be interpreted in a visual medium), I eagerly snapped up a copy.

As I’ve already noted in my review of Gatiss’s novel, I was very much disappointed in the story, particularly in the way the second half seemed to fall apart, plot-wise. In the graphic novel, the story is distilled to the main mystery, and all other subplots have been removed. I’m not an illustrator, let alone a graphic novel artist. However, I’m very well aware of the difficulties that may come with turning something purely textual into something visual. Bass’s decision to rewrite the plot in some places is quite understandable, and to some extent, it does work.

On the whole, I like the art style despite its inconsistencies. Ian Bass’s illustrations work pretty well with the hybrid of mystery, sci-fi, comedy, and history that defines Gatiss’s novel. The characters are distinctive - as in their personalities are nicely captured and given more definition with an exaggerated detail or two. There are occasional decorative flourishes in the background or on the characters that make me think of Aubrey Beardsley - quite appropriate, given the historical period. It’s not a very “pretty” style, and manga fans who’re used to seeing beautifully stylized illustrations when it comes to gay-themed stories will be sorely disappointed in this book. Mark Gatiss’s novel is a romp, and it’s written in a very visual way (considering Gatiss’s writing background involving film, it’s not at all surprising). It translates well into graphic novel form, where the more fantastic elements that might not work in the book are quite at home.

In terms of plot, the graphic novel is rather lean. As mentioned before, subplots have been pruned, and the character list has dwindled to about half, the focus placed mostly on the main characters. If not completely rewritten, several scenes were dropped, many of which involved Bella Pok and her role in the book. Considering that she’s a significant player in one of the subplots (and it’s a subplot that’s really more of the throwaway kind that adds nothing to the overall story), her drastically reduced scenes make me wonder why she’s kept in the graphic novel at all. To show how much of a cad Lucifer Box is, maybe? If so, it doesn’t quite work, given the heavy emphasis on the main mystery, what with all those side stories being dropped. There’s just no room left for Lucifer Box’s amorous bisexual adventures.

What works in this case, though, is that Ian Bass gives us a much better treatment of Bella’s presence in Naples. In the novel, she’s there, and then she’s gone - a plot device that doesn’t work at all. In the graphic novel, she remains in Naples, and everything that takes place in the novel’s climax is squished into one setting, not two.

A final word of warning to readers: this graphic novel is for adults. There’s an orgy scene in a brothel (not very detailed), both het and gay, and one of the characters exposes his genitals. It’s an important detail in the story, trust me.

Buy the book: Amazon, Amazon UK

Review: A Hidden Beauty by Jamie Craig

Poetry drew them together. Forbidden love bound their hearts.

A student of letters, Micah Yardley wants one thing: To meet Jefferson Dering, a poet he’s long admired from afar. After hearing his idol speak at Harvard, Micah travels to Jefferson’s home in Wroxham, entertaining visions of discussing poetry over dinner and drinks. What he experiences exceeds anything he ever anticipated.

Jefferson finds Micah mesmerizing, passionate, everything he has ever wanted. But ten years earlier, caught in a compromising position with another young man, he exiled himself from Boston and proper society. Now Jefferson represses his desire out of respect for Micah, but his tumultuous emotions stir the restless ghost of Wroxham church—with deadly consequences.

Amid denial, desire, and the villagers rising panic, a single kiss is enough to change the course of their lives…and ignite the flame that could fulfill a generations-old promise.

Review by Alex Beecroft

To start with the outside, this is one of the most beautiful covers I’ve yet seen on an ebook; it’s moody, tasteful and sensual and, what’s more, it completely fits the contents of the book.  It might even be an illustration for a particular scene.

The cover sets a high standard and to my pleasure the book inside lived up to it.

Again, I’m pleased to find that the blurb is not at all misleading and does actually summarize what the story is about! I wish I didn’t have to be quite so impressed at both of these things.

This is a slow-paced, tender and beautiful love story between two poets, set – if I’m reading it correctly – in early 19th Century America. Micah is a young gentleman of good family, studying at Harvard, whose admiration for Jefferson’s poetry leads him to visit the man himself in his artistic exile. Micah’s innocence is such that initially he believes his infatuation is merely with Jefferson’s mind, his words, and the shock of discovering his own nature and his real desires is beautifully portrayed and very realistic.

One of the things I liked about the book was that it gave enough time for Micah’s journey of self-realization. Neither his innocence nor his eventual acceptance felt rushed or hard to believe. I also particularly appreciated the epistolary sections, where the different voices of the two men came across sharply. There’s something very charming about reading their love letters.

The slow and careful development of the relationship also allowed time for the forces of society to be amply ranged against the two men. I enjoyed – in a sort of masochistic way – the feeling that, slowly but surely, the jaws of intolerance were closing on the burgeoning love story. By the end I was on tenterhooks as to which force would come to the point of action first. The slow but sure build up of tension almost certainly contributed to the fact that the sex scenes in the book are some of the best I’ve read. By this time we know exactly how much they mean to both men, and some of that awe and wonder comes across, making these scenes truly intimate rather than merely voyeuristic.

However, the sex is also one of the things where I felt the balance of the book was just that little bit off. For my own tastes, there was slightly too much sex in the last quarter of the story. I found that it got in the way of both of the threats the couple faced – the threat of exposure, and the increasingly violent threat of the ghost in the church.

Speaking of which, to me, the ghost and his spooky doings felt a bit shoehorned in. I found myself far more aware of how dangerous it was for Micah – with his powerful father and vigilant tutors who already suspected Jefferson of homosexuality – to move in with Jefferson, than I was of the danger of the ghost. I was waiting for the long arm of the law to reach their idyll, and for the last minute flit to the safety of the wild West, all of which were looming deliciously on the horizon. But instead we had a church burning and the laying of a ghost. I daresay that it was metaphorical or thematically important and I wasn’t paying attention, but I felt it was a bit of a sidetrack.

Oh, and one other quibble; it took me a while to realize that Micah was an innocent young man who didn’t understand his own desires, because I was lead into error by the first sentence:

Prior to his journey, Micah Yardley would never have considered anticipation as the ultimate aphrodisiac.

I have to admit that I spent the first chapter and a half thinking that he was a worldly and debauched young aristo who had come into the country to corrupt a timid poet. Whether this was accidentally misleading, or a deliberate, amusing irony, I’m still not sure. It made for a strange twist in the head a couple of chapters in, which did leave me feeling a little seasick.

Apart from those few things, however, this is a book I really enjoyed – a book I felt immersed in with delight – and one that will go up on my favourites shelf to read again often.

Buy: Samhain

Review: The Alienist by Caleb Carr

New York City, 1896. A serial killer is on the loose, gruesomely preying upon cross-dressing boy prostitutes. Police detectives are making no progress solving the ghastly crimes. In fact, someone with power or influence seems to be bent on silencing witnesses and thwarting any investigation. Reform-minded police commissioner, and future president Theodore Roosevelt is determined to catch the killer and assembles an unconventional group of investigators headed by “alienist” Dr. Lazlo Kreizler. In the 19th century, when psychology was in its infancy, the mentally ill were considered “alienated” from themselves and society, and the experts who treated them were known as “alienists.”

Review by Erastes

A real meaty read this - about 500-600 pages in paperback and all of them worth reading, it gripped me from start to finish, and for my money it deserved its 25 weeks in the Publishers Weekly bestsellers chart.

It’s not a “gay historical” per se - none of the main characters are gay, but young male prostitutes are being killed so it does offer a fascinating insight into a culture that is not much written about.

What makes it compelling reading is the “serial profiling is in its infancy” (that and just about ALL the modern policing techniques that the team use, like fingerprinting, time of death and all the things CSI take for granted.)

It’s really gruesome, as would be expected. Carr doesn’t flinch from his descriptions, and of course anyone who watches modern crime dramas won’t find this a problem in the slightest. There’s also a lot - a LOT of chat., which I loved, but someone wanting non-stop Dan Brown action won’t appreciate that. Although there’s a lot of tearing around in landaus and barouches and hansoms, it’s not fast paced as a modern thriller and neither should it be, either.

The killer leaves very little in the way of clues; no-one’s seen him, and the boys are seemingly snatched out of locked rooms. It’s how the team piece the case together that makes this a fascinating read, and for me to applaud it as a magnificent work of fiction.

The characters are all vivid and believable. From Lazlo, the Alienist himself, John Moore the journalist, Miss Howard, the bluestocking who takes a post as secretary in the hopes of being the first woman detective, the two Jewish forensic scientists and three members of Lazlo’s household. I identified with them all and wished them well (although doubting they’d all make it through the book unscathed)

As a historical author I can only sit here with my jaw dropped in envy. The research that this book must have taken must have been staggering. It’s not just a matter of learning 19th century police techniques, but there’s obvious intelligence about the whole psychology behind serial murders and the Alienists who study them. Then there’s an indepth knowledge of the powder keg of New York socio-politics and a clear picture of a city on the edge; dragging itself from incipient corruption into a more enlightened age. Add on rich descriptions of buildings and streets that are no longer there, what’s being built, who runs which district, gangs and thugs and whore-houses…. The list is endless and I am in awe.

Very cleverly too, it teases the reader with red-herrings, which,being a red-herring phile I followed to conclusion every time. Highly enjoyable.

If you enjoy crime fiction, and are one of the four people in the world who hasn’t read this, then I recommend it heartily.

Amazon UK Amazon USA

Review: The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss

Review by Hayden Thorne

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
This sex-filled farce is part James Bond, part Austin Powers. Lucifer Box is a portrait painter and a rake who catches the eye of all the ladies. But there are two things these women don’t know about him. First, Lucifer is His Majesty’s top secret agent. Second, Lucifer is a mad, passionate lover…with his delectable right-hand man, Charlie. Together, the two must set out to discover why Britain’s most prominent scientists are turning up dead. They and a cast of quirky characters must work together to save the world from total destruction. And it all seems to center around an underground sex club, which goes to show that sometimes, you just have to mix business with pleasure.

REVIEW:
The first thing I need to point out in my review of Gatiss’ novel is the description above, which is taken directly from the book’s cover blurb. The description is misleading to a degree. Firstly, it’s not sex-filled - or at least as sex-filled as the blurb seems to impress upon readers. There are sex scenes, yes, but they’re few, and they’re of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. Even the description of the underground sex club isn’t as titillating as it might sound, with the details being largely general and almost dismissive in tone, with the emphasis more on atmosphere. Secondly, there’s the matter of Box’s “delectable right-hand man” and his relationship with him. For that bit, I’ll have to leave you in a cliffhanger of sorts while I go over other points first.

On the whole, The Vesuvius Club is a fun read. Very fun. Gatiss knows his Victorian and Edwardian London - please excuse the cliche - like the back of his hand. He firmly cements us in his world, its elegance and its seediness, its host of refined and coarse residents. He pours on the details without bogging down the narrative, and we’re left with vivid mental pictures of a time and a place that’s so far removed from ours but ends up feeling very real. Gatiss peoples his novel with a variety of quirky characters, and he gives them distinct personalities and names that make you think of Dickens: Lucifer Box, Charlie Jackpot, Bella Pok, Jocelyn Poop, Christopher Miracle, Emmanuel Quibble, etc.

Mark Gatiss is known as an author of Dr. Who novels, and he also writes for the new Dr. Who series and in fact wrote “The Unquiet Dead,” the episode involving Charles Dickens and zombies for the new series’ first season. One can certainly see his love of Victorian England (in the novel’s case, Edwardian England) in the way he establishes both the setting and the characters’ personalities. In the first half of the book, with the events taking place in London, the story is at its most interesting. Though a comedy and definitely a satire of spy/assassin/detective fiction, the novel still impresses us with a fairly complex plot and a quick pace, with the story being told from Lucifer Box’s point of view.

It’s when the novel’s action moves to Italy that things go down. It’s an odd switch - not in terms of location, no, but in terms of focus. In the first half of the novel, we’re treated to a funny and engaging Sherlock Holmes-style plot; in the second half of the novel, however, things unaccountably turn sci-fi, and what could have been a more solid climax and denoument becomes a study in absurd plot twists involving Mt. Vesuvius, a cult (which made me scratch my head a few times), and the mastermind (and master plot) behind the scientists’ deaths. In brief, there’s such an incongruence in the story elements between the first and the second half of the novel, and what starts out as a very promising Holmes-meets-Austin-Powers plot unravels into a rather weak and silly end.

As for Charlie Jackpot? He’s not introduced till the second half of the novel, which I feel is far too late for him to be as significant a character as the book’s description implies. Yes, he does become Box’s right-hand man, but at that point in the story, his participation brings with it a certain forced feeling into the mix. Lucifer Box, as the protagonist, is witty, self-centered, narcissistic, and an insufferable cad. He’s given so many great lines of the laugh-out-loud variety, but I don’t feel as attached to him as I’d like to be. For all his attractive roguish qualities, the man’s a bastard, and he even takes pleasure in hurting Charlie in one scene or telling some poor, unattractive rent boy that he’s butt-ugly, point blank.

There are a few subplots that also don’t feel satisfactorily tied up. Mrs. Knight’s disappearance and the murder of Abigail, for instance, though largely explained, still leaves holes insofar as justice being brought to the true criminal is concerned. There are also a few involving Bella Pok, which makes me wonder if Gatiss simply bit off more than he could chew in putting his mystery together.

The Vesuvius Club is the first of a trilogy involving Lucifer Box. This book has also been turned into a graphic novel, which I’m really interested in reading though I understand that it’s a distilled version of the original.

Buy the book: Amazon, Amazon UK

Review: Mr Page and Mr Clive by Neil Bartlett

It is Christmas Eve, 1956, and the reclusive Mr Page is remembering a dream from thirty years ago. The dream is about the rich and wild Mr Clive, a man who could have been Page’s twin, and what really happened to the beautiful white-haired boy who served in his house. And the dream is about Clive’s house itself–ostensibly modern and spacious but in truth deeply secretive, with its invisible network of staircases, corridors and hidden rooms. Neil Bartlett bears angry witness to the oppression of gays in the past and evokes their concealed world with dark, erotic tenderness.

Review by Erastes

I’ve just closed the book and am completely blown away.

It’s probably not for everyone, because it’s written in first person; is interspersed with (relevant) articles and news clippings; is written in a realistic diary-style; has a very campy-fussy-gay-man-tone and rambles quite extensively. But for my money it’s one of the best books I’ve read.

For a start it emphasises the very real fear that gay men were feeling in late 50’s England. Compare and contrast this with Isherwood’s bohemian gay life of A Single Man and you will appreciate the difference of Californian sun to the cold austere post-war severity and class-conciousness.

You’d think that - as the Labouchère amendment had been in place for 70 years - that the gay community (such as it was) would be a little more confident but for those who didn’t already know that was not the case, this book shines a light on the constant fear of discovery.

Mr Page is a wonderful character; from his first words “I’ve got the gas on, Lovely,” you immediately picture him: fussy, beautifully turned out, and alone. The entire diary is written with a core of the fear of detection running all the way through it, and he explains, just by the way he describes his life, why he’s so repressed because of the case of that household guard, those two navy boys, that man in the university - a catalogue of less fortunate men who have been “found out.” He even says that he can’t name names because if they found any of those names in this - they’d know. It’s a terrible thing to be so very afraid, afraid to love.

In a very real way, it reminds me of Rebecca; there’s a gothic feel to Mr Clive and his huge empty expensive house, and Mr Page even mentions the book at one point, which probably helps the comparison. Mr Page meets Mr Clive (a Gatsby type figure, apparent wealth and eccentric behaviour) outside the Turkish bath where Mr Pages goes every week. Although it’s very veiled (as Mr Page doesn’t want anyone getting hold of his memoir and naming names) it’s clear that the bathhouse is a meeting place, as such places have been in history.

Mr Page wonders why Mr Clive picks him up the way he does, first thinking that it is because they look so alike, but then realises it’s probably for other reasons. It’s not a friendship, never a friendship, but it’s compelling both to Mr Page and to the reader - and whether or not Mr Page’s reasoning at the end of the book- the reasons why Mr Clive did the things he did - are accurate, then that’s up to the reader.

The core of the book is one image: of one day in history 14 March - when Mr Page saw a blond man, naked, bathed in sunshine. This image is both a dream and a reality and what starts out as one certain image - what we think we know is happening - gradually unravels as Mr Page get more maudlin (fuelled by Christmas brandy) and we finally, tragically, understand what the image of the naked, blond man is really all about. You get a real feel that it’s the true meaning of the image that Mr Page has been trying to hide, but in the end, he had to get out.

I wish I could say more, but it’s difficult to do so without spoiling, despite the length of the book, it’s a very simple premise, fabulously written and I was jealous of every line. The ending had me sobbing, but not in a bad way, believe me.

This is definitely a keeper, a re-reader, an inspiration, and one of my essential reads.

I don’t often link to other sources, but I think that this essay on the book is well worth reading (after you’ve read the book, of course)

Buy: Amazon UK Amazon USA

Review: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the texture of life itself.

When I told a friend about this book, I said “it’s very well written” and she said “Well, der! Isherwood!” and I laughed. But then I’ve only read Goodbye to Berlin and I was very young then, and didn’t know good from bad.

It’s possibly one of the most perfect little books I’ve read, absorbing from the first page and written in such a way that it feels like first person but it’s actually written in third, astoundingly clever to my eyes. You get as easily into George’s head as if it were first person.

Set over 24 hours, it simply covers his thought processes as he moves through the day and you learn a lot about him and the world in which he lives. From the first section he touches your heart as - as anyone who has suffered bereavement will understand - he wakes up and remembers again that his lover is dead. But he’s not pessimistic about his outlook - he doesn’t like the way that conservatism is encroaching upon the once bohemian area where he lives - once where there was artists and poets and easy sexual values, families are moving in, with more straight-laced ideals, but in juxtoposition to this, he loves youth.

He teaches at the University and the scenes with the Gidget-era youth are rather sweet and truly give a window into a lost American world. He does watch the athletes for his own enjoyment which was a nice touch.

I loved his optimism, despite how much he missed Jim, and the way that he finds the light and the dark in his life. He interacts with many people throughout the day, he’s not at all an isolated person, but I was left feeling that he was spinning on the spot, lonely despite all the people who know and care from him. Without the one intimate friend he needed.

And really - that’s about it apart from(spoilers below)

Review: A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel by J S Cook

In London, with Jack the Ripper’s crimes still raw in the great city’s memory, a well-known male prostitute is brutally murdered, the head neatly severed, and the body set on fire. Detective Inspector Phillip Devlin of Scotland Yard, mid-thirties and secretly gay, is called to the murder scene by plainclothes constable Freddie Collins, and soon both Collins and Devlin are caught in a web of intrigue as more savage murders occur. A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel resonates with the sights, sounds, and atmosphere of 1880s London. Witty and engaging, it unfolds the story of a man who must brave not only the killer but also his own inner demons in order to end the violence that is harrowing the city.

Review by Erastes

Oh… I started this book with such brio. It started (and continued for some time) so well. A bloody murder in Victorian London, lots of gore, a bloody thumbprint and a mad-man on the loose. I was certain I was in for a great ride. Sadly I ended up rather disappointed, but the ride was - in the main - enjoyable.

Inpector Phillip Devlin appeals. He’s taciturn to the point of silence and keeps a lot bottled up. He’s got secrets, and that doesn’t only include being homosexual in an era where the Labouchere Amendment has homosexuals running scared. He’s a pioneer in his field, without being a Mary-Sue or a carbon copy Holmes clone, even though he knows a little more about forensics and handwriting and the like than your average plod.

The other main character, and what one hopes will turn out to be Devlin’s love-interest, is Collins, the earnest and not-so-bright devoted assistant. Again, he’s well drawn, and he convinces in his dedication and loyalty to Devlin but I got rather annoyed with the fact that we were constantly told how not-bright he was, he didn’t seem any less dim than the inspector.  Collins holds a large…torch for his inspector but in the days of the Blackmailer’s Charter - when no proof was needed to destroy a career - he has been quiet for a long time, until matters start to turn which drag secrets out into the daylight and both men are suddenly aware of the other in new ways.

As I said, from the promising start it boded well. Good characters, excellent murder, a thinking gay detective, burgeoning evolution of forensics, a couple of resurrection men…

That’s good, and it seemed promising when he spotted strange substances under fingernails and gunpowder up noses … but - well, it just doesn’t GO anywhere.

It just didn’t mesh. I was inspectin’ some detectin’ I suppose, seeing as how it started as such a classic detective novel but about half way through Devlin admits that all the clues he’s got lead nowhere and he’s baffled. And I was too - completely baffled!  I spent the next half of the book waiting impatiently for him to suddenly do a Poirot and say “Incroyable, I have been the imbecile! It’s all so simple!” but the eureka moment just didn’t happen and what started as Holmesian foresenic detection ended up in a sort of John Buchan style chase with everyone knowing what was going on apart from Devlin (and me). Very little is explained, very few loose ends were tied up and I was going “but.. but… what about the ambergris” after I’d shut the book in disappointment.

That being said, there’s some quite delicious writing in this, and all the characters are likeable and believable and very male in parts.  I think that I might just pick up some of Ms Cook’s other books to see what they are like, but having been raised on a diet of Poirot,Marple and Holmes - this didn’t really work for me.  I would be happier too, if the only 2 reviews on Amazon.com were not by the author herself!

Buy Amazon UK    Buy Amazon USA

 

Review: Kestrel on the Horizon by Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks

Blurb from Naomi Brooks’ site here:

Kestrel on the Horizon” is the first in a projected series of pirate novels. Nathaniel Collins never expected to be a slaveholder. But the sad blue eyes of the man on the block spurred him to an impulse purchase. Adlai had expected to inherit his white father’s estate, not be sold with it. He certainly never expected to live a life of piracy.

Review by Alex Beecroft

In a case of love, or at least lust, at first sight, Nathaniel Collins, an English privateer, buys Adlai at the auction of Adlai’s dead father’s goods and property. Collins intends Adlai for his cabin boy and lover, and this rapidly comes to pass, largely because Adlai does not assume he has the right to say ‘no’. Nevertheless, the pair soon grow fond of each other, and Adlai confesses his ambition to earn his freedom and to save enough money from plundering enemy ships to buy back his father’s plantation and run it himself.

This all seems to be going splendidly to plan until Collins’ old nemesis and prior captain, Thomas Harrison, comes on the scene.  Harrison nurtures an old love for Collins, along with a cruel streak, and a sadistic cabin boy of his own by the name of Samir.  Both of them are very keen on the idea of taking Adlai away from Collins and making both men suffer.  
Will Collins ever free his slave?  Will he get the chance, or will Harrison torture Adlai to death first?  Will Adlai ever get his plantation back?  Will Harrison ever get Collins back?  Most of these questions, but not all, are answered by the end of the book.
I find myself reluctant to go on to say whether I liked it or not, mainly because I love sea stories, but on the whole I didn’t care for this one.  I imagine from the ubiquity of pirates, and the presence of Tortuga as a major pirate port that this is set in the later half of the 17th Century.  But some of the medicine involved is mid to late 19th Century.  A crew member pours whiskey on a wound to ‘kill the animaculae’.  While animaculae had been discovered in the 17th Century, they were not in any way thought to cause disease, and sterilization did not occur as a medical concept until very recently.  Indeed, doctors in the 18th Century were glad to see a wound fester – they called it ‘laudable pus’ and considered it part of the normal healing process.  
At one point Adlai is kidnapped using ether, and a crew member says that he looked like a patient the doctor had been operating on earlier.  Given that anaesthesia was not used before the 1840s this puts the date long, long after the age of pirates.
The status of Collins also formed a long-running annoyance for my part.  He’s described as a privateer, and indeed he doesn’t take British ships.  Yet on several occasions he calls himself a pirate, and on one occasion he even hoists the red pirate flag.
To modern readers, there may not be much of a difference between a pirate and a privateer.  But at the time there was a vast chasm between the two.  As a privateer, Collins is a citizen of his country, bound by his country’s laws, entitled to the protection of His Majesty’s Navy on the sea.  He is perhaps not entirely respectable, but he is, nevertheless a civilized member of society.  A pirate is not.  A pirate is a terrorist, an outlaw, outside society, with no rights.  If a privateer was shot in the street, his killer would be arrested for murder; if a pirate was shot in the street, his killer would be congratulated and possibly rewarded.
There is a big difference.  And to my mind it’s a very interesting difference, keeping in tension the requirements of prize-taking ruthlessness at sea and civilized behaviour both at sea and on land.  I would have loved to see Collins’ status as a privateer gone into more deeply; what it meant to be somewhere in between a navy commander and a pirate captain.  But sadly that didn’t happen.  Other than never having to worry about being arrested, Collins is indistinguishable from a pirate.  He even hoists the pirate flag at one point!  I’m sure the authors must be aware that this flag means ’surrender or we kill every living thing on board’, and would instantly brand the vessel a pirate – legitimate prey for any vessel, including one belonging to his own country, that happened to be passing.
Obviously, these problems may seem terribly nit-picking.  That’s why I found myself reluctant to go into them – they spoiled my enjoyment, but they may not spoil the enjoyment of most readers.  I wondered if it was fair of me to criticise just on those grounds.
But when I think of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, with 17th Century pirates, 18th Century Navy, a mention of 19th Century Singapore and Will wearing a musketeer outfit, I don’t care about the lack of historical accuracy because the plot is such fun and the characters so engaging.  If I do care about it here, it may be because I’m not finding enough positives to counterbalance the errors.
For example, most of the action of the book occurs in taverns or in cabins aboard ship.  For a sea-story, there’s very little sea or scenery.  I don’t get the impression that the authors have really thought about the demands of life onboard ship.  At one point Collins demands that his crew set a watch because of the threat of Harrison, thus implying that there was no watch on deck as a regular requirement.  In which case, how on earth did they prevent the ship from being broached to and sunk in the middle of the night?  
I also found Collins and Harrison almost indistinguishable, Adlai too sweet and flawless, and Samir too much of an ‘oriental’ stereotype.  I think that if your kink is for obsessive relationships, dubious consent and power imbalances, then the sex scenes – and there are a lot of them – would make up for a great deal.  I did love the duel.  The fact that Collins prepared for the duel by practicing new techniques, rather than slumping into angst, made me feel well disposed to him in the last chapter or so.
I admired the fact that the book did not sweep slavery under the carpet, though Collins lost points with me for using his slave for sex, and the sudden progression of that relationship into true love didn’t quite work for me.  
On the whole it is a solidly written, well plotted book with battles, kidnaps and sexual shenanigans enough to satisfy most people.  The fact that it didn’t satisfy me may just have been because I was hoping for something different, and didn’t get it.  
I’m certainly going to give the sequel a go, because I’m curious to know whether Adlai manages to get his plantation (possibly no?), and whether Harrison returns as an avenging angel (almost certainly yes?).  I think, on the whole, he was the character I liked most.  And you can never have too many sea stories.  I’m hoping there will be more ship-handling and sailing in the next one, but maybe that’s just me!
 

Buy: Torquere Press  All Romance ebooks.com

Review: Oscar Wilde & the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth

This work is set in London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde’s unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms and the bohemian demi-monde to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation of what turns out to be a series of brutal killings.

Review by Erastes

Knowing of Gyles Brandreth from the television and radio, I rather thought this book might be a little “sophisticated” for me. He’s a vastly intelligent man and, like Stephen Fry, he often loses me with his mind but I needn’t have worried, because The Candlelight Murders is an enjoyable - almost frothy - murder mystery of the old school and thoroughly enjoyable.

It’s obvious from the word go that Brandreth is a big fan of Oscar Wilde and he sets the scene well. The books are narrated from the Point of View of Robert Sherrad, a real life friend of Wilde’s, and right at the beginning Robert makes it clear that although he loved Oscar, he was not his lover. The narration style is worthy of Watson, bumbling a good 20 steps behind the genius of Wilde as he burns his way across the page, leaving epithets and witticisms in his wake - believably so, as Brandreth explains that he would trial his “stock phrases” on his friends and relations before using them in his published works.

Oscar is totally believable, you can almost visualise him, almost believe that Brandreth had spent time with the great man, because he’s portrayed here in all of his greatness and his ambivalence. His love for his family and his wife is clear and yet the darker side of his life is never glossed over, not completely. It is clear that Sherrad knows of his predilections and they threaten to break through at any time.

I enjoyed this particularly because I grew up with Sayers and with Christie, I love romping through a book, catching some of the same clues as the detective and feeling smug, but I also love being led down a blind alley and being throughly duped by a clever writer. This doesn’t achieve that totally, not - for example - in the same magnificence as “Ten Little Niggers” did, or “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”, because I actually realised what was going on a couple of chapters towards the end. But it did a damned good job and once started it was impossible to put down.

The period detail is spectacularly well done, the demimonde feel of the fin-de-siecle cities, the descriptions of Oscar’s house, the dinner parties and most intriguingly the group of men who love boys is perfectly expressed. The cast of characters, ranging from the aesthetes to the grotesque as wonderfully drawn and suit the era and the darker undercurrents exactly.

Anyone who loves a good murder mystery will love this, and the homoerotic sublayers add even more flavour.

Buy: Buy Amazon UK Buy Amazon USA

Review: The Carnivorous Lamb by Agustin Gomez-Arcos

Review by Hayden Thorne

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
A brilliant, lunatic tale filled with black humor and decadence, The Carnivorous Lamb is a compelling family saga of power, love, and politics. Into a shuttered house, haunted by ghosts of past rebellion and Franco’s regime, Ignacio is born. His mother despises him; his failed father ignores him; his older brother becomes his savior, his confidant…his lover. Shocking, irresistibly erotic, their forbidden relationship becomes the center of exiled Spanish author Agustin Gomez-Arcos’ savagely funny, stunningly controversial novel - and a damning indictment that neatly spears Franco, family, Church, and the modern world.

REVIEW:
Ignacio and Antonio are brothers. They’re also lovers. Priests are hebephilic perverts, and they stink of incense and shit. Franco’s regime drips from every corner of a decaying house that’s literally, emotionally, and psychologically cut off from the rest of Spain. Within this household, religion and politics play themselves out day after day, shaping Ignacio’s birth, childhood, and adolescence, offering us a bizarre tableau of family dysfunction and oppression.

The novel might sound like an erotic melodrama, but it isn’t. What Gomez-Arcos does - and does magnificently - is take Spain, the Catholic Church, Franco, and notions of family by the hair, and skewer them through with a knife. Again. And again. And again. His tone is brazen, defiant, and angry, with Ignacio telling his story with a dark, biting humor that kept me enthralled from start to finish. I have, I must admit, a special fondness for angry, subversive fiction that takes no prisoners, and The Carnivorous Lamb does so with wit and a vicious satire that would make Juvenal weep with pride (sort of). Like Lindsay Anderson’s If…, the novel, in a nutshell, is one big “Fuck you!” from start to finish.

To say that the characters are fascinating would be an understatement. Because Gomez-Arcos limits his scope to Ignacio’s family, bringing in an occasional outsider in order to place the family within a certain social context or, in the case of Don Gonzalo (the priest) and Don Pepe (the tutor), to just plain tear apart, the characters are explored to near minute detail in a kind of vacuum. Their complicated relationships, their ambivalence toward each other (in the case of Ignacio and his mother, a mutual hatred), and their ties to the past (notably the Spanish Civil War) play out like a surreal stage production.

Of all the characters, Matilde (Ignacio’s mother) is the most interesting and the most complex. She’s born into wealth, and her family’s aligned with Franco’s Nationalists, but she loves and marries a Republican, whom her family saves from imprisonment. Her conflicting allegiances show themselves again and again, and at times, we’re left wondering which side she truly belongs. She starts out as a satirical figure, representing the Catholic church in many ways, but as the novel progresses and Ignacio begins to touch on the more “hidden” corners of her character, she grows into a much more fascinating and exasperating figure.

Carlos (the father) and Antonio are the least developed of the major players. Carlos, a former Republican soldier and failed lawyer, spends his days hiding in his study, listening to old propaganda records that talk about peace and victory while locals consult with him over legal matters. He wastes away slowly, practically dead well before he dies. Antonio’s given more room for development, but though he remains a constant in Ignacio’s life - a strong, erotic, protective figure who exerts a remarkably strong influence on Ignacio - he still remains largely in the periphery.

Ignacio’s anger - simmering and sustained throughout the novel - colors our views of Spain, but we’re also made to laugh (maybe in shock, maybe in sympathy) at the occasional wry observation and simply out-and-out hysterical commentaries and exchanges he makes with the other characters. The scenes involving his baptism, confirmation, and first communion, for instance, are classic. Even America, represented by Evelyn (the graduate with a degree in Home Economics), isn’t spared a vicious tongue-lashing. Some readers might find Ignacio’s loathing of his mother and of Evelyn a blatant show of misogyny, but I think that’s limiting one’s reading of the text to a surface level. The nature of the story itself is so bizarre and outlandish that to read on a literal level would be doing the book a bit of injustice.

As the novel progresses, and Ignacio’s rage escalates, the scenes turn more and more surreal. Even Evelyn, who plays a small but effective part near the end of the book, becomes less of a character and more of a metaphor, and it’s clear that it isn’t because she’s a woman that Ignacio learns to despise her. It’s what she represents in addition to her role in the family, what with all his contemptuous observations of her diploma and her American bacon-and-eggs efficiency in the kitchen.

Gomez-Arcos’s novel can be taken apart in so many ways, given its subject and its narrative approach. It’s the kind of novel that’s memorable in its in-your-face subversion and celebration of anarchy. Darkly funny, incredibly erotic, I give this book four stars for the writing and one extra star for the damned fine cojones.

Buy the book: Amazon, Amazon UK

Review: Cane by Stevie Woods

From the blurb: Sint Marteen 1855. Privileged young Pieter may have grown up on a sugar cane plantation, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the way his father runs things. He falls in love with Joss, one of his father’s slaves, and their affair sets off a chain of events that is destined to tear them apart. When Pieter’s father dies, he returns home hoping to find Joss. It’s too late for their love, but maybe it’s not too late for Pieter to find happiness. As he makes his way to America, Pieter realizes old conflicts still rage, and even as he finds a new love, danger stalks his every move. Can Pieter learn to overcome the hate and fear that threaten to tear his world apart?

Review by Erastes

I received a jolt right at the beginning of this book, and it set me on edge. It worried me almost immediately about the research, but in the end I shouldn’t have worried. Pieter’s family’s plantation’s name - Spinnaker- probably sounded Dutch to the author, but the term (for a sail) wasn’t coined until the latter part of the 19th century, and therefore couldn’t have been the name of a tulip in the 1600’s!

However this is just about the only gaffe that I spotted. I did wonder briefly why the slaves on Spinnaker didn’t leg it to the French side of the island - or at least wondered why there wasn’t mention of that - seeing as how the French had abolished slavery some 7 years previously, but maybe they had their reasons.

It’s an intriguing premise and Woods has obviously done a ton of research about Sint Maarten, sugarcane and the Dutch trade, and that shows. There’s rather a little too much history at the beginning of the book - which follows on from the very opening scene, a sex-scene between Pieter and Joss and pulls you away from a erotic beginning into HISTORY! Then the time-line jumps back and forth and is a little disruptive, and in fact (as far as I can see, from just one reading) goes wrong at one point, and Pieter goes from being nearly 21 to 25 years old in only 2 years.

Pieter’s complete ignorance of his surroundings, and the workings of the plantation, relationships of the slaves struck me as rather implausible. He’s about 12 before he starts asking questions, and .. well… that just didn’t ring very true. He doesn’t seem to have a tutor, and I’d imagine that his father would have had him learning the business (as an only son) pretty early on. He has, however to become an abolitionist so I suppose this might have been necessary. What struck me, too, is that the voices were all so similar. You had a Dutch-Caribbean young man who’d never been off the island, a young negro slave, an American plantation owner from Louisiana and so on, but they all spoke identically. I’m not saying that I want phonetic representations of accents, but I’d like to have seen some differentiation here and there.

I did like the way that the author showed the reasons why some plantation owners could not follow the abolitionist route, but I did find it ironic that, for all Pieter’s talk and attempts to convince Sebastian of his views, he still owned slaves in St Marteen, even if they did run the plantation themselves.

The conflict takes a while to kick in, and everything is bit laboured for the first half of the book - particularly the episode back in Holland where nothing much happens except to introduce Cane himself - but when it does it relies heavily on not only one major coincidence but two, which was a bit much to swallow. The reintroduction of previous characters could have been done a little more elegantly.

The thing is, that I did enjoy this book - I appreciated the work that the author had put into it, and I liked the set up at the end which screams sequel. If there is one, I’ll definitely be buying it, but there were too many reasons that stopped this from being a book which, with a few tweaks, was one that would have easily earned five stars.

eta: The author correctly corrects me and advises me that there was a tulip called Spinnaker, so bad Erastes. Also that she had addressed the matter of the Dutch slaves fleeing to the French side of the island but that came out in the editing.

Torquere Press

Buy from Fictionwise

Review: Wheel of Fortune by Julia Talbot

From the Blurb: Fortunato is a mute lad, making his way in the shadowy world of Renaissance Venice. Angelo is the scribe charged with his education in reading and writing, all at the order of the mysterious Master Riccio. These reluctant allies come to know each other better than anyone could imagine and as Fortunato is dragged into a world of deceit and danger, Angelo is the only one he can trust and with any luck, love. Romantic historical suspense that begs for more at every cliffhanger.

Review by Alex Beecroft

When I started reading this, I was overjoyed by the way the author conjured up the setting.  I really felt that yes, life in the Doge’s palace in Venice might have been just like this for a child learning to be a tumbler and acrobat, and an ex-monastic scribe valued for his illuminations.  That delight carried me along for a good quarter of the book.  Little things, like the ink stains on Angelo’s hands, or the mosaic on the floor of the church, Basillio’s success at playing the female parts in plays, the atmosphere of the store-room where the old musical instruments are kept – these were so well written and enthralling that I was initially swept away simply by the lavish detail.

Both Angelo and Fortunato are very likeable characters, and I was intrigued by Fortunato’s dumbness and the efforts that the other characters had to make to communicate with him.  It’s an amusing twist that Fortunato is rejected by his family and goes through the angst so typical of m/m protagonists, but not because he’s gay – he’s flawed because he can’t speak.

The romance between Angelo and Fortunato also starts delightfully, with Angelo initially resentful of being given the task of teaching the boy to read, then charmed by Fortunato’s sweetness of temper, while dead set and determined not to allow himself to be attracted by someone who is at that point still a child.  The growing tenderness and trust which they each have for each other is another beauty of the book.  It’s nice to see a relationship which is obviously built on mutual kindness and liking, rather than the usual concentration on mere looks and lust.

Unfortunately my initial delight faded a little once I got past the midpoint of the book.  Fortunato began to grow up, enough to have a threesome with his friends and to develop fully realized desire for Angelo.  But his characterization did not seem to change in any way.  It’s hard to explain, but I felt he was still written as a sweet innocent child.  I was looking for some evidence that the child had turned into a man, and I didn’t find it.  This was also reflected in the way the other characters treated Fortunato; even at the end, when he’s stormed the dungeons and rescued his lover (while somehow still remaining sweet and innocent) the other characters persist in mothering him.  That had made sense at the beginning, but gradually became less and less convincing.

I also felt that once sex entered the equation, the novel’s wonderful attention to detail and characterization got sidelined in favour of fitting in a certain quota of sex scenes.  Fortunato’s discovery that his training has been in order to equip him to become Master Riccio’s assassin, and his reaction to being sent out on his first mission is passed by almost in parentheses.  All we see of it is him returning to weep on Angelo’s shoulder, and Angelo being outraged that Fortunato’s kind and gentle nature has been taken advantage of.  The fact that he’s killed someone in cold blood is ignored as though it was a triviality.

I’m not saying that you can’t have a naturally gentle person who is forced to kill and is devastated by it; I’m just saying that I didn’t feel it was given the weight it should have carried.  Angelo’s experience in the dungeons was passed over in almost the same kind of rush – as if it was an impediment to the story, rather than the story itself.  I came away wondering if the author had a deadline to hit, and had written the second half faster than the first.

I also became progressively more annoyed at the tarot card quotes scattered thick and fast throughout.  I have a pack myself and have occasionally used them for trying to think of a plot, but somehow showing them decreased the build up of tension and the feeling that the story was a cohesive whole.  Starting a new chapter with ’sudden reversal of fortune’ or the like just made the text that came next feel as though it was colouring in between the lines of a picture you’d already seen.

From the first half of the novel, I formed the impression that Julia Talbot was a very talented writer, and I’m glad to have read the book for that alone.  I’ll be looking out for her other stuff with high hopes.  But I probably won’t be reading this one again.

Buy Fictionwise 

Review: Aubade by Kenneth Martin

Review by Hayden Thorne

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
It is the beginning of the summer, and Paul has just left school. Estranged from the people around him and unable to communicate with his parents, he feels lonely and unloved. But his life suddenly changes when he meets a young medical student whom he renames Gary. Their relationship develops through the long hot summer, to reach its climax with the approach of autumn.

REVIEW:
Kenneth Martin was only sixteen when he wrote Aubade, using his poverty-stricken adolescence as well as people he knew for the book’s central conflict and characters. Given those, one can say that Aubade is the ultimate gay young adult novel. Elizabeth Bowen’s review for the Tatler sums it up best: “Most books about [adolescence] come from the pressure of emotional memory: Kenneth Martin writes from the very heart of them.”

The novel is very short: 150-plus pages with large text. I read the story first and then the book’s introduction afterwards - not advisable, in hindsight, because Kenneth Martin’s introduction provides a long, detailed account of his adolescence, his family, their hardships, and his experiences in publishing and beyond. Knowing all those beforehand would have made my reading experience much more comfortable because at the very least, I’d have been able to read through the book with a better understanding of Paul’s character.

Stylistically, Martin’s age and inexperience show. The prose alternates between concise and clunky. The novel’s rough around the edges, at times lyrical in its descriptions, and other times devoid of sensory details. The dialogue also teeters between natural and stilted, and Martin provides an interesting - and rather poignant - reason for his attempts at keeping proper syntax and not colloquial speech.

Paul, as the novel’s main character, makes things a little more difficult if one decided to skip Martin’s introduction. On the whole, Paul is unlikable. He’s cruel to his parents, his friends, and toward girls. He’s bored and restless, withdrawn and angry, selfish and proud, and he lashes out at the smallest provocation. Without understanding Martin’s background, it’s quite easy to simply dismiss Paul as another insufferable, angst-ridden teenager who’s suffocating under the pressures of family and convention. As it turns out, things aren’t that simple with him.

Kenneth Martin’s childhood and adolescence were a miserable time for him, being an adopted son of a large, impoverished Irish family (he was adopted to replace a child who died), where endless hardship had taught everyone to be silent and walled up despite their close physical proximity. Growing up under such unhappy circumstances, coupled with his own development as a confused gay kid, Martin lets it all out through Paul. The absurd quarrels, the outbursts of rage, the illogical cruelty, the loneliness, the extreme self-centeredness - everything about Paul becomes more solid once its foundation in real life is understood.

I think the only thing that makes Paul’s circumstances a little implausible is the fact that Martin makes Paul’s family more financially stable than his real-life family. The degree of Paul’s rage, then, is somewhat disproportionate, but I suppose one can always argue that we’re still looking at things through a disaffected teenager’s eyes. In that sense, financial stability doesn’t really matter.

Paul’s romance with Gary actually makes up a fairly small portion of the novel. Yes, most of the book focuses on Paul: his relationship with his dysfunctional family and his friends, with only occasional references to his restlessness and loss of interest in girls and growing fascination for Gary, at least in the first two-thirds of the book. The novel’s more of a character study, which builds up in the direction of Paul’s awakening sexuality. It’s in the last third of the book that we’re finally shown the growing relationship between the two young men.

The minor characters are limited in development. There’s enough there for us to have a pretty basic idea of who they are, but because a lot of them tease us with all sorts of interesting histories, complexities, and quirks, it won’t come as a surprise if we ultimately feel a bit let down because they’re not explored as deeply as perhaps they should be. Gary, especially, remains elusive despite Martin’s efforts at bringing him to life. There’s a certain untouchable quality in him that makes him, almost literally, an ideal that poor Paul can only dream of. That Paul renames him Gary (Gary’s real name is John) can be seen as a reflection of that, which to me is the saddest detail in the book.

The lack of polish in a sixteen-year-old writer’s first novel can be a bit off-putting at times, but the intensity of feeling and the crazy, sometimes disjointed fumbling around for answers work well in tandem with the absence of stylistic maturity.

Buy the book: Amazon, Amazon UK

Review: Finistère by Fritz Peters

Review by Hayden Thorne

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
A lyrical gay coming-of-age story first published in 1951, acclaimed by many including Gore Vidal and The New York Times, about Matthew, a young American who moves to France with his mother following his parents’ divorce. In boarding school and on trips with his mother into the countryside, Matthew investigates his budding sexuality and complicated new relationships with trepidation and hardship until he is forced to confront finistère - land’s end - where the brutal truths of the world can be found.

REVIEW:
Though the novel was published in the 1950s, the story takes place in the late 1920s. As a historical novel that’s also a coming-of-age story, it’s very much the classic problem novel of which we see a lot being published as Young Adult fiction. What we have in modern sophistication and cynicism becomes postwar America’s confining views about homosexuality, and that said, it comes as no surprise that Peters’s novel is a tragedy - the kind of pre-Stonewall fiction that some readers criticize or dismiss as self-hating and/or trashy.

On the whole, Finistère is both easy and difficult to read, the reasons lying largely in Peters’s narrative style. Given the delicacy of the subject - fifteen-year-old Matthew’s process of self-discovery, which involves a man who’s twice his age - Peters tackles it with a certain elegance and grace that adds color to the frank sensuality of Matthew’s relationship with Michel. The sex scenes are suggestive, not explicit, and even the slightest gesture, touch, or even kiss is beautifully erotic.

The characters’ complexities, particularly those facets of their natures that are shaped by their pasts, are subtly and skillfully drawn. The effects vary, of course, depending on the character and how Peters is able to develop him or her. Some minor characters - such as Edith, Matthew’s stepmother - are on the scene for a very limited span of time and yet are able to convey so much about themselves through mannerisms, dialogue, casual gestures, and simple interactions with others. There are those - such as Paul - who are there from start to finish and yet come across as unsatisfying and flat. In Paul’s case, Peters does try to say as much as he can about the man’s character, but in the end, it’s simply not enough. Paul, in fact, though adding texture and color to Peters’s impressive cast of characters, remains a problem for me. He’s simply too villainous, and while there’s an effort in the end to give him a more multi-dimensional quality, it’s simply too late in the story for him to rouse sympathy in me. To some extent, Peters’s efforts in developing him in the final chapters feel almost forced.

The greatest weakness in the book, I think, lies in Peters’s use of the third person omniscient POV. While readers are treated to close and in-depth looks at each character, the heavy dependence on so much telling, not as much showing, can take its toll. The book relies a lot on introspection and exposition, and being in a character’s head can last a few pages at a stretch. It’s during those moments when I feel myself slow down quite a bit in my reading. Despite the interest these scenes raise in me regarding a given character, they can be relentless and even repetitive. There are, in fact, scenes in which Michel ruminates about the same things that Matthew does in other scenes. There are also times in which situations that are shown in a previous chapter resurface in another, but this time it does so in the form of exposition, with the reader rehashing the same issue in, say, Scott’s head.

On the other hand, this omniscient POV also works to give the characters - pretty much all of them - varying degrees of complexity, which really adds to the dramatic texture of the plot. Most of them undergo a process of transformation, and some end up being revelations. It’s an effective approach to take in telling Matthew’s story, especially when one considers that Matthew, at fifteen, is the only youngster through most of the book. His innocence comes under fire from his environment, which is peopled with bitter, loving, pragmatic, misguided, selfish adults. The boy is alone through his ordeal, and the sympathy he rouses in his readers is sharp and strong. It’s quite easy to see Michael Bronski’s point in the book’s introduction when he says that Matthew, in his youth and innocence, becomes a metaphorical symbol of “the naturalness and the ingenuousness of homosexual desire.”

Michael Bronski’s lengthy introduction is a gem in itself, for it provides readers a fascinating mini-study of postwar gay fiction and, therefore, a historical context for the conception of Finistère and its successful reception. His discussion of post-Stonewall attitudes toward pre-Stonewall gay fiction is also significant, given the fact that most postwar gay novels are tragedies, conveying pessimistic views of homosexuality against the backdrop of past mores.

“While it is understandable that gay readers of the 1970s would reject these earlier novels in favor of a new wealth of literature that was being published by both mainstream and alternative publishing houses post-Stonewall, the rejection incurred emotional costs as well. Not admitting these novels into a growing canon of gay and lesbian literature meant that the gay reader of the 1970s did not allow himself access to the world view - and more importantly, the emotions and the psychological mind-set of homosexuals who had come before him…These new gay cultural norms were so set that they did not allow gay liberationists to take the time to understand the people or the cultures of the recent past. This lack of cultural empathy created a generational divide that was difficult for people on both sides.”

Well said, and that can certainly be applied to new generations of readers as well.

Buy the book: Amazon, Amazon UK

Best GBLT book of 2007?

I’ve been contacted by Dear Author and Smart Bitches and they’ve asked if Speak Its Name would like to help nominate some of the books for ther upcoming awards, namely the GBLT category. Rather proud to be asked, have to say.

Now, I know my favourite books of this year, but I’ve only read a fraction, and I’ve read NO lesbian, Bi and only one Trans - so PLEASE (please please) if you have a recommendation can you comment here and I’ll knock together a short list. 

I’m assuming that they want Romance.

If it helps you, Lambda nominees are here

Many thanks to you all btw for making the comm the success it has been in such a short time.

Review: A Warrior’s Hope, by Sabrina Luna

From the Blurb:
As political unrest swirls in the palace of Tutankhamun, Commander Thabit, a Warrior of Amun-Ra, is eager for a stolen moment with his lover, the royal scribe, Akil. Leading his men to the border to face an unfamiliar tribe of renegades, Thabit isn’t sure when he’ll return home to Thebes…or his beloved again.

Review by Alex Beecroft 

This is a short read – 29 pages, of which fully10 pages are copyright information, a biography of the author and PHAZE advertising.  As a short erotic story it would be unfair to expect too much plot, and if anything this story has the opposite problem.  There is more plot than there needs to be:

Thabit is a warrior of Thebes, who is being sent out by the evil vizier to pacify some border tribes.  Thabit wants to persuade the tribes to move away by diplomacy, but the evil vizier wants them destroyed.  Little, eight year old Tutankhamun daren’t say anything against the evil vizier in public, but sneaks out at night dressed in the clothes of the common people to tell Thabit that he wants his army to just go and ask the tribes nicely to move away.  Thabit and his lover Akil then get together for some sex in a bath-house.  When Thabit leaves in the morning he looks back to find the young king holding Akil’s hand, and thinks to himself that there is hope that Tut will grow up to get rid of the evil vizier and a new age of justice for all will reign (or something like that.)

I’m not quite sure how to tackle this.  On the one hand I like plot, but on the other hand, I like a set up for something to happen to be followed by that thing actually happening.  Given the amount of time spent on Thabit’s mission to the border tribes, I’d have liked to see what happened when he got to the border and had to deal with the tribes.  Given the ‘omg, the country is in the thrall of an evil vizier‘, I’d have liked to see the protagonists working together to get rid of the evil vizier.  It seems odd to have two threads of a story set up, and then to ignore them both in favour of hot bath-house sex.

By all means, lets have the hot bath-house sex, but maybe it just doesn’t need to come wrapped in a set up for a story that never happens.

In addition, there were a couple of other things about the framing story that just didn’t sit right with me.  The evil vizier, the virtuous young king who goes among his people in disguise, they seemed too archetypal to be a true reflection of a specific court.  Even though Tutankhamun may very well have historically been murdered before he could begin to rule (a fact that makes the ending of this story heavily ironic) the handling of the issues felt fairy-tale, even cliché, rather than historical.

I also felt that the author had tweaked the characters for modern sensibilities, in a way that made it hard for me to believe in them any more.

Would any ancient king really think it was a good idea to just talk to potential invaders?  When a culture’s iconography depicts their king standing over a kneeling prisoner, about to bash his brains in, the idea of him using his armies for gentle diplomacy seems hard to swallow.  Equally, I could not buy Tutankhamun—the living incarnation of a god—holding hands with a scribe.  Even a modern eight year old boy is beginning to think it’s below his dignity to hold hands with adults; would the god-king of Egypt really be more approachable?

It’s quite possible that I’m over-thinking this.  At this rate my review will be longer than the story itself, but I feel that in some respects the author shot herself in the foot.  The bath-house scene, which seems to me to be the heart of the story, is really very nice.  The author has quite a gift with metaphor and description, and the bath house, the steam, the scent of lotuses and myrrh, for the first time really captured that evocative sense of being in another, more romantic country.

As a little sensual vignette, the bath house scene made sense.  I wouldn’t say it was the best written sex scene I’ve ever read, but it was very pleasant, and there was no feeling that something was missing or wrong.  It was just the envelope which this central sex scene came in that let it down.

I know I’m always asking for more plot, but this could either have done with less, or with being long enough to wrap up the threads of plot that were started at the beginning but never finished.

Having said all that, I did enjoy it, and I would love to see more with this sort of setting.  Ancient Egypt is a treasure house of stories just waiting to be opened, and this was like a first glimpse through the wall into a jumble of gold.

Buy: Phaze