Review: The Pretty Gentleman by Max Fincher

Erotic sketches, a blackmail letter, a closeted aristocrat, his ambitious lover, and a sacrificial murder. Love, betrayal, deception and vengeance in Regency’s London’s art world.

George Rowlands, an aspiring young painter and apprentice to his father in the Haymarket theatre, meets Sir Henry Wallace while drawing the river at Richmond. Wallace invites George to his home in St. James’s square to draw his collection of sculpture and his good-looking valet Gregorio Franchese. Securing him a place to study painting at the Royal Academy of Arts under the eccentric Gothic painter, Henry Fuseli, George meets the mysterious John McCarther who befriends him. Meanwhile, Lady Arabella Wallace records in her diary her suspicions about her husband’s night-time absences and his ‘enthusiasm’ for his new protégé. George discovers his every move with Wallace is being watched after Wallace confesses his love for him.

ebook – 306 pages

Review by Erastes

I’ve been musing a while as to whether I should still be reviewing self-published books on this blog, and the editing–I’m sorry to say–on this book has pushed me so close to the edge of deciding, it’s only going to take one more like this to get me to fall off the fence one way or the other. From the huge list of helpers, encouragers and friends that the author lists in his acknowledgements, you’d think SOMEONE might have pointed out that he has a comma abuse problem. As well as subject confusion, and many other issues such as random tense changes, homonym mistakes and typos.

Sidebar: Self Published authors. I’m sick of this. Don’t go skipping towards self-publishing with the attitude that by not having to give most of your royalties to your publisher you can coin it. Think rather that you should be paying a fucking editor the money your publisher would have. Because? If you skip this, cut corners and think gleefully at the money you’ve “saved” you’ll produce a shoddy product which no one will bloody BUY. Rather defeats the object. I apologise for losing my temper, but this book really tipped me over the edge, and when you review books and you read so many self-published books which clearly are not ready for publication, and there’s so many authors doing good work, it makes me mad.

That all being said, there is something to like in this book. If it had not had that kernel of promise I would have either not reviewed it at all, or dismissed it with a half of one star for putting words in a line–kind of the equivalent of putting one’s name at the top of an exam paper, but there is talent here, there is a knack for description and the ability to communicate a time and place. It’s just a shame that the shoddy workmanship drags it down.

The other main problem is the pacing; putting aside all other issues, if this had been the type of polished self-publication–as say, The Painting was–I would still have problems with the execution. It’s possibly the most realistic Regency set book I’ve read, the research has been done mostly impeccably and you really feel that–with the descriptions of the grit and grime of the streets and the dark, candlelit rooms that you are in a time before gas lighting and electricity. But the first half of the book is so painfully slow and laboured if I hadn’t been reviewing it I would have given up, and I almost never feel that way. There’s just nothing much going on–George meets Wallace by chance whilst out painting the landscape and so slowly you can almost see the glaciers growing faster they move to a position of artist and patron while George falls in love with Wallace. Apart from one instance where George follows Wallace in stalkery fashion to Vere Street and another time he sees someone he thinks is following him, for over 50 percent of the book nothing much else happens. Oh, there’s attendance at art school, and the occasional party, and endless pages of George painting and sketching–all interspersed with the increasingly paranoid journal entries of Wallace’s wife, but there’s no real sense of foreboding or even burgeoning love on either side. George tells us he’s (probably, how can he tell?) in love with Wallace on numerous occasions, but he doesn’t really give any reason for that, nor is the reader given any. Wallace, for me, was a thoroughly objectionable, spoilt brat who wants everything his own way, and everyone to agree with his own opinions. He’s not even depicted as being entirely mesmerising which would explain why George falls so completely under his spell.

As I said, there’s a lot of historical detail in the book, most of which is accurate as far as I could tell–I wasn’t knocked out by modern language or attitudes. But many of the touches which the author obviously wanted to put in so we can tell he did the research were a bit superfluous and I was often thinking – “yeah, ok, nice scene, good description, but what’s the point of it in the plot?” I also rolled my eyes at George being paid £200 for his very first portrait and then wondering how he was going to live – the minimum conversion of that sum of money is well over £11k so it’s unlikely he’d have had any money problems for a good long while.

The major conflict, when it happens is not unexpected, but is actually well-handled. Wallace proves himself to be the git I took him to be all along which was gratifying, at least. I think what the author was aiming for was a gradual escalation of the plotline as after the middle of the book things start to kick off, but the beginning needs to have some acceleration rather than pages of walking around painting and or looking at things.

So, I’m torn about the book. On one hand it’s well done to the extent of the feel and the paranoia and the atmosphere of the times, but the painfully slow pacing would make it a do not finish for many. I would probably recommend it as a read if you can get past the pacing – AND if you are prepared to put up with the legion of grammatical errors throughout. I would advise the author to get it very carefully proofed by someone who knows how to punctuate, at the very least. A neatly edited version of this would have earned a 3.5 but as it is–specially the conversion from PDF to Kindle where all the double Ts were entirely missing–I can’t give it more than a 2.5

Author’s Website

Buy at Amazon UK | Amazon USA |

Review: The Actor and the Earl by Rebecca Cohen

Elizabethan actor Sebastian Hewel takes his bow at the proscenium only to embark on the role of a lifetime. When his twin sister, Bronwyn, reneges on the arrangement to marry Earl Anthony Crofton, Sebastian reluctantly takes her place. At nineteen, Sebastian knows his days as a leading lady are numbered, but with this last performance, he hopes to restore his family’s name and pay off his late father’s debts. Never mind the danger of losing his head should he be discovered. 

He didn’t expect Anthony to be so charming and alluring—not to mention shrewd. While he applauds Sebastian’s plan, Anthony offers a mutually beneficial arrangement instead. Sebastian will need every drop of talent he has to survive with both his head and his heart intact, because this is the best part he’s ever had

ebook and paperback – 216 pages

Review by Erastes

This is a plot done before, and to be honest, done better–in Madcap Masquerade by Penelope Roth–but that’s not to say it’s not worth a read.

It’s set in an era that isn’t covered enough in gay historicals–Elizabethan England and although, as the title explains, one of the protagonists is an actor it’s not set solely in a theatre. Shakespeare does get a mention here and there, though–is there anyone living in London at this time who didn’t know him!?

Overall, it’s nicely readable, and the plot canters on engagingly, but there is a major error that runs throughout which made me grind my teeth and will do for others I suspect. Let me just get that out of the way first. An Earl is usually “an earl of somewhere” e.g. the Earl of Pembroke OR simply as a prefix e.g. Earl Waldgrave. They are NOT addressed as “Earl Crofton” but as “Lord Crofton” as is the case here.

That aside, the book makes a good attempt to get a flavour of the time without an overabundance of detail. The food is mostly convincing–there are good descriptions of feasts where the meat goes on forever and there’s nary a fork in attendance–and the clothes are nicely illustrated: the gaudy doublet and hose of the men and the uncomfortable and restrictive clothes of the women. There was one scene where Sebastian put on his own corset which I found a little unlikely, but in the main it’s well done. The author even manages to tip a nod to the make-up of the day–white lead paint for the face–by having Lord Crofton (Anthony) forbid Sebastian to wear it when not at court.

The way the deception was managed–having Sebastian “visit” in his male persona while Lady Crofton was in bed with a mysterious illness was a bit unlikely. Despite having a couple of staff in on the truth it was rather unbelievable that a country house with dozens of staff would not sniff out what was really happening. There’s one section where Sebastian (as a male) goes over to visit neighbours and has a serious fall, and no mention of contacting his sister is made, let alone how that sister’s illness is continued when Sebastian isn’t on the premises. I mean, there’s no flushing toilets, so someone would notice at the very least, the lack of chamber pots.

There’s a fair smattering of OKHomo throughout, however. Everyone who is in on the secret from the beginning is all right with it, and the people who discover it as the book progresses are also perfectly fine, and are more concerned for the couple’s safety than the horror of what they are doing, as was the tone of the day. In fact everyone in the book–with the exception of Sebastian’s sister–is thoroughly Nice and all the conflict, which could easily come from external sources in this time and place, is managed by jealousy.

And that’s its major failing, really because I was never really convinced of the couple’s devotion to each other. That’s possibly because of the fact that the point of view is only from Sebastian’s side, so we never see Anthony’s feelings–although that’s part of the plot, too. But I didn’t understand WHY Sebastian fell in love with Anthony; I could see why Anthony fell for Sebastian as he’s quite doormatty until he finally has enough, but Anthony–other than being sexy and seductive–isn’t particularly nice until he realises that he might lose Sebastian for good.

So, all in all, a decent enough read and if you like the era you’ll probably appreciate it, but not a keeper for me. The sequel will be out later this year.

Author’s Blog

Buy at Dreamspinner

Review: Life Begins at 40 by Jessie Blackwood

After months of physiotherapy, Group Captain Jack Ratigan has regained some of the mobility lost in plane crash at the end of World War II. But six years later, he still requires the care of his cousin’s butler, Ifan—who is also Jack’s secret lover. In an era when homosexuality is an imprisonable offence, they have to maintain the utmost discretion or risk prosecution.

Insecurities, outside attacks, and misunderstandings are close to tearing Jack and Ifan apart: Jack’s impending middle age, an act of violence in their house, a letter threatening the close-knit community Jack now calls home—and the detective inspector from another jurisdiction investigating a similar unsolved case. The threat of exposure is growing, and for their love to survive, Jack and Ifan must determine who their true friends are—and if they are strongest together or apart.

ebook only 112 pages

Review by Erastes

OK. I had to work hard with this book and I took the effort because it’s pretty well written and it’s clear the author has talent. But there’s a but coming, you can tell, can’t you?

But.

It’s Torchwood fanfiction and it’s another one of those annoyingly done ones which have taken the merest cursory swipe of the cleaning rag to remove any serial numbers and frankly might as well not have bothered because anyone who has watched the programme and has any knowledge of the characters is going to spot it. Perhaps the place the author should have started was by not having her main protagonist be Captain Jack–an Englishman who was raised in America (hence the American accent) who flew in the RAF and (sigh) has a Welsh lover.

In fact this is the sequel to “Per Ardua” which Speak Its Name reviewed in 2010.

When you get this level of blatant non-conversion (despite it being set in the late 1940’s/early 50’s) it’s (for me, as least) almost impossible to enjoy the book as a book for itself as the characters from the canon keep leaping in and you are saying “oh, here’s Gwen, (Bronwen) here’s Rees  (Hugh) and so on and so on. I was constantly on edge waiting for the Japanese character to make an entrance. The author–who is possibly too close to it, and obviously extremely fond of the characters–probably thinks that this is merely an homage, and the little references (like to TW’s Captain Jack’s greatcoat) are such fun but it’s an extreme irritant when you know what’s being ripped off.

You might say that this shouldn’t be part of a review and I disagree. I don’t see how the author can think she’s fooled anyone by this veneer of changing the fandom. Just because it takes place in a different time from Torchwood doesn’t make it any less recognisable, and if I was the Torchwood creators and had spotted this, I think I would have issued letters to the publisher.  The trouble is that Dreamspinner have published near-to-the-knuckle fanfic, and outright plagiarism before and although in the latter case they nipped the book in the bud, I would have thought they would be very very careful choosing projects since then. The disclaimer clearly says: “Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously…” which in the case of character, clearly isn’t true.

THAT  BEING SAID, I can’t decry the book for entertainment value. I liked the story. I mean I already liked the characters, so that was a given. Blackwood makes Jack a little more vulnerable in that he’s had a major crash in his aeroplane before the story starts and it’s taken him months to get back on his feet and he’s only just managed that. There’s some nice tension introduced with poison pen letters, bringing their relationship into jeopardy and the relationship stretches almost to breaking point because of it and Jack’s infirmity.

I have to say I did chuckle a bit when Ifan (sigh) who is the Ianto character goes around declaiming that they hadn’t been at ALL indiscreet either inside or outside the house when two minutes later he’s calling Jack “cariad” in an open part of the house where anyone could have walked in. Not to mention having blazing arguments in their bedroom as well as loads of hot monkey sex. Not terribly discreet at all, old boy, to be honest.

I was rather confused too, when the poison pen person was revealed. The general trope for this kind of thing is to have it revealed at the end after we’ve met all the characters and for it to be someone we’ve met, whether we suspect them or not. However it was all cleared up in a short action sequence, and I was left scratching my head because I didn’t care or know who it was.

The reviewer of the previous book in the series had similar issues – that of the war taking a sideline to the relationship, and for me this shoehorning a plot, which had great promise, into the book only to tear it away and concentrate more on birthday parties and birthday presents left me feeling short-changed. But then this is basically romance fanfic for Torchwood fans, and isn’t about the plot, it’s more about how next to get Jack and Ifan into a schmoopy situation with their arms around each other.

As a continuing romance it works well and read simply as that I enjoyed the story as it was, it was just a little light when it could have had more punch. There’s a fair amount of repetition particularly at the beginning of the story where we are told about ten times that Ifan is Jack’s companion, Bronwen’s butler and goodness knows what which irritated me and some of the back story is lengthy and unnecessary as some of it was dealt with later on in dialogue and frankly could all have been dispatched thusly.

I will leave it, as usual, for the reader to decide whether to buy this book or not. Personally I wouldn’t want to make money on someone else’s characters–and I’d be scared to while they are very firmly still in copyright. It’s a good enough story, and that’s why I can’t understand why someone who writes as well as Miss Blackwood does can’t create her own world and characters and have them live it out, rather than those already belonging to Russell T Davis.

Author’s website

Buy at Dreamspinner Press

Review: Journey to Rai-Lay by Michael Joseph

Journey to Rai-Lay is the sequel to Journey to Angkor. It follows Henry, whose brief affair with Piero causes the Sicilian to be sent off on his journey to Angkor. Separated from the man he thought he might love, blaming himself for it, and still under the thumb of his uncle, Henry spirals into a deep depression, seeking sex in the underbelly of London’s docks, where more often than not he’s beaten and abused. But it’s while nursing a beer in a seedy docklands pub that Henry meets James Brooke.

Henry’s chance meeting with Brooke launches him on a journey of discovery. A journey that has him learning the ropes as a sailor, and learning more about himself and what he really needs. Sometimes we find what we need in the most unlikely places.

ebook only–122 pages

Review by Erastes

This is a sequel of sorts to Journey to Ankhor which I reviewed last year. I say of sorts because it follows Henry’s story who Piero left behind in England, and doesn’t feature Piero in person at all. For those who have been, or who would like to go to Singapore and Rangoon and other places in the area, it’s written by a man who has been based in Bangkok for 20 years and his experience helps. He writes well and descriptively and it’s clear he’s been to many of these places. He works as a travel writer and it shows.

But while the scenery is hotly pretty and the sex pretty hot, I had two problems with this book, one of which is probably more subjective than the other. Firstly, it’s again (I had the same problem with the first book, if I remember)  more of a travelogue than a novel, and doesn’t go into nearly enough detail to be a proper travelogue, so it falls between two stools and doesn’t really succeed in either genre. Basically nothing much happens. The only conflict–other than Henry “running away” from his not-actually-very-wicked-at-all-Uncle in the first place–is when he’s swept overboard when pirates attack the ship he’s on. As with so many other characters in books, he’s taken on the ship in the first place knowing nothing, learns how to do everything with no real problems at all, and makes friends wherever he goes.

After he’s swept overboard he floats around for two days before being washed up on a beach and amazingly the village he’s rescued by is manned (scuse the pun) by men who prefer men, and these men all welcome him with open arms. It really stretches the bounds of imagination here. To be washed up exactly there has the same coincidence factor as Doctor Doolittle sticking a pin in an entire atlas in order to find the Giant Pink Sea Snail. If Henry had, perhaps, heard of this village, if it had been a dangerous journey or trek to find it, and he’d arrived half dead but having achieved this aim, it would have been 1. more believable and 2. more of a story.

As it is, there’s a lot of making love, picking fruit, making love, picking fruit and then two journeys to visit the parents of each protagonist where some stuff is eaten and no-one cares that they are shagging like rabbits in a wooden bed on wooden floorboards, not even the Victorian parents of Henry. Nothing dreadful happens and they return to their fruit picking to live endless and dreary lives full of amazing sex. A couple of things struck me as the weeks went on in the book were:

1. Why he took so long to start learning the language – long after he’d started a relationship with one of the natives and

2. why it took him so long (people arrived on the island to “rescue him” before he really thought it necessary) to think about other people and how worried and sad his parents and friends would be having thought he had perished at sea. It was hugely selfish of him.

It’s not a bad book, and it absorbed me enough to keep me reading but if I hadn’t been reading for a review I would have given up because the second major problem I had with this book was the editing. I can excuse a few typos scattered here and there but there are just so many here that it seems that it wasn’t even run through Word, or had even the most cursory “here, mate, have a look through this and point out the typos” wasn’t done, let alone any kind of professional editing. There are just too many errors to be excused. I don’t think the word “led” was ever used when “lead” could be put in there instead. So many words missing, so many letters missing “The could see the gathering dark clouds ahead of them.” is just one example. So many misspellings, it was simply inexcusable. I can understand that professional editing for self published authors can be out of the price range, but there are many people on the internet who would be happy to enter into a quid-pro-quo arrangement editing books. Even a grammar check on Word would have found many of these mistakes.

It’s a shame because Joseph lets himself down in this respect and readers are unlikely to have the patience I had. I found that instead of letting myself read and enjoy the story–even though it was slightly uneventful it did show that Joseph’s credentials as a travel writer were solid–I found myself tensed up waiting for the next mistake, which did, I’m afraid, happen on just about every Kindle page.

The historical time line has been altered, but Joseph mentions this, which is helpful, and I wish more authors did the same.

I do recommend the book for people interested in the area, or who enjoy a nice uneventful story with plenty of perfect sex, but a story to fire my interest has actually to have a story not just a documentary style of discovering new people and nothing happening. If you do try it, I’d advise you to wait until the author issues a new edition because I am sure any reader will find the legion of errors very distracting and perhaps off-putting. Edited to perfection this would get a 3½, but in the state it’s in now, I can’t give it more than 2½ which is a shame.

Author’s Website

Buy at  Amazon UK | Amazon USA | Gumroad ePub MOBI PDF

Review: The Walled Garden by F.M. Parkinson

William Ashton, retained as a gardener by Edward Hillier, discovers his new master to be a detached and driven man. Over the years, as travail and tragedy bring them closer together, he understands that they have more in common than he first realised, but the affection they feel for one another will be sorely tested by boundaries both of class and of rigid Victorian morality. Like the private garden behind the high walls their love must flourish only in the strictest secrecy – or else it will not do so at all.

102,000 words/380 pages /ebook only

Review by Erastes

I’m in two minds about this book.

While I have to say I appreciated most of the writing–which is deliberately done in an old-fashioned, if not quite Victorian style–this book annoyed me quite a lot for various reasons.

Firstly nothing much happens and while some may say that it’s simply a gentle, old-fashioned style it takes more than an old-fashioned style to create an old fashioned book.  Emma, Jane Eyre and books like that had plenty of things happening. Instead of things happening, this book contained what seemed like nothing much more than filler in many places–there’s a section where Hillier’s manager is getting old and gets replaced which is entirely pointless and dull for example and goes on for pages. The problem is that much of this filler is relatively pointless or if it seems to have a point, then it’s never followed up.

It takes the protagonists an endless age to get together, and that’s not exactly filled with angst filled nights, or rivals for affections, or anything particularly interesting. It’s simply because Hillier doesn’t find Ashton attractive until quite late in the day. To be honest, I can’t see what on earth Ashton saw in Hillier because his behaviour and attitude is pretty unpleasant–although he’s like that with more than Ashton. He’s much loved in the village which puzzled me because he wasn’t shown as doing anything for them other than at one point attending another pointless scenario–a ball on behalf of a campaign for laying drains. Other than that he does nebulous work “writing letters” and attending Parliament.

There’s an overuse of the hurt/comfort trope which raises its head not once, not twice but a colossal three times throughout the book, each time Hillier getting ill and Ashton running around getting him well and getting literally no thanks for it. This, aside from them having an argument, is the main use of conflict and together with lack of plot made for pretty dull reading.

However, although not very exciting–and we can’t always have post-chaise chases and gun fights in every book, it’s quite readable, and if it wasn’t for the final problem that had me grinding my teeth it would have got a 3.

It’s epithets. There are a record winning number of epithets in this book and I got to the stage of bursting into laughter when I found a new one. It’s like the author had had a rule sheet which said “you must never use the character’s name more than once on a page.”

Hillier is known as the lawyer, alternately, but Ashton wins the prize as “the broader man” “the gardener”, “the secretary” “the former gardener”, “the former secretary” and many many others. When there’s a scene with just the two of them it’s like there’s six people in the room. I hope, should Parkinson do another book, they will–or their editor will–ruthlessly red-pen this habit as it’s annoying as hell.

So while I appreciated the writing–mostly–the story didn’t so much grab me as much as mire me in treacle and I found it a heavy going read. But you might enjoy it more than I.

No website that I could find.

Buy at Manifold Press

Review: Almost an Equal by Heather Boyd

When Nathan Shern, Duke of Byworth’s, empty sham of a marriage is threatened by a fellow duke he is naturally aggrieved. He cannot allow the potentially damaging contents of his wife’s diary to reveal the depths of their estrangement because exposure of his secret dalliances with other men would taint his innocent children’s lives. Not to mention end his life. So, without revealing his mission to his steward, Henry Stackpool, a man he trusts for everything else, Nathan undertakes to steal the diary back alone.

Former pickpocket and molly house whore, Henry Stackpool, works hard to keep his position as right hand to a moral man, the Duke of Byworth, but he fears his kind hearted employer is ill-equipped for a confrontation with his unstable opponent. Yet Henry cannot reveal his knowledge of the threat without exposing the secrets of his past or his keen interest in Byworth’s safety. So when fate places Henry in harms way, he risks his hard won reputation to retrieve the diary. Yet he too is held captive, and when Byworth comes to his rescue his lies are revealed.

Can Byworth forgive him for his deception and will Henry keep the country life he’s grown to love?

Review by Erastes

Sadly unoriginal story which I think I’ve read at least six times since starting reviewing the genre. That’s not to say that it’s not readable, because it is and at $2.99 it’s not expensive. But it says nothing new and the characters and plot are so derivative I got a little bored.

Two men who both fancy each other and of course neither knows and both think they have heterosexual inclinations, then there’s an intervention and suddenly PING they fall into bed together–they can’t even look at each other (including in front of the children which was mildly repellent, no control at all) without getting instant hard-ons. You know. Then when they do go to bed, rather than being “Almost an Equal” the servant goes from calling the Duke “Your Grace” to “Nate” (after being asked to call him Nathan.) And in a day or so they are madly in love. Of course. Sound familiar? Yes.

Oh, and course the Token Woman who is necessarily Evil.

Then of course there’s the obligatory BDSM elements which seem to be de-rigeur these days. It appears that you simply can’t be a Regency homosexual without either being a sadistic rapist OR wanting to play BDSM games.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, it’s self-published and yes, the editing is dire. The author clearly didn’t bother to have anyone check it over (or if she did, she needs to use someone else) because there are dozens of typos–lack of apostrophes where they need to be, wrong homonyms etc etc.  I’m this close from never reviewing self-pubbed books again at this point.

I found myself intrigued, though in some respect. The books is subtitled “The Hunt Club Chronicles book 1” and Henry and his friend “Archer” were both whores at the ubiquitous upper class gay brothel so I would be interested in reading more about the background of the two men. It might have been better though had the saga started in the Club and shown how they left rather than showing it as backstory.

There is a large proportion of sex in the book, which will probably please many. The build up is teasing and then there’s many long, long scenes which are meticulously described and well-written. Although, once again, there’s nothing new here, the sex scenes were the best parts of the book for me.

I might try book 2 if it gets published, but if it’s not noticeably better than this I won’t be going on to book 3. Unmemorable.

Author’s website

Buy at Smashreads

Review: Butterfly Dream by Dave Lara and Bud Gundy

At 6 years old, long before he discovers that he is gay, Banat Frantz learns that being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany is a bewildering crime for which he and his family must pay. Fire and loathing greet his emerging consciousness and a resourceful child begins to learn survival skills. Violently forced from their home and a successful business, his family immigrates to Holland but discover that they haven’t traveled far enough. They realize too late that Hitler’s mania would spread across a continent. The Nazis wrench the family apart, tossing them into the maw of the holocaust where only survival matters. Even in places where humanity itself chokes on the ashes of hatred, Banat realizes that he is gay and has fallen in love with another young Jew. The knowledge shapes his existence as he copes with the relentless horror of his life in a series of ever-more grim and nightmarish places until he finds himself in the hushed and gray world of Auschwitz, where silent screams fill every mind. But nothing can truly kill the spirit if it is filled with a longing for beauty. A young man of such sensibilities can forge moments of sublime bliss in whatever setting he encounters, and through a network of Jewish actors, writers, singers and intellectuals he learns that art can shelter his passions and that his very longing is his refuge. From his earliest memories of Nazi rallies that unleashed teeming hatred, to his redemption in a New York gay club, Banat Frantz lives an entire life before it ever really begins.

Review by Erastes

I find books about the concentration camps difficult to review and rate, let alone that they are often difficult–that is, painful–to read and this is no exception. One feels that one should have an automatic sympathetic response to the book, that one should praise it because of the subject matter, and by criticising it, one is somehow lessening the horror of what actually happened in Europe (and elsewhere.)

But although there was much to like about the book, I’m going to be critical too. Firstly, it’s another self-published book, and like nearly all self-published books (note I said ‘nearly’ before you get on your self-publishing high horse) the editing is appalling. Not merely shoddy, but absolutely unforgiveable. If the book had been through a second pair of eyes other than the two authors’ then that editor needs to have his/her red pen forcibly inserted somewhere. So if you are going to take on the book–and for some that will be a difficult decision, you’ll need to take onboard that not only is the subject matter tricky, but the editing will make you want to throw your e-reader at the wall.

Basically it’s the story of the Jewish boy, Banat, who, when the story begins is about six and he witnesses one of the rallies that Hitler was having in the 30’s. Things had already started to become difficult for Jews at this time, trading was limited and hatred was common-place and open. There’s a shocking scene where Banat was beaten up on the street by the father of a school-friend and no-one helps him at all. It’s a powerful scene, but was marred for me by there being no repercussions about it. Banat had been told to stay in, that it wasn’t safe–and although I’m sure his parents would have been less annoyed with him when he came back with a bloody bruised face, no mention was made of what happened when he did go home. There’s a lot of this kind of loose end stuff lying around which again, an editor would probably have helped with.

The problem I had with baby Banat, and again and again throughout the book is that I would have preferred it to be through the eyes of the protagonist himself. Instead of which, it’s written as a memoir, with all the hindsight and knowledge of what is going to happen and a knowledge of world events. It probably suits more people this way, but I think if Mockingbird had been written from the perspective of a older Scout it wouldn’t have had the same impact. The author as narrator can’t help but talk about things that are happening, that are going to happen, things that Banat could not possibly have known about and these intruded into his day-to-day experiences, when I would have preferred just to know about those experiences and not the world stage. We know what happened on the world stage, and on a small scale, those things only affected Banat in the way of him being Jewish.

However, as a memoir, it’s very readable–aside from the appalling editing. The concentration camp sections seem a little lighter than I was expecting. I’m not saying that I wanted in-depth descriptions of what Banat went through but really, other than a lack of food and warmth he managed to have a bit of a charmed life and drifted through the camps with what seemed very little danger to himself. Others disappeared but he not only survived–as people did–but he kept his father with him and remained in “safe” occupations for the most part. When he does mention the horror around him, like dead people littered around the camp its almost a surprise because the suffering hadn’t really been mentioned much before and I knew he had to be suffering every day.

So we can imagine Banat’s suffering, and what he’s going through, but I had to import it from information  gleaned from documentaries, books and films on the subject. Seeing as how terrible things didn’t happen to him–he’s even spared from being a bum-chum to a guard simply by saying “no thanks”–it then surprised me that he developed pretty bad PTSD after the war. He begins to suffer from “waking nightmares” and although I know his experiences in the camps could not have been good ones, because we aren’t told the horrors, his waking nightmares seem a bit over the top.

The days after the immediate liberation were a bit convenient. A group of them set off together–and the Russians don’t help them, being rather pre-occupied, and they find a camp where British soldiers had been held. There’s loads of food here, and they find a cow and a pig too. I found this a bit of a stretch, because why would the British soldiers–who they met later–leave behind so much food? Again, it’s all a little too pat, a little too charmed. He manages to get to Paris with no difficulty to retrieve his mother and getting the papers and money to return again is a piece of cake.

When he moves to America it’s much the same. He has more than enough money to live on as his father sends him loads, and when he does get a job it’s handed to him on a plate, and it’s a good job too.

It’s in New York where I noticed a large continuity hiccup and that worried me about the research for the rest of the book, as up to now I had been taking as gospel what I was reading was accurate as to dates and times. There’s mention of Caffe Cino – a cafe opened in 1958 by a retired dancer – and which became the birthplace of “off-off-Broadway” plays – but it certainly wasn’t around in 1948!

The ending is unsurprising, but sweet and all in all I enjoyed the read. I wouldn’t read it again though, even if the errors were taken out–and I highly recommend to the authors that they address this, it’s just too War-Lite for my taste.

Authors’ Websites: Bud Gundy  Dave Lara

Amazon UK   Amazon USA (available as print and ebook)

Review: Keta Diablo – The Devil’s Heel

Five years ago Drew Hibbard dismissed Rogan Brockport from his life. Now, they meet again at the Governor’s Ball and Rogan will know the reason for the abrupt, unexplained cut. After Rogan saves Drew’s life during a pirate raid, he kidnaps him and the perfect opportunity to extract answers from Drew is finally at hand.

Betrayal
Retribution
Undying Love
The Devil’s Heel

Review by Emily Gained

Sadly, during the first few pages, I discovered that this wasn’t the kind of book I’d normally choose to read. First of all, there’s more purple prose than I can stand on an empty stomach (I found the previous book, “Magnolia Heat” less afflicted by that, so one of them might have benefited from a good editor or simply a different process/taste in the author).

To me, the prose wasn’t just purple, it also confused the hell out of me. Here’s a representative sample right from the start:

“From the lofty balcony, Rogan Brockport watched the merriment in the crowded ballroom and squelched a smirk. Polite society would be astonished to discover he found their existence mundane and tedious.

He lifted the goblet of burgundy to his lips, took a sip, and smiled. The foremost reason for his appearance tonight, and the object of his intense perusal, had finally arrived. The parchment in Rogan’s vest pocket—a summons from the Governor—rustled when he pulled himself from the railing and devoured the man’s beauty.

The young widower, Drew Hibbard, wound his way elegantly through the crowd, nodded to several bystanders and stopped briefly to present a white-gloved hand to the fools of Virginia’s Parliament.

Attired in an ensemble fashioned after the London gentry—a mauve silk coat and matching breeches—a dreamlike beauty enveloped Drew. His midnight hair glimmered beneath the crystal chandeliers, and although Rogan couldn’t see his soulful eyes at the moment, he knew from memory they matched to perfection his dove gray waistcoat. A bevy of flushed maidens surged forth and surrounded him, their peacock fans fluttering like leaves caught up in an eddy.

In mourning after the death of his wife six months ago, Drew’s self-imposed exile had not diminished his allure or his captivating magnificence. Christ, the man embodied beauty.

Rogan fought an overpowering urge to quit the balcony and seek him out, gaze into the gunmetal eyes, lose his soul in the shimmering, long, black hair, and watch his spine stiffen when he offered his hand. Drew’s distress over seeing him again would be palpable, and equal to his. He had a score to settle with the meretricious widower and he’d waited a lifetime, it seemed, for tonight.”

Diablo is going for the old shtick of an innocent (Drew Hibbard) being seduced by a rogue—a Byronic hero, dark and brooding and arrogant, but the effect fell completely flat for me. Both characters are so over the top that I just couldn’t connect to any of them. Rogan (not Josh) is the caricature of a rogue, so arrogant he makes your toe nails fall off. Domineering, so driven to get his man—willing or not—that he comes across like a psychopath.

Drew, while innocent and all appalled about how his ex-lover treats him (for example, he threatens to shoot Drew’s dog! Now there’s a sexy man you want to spend your life with) also needs Rogan’s cock so badly he turns into a whimpering, spineless wretch who loves getting semi-forced and semi-seduced. Hey, I love some good forced seduction with the best of them, but I found the characters way too over the top and the writing and set-up too melodramatic.

Plotwise, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on, because it’s all just stage dressing for the sex scenes. There’s some hare-brained scheme for Rogan to join a famous pirate, and he dances through that small challenge.

So when the famous pirate attacks Drew, Rogan can carry him off to safety for some rogering. The interesting plot-oriented scenes were brushed over and were clearly subordinated to the “romance” plot. Only, the “romance” plot in this case isn’t much of a romance, since the characters are so dysfunctional and dependent, nevermind completely controlled by their desire (read: hard cocks) that I didn’t believe for a moment that anybody loved anybody. In a way, the simpering spineless Drew deserves the domineering psychopath Rogan, but I really didn’t want any part in their relationship, let alone read about it.

There’s ample sex in this short piece, and if you don’t mind their rather unbelievable recovery period between the fucking and the purple prose and look for some historical porn to fill forty-five minutes of boredom, check this out. It wasn’t for me.

Author’s website

Noble Romance Publishing

Review: A Gentleman and His Jockey by JM Cartwright

Jockey Gem Hardaway has a race strategy that will not only carry him and Pilate to victory, it will also show that he’s the best jockey at Templeton Yard. Lord Templeton, the Earl of Vickers, knows exactly what he wants to have happen at the racecourse. He demands Gem’s obedience.

When an unruly horse intervenes, the Earl insists on a meeting of the minds. Gem is shocked to learn exactly what that entails.

Review by Erastes

A very basic little short story about a jockey who likes men and the description of a race and the consequences of him not obeying the instructions of the horse’s owner regarding that race. Basically build-up, race, sex but it fills ten minutes of your time. I wouldn’t say it’s worth actually paying for,and I’d baulk at paying $2.29/£1.40 for it (even though I did!) 99c would be a much more reasonable price, and even so it’s not much for that price.

There’s no real grounding as to when and where the story takes place, just some generic racecourse during “the earlier days” of racing—I’m guessing early Victorian perhaps or Georgian. Nothing wrong with it but nothing to write home about either.

Author’s Website

Amazon UK    Amazon USA

Review: Over the Mountain of the Moon by Reiko Morgan

Tetsuya, a young male courtesan, is living a life of relative safety until an unknown samurai called Jin arrives on his doorstep, bringing passion and death. Awakened to the strange paths of destiny, Tetsuya chooses to leave the only place he has ever known to follow a samurai who is on a quest for vengeance. Their heels dogged at every turn by paid assassins, Tetsuya and Jin learn to trust each other as they discover hidden truths which may get them killed before their love has a chance to redeem them both.

Review by Sal Davis

The cover of this book is absolutely stunning, even in the black and white version I saw. It’s even better in colour. Deana C. Jamroz has done Reiko Morgan proud, illustrating a key scene in the book in a powerful and tasteful manner.

The character illustrated is Tetsuya, a male prostitute at the top of his profession. Beautiful and androgynous, he is a talented musician as well as being top class in the sack, and has reached the stage where he can pick and choose amongst the clients at the inn where he is employed, though not always wisely. He has a comfortable place to live, enough to eat, good friends amongst the other workers at the inn and in the town. But all that is turned upside down when he intervenes to save a young girl from a wandering soldier and is, in turn rescued by a samurai called Jin.

A day or two later Jin is imperilled and Tetsuya is able to return the favour, thus beginning a relationship that takes Tetsuya from everything he knows and setting them both on a long hard road to adventure and danger. Jin, naturally, is not what he seems, and Tetsuya is far more than the pretty boy for hire that he appears to be at the beginning of the book. That they are destined to be together is established almost immediately, and that their love for each other is unwavering is one of the main themes of the story. Most of the conflict is external, gleaned from plots concerning political manouvring and vengeance.

I know nothing – nothing at all – about early feudal Japan. I haven’t even read Shogun by James Clavell. So from an historical point of view I have no idea how accurate or inaccurate is the author’s depiction of the period. This is a bit of a pity because, as I read, I frequently found myself feeling that I was missing very important points. At other times I laughed at what I assumed to be irony, then wondered if it was supposed to be funny. I found Tetsuya’s girliness and helplessness irritating. That Jin had to spend so much time carrying him around and looking after him when they were in very real danger annoyed me rather than impressing me with his devotion. In short – I just don’t think I understand the tropes of this genre of novel. I have the feeling it’s edging into yaoi territory and the rules that I am used to with western style plotting no longer apply. I also had some problems with the style. There’s a lot of telling rather than showing. In fact I had to go back and check that the first couple of pages of the book were actually part of the story because they read far more like a prologue to give unfamiliar readers some background than a novel. Production values were good, but there are some awkwardly used words, and some very clunky phrasing here and there that the editor should have picked up on.

I honestly tried to like it but it was just too different right from the beginning for me to be able to get into the story. I think that if a reader is a fan of manga or anime they’ll probably have a whale of a time with it but for me – sorry, no, it’s not on the read again pile

Couldn’t find an author’s website

Buy from MLR

Review: The Matelot by Ariel Tachna

Their pirate vessel destroyed, Captain Amery White, ship’s surgeon Gavin Watson, and quartermaster Quinn Davies are left without a livelihood or a home. The three men have served together since they were old enough to put to sea, sharing hardships and comfort until Amery and Gavin formalized their union with a matelotage—the pirate equivalent of a marriage contract.

Now they’ve been offered a letter of marque and a fine English galleon with enough speed and firepower to catch and capture any ship in the Caribbean. But their mission brings back memories long-buried and puts a strain on Amery and Gavin’s relationship, especially when the Silver Queen captures a Spanish slave ship, bringing the very young, very beautiful, and very abused Eliodoro to their crew.

Quinn finds himself torn between the love he’s always had for his friends and his desire for their new crew member. When secrets from the past come to light and cause a rift between Amery and Gavin, Quinn will have to choose between substituting for Gavin’s true love and becoming the center of Eliodoro’s world.

Review by Sal Davis

I do like pirates. I know I’m on very shaky ground historically speaking because pirates tended to be syphilitic psychopaths with bad personal hygiene and worse morals, but from an entertainment point of view pirates are excellent box office. Swash buckling, passion, open or no shirts, wind-blown hair, healthy exercise in the fresh air, a little light robbery from people who deserve it – the cover of The Matelot conjures up all of that. Cover artist Analise Dubner has produced a well-balanced sepia toned image that depicts Quinn and Eliodoro, the two main protagonists of the novel, very well.

Relationships in the book are quite complex. Amery and Gavin are in a formal relationship, having taken out articles of matelotage. This leaves old friend and some time lover, Quinn, out in the cold, listening to them boink through the thin canvas wall between his and their cabins. But discovering the gorgeous Eliodoro chained in the hold of a Spanish prize takes his mind off his loneliness. Naturally there are obstacles to their love, and Amery and Gavin’s relationship is imperilled as well before the story is brought to a satisfactory and loving conclusion. As a romantic romp the book works very well. There are sex scenes that are sufficiently different in pace and content to pique the interest, but not so frequent as to get tedious. I think that people who want a light, if substantial, read will be pleased with this.

Less pleased will be the people who are fans of Age of Sail novels. Patrick O’Brien this isn’t and even to my eyes there were enough maritime gaffes to make me giggle. There are also some editorial problems – words out-of-order, confusion of personal names, misuse of words, including ‘colossic’? – which surprised me. Dreamspinner are usually better than that. However both problems were within my tolerance and I could ignore them.

Less easy to ignore was the sheer emoness of these pirates. They all spent far more time angsting about their objects of desire than pirating. It also seemed to be an OK-Homo Caribbean since there was only one person in the novel who had a problem with the male/male relationships, and that was expressed merely as a disapproving sniff and nothing more came of it. I also had problems with the ‘abuse’ angle. Luckily none of it was shown but they talked about it a lot. Quinn, Gavin and Eliodoro had all been raped, sometimes repeatedly, with varying degrees of emotional damage.

So – emo pirates – not my cup of tea but I think that people who want a light, if lengthy, read will be pleased with this, especially if they aren’t too picky about their history.

Author’s website

Buy at Dreamspinner

Review:Of Death and Desire by Jude Mason

October 15, 1898

Dear diary, that’s how you’re supposed to begin these things, or so I assume. I never in a million years thought I’d write in one, let alone under these circumstances. This was Jonathan’s doing. When he asked me to make this entry, it was something I had to do, for him. He’s given up so much.

The beginning. Yes, that’s where I should begin and then let his accounting tell the tale.

Review by Erastes

This is a short story, about 10,000 words, and is probably worth getting to fill twenty minutes or so. It’s a ghost story, which allows it to slide in here—paranormals not being the norm—and for most of the story, the ghost element works well, but I have to say I rather lost the plot towards the end.

The beginning is rather baffling. There’s a prologue, which is written in Jonathan’s first person POV (from his diary, which plays a part later on) but at the end of the prologue, it says END EXCERPT so I assumed that this was indeed, not a prologue at all, but an excerpt of the prologue.  But then we go into Chapter One straight away, so I assume that’s a typographical error and a most off-putting one.

The period placing is done quite well, the entire book takes place in one house, so it was easy to stay placed in the time and location. Having a claustrophobic feel to it added a touch of the gothic too which works well, as it is really a gothic short story. Note the title, please and be prepared for both aspects of it.

Some words jarred here and there, and there were a couple of typos but not too many—and I felt the BDSM element was somewhat pasted on, because when Jonathan started talking about his master, I was rather surprised as there’d been no mention of that for the first section.

It wasn’t clear what Jonathan’s sacrifice was—and I didn’t think it was much of a one—and it was never explained how anyone dealt with what happened to Philip at the end, how it was explained to the public at large.

It was a good concept, but perhaps the length of the piece prevented it from being all it could be. As I said at the top, fine to fill in a lunchbreak, but probably not a keeper.

Amazon UK Amazon USA

Review: Hotel de Dream by Edmund White

(From Publisher’s Weekly) A biographical fantasia, White’s latest imagines the final days of the poet and novelist Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), who died of TB at age 28 in 1900. At the same time, White also imagines and writes The Painted Boy, a work that he has Crane say he began in 1895, but burned after warnings from a friend. Crane dictates a fresh start on the story to his common-law wife, Cora Stewart-Taylor. Interspersed within White’s impressionistic account of Crane’s life, The Painted Boy tells the tale of Elliott, a ganymede butt-boy buggaree. Once a farm boy used by his widowed father and elder brothers like a girl, Elliott escapes to New York and begins a new life as a street hustler. Crane, dying overseas, asks that someone skilled and open minded complete the novella. The wry Cora, in her earlier career as a madam at the Jacksonville, Fla. Hotel de Dream, has some ideas of who among Crane’s friends fits the bill.

Review by Erastes

It’s a book of two halves, really. The first half, with Stephen Crane–who spends the entire book dying–is as slow as a meandering river. Suddenly, the “book within a book” which he’s writing hots up and the pace increases–it’s just that the two don’t really gel with each other. If you had told me two different people had written the book I would have believed you.

It begins with lengthy descriptions of Stephen Crane dying of tuberculosis and living in Engand in preparation for travel to the Black Forest for a hopeful cure. Crane is writing the “O’Ruddy” and he regrets that a manuscript he began about Elliott, a boy-prostitute he met in New York and who he interviews with journalistic zeal, was burned by another writer friend, so he begins it again, dictating it to his common-law-wife, Cora. This book “The Painted Boy” has become a writing myth, as there’s only that, and rumour to substantiate its existence, but it makes an interesting premise.

What I suppose I couldn’t really get over is that White could easily have made this story about a fictional author and it would have worked just as well. The fact that he’d set himself to write The Painted Boy himself, to take on the task of emulating Crane’s style seemed to me to be rather hubristic. Whether he does it well I will have to leave to others, as I haven’t read any of Crane’s works, but I couldn’t really tell the difference in style between White’s prose and that of what he puts forward as Crane’s.

I must apologise because this book didn’t appeal to me in any aspect. It was really a case of “gah, how many pages left?” and I appreciate that makes me a bit of a illiterate slob as this book has been lauded all over the place as being a work of genius, but frankly I’ve read books labelled “M/M” that have more literary merit in my eyes.

I’m more than slightly baffled about a couple of things. One, it’s called “A New York Novel” and this doesn’t really come over. You would have to squint hard to see much about the city–it’s mentioned here and there, more so towards the latter end of the novel, when the book gets more interesting, but it’s certainly nothing on the scale of other books that are steeped in the late 19th century city. Gaderene by Tina Anderson and C.B. Potts is far more New York than this, as is The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Not only is Crane iving in Engand and travelling to Germany in the book, but when he,or any of the other characters, are shown in New York, they are inside somewhere, and very little flavour of the city at that time is shown. There’s one segment which smears on description, thick as lard, about the Five Points and Manhattan towards the end, but it really feels like the author had done a bit of research and wanted to shoehorn this local colour in instead of threading it through the entire book.

Also baffling is the title. Crane met his ex-prostitute Cora at the brothel “Hotel de Dream”, but unless I’m missing something (probably) it’s not mentioned otherwise, so any symbolism to the name entire skidded over my head.

That being said I liked the characterisation a good deal. From the real Elliott who Crane interviews–and has him take around part of the queer scene in New York of the time–namely a gay bar and a visit to an androdyne, to the characters they meet in their investigative travels, to Cora, Crane’s mistress who loves Crane so hugely and does anything it takes to try and get him the help he needs, from mumping off friends to writing her own hack stories (which sell) just to support them in their financial troubles. But the most compelling characters in the book for me were the fictional Elliott portrayed in The Painted Boy and his obsessed, entirely in love protector, Theodore Koch. The love that can come to an older man this late in love can be a frightening and destructive love and so it is here, the seven year itch taken to its nth degree. I think of all the characters in the book, it is Koch that will stay with me, as he’s so in love, and ultimately so destroyed–but hey, it wouldn’t be gay literature if everyone wasn’t as miserable as hell.

Oscar Wilde said this of The Old Curiosity Shop: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

And I’m afraid you will think badly of me when I tell you that I roared with laughter at the denouement in Hotel de Dream. It was probably not meant to be funny, and I have a sick sense of humour but I thought it was hilarious. It reminds me of the best kind of shaggy dog story, so be warned.

Do I recommend this? It’s probably fifty fifty. I’d say get it from the library, and see what you think.

Author’s website

Amazon UK Amazon USA

Review: Out at the Movies: The History of Gay Cinema

Over the decades, gay cinema has reflected the community’s journey from persecution to emancipation to acceptance. Politicised dramas like Victim in the 60s, The Naked Civil Servant in the 70s, and the AIDS cinema of the 80s have given way in recent years to films which celebrate a vast array of gay life-styles. Gay films have undergone a major shift, from the fringe to the mainstream and 2005’s Academy Awards were dubbed ”the Gay Oscars” with gongs going to Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Transamerica. Producers began clamouring to back gay-themed movies and the most high profile of these is Gus Van Sant s forthcoming MILK, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the first prominent American political figure to be elected to office on an openly gay ticket back in the 70s. So loved was he that his brutal and homophobic assassination by ex-policeman Daniel White sparked the biggest riots in gay history.

The book also includes information on gay filmmakers and actors and their influence within the industry. Interspersed throughout the book are some of the most iconic scenes from gay cinema and the most memorable dialogue from key films.

With a foreword by Simon Callow.

Review by Erastes

I wouldn’t consider this as a research tool, it’s more like a box of chocolates. Rather than a weighty tome dealing with the subject on a serious level, it’s more a coffee-table decoration and one that lets you pick it up, delve inside and read their view.

Sadly, I didn’t find it a “history” rather than a rainbow coloured meander down a yellow brick road. And that is probably its aim–for a book to truly do justice to subject it would need to be about four times the length.

Despite a very lengthy foreword by Simon Callow I felt disappointed by this book for several reasons.  Many of the films I wouldn’t consider gay at all–but simply “films that have become favourites of gay men.” Films like Mildred Pierce are included, I assume, because Joan Crawford has become such a huge gay icon. But the film itself? Not gay in the absolute slightest. And “The Women” is listed–again, because of the performances and gay icons within and gay men love the film, but neither film is one I would consider to be “gay cinema.”

As well as films that were included–and many of which were awarded their “gay oscar ” accolade at theend–there were notable omissions–the main one being “The Celluloid Closet” which baffled me, unless it was consdered to be a rival. I feel it was an important enough film to at least be mentioned.

It’s an attractive book, with a beautiful layout, lush with photographs and I can’t fault it in that respect. Each era is nicely handled, and not one era is top heavy. It is certainly informative, I just don’t think that it’s as informative as it should be, given the title.

It strikes me like someone’s favourite list, and not a tome for serious study. But it depends what you are coming to this book for, I suppose. If you want a book you can flip through and read snippets about star gossip and what the author thinks gay men take from the “not gay” films–interspersed with actual gay movies, but missing several important films out entirely–then you’ll probably enjoy it. It’s probably suitable for leaving on your coffee table for your friends to leaf through, but if you want a concise book for research on the subject, don’t waste your money.

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Review: Dona Nobis Pacem by Willa Okati

Mute saloonkeeper Donnell knows all about prejudice; he’s had to battle it all of his life. He also knows how self-righteous and judgemental the people of the old west town of Nazareth can be, so he isn’t surprised when he sees them spurn requests for work from a man who walks into town looking to be all but on his death bed. Donnell takes the man in and nurses him back to health, falling in love along the way.  But is Donnell destined to have his heart broken?

Review by Jess Faraday

I feel badly that my first review for Speak Its Name is going to be largely critical. However, not all books were written for all readers. Even though the story didn’t work for me on a number of levels, there’s quite a bit in Dona Nobis Pacem to like. I’m certain that there are readers who will enjoy the story for its merits. Here are a few of them.

I’ve read a few other stories by Willa Okati, and the sex is always hot. It’s graphic, but not to the point where one is counting the pores on the hero’s…er…chin. So if you like some hot, well-described man-on-man nookie, you’ll find three very tasty scenes to sink your teeth into.

I also liked Nathan’s (the hero’s love interest) inner conflict regarding his attraction to Donnell. It seemed realistic given the time, place, and Nathan’s religious background. Although I thought this could have been drawn out and explored more, considering the brevity of the piece (100 pages and change), the amount of time spent on it was appropriate.

There’s a difference between historical romance and romance with historical flavor. SIN reviews historicals, so I read from this perspective. As historical fiction, this story really didn’t work for me. The main difference between a contemporary and a historical is setting, and the setting in this story was basically undefined.

References to a gold rush suggest that the story is taking place in the 19th century. Vague descriptions of a desert-like climate suggest that it was the California gold rush of 1848 (although the gold rush did not take place in the desert part of California), or possibly the Northern Nevada gold rush. But however one slices it, there was not enough physical, social, or cultural description for me to feel any certainty of time or place.

A few character inconsistencies also distracted me from the story. The hero, Donnell, seemed far too cosmopolitan for his circumstances. For an orphaned son of a prostitute in a one-horse town, he knew an awful lot about the world, including what color the Jamaican sea was, the weather in Texas, what blizzards were like (hint: blizzards do not take place in, or anywhere near deserts) and the works of Tchaikovsky (who would have been a child during the California gold rush) and Rachmaninoff (who wouldn’t be born for another 20-odd years). He also had a magnificent vocabulary, which, despite being mute, he managed to express flawlessly through gesture.

Moreover, in the beginning, it was stated that only Donnell’s adoptive mother knew about his proclivities–entirely believable for the time and place–but by the end of a month, this tough, old-West town had become remarkably OK HOMO.

As a light romance, the story fares somewhat better. Dona Nobis Pacem is a classic hurt/comfort tale: a story in which the plot consists almost entirely of one character nursing another through a Grave Crisis. Although the crisis was drawn out a lot longer than was realistic (one does not require a month–need I say it, in bed–to recover from heatstroke), H/C lovers may enjoy the plot. Unfortunately, there’s not much more to the plot than that. There is some attempt at external conflict with a wild-eyed preacher bent on taking Donnell’s land and claiming Nathan’s soul By Any Means Necessary. However, this conflict isn’t developed, and is dropped altogether without explanation in the last third of the book.

I would recommend this story for someone looking for a quick read, some hot sex, and a happy ending. But if you’re in the mood for a complex plot or a well-researched historical, this probably isn’t the book for you. 2.5 stars.

Buy from Torquere Press

Review: The Bitterweed Path by Thomas Hal Phillips

This long out-of-print and newly rediscovered novel tells the story of two boys growing up in the cotton country of Mississippi a generation after the Civil War.

Originally published in 1950, the novel’s unique contribution lies in its subtle engagement of homosexuality and cross-class love. In The Bitterweed Path, Thomas Hal Phillips vividly recreates rural Mississippi at the turn of the century. In elegant prose, he draws on the Old Testament story of David and Jonathan and writes of the friendship and love between two boys–one a sharecropper’s son and the other the son of the landlord–and the complications that arise when the father of one of the boys falls in love with his son’s friend.

Review by Erastes

This review will be very interesting to compare and contrast with the review of the next book I’m going to review – “A Room in Chelsea Square” by Michael Nelson. They are both lost gay novels, republished, and they were both written in the 1950’s – but oh! The Difference!

I’m afraid I didn’t like The Bitterweed Path very much. Although at times beautifully written I found it a frustrating read and sometimes hugely self-conscious and self-indulgent.

It’s the story of a young man from a family of religious and strict people who meets up with the Pitts, a more liberal and friendly family.  Darrell, the young man from the strict upbringing is attending a running meet, and his own father doesn’t attend, despite the fact that Darrell is a great young runner and he wins the race easily.  Malcolm Pitt is an easy going, well-off landowner who owns land adjacent to Darrell’s Ku Klux Klan father and right from the first meeting Darrell and Malcolm hit it off. Malcolm’s own son,  Roger has been unable to attend the meet due to injury, and when Darrell wins easily, Malcolm accompanies Darrell to collect his trophy, tells lies and says that Darrell is his “other son.”

Gradually, Darrell is drawn into this warmer, friendlier world than his own, much to the disgust of his father, and then his grandmother. Despite this, his life is enmeshed with the Pitts forever–the boys become great friends.

First of all I had great problems with Darrell himself. He’s almost entirely passive. Everything seems to happen to him without him instigating anything himself.  The most active thing he does is win the race, and there ends his pro-activity. Perhaps (and this is another reason why I don’t like the book much, because I don’t know if that’s supposed to be the message, or whether I’ve entirely got the wrong end of the stick) this is deliberate, that after he meets the Pitts, he’s swept up like a piece of flotsam and his life is never his own again.

The thing is, compared with The Charioteer (1953 UK, 1959 USA) – The Bitterweed Path is almost so heavily coded (if indeed it’s coded at all, and not just a What You See is What You Get book) that I found it rather difficult to follow.  Other reviews and blurbs I’ve seen state that Darrell falls in love with Roger but it certainly doesn’t seem that way to me, he certainly is extremely fond of Roger, and it’s clear that Roger is probably in love with Darrell, but like so many aspects of this book, it’s pushed to one side. Darrell refuses to write to Roger, and doesn’t even see him for several years after he’s been sent away to school and his friendship with Malcolm continues.

I was convinced even at the end, that it was Malcolm (if anyone) that Darrell had “unsuitable” feelings for, but as I say, it’s rather hard to tell, as he doesn’t really seem to care deeply about anyone. Except his puppy at the beginning (to which horrible things happen–twice–so be warned.)  But then again – perhaps that is part of the theme too, perhaps the puppy is indicative of his feelings or something.  Roger is (probably understandably) jealous of Darrell’s place in Malcolm’s life. After all, Roger was sent away to school, then to medical college and rarely came home – whereas Darrell was the piggie that stayed home and Malcolm lavished with trips away (where they slept in the bed together, arms around each other), his attention, and half his business.

There’s at least one character who–as far as I’m concerned–was entirely superfluous.  I didn’t understand her existence, I don’t know what she was set up to show about Darrell and I don’t know her point.  Nothing Darrell does, as I said – due to his enormous passivity–convinces.  I don’t feel he cares about anyone, even Miriam (Roger’s sister) who he professes to be in love with and expects to marry and doesn’t, or his wife who he obviously marries in rebound, or even his own children.  There’s also much that is not followed through, too. We are told that Darrell’s grandmother is a hell and damnation type, but we don’t really see much of this, and after his father dies, Darrell seems to do exactly as he pleases and his grandmother goes along with it. Nothing is ever done about Darrell’s running which seemed a bit odd – the whole running scenario seemed shoe-horned in just to show how evil Darrell’s father was in comparison to Malcolm Pitt.

At the end–almost in an afterthought, perhaps the author realised he was being far too vague – Roger breaks down and says that he loved Darrell, probably too much, and Darrell says that he never loved Roger that way, but he thinks that he probably loved Malcolm too much.  I don’t think there was any sexual activity in the entire book, even hidden away in the way it is in The Charioteer, and I wasn’t expecting it but I would like to have stopped feeling so confused.

It’s been compared with David and Jonathan from the Biblical story and I really can’t agree; at no point do I ever feel that Darrell and Roger have that kind of love “surpassing that of women” – especially as they are separated for most of the book and don’t even bother to write to each other.

If flow of consciousness narrative is your cup of tea, then you will probably enjoy this, but if, like me, you get annoyed with having to second guess what’s actually going on, I’d say give it a miss. Beautiful in parts but made me feel dim and left me with a bit of a headache.

Amazon UK Amazon USA

Review: How the West Was Done by various

In these eleven steamy stories, the archetypal image of the cowboy is given a fresh new spin as the virile man who shares his mind, his passion…and his body with other cowboys. Whether it’s a story set in the Wild West of the 1800s or an exploration of the modern-day cowboy, each author takes the cowboy fantasy to new erotic heights.
From award-winning authors to fresh new voices, HOW THE WEST WAS DONE is sure to please anyone looking for tales of denim and leather, cowboys and Indians, real men and the men they love. So, saddle up for a fascinating ride in to the past, where the men who sought to settle the west also sought out the most primal pleasures.
With hot action and fast-paced storytelling, this ultimate collection will have you wanting to ride off into the sunset. And not alone…

Review by Aleksandr Voinov

It’s almost pointless reviewing this, so I’ll keep it short. This is a collection of 11 cowboy-centric stories, ranging from historical to modern. The best story in the collection is a contemporary, but its not of interest on this blog, so I have to leave it out. The others range from ‘solid’ (three stars) to ‘laughable’ (one star).

Clearly, when choosing the stories, the main point was to feed the cowboy fetish. So, every story features a long sex scene (or several), which is most often framed with the flimsiest excuses for stories. This collection stands proudly (I guess) between its porn movie brothers – plots like “you broke my windshield, now suck my dick” wouldn’t be out of place in this collection. I’ve read much worse porn, and if you like cowboy porn, absolutely, by all means, go for it. You’ll find modern men in cowboy gear getting it on, your usual western cliches, enormous dicks and relentless fucking with the usual porn ‘dialogue’ and porn ‘plot’, and I’m using both terms with a lot of room for discretion.

Enjoy.

Even the ‘historical stories’ feature modern men. Dropping in a few facts about the American Civil War or a reference to some historical thing or other doesn’t make any story really historical. These are modern men, with modern thoughts, that they express in modern ways, which makes this porn in period costumes. And that’s pretty much it.

Taken and read as ‘just porn’, these are okay. I’ve read much better, I’ve read much worse. They accomplish what they want to accomplish, but not one of the historical stories left a positive impression, and many of them left negative ones, whether they were funny, bizarre, trying very hard and falling short, or working a kink I don’t really share.

Fine as porn, not recommended from the historical perspective.

Buy at Ravenous Romance

Review: Conflict by Stevie Woods

The sequel to Cane.

Two men, one war. Can love survive when each takes a different side?

Leaving his lover behind to support the abolitionist cause, Piet Van Leyden finds himself leading one of the first all-black Union troops into the heart of battle. Reuniting with free slave and former love Joss brings some comfort, but will his presence tempt Piet into forgetting the love waiting for him at home?

Sebastian Cane wonders how he’s able to go on without Piet by his side. When a series of unfortunate events lands him a prisoner of the Union, Seb knows he must rely on his wits and his love for Piet to survive…and get home to him. 

Review by Aleksandr Voinov

Reader, I was bored. This book echoes, rather unfortunately, my impressions of J P Bowie’s “Warrior Prince”. I know that there are readers for this book, alas, I’m not one of them.

Short summary of what we find here. At the time of the American Civil War, Sebastian Cane, a “Southern gentleman”, his lover and plantation manager Pieter van Leyden, and Pieter’s childhood lover and Sebastian’s ex-slave, Joss, end up in something of a love triangle against the backdrop of the civil war.

Pieter goes off to fight, where he meets Joss again. Sebastian stays behind, moping, until he hears that Pieter is dead, and, seeking death himself now, joins the Confederates.

If I’d have to sum up the impression the book made on me in one word, that word would be ‘repetition’. Everything’s repeated. Both men (Sebastian and Pieter) are approached for sex in the name of comfort. Both men agree, after some soul-searching and angsting, both do the dirty with a stranger/friend, then feel terrible about it and angst some more. Both men are taken prisoners by the other side in the conflict. And so on, and so forth.

The book opens with a lot of backstory, many, many pages devoted to bringing us up to specs about what happened in the prequel, “Cane”, and my eyes glazed over during those long, long passages where absolutely nothing happened, and things were repeated in three different point-of-views – Sebastian Cane gets his version, Pieter van Leyden gets his version, and Joss gets his version, too. Not that any of this is important to the plot, only that Sebastian and Pieter love each other very much and Joss has a connection to both. That could have been told so much faster and more efficiently without boring the reader to tears (who was, in this case, not even aware he was dealing with a sequel).

The history seems okay for the most part. Woods’ main issue is that for the life of the author, they don’t manage to bring any of this alive. This reader didn’t care. It could have happened on another planet – nothing that happened had any impact on me. Instead I wondered why on earth anybody needs three characters telling the same story, when the author chooses an omniscient narrator. Technique here seems lacking; I’m not sure the author chose any point-of-vierw deliberately, because it seemed to want to be third person, but ended up omniscient – and all characters, slave, southern gentleman and plantation manager, sound exactly the same and act exactly in the same manner. Maybe Joss is even more selfless and sacrificing than the other two, but that’s really the only difference I could detect. They speak the same, they act the same, they sound the same when they think. And this reader didn’t care about them just the same.

Another killing blow – the characters have no flaw. Joss is a saint, Pieter is a saint, and, guess what, Sebastian is a saint, too. They are all so good and pure and cute, possessing the pure hearts of five year old boys brought up in a cloister, that I found myself entirely disbelieving I was reading about people. The sex was all cute and nice and totally unerotic – nothing was resolved, there was, quite ironically for a novel called “Conflict” no real conflict, no real progress, no sparks flying, it was all nice and sweet and placid, with bad things happening that never really touched this reader or the characters. The author claimed they were suffering, but these saints bore it placidly, spiced up with lots of angst and luke-warm longing.

Add to that a language just as tepid and unexciting, and you get a good idea why I was dreading my commute more than normal (and it had nothing to do with London’s horror or the suffering of morning/evening cattle class). I just didn’t want to spend my time in the company of these weepy little boys. At no point did I feel I was dealing with characters from the time period. The most jarring example is when our “southern gentleman” sounds like a modern-day California porn star during a ‘wet dream’ sequence which I found cringeworthy rather than sexy. I’m talking about this scene, which, in terms of writing, is pretty typical:

It took longer than he expected before Lane was able to check on Cane, but he was relieved to find the man sleeping, and reasonably peacefully. Often delirium caused those affected to sleep very restlessly.

Lane pulled up a stool, taking the opportunity for a few minutes rest; it was for once fairly quiet in the ward. He’d almost started to doze when he heard muttering from Cane, and saw that even though the man still appeared to be sleeping peacefully, his eye movements were rapid. The captain realized he was dreaming and if the slight smile was any indication it was a good one. Cane began to mutter again, a little more clearly this time and Lane could’ve sworn he heard the words, ‘yeah, just there’.

Staring at the man he considered a friend, albeit not a particularly close one, Mason wondered if it would really matter if he listened a little closer. If his guess was correct,

Cane was having an erotic dream and a little titillation wouldn’t do any harm. Damn, but it would do him some good!

The man was well and truly out of it and he’d never even know. Carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping man, Lane moved his stool as near as he could to the bed.

“God … harder … yeah, that’s … ooooh, fuck!” Cane moaned, tossing his head from side to side. Lane leaned closer. “Deeper, Pieter … more … oh, God.” Cane’s movement stilled, he gave a deep sigh and was silent.

Mason sat frozen on the stool, staring at Cane. He could hardly believe what he’d heard but then a smile broke slowly over his face. He’d wanted titillation and he got more than he bargained for. Who’d have guessed?

“Oh, boy, you and I have got some talking to do when you’re better,” Lane muttered. “Lord, do I hope you don’t die of this thing.”

Taking one last look at the lieutenant as he got to his feet, Lane nodded his head and whistling softly, walked away.

While I’m not an expert on Southern gentlemen and plantation owners in the 1860ies, I’m not convinced this is what one of them sounds like in his sleep. And this is just one example where the characters just weren’t believable.

As I said, the history seemed mostly okay, the main flaw was that I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t engage with the characters, I didn’t care about them. At the end of all these things that happened to them (wounding, long prison sentence, loss of friends), they haven’t changed at all. And I’m not starting on the fact that Sebastian spends many months in a prisoner-of-war camp with not a fruit or vegetable in sight and doesn’t lose his teeth – some creative license can be taken when dealing with the past. One is a bit thinner and greying, the other is tired of war. I’m not sure what the author tries to communicate here. War is hard? War isn’t worth it?

The book is a “historical romance” with a couple sex (pretty tame) sex scenes, so if you just want a nice sweet romance with lots of pining and a war that is mostly used to keep two lovers separated for almost all of the book, go for it. Personally, the book didn’t make any impact on me, the writing and characterisation was just not strong enough for me to get anything from this. I know there are readers out there for this kind of stuff, and at least it has a discernible plot and the research seems mostly ok, but this wasn’t for me and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Author’s Website

Buy at Phaze

Review: Le Frai de Demon by Sarah Masters

Life at sea brings new experiences to Vincent, but tragedy eclipses the happiness in his heart. Blurb: As Le Frai De Demon coasts the ocean waves, Vincent and Julian continue their love affair. Upon arriving at Hellion to trade wares, Julian takes Vincent to a special place where the crack of a whip brings them both pleasure. However, their private time is interrupted when a crew member brings news of a rogue trader causing trouble. The men return to the ship intent on leaving Hellion as soon as possible, but a tragedy is in their midst. Once at sea again, Le Frai De Demon battles through a storm, but will all the crew survive?

Review by Erastes

This is a sequel to Devil’s Spawn reviewed last year, which I must admit I haven’t read, so it was interesting to me whether it could stand on its own.  I found it didn’t, not really–as within the first couple of pages I was a bit confused as to who anyone was and why they were there.  The crew seemed entirely accepting of Vincent and Julian, and in fact seemed all gay themselves which is a fantasy trope I can do without.

The ship docks at an unnamed place–dubbed Hellion by Julian, but we are told that’s not its real name–and predictably, there’s a brothel there that caters for homosexuals. There’s one major sex scene, which involves a woman whipping the pair of them, which I really didn’t like that much–I don’t see the attraction of whipping, when it’s out of context–there didn’t seem to be any BDSM relationship between the two of them – and I wasn’t expecting any female action in my m/m.

The language tries hard to be old fashioned, and is a tad too purple for my current taste, but the lack of care with anachronistic words such as adrenaline and libido jars from time to time.  Libido dates from around 1892 – although there’s no time frame to this story.  With the mention of breeches and sailors, I am guessing late 18th century/early 19th, but there’s no real way to tell.

I have to say, that it rather surprised me, that when the ship seemed to be in trouble and they had to get out of Hellion in a hurry, the pair retired to their cabin to shag, rather than to take care of the necessities of leaving port. In fact, it’s Vincent, not the captain, Julian, who eventually says that they should get out of bed and go and help the crew who are struggling with a storm!

The blurb promises excitement in the storm, but as they spent most of it in bed, saying that the crew can cope, I rather lost my sympathy for the pair of them.

Age of Sail purists should probably avoid this.

Other than that, I think my main concern is that there’s no actual plot. The men dock at a port, are chased off, get into a storm, shag a lot, speak endless endearments and that’s about it.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, which was set up from the beginning, but nothing actually happened, and as with the last book, the entire plot is described within the blurb.  Even with my short stories, I expect some kind of surprise.

So, it doesn’t really work as a standalone, I’m afraid, whatever happened in the first book might explain some of the bafflement – and I understand that this is an ongoing series, with five books now–but at two-three dollars each, I think I’d prefer one whole book to read.

Buy from Lovedivine Alterotica (also available on Fictionwise and Kindle)

Review: Irish Winter by John Simpson

Living in Cork, Ireland, a hotbed of resistance to British rule, makes Ian Mulroney’s life dangerous despite his peaceful beliefs. But disgusted by the brutality and shootings in the streets, he agrees to join the local IRA brigade to use his skills with medicine and learn the ways of war. There he meets Devlin Walsh. Ian has seen him before, and the impression left upon his body was not easy to ignore. He couldn’t know that Devlin felt the same. But because of the war, they are comrades first, despite their silent, budding attraction to one another. As the resistance grows and the violence escalates, Ian and Devlin fight the only way they know how, losing family and friends in their efforts to free their country. Together, they are stronger to face the next day’s struggle. Together, they are united in their belief in the hand of God. Together, they will find a way to survive the war.

Review by Erastes

Anyone looking for a adventure story, with thrills and spills, anxious moments and a growing romance which blossoms in predictable fashion to a lasting love affair and sex no matter what thrills and spills going on around them, will enjoy “Irish Winter” a lot.

However – if you know anything at all about Ireland and her history, you probably will, like me, find it a frustrating read.

I bought the book because I have lived in Ireland for many years and I’m always eager to read about earlier times. Having loved At Swim Two Boys I knew that nothing was going to come close to that, but I was still eager for more.

The characters aren’t bad.  They aren’t girly, and that’s a major point in their favour.  They talk like young men, they act like young men and they fuck like young men – there’s no lyrical descriptions and purple prose here, just wham bam and get on with it–nothing wrong with that. But they are very samey, though, and neither has their own distinct voice.  It was difficult at times to tell who was in control of the POV (there’s a lot of headhopping, and switching from third person to omniscient which doesn’t help with that.)  I personally would have liked them to be their own personalities more, and that really didn’t come across.  The secondary characters, such as Ian’s mother, and Shane, the leader of the local IRA cell come across well.

But it’s the history, and the research which really really lets this book down. I really wish people would leave this period of Irish history alone unless they really understand it.  I’ve lived there, both sets of grandparents were Irish and I don’t think I would touch the subject with a bargepole.  Like Age of Sail there’s so much to it.

I’m not going to list everything that was wrong, because that’s not the point of a review, but I’ll mention a couple of the basic, fundemental errors which should not have been done, and even the basic amount of research would have highlighted them.

First of all: Ian.  I did like him, he’s – like many young men of the time – forced into the fight even though he abhors the violence on both sides.  But he’s a single child, which is pretty unlikely for Catholic families. (So is his lover, Devlin, coincidentally. They are “unaccustomed to sleeping with other boys”  When I was in Ireland, families still had two room cottages, and all the children slept in one bed.) We are told that he’s poor, dirt poor, supporting his mother by working part time in an “apothecary” as an apprentice.  But he has jam every day, his house has a porch (this is so American, houses in England and Ireland do NOT have porches) and there’s no way he can be an apprentice chemist.  (That’s the word, after all. Apothecary is from another time. ) To be a trainee chemist (and we are told he’s six months from qualification) he’d have to have a degree, and yet he doesn’t even know what laudanum is.  Apprenticeships for apothecaries were abolished in 1822 – and I found that in minutes – so that’s blatant nonsense for a start.

His name is wrong.  There is no Ian in Roman Catholic Ireland. He’d be Sean. Many of the names are wrong – Kyle and Byron and Devlin for example – all American Irish names. Boys of this age would have RC names, and that means names of saints. Spelled in an Irish fashion .  To not know that part of the basis of the problems between Ireland and England is the Scots! And to attempt to write about the War of Independence proves a lack of research.)

There’s no mention of church at all. Impossible. Shops are open on Sunday. Pubs are open on Sunday!!  No. And on this matter, the timeline staggers around like a drunk on a Saturday night. It’s hard to keep track of when Ian is supposed to work for example.

Ian bicycles from Cork to Limerick AND BACK (a total distance of over 100 miles) in a few hours.  I’d like to see someone do that today, let alone in 1919.

And the Black and Tans – the paramilitary imports from the English army into the Royal Irish Constabulary – the main impetus for the entire plot of this book – didn’t even enter Ireland until a year LATER than this book is set.  In fact, the facts of the war in this book are made up.  That’s not entirely unusual in a historical book, of course – but when it comes to events such as this, attacks on the Cork RIC garrison, murders of civilians and reprisal killings of Black and Tans, I’d rather have read real facts OR had an author’s note in the book explaining it.  I don’t think the “fits all” disclaimer that all books have works in this instance.

That’s not to say that the events portrayed in Irish Winter aren’t similar to what actually happened.  The Tans did terrible things, killing civilians and burning villages, and putting Tralee to siege for an entire week.  So in this respect it was clear that Simpson did do quite a lot of research – so I don’t know how he managed to cock up some of it so very royally.

The cover is bloody lovely, (although wtf was with putting the flag on it’s side??) and I know that Dreamspinner have their heart in the right place – they like historicals and that alone gets a thumbs up from me.  I just wish they had an editor who could sniff out the stuff that turns a good book into one that gets thrown across the room.   For that reason I’m giving this book two and half stars and because as a story, it holds up.  There’s action and adventure, and I think that with decent research or an tough editor this book would easily have scored four stars with me, but as it is it doesn’t merit anything more than two and a half.

Review: Confessing A Murder by Nicholas Drayson

Purporting to be an anonymous memoir found in an attic, its author is an arrogant but brilliant homosexual whose life has crossed with that of Charles Darwin with startling regularity.  He is writing it on a small island in the Java Sea of which he is the only human inhabitant. Aware that his life will soon come to an end, he sets out the true story of the theory of natural selection, confesses a murder of his own and provides a fascinating and delightful account of the plans and animals of the island

Review by Erastes

I’m afraid that this is another book that was loudly lauded by all and sundry but leaves me going “and?” When I see the books that people I know produce and then see this, which does nothing to me at all, emotionally or intellectually, I wonder what is wrong with the world.

I was almost tempted to wipe it from Speak Its Name’s list, because, as will be clear it is speculative fiction, but I think-because of the conceit used, it can remain.

It’s an interesting concept: the conceit is that the book is real, even the publisher’s note at the beginning goes into depth extrapolating on where and when the manuscript was found, how it was written, and on what–then goes into Darwin’s life, and the possibility that this account may or may not be real. There’s also an editor’s note, bylined by Mr Drayton explaining the way it has been edited. The point, ably made at least, was to show how Alfred Russel Wallace and (more famously) Charles Darwin, came up with two independent and similar Theories of Evolution. The reason of this book being that they both got the idea from the narrator of this manuscript. (who purports to be an illegimate scion of the Darwin family).

So I picked it up, more than intrigued. Seeing as it combines two of my interests, natural history and gay historical fiction, I felt that surely I was going to love it, but try as I might, I just didn’t.

The book is told in two interweaving sections: one describes the island, and with each segment that relates to the place where the narrator (who is never named) is marooned, he goes into detail of the completely unique flora and fauna found there. Vampyric plants which parisitise young birds (but keep them free from worms), swallows that hibernate in mud, minnows that can survive in near boiling water. Drayson is a naturalist and zoologist–has written a book about birds and one about platypuses–so I don’t doubt his descriptions of these animals that never were, it’s just that it’s not terribly interesting.

I think that it’s partly to do with his narrator, who comes across as being so bland as to be frightfully dull, and this shouldn’t really be. He’s homosexual, he’s known this from quite young and seems to have had no angst about this. He’s had an event-filled life, travelling from Shrewsbury to Edinburgh to Cambridge to South Africa to Australia, hinting only as the decadence and high life he leads. He started promisingly when he realises the power he has over men who find him attractive. he uses his wiles to punish, to tease, to demand–and in this way, he says, he can keep just about any man at heel. But it’s the bland way he describes it all, not only with the bare minimum of detail, but more dispassionate than watching a beetle die in a killing jar (at which event he cried, copiously.)

Perhaps this is deliberate, perhaps we are supposed to get that he has less enthusiasm for life than he does for beetles, I don’t know. But it’s not how it seems to me, I don’t think that’s what Drayson was aiming at. I think we are supposed to find him adventurous and driven, but frankly I found him boring beyond belief and I heartily wished he’d fall into the volcano himself.

I can compare this book to Philipa Gregory’s “Earthly Joys” which I rate more highly, where the themes of passion for the natural world, and a compulsion for cataloguing and collection are described side by side by an adventurous life, and in this respect Earthly Joys succeeds and takes fruit, while in my eyes, Confessing a Murder is not deemed for natural selection and, to stretch an analogy to its limits, should have withered on the vine.

That being said, if you have any interest at all in Darwin, Wallace and the Theory, you will probably find this worth a read.

Buy: Powell’s Books –  Amazon UK – Amazon USA

Review: Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Connie Bailey and J.M. McLaughlin

When Sir Daltrey Powell summons his niece’s old, stuffy piano teacher for a dressing-down, he’s more than surprised when the young, handsome Professor Northlund Merrit presents himself. Despite their dispute, Daltrey is convinced: He will do what he must to fan the spark he saw in Northlund’s eyes to flame.

Review by Hayden Thorne

This story is actually one of several from Dreamspinner Press’s 2008 Advent Stories series, hence the non-historical, all-purpose cover. Because of its length (it’s a novelette, I think), readers shouldn’t expect much by way of a thorough exploration of a romance developing between an earl and his niece’s music instructor.

What I enjoy the most is the story’s classic romantic plot. Two gentlemen from wildly diverging backgrounds cross paths, feel instant attraction, and the game, as they say, is afoot. Given their pasts and their temperaments, it’s natural to see both react to their attraction differently: Daltry Powell with arrogant ease and a sense of entitlement that’s expected from a peer, Northlund Merrit with dismay and horror, no thanks to his nomadic existence, which is forced on him by society and that damned annoying specter called convention.

The characters, both main and side, are interesting and fun to read. Though by and large, Bailey and McLaughlin leaned a little too heavily on archetypes, readers can still enjoy the interactions between the characters.

The difficulties I have with this story, though, outweigh the highlights, the characters’ lack of complexity being one of them. Then again, one might say, it is a novelette, and there’s only so much a writer can do with such a limited word count. In this case, the story feels as though it should be given a much, much wider berth or greater room to expand. There’s so much going on in the story that’s implicit and otherwise, and it’s disappointing not seeing it being brought to its full potential. Given the conflict between Powell and Merrit, the subplot involving Arabella (the niece) and the suffocating state of women’s roles back then, as well as the relationship between Lionel (Powell’s valet) and both Daltrey Powell and his father, I think there’s quite a bit of material that’s unfortunately sacrificed to the publisher’s length requirements. As things stand, the characters remain archetypal, and the plot unfolds quickly and almost haphazardly, with hardly anything solid on which it can ground itself.

The biggest problem I have involves setting. Yes, there’s mention of London. There are the references to a landau, balls, lavish dinner-parties, and manor houses. But we’re not given a specific period in English history in which we can firmly set the story, so we can have some point of reference when it comes to historical details.

The story is set in a small shire, with Greenholm as the main village where Merrit lives and works. Unfortunately, the actual location is never mentioned, and there are several shires in England, leaving us with no clear reference point. The manor house is very lightly described, and when it is, the details are generalized, so that you can think of any great house somewhere in England’s vast countryside, and you’ll have the place pegged. In fact, everything about the setting (landscape, buildings, etc.) is very generic and almost treated dismissively. I don’t find myself in England at all unless London’s mentioned. I just feel like the characters live in a strange historical vacuum that could be Georgian, Regency, or Victorian (I’m guessing Victorian, but I’m biased).

The scenes also change too abruptly. In one instance, we’re left with Merrit being escorted out of the house by Arabella. The next scene, we’re suddenly in his office, and he’s in the middle of being startled (or in the process of panicking) because his privacy is suddenly being invaded by a horny Powell. The beginning of the scene feels like it’s missing a little more material that could’ve allowed the reader a chance to shift gears (i.e., transitions). Again, the office isn’t described in detail, so for a moment, we’re forced to rearrange things mentally after we realize that the scene’s taking place in Merrit’s office in the school where he teaches. There’s another scene following this in which they’re suddenly outside, taking a walk in the snow, again with no easing into the scene that would’ve helped the reader keep track of the narrative’s movements. And where is this quiet footpath located? There’s mention of a river, but again, we’re left with nothing else.

The smaller problems involve errors in the use of titles (“Sir Daltrey” would be used in addressing a baronet or knight, not a peer), uneven dialogue that switches back and forth between modern/anachronistic and historical/stilted, and strong elements of OK Homo from start to finish, including a rather unrealistic detail near the end involving the sleeping arrangements of a mere tutor in reference to his employer’s.

It’s really too bad that the story was forced into such a short length. I do feel that it’s got quite a bit going for it, but it needs way more room than what a novelette can offer for it to be given the justice it deserves.

Buy the book: Dreamspinner Press

Review: Gerard and Jacques Vol.01 & 02 by Fumi Yoshinaga

Blurb: The heroes of this story meet in a rather unlikely place – a brothel. Gerard, after deflowering the young aristocrat-turned-prostitute Jacques, pays to free him from his profession and spares him a life of selling his body to survive. Jacques shows up at Gerard’s door soon after, willing to work to repay his debt, not knowing that he would soon be tangled up in a web of romance with his new master.

Set in the years around the French Revolution, Gerard and Jacques is a story we’ve all seen before – Jacques is a young man sold into prostitution for whatever reason and comes across Gerard, a man who takes him away from all this (not before raping him, though; this is yaoi after all). “Unlikely” isn’t exactly a word I’d have used either, I’ve read so many books where brothels are involved.

Gerard wants to humiliate Jacques, to make him realise that he might as well be a whore, because he’s of no use—as an ex-aristocrat—for anything else. The boy surprises him by working hard around the house.

Jacques had my admiration for battling on with his chores, until it transpired that he’d learned to shoe horses after just being shown once. Hmmm. I’m not looking for a huge amount of realism in yaoi novels but this really annoyed me. I’m forced to admit that there are aspects of manga that I really don’t like, such as the cartoony faces of surprise like this—I know there’s probably a huge tradition behind this, and it’s what the readers like and expect, but as a grown adult who has jumped from childhood comics to graphic novels with an interim of many decades, I can’t acclimatise to it, and it pulls me from the more realistic drawings that the rest of the novel is drawn in.

I also don’t like the words to describe the actions. If the pictures are drawn well enough, and they are, I don’t need the words “JERK UP!” or “STARTLE!”to describe action.

There’s no real story here, though, in volume one. It’s a little plot, interspersed with backstory, mainly relating to Gerard who was married once.

I’m not enamoured of the homosexual image either – as expected Jacques, being the uke, is unwilling and resentful of his new master. He finds the advances distasteful but in secret he feels a sexual attraction growing – this is expected in the genre, I suppose. However as Gerard’s backstory emerges we find that he was pretty much hetero, but was “lured into m/f/m” by his “evil wife.” When the other man makes advances to Gerard on his own, Gerard rejects these advances calling them filthy.

The sex scenes are a little more explicit than I’ve seen in other yaoi-almost accurate cocks and such like.

There were interesting sections—discussions of politics, literature and philosophy – and I’d have liked a bit more politics and a bit more plot but then that’s probably just me.

Volume 02 was marginally more interesting, but rather repetitive and dull in parts, whole pages of just the same expression, or so it seemed to me, and the plot jumped all over the place which made it very confusing.

I did like the drawing in the main (apart from the aforementioned funny faces) the period clothes were beautifully done, although I’m no expert, and there were touches of humour that really made me smile but all in all the whole angst angst he raped me no no no no oh maybe angst maybe i love him angst angst thing just wasn’t for me. I just think I’m not a natural yaoi reader, I’m afraid.

Buy from publisher

Review: The Keeper by Kalita Kasar

Cobbler’s apprentice Thomas Williams is on his way out for the night when he’s stuffed into a carriage and whisked away from the staid life he’s always known. Stolen away from his Quaker master, Thomas is sold into the household of Leon Chambellan, a Frenchman also known as the Keeper.

Caught up in the latent sensuality of the keeper’s home, Thomas finds his resistance slowly crumbling, and he submits to Chambellan’s charm. Pursued by his new master, jealously hated by this rival, Alex, Thomas must learn survive in a world completely alien to anything he has known before. A world of beauty, brutality, rivalry and intrigue that threatens to destroy him before he can win his rightful place at Chambellan’s side.

Review by Erastes

First the cover: Bafflingly it is not at all representative of what I found inside, as the book tells me it’s based in 1772, so the appearance of medieval helmet, chain mail and a broadsword on the cover was peculiar. Publishers will need to learn that it’s not only the words that need to be accurate!

This is an erotic novel, so if long sexual scenes with strong BDSM themes aren’t really what you are after, then it’s not the book for you. We are thrown into the action almost immediately as – not knowing Bilbo’s warning about being careful about stepping outside your front door, Thomas is swiftly kidnapped by a press-gang. However, unlike Benjamin York, a real-life cobbler’s apprentice of the same era, who was pressed and sent to the Colonial war, Thomas is lucky that he’s pretty for he’s taken as a sex-slave to Chambellan: kidnapper, white slaver and Monsieur of a bawdy house for homosexual men.

There he encounters all manner of pleasure and pain, is strangely drawn to Chambellan “The Keeper,” repulsed by Alex, one of the “groomers” and meets the alluring Lucien.

What struck me almost immediately was Thomas’ surprising passivity. I, as a reader, had to assume that the reason that this nineteen year old man, (who had been working as a tanner and cobbler for ten years, and would be pretty damn strong), didn’t attempt to escape or overpower his captor when he was alone with him, was that he was a Quaker. This is actually the case, but we aren’t told of his reasons for his passivity until page 52. He even thanks the man for his hospitality of his kidnap.

I didn’t like the rapes either. Thomas says no, but he’s raped anyway, and as is often the case in fiction, he enjoys it whilst finding himself repulsive for doing so.

I know that I was supposed to find Chambellan darkly attractive but I couldn’t. Apart from raping Thomas (and supposedly every boy who he has ever enslaved) and being a white-slaver, when Thomas asks him to send him home, he says that he’ll release him back to the press-gang if Thomas wants it. That’s a nasty thing to say, and then he stomps off when Thomas complains he’s been raped and says that he “won’t do it again.” What’s more disturbing is that Thomas then longs for him to come back.

Chambellan actually says “You know there are only young men in my household and none of them is compelled against his will.” Which made me go WHAT!? I rather think that imprisonment and sexual coercion upon young men who say “no” counts as “against his will,” Chambellan.

I did like that this was on the cusp of slavery being abolished in England, and that also the very real danger of running a “macaroni club” is mentioned, these issues should never be completely forgotten in gay historical fiction. I liked the prose too, mainly – it was the other issues that stopped me enjoying the book.

Sadly, there’s also the usual problem with Torquere’s editing. I don’t like to keep mentioning this in Torquere’s reviews but they do themselves no favours. As they are already infamous for bad editing, you would think that they would work doubly hard to ensure that stories are as without error as they can be, but it seems not. This story is less than 100 pages long, so there’s no excuse for things like “he had long brown hair that was tied back in a cue“ and “he lay on the bed, his eyes closed, abandoned,” to name but two

I actually felt bitterly sorry for Thomas, and wanted him to escape from his plight – and from the much worse one that he falls into later, too. I wanted him to get safely home – not to Chambellan, but to his apprenticeship because frankly he deserved neither the frying pan, nor the fire.

Whilst the writing is pretty good, and there’s no doubt that Ms Kasar is a good story teller I’m afraid I didn’t find this erotic or romantic – it’s eroticised Stockholm Syndrome and that’s not any more arousing to me than eroticised rape, but your mileage may vary.

Buy from Torquere Books

Review: The Squire by Shawn Lane

Duncan has been Sir William’s squire for two years. During that time, he has lusted after and been in love with the beautiful muscular knight. Too bad Sir William prefers fair maidens…

Sir William is called home due to the impending death of his father. On the journey, he catches his squire watching other men having sex and realizes Duncan is also ready for some love play. Once they reach the family’s estates, William and Duncan begin an affair of both body and heart. But the happiness they find together is short-lived when the king dictates that William must marry a suitable heiress.

Unable to bear his place beside William and his wife, Duncan flees. Can William find the squire to convince him their love is meant to be?

Review by Erastes

This is an erotic short novella/long short story set in the 14th century, and the heat level is right up there at the top end of the thermometer. I’ll say here and now that I enjoyed the story, and although it’s short and sweet, the author did all the things a short story should do with conflict, and resolution and I can’t fault it in that way at all. I enjoyed the sex too!

The characters were easy to get to know, and I particularly liked Duncan for all his enthusiasm and affection. His knight Sir William has a voice all his own, and I could really see him as described.

That being said, and as this is a historical blog, I have to mention some of the things that struck me when it became clear that this was simply wallpaper historical erotica – men in fancy dress having a lot of sex out ofthe fancy dress – and this could have been avoided.

Firstly, the speech. As the story is set in 1345 it would of course have been impossible to write the speech as it was unless you wanted ye olde Chaucerie erotica but there are ways to express a more formal way of speaking. It is also fine to have your characters speaking in modern (but not too modern please) ways of speaking – but to mix them up is jarring to the reader (or to this reader anyway).  One minute Duncan is sounding like a modern man; and then – almost as if the author was suddenly thinking “oops – got to remind the reader that this is in the past” words like “mayhap”, “swive” (when fuck (and making love) are used alternately) and “nay” are scattered throughout. I don’t mind one or the other, but not both.

The historical inaccuracies abound I’m afraid, enough to make a purist scream: Braes are referred to as ancient underpants but braes are actually hills, and I was a bit confused why the squire had hills around his ankles. The word for medieval knickers is braies. There’s mention of chests of drawers (no!) and a wardrobe (definitely not!) but most jarring is Duncan’s age. I understand perfectly why the author had to make him 18, (because most publishers insist on it as that’s the legal age in parts of the USA) but it makes little sense in context, and warping fact to fit modern sensibilities is just daft. Squires were 12 or so when they became squires (having been pages before this from the age of 6 or 7) so to say he’d only been a squire for two years stuck out like a sore thumb. This could have been avoided with a bit of alteration – say making him a squire since he was 12 although this wouldn’t have explained why he could hardly ride a horse.

The editing has to be mentioned too, I’m afraid. Amber Quill is invite only and self-proclaims itself as “The Gold Standard in Publishing” but there are too many typos for me to be convinced of the hyperbole, and in such a short story the quantity of errors, both in accuracy and in the text simply isn’t acceptable.

It’s hard to comment more on the plot, because of the shortness of the piece, but it hangs together well– and, as I said, the sex is red-hot so lovers of historical sex will definitely find this lights a fuse under them. For me though –although I enjoyed the erotica – it was the inaccuracies that spoiled it for me. It won’t stop me looking out for more of Shawn Lane’s work though, as it’s clear that he/she can tell a tale, in and out of the bedroom.

Author’s website

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