This review was written for, and originally appeared on, BDSM Book Reviews.
Mai Kearns has a lot on his mind. The Thai-born adopted son of Dekalb, Illinois farmers is a bit of a misfit, being Asian and gay in America’s white heartland. Nonetheless he loves his parents and his farm, which he seems about to lose. So, it’s hardly surprising that he feels he needs to break his ‘date’ with the mysterious Vin Vanbly.
The year is 1996, in the very early days of the public Internet. There are no smartphones with hook-up apps like Grindr yet. There’s mostly just AOL or Compuserve, with their chat rooms and pre-blog, pre-social media personal web sites. It is on AOL that Vin has spun his stories of the “Lost Kings”. In the lore of the Lost Kings, every man is a king, he’s just forgotten, or lost, that special quality that makes him a king. It’s Vin’s rather curious mission in life to help Lost Kings reclaim their kingdoms, through what he calls “Kinging Weekends”.
Mai is fascinated by the tales of the Lost Kings, and what he hears about Vin in chat rooms, so he eventually asks to have the Kinging experience. Vin agrees, but on the Friday evening when their adventure is about to begin, Mai wants to back out, since his family is about to lose the farm to some corporate enterprise the following week. Vin cajoles Mai into taking part in his King Weekend, which is in the form of a treasure hunt for the ‘metaphorical’ kidnapped deed to the farm. It won’t be the fun and games Mai might have had in mind. Rather, it will be one of the most difficult experiences of his life, as Vin sets up events which will tear Mai down before rebuilding him as the man he could be.
“King Mai” is a difficult story to categorize. It involves a mystery, but you wouldn’t necessarily describe it as a classic whodunit mystery novel. There is certainly a bit of romance to it, but this is a rather gritty, rocky romance, not filled with fluffy kittens and made-for-each-other happily-ever-after gooeyness. Perhaps most importantly, since this review is for a BDSM book site, this is not a story that involves any form of BDSM. You could try to draw parallels to a D/s power exchange in Vin and Mai’s agreement, but that would be a big stretch. Vin is a control freak, a schemer and even something of a stalker, but he’s no dominant. In fact, he’s a bit of a wuss. While Mai has agreed to do what Vin says for the weekend, he’s no submissive. In fact, he’s clearly the stronger man. Furthermore, there’s virtually no sex in the book, although there is a lot of kissing and hugging. The few sex scenes don’t involve anything kinky, unless you find getting a blow job in the middle of a corn field kinky. In the end, it might be best to describe this novel as a sort of buddy story, about two men who come together for a weekend of self-discovery.
If the description sounds a bit new-age, the story carefully avoids that by keeping the focus on Mai. This is his personal journey, which is different from everyone else’s. We learn quite a lot about Mai and the life that has led him to this point. It’s quite easy to empathize with him. Vin is a somewhat different story, even though he is the narrator. We get bits and pieces of his background, enough to suspect that there might be some very traumatic events in his past, but only one incident is ever revealed. “King Mai” is the second in a series of books about Vin and his Lost Kings. While each of the books in the series appears to be about a different king, one suspects the entire series is about discovering who Vin really is and what sent him on this quest.
Having not read the first volume in the series, I have nothing to compare this one to. The pace of the story is slow, going into the details of almost every minute that Vin and Mai are together for their weekend. There is a nice mix of humor and pathos in the story, even if we don’t quite connect with either character. The narrator Vin is definitely holding back, and we only see Mai through his eyes. It’s easy to understand Vin’s infatuation with Mai, but almost impossible to understand why he then makes the decisions he does. It’s an obvious hook to get you to want to read the further books in the series, to find out what’s behind Vin’s motives, but it might leave you feeling a little dissatisfied, as it did me.
You can find out more about the author at his web site. “King Mai” is available from Amazon
