Posts labeled Book Reviews
Review - Kei's Gift
My rating: 
The best word I can think of to describe Kei’s Gift is “epic” - in the very classical sense of the word. This is a broad tale of the clash of two cultures, set in an alternate world not far removed from Earth’s ancient antiquity. The ‘clash’ is actually an all out war, and against this background our two heroes struggle to find peace, and each other. On the one side, we have Arman, a general in the Prij army.
Tags: Fantasy
Review - Jasmine Nights
My rating:
This is one of my favorite books, and the one I’m most likely to recommend to people who ask for something to read about Thailand or Bangkok. Although set in the early 1960s, it still manages to accurately capture the crazy contradiction that is modern Thailand. For those that haven’t spent much time in Bangkok, many of the situations described may come across as wildly fanciful, but anyone who has lived here for any length of time will know they are dead-on accurate.
Tags: Trans*
Review: Fun With Dick And Shane
My rating:
This is the biggest surprise I’ve had for quite some time. I was expecting a bit of light fluff, and while there’s lots of humor in the author’s breezy first-person account of the ‘adventures’ of a 24 year-old houseboy/partner of two older men, the book still manages to tackle some very serious subjects. Gillibran Brown, called Gilli by his friends, is the hero of the book, as well as in his own mind.
Review - Hell's Pawn
My rating:
This book was a really pleasant surprise. It was a really nice change from what I have been reading lately, and reminded me how much I like a good sci-fi/alternate universe story. It was my first reading love, before puberty got me interested in sex and smut. Bell has crafted a very believable vision of the afterlife, where the various belief systems of humanity - Christian, Hindu, Celt, ancient Egyptian, etc.
Tags: Fantasy
Review: A Dish Served Cold
My rating:
This wasn’t exactly the story I was expecting, so my reaction and review of it may be colored by that. The mention of slavery in the description, as well as the BDSM genre classifications, had me expecting a m/s story, and this is NOT that. In fact, I would argue that there’s not a shred of ‘real’ BDSM action in this book. There’s some forced sex, and a fair amount of bondage and discipline that has nothing to do with sex.
Review: The Hadrian Enigma - A Forbidden History
My rating:
Hadrian and Antinous is one of the great true love stories of gay history, so anything to do with it is sure to get my attention. This is a difficult book to rate, because it seems to try to cross genres and doesn’t do it very successfully. Still, it is obviously a very well-researched story.
Review: Transgressions
My rating:
I’ve always enjoyed Erastes work, especially Mere Mortals, which was the last of her works I read. Unfortunately, Transgressions failed to capture my imagination. There’s nothing I can put my finger on as to why the book didn’t do it for me, and it’s probably not any one thing. This is a much longer work than most of Erastes’ books, and it does move along rather slowly in the beginning, as her books do.
Review: Duck!
My rating:
I probably wouldn’t have picked this book up on my own, but it was so highly recommended by several people I follow on Twitter that I decided to give it a try, and I’m very happy I did. It’s a lovely story, told in full. So many books I’ve read lately have been under-developed, but “Duck!” is very well fleshed out, and written in a very easy to read style that makes it a real page-turned (although, since I no longer read dead trees, I guess that makes it a “thumb-tapper”).
Review: Test of Faith
My rating:
I’m surprised there aren’t more m/m books set in the crusades. It would seem to be fertile ground. “Test of Faith” was quite a refreshing change from the Regency/Victorian setting of most historical romances these days. It doesn’t have a happily ever after ending, which is disappointing but true to the characters. There are a couple of reasons I didn’t give it four stars: The point of view flip-flops between the two protagonists - Abdul and Thierry.
Background: James Brooke
I just finished the first draft of the sequel to Journey to Angkor, which hopefully means I'm only a month or two away from publishing it. So, I thought it might be interesting to give you some background on the one historical figure I've used in this next book. I first encountered James Brooke when I visited Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, where he was the first "White Rajah" of Sarawak.
Tags: Journey to Rai-Lay
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