Posts rated 5 stars
Review - The Brig
My rating: 
In spite of recent events, the Vietnam War remains one of America’s most controversial foreign entanglements. It was the first ’television’ war, in which the brutalities of conflict were brought right into people’s living rooms every night. The result was perhaps the first time any war was openly debated in American society, and that included the rank and file of the armed forces. Against this background, the unnamed narrator of “The Brig”, a seminary dropout, joins the navy.
Tags: Vietnam War
Review - Aaron
My rating:
The title character Aaron is a deeply disturbed young man. As a high school sophomore, he and his best friend were grabbed off the street, beaten, raped, slashed and left for dead. His friend Juliette died but by some miracle Aaron survived. However, he is deeply scarred, both emotionally and physically. As the story opens, it’s two years after the attack, but Aaron is still barely able to function. “Post traumatic stress” is altogether too mild a term for Aaron’s almost catatonic state.
Review - I Once Had a Master
My rating:
“I Once Had a Master” is a collection of nine short stories by one of the masters (if you’ll pardon the expression) of gay BDSM erotica. Preston passed away in 1994 and the book, originally published in 1985, is only available in print, so it’s taken me a while to get my hands on it. The collection isn’t exactly what I was expecting. While the stories are almost all hard-core in one way or another, there’s a lot more to them than just the kinky sex, which often plays a minor role.
Review - The Rabelais Alliance
My rating:
Curtis Marin is a hit man, although he would object strongly to that term. He would probably prefer something more along the lines of ‘avenging angel’. In the almost lawless fringes of the human colonies among the stars, where money and power lets you get away with murder (in other words, not much changes in 700 years), Marin works for a secret organization that, for a price, allows bereaved families to get justice.
Tags: novel Space Science Fiction
Review - Gaius and Achilles
My rating:
This review was written for, and first appeared, at Speak Its Name. It’s not often anymore that a book catches me completely by surprise, taking turns that you just don’t expect an historical romance to take. “Gaius and Achilles” surprised me, and I don’t mind saying right up front it was quite a pleasant surprise. We’re first briefly introduced to Achilles and Hippothous, two aristocratic Greek youths of Paphos, on the island of Crete.
Tags: Historical Ancient Rome BDSM
Review - Remastering Jerna
My rating:
Remastering Jerna is a really dark tale of suffering and redemption. In it, the author has created an alternate world not unlike our own, but with significant small differences. She spends many pages drawing this world and the main characters in rich detail, making everything three dimensional and very real in a very readable style that gradually draws you in. The title character, Jerna, is a teacher in a temple school with a wife and two daughters.
Tags: Speculative Fiction D/s BDSM
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: 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”).