Tag Archives: M/M

My Lord, My Master

Book Review of My Lord, My Master (The Three Kings Series,#1), by Scarlett Raynes

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My Lord, My MasterAuthor, Scarlett Raynes, sent me an e-copy of her novella, My Lord, My Master for review. I was super excited, because I’ve been really in to M/M lately and this is the first M/M I’ve received for review.

Description from Goodreads:
A King set on ruling with absolute power no matter how cruel or high the cost. 

A fierce warrior who’s loyalty is tested when forced to confront his lust for an enemy. 

A rebel, intent on claiming the throne and willing to destroy anything and everyone to get to it. 

In an Ancient Kingdom, King Solveig rules with an iron fist. Those who are loyal, sacrifice their lives for the pleasure of his service. Those who are not- die. When his loyal right hand man, Gunnvor goes missing on a routine hunt, all hell breaks loose. A routine hunt for his King, turns into a nightmare as Gunnvor is captured. Forced to submit to his captor to survive, the line between lust and loyalty becomes painfully blurry. 

Tired of his people being persecuted under the tyranny of the sitting king, Torhild is determined to conquer the land he believes is rightfully his. The unexpected intruder challenges not only his plans but also his self control. 

Review:
OK, I’ll get this out of the way to start with. I might have been more pleased with this book than I was,  except that it is a totally cliffhanger with absolutely no resolution. I consider such books a waste of my time and tend to avoid authors I know make a habit of it. Especially considering it’s only 73 pages long. Surely the whole story could fit in a single novel if it’s being broken into chunks that small.

Beyond the cliffhanger issue, I would consider this a decent Porn With Plot read. Certainly it’s nothing more. The two characters meet, try and kill each-other, somehow (while still trying to kill one another) their feelings change from homicidal to erotic. Then the whole rest of the book is the two men raping and humiliating each-other and apparently falling in love (or something). There is no real character development, no real progression of plot, not really even much of a story. That’s not really my bag, but some of it was hot.

The editing could use a bit more attention. There were a few typo-type mistakes, the POVs jump around, and a new 1st person POV character is introduced at 80%, as is a supernatural element that hadn’t even been hinted at up until that point. The whole thing was just rushed, inelegant and abrupt. Oh, and the series title kind of gives away how the whole thing is likely to resolve itself.

So, if your just looking for something to fap/paff with and you’re into the dub-con, pick this up. But if you’re looking for a deeper read, you’ll probably be disappointed.

The Tide of War

Book Review of The Tide of War, by Lori A. Witt

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The Tide of WarI received a copy of Lori A. Witt‘s The Tide of War from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Lieutenant Commander Kyle West is one of Earth Fleet’s greatest fighter pilots. Every day, he leads his squadron into battle over Earth’s cities in a seemingly endless war against a vicious alien race, defending his home and his loved ones.

Millions of miles away, the Fleet’s Elite Squadron attacks from another angle, engaging the enemy on its home turf. Casualties are high, and the Squadron needs more of the Fleet’s very best. But joining the Elite is a death sentence—a surety Kyle isn’t willing to face. Until a devastating attack wipes out the family he refused to leave.

Commander Andrei Dezhnyov, an Elite Squadron gunner, isn’t sure what to make of the cocky new American pilot. Kyle is equally uncertain about the snarly Russian, but as they warm up to each other, their tentative alliance becomes a deep bond—one that endangers them both when a daring and disobedient rescue reveals secrets that call into question everything they’ve ever believed about their enemy. Secrets that their .superiors would kill to protect.

Review:
This is one of those ho-hum, ‘it was ok’ kind of books. The writing was fine, the editing was fine, the dialogue was fine. There wasn’t a lot of sex, but it was fine. Nothing in the book blew my mind, but I didn’t hate it either.

Unfortunately, as much as I love me some M/M loving, I thought the book would have been stronger without it. Which is unfortunate, because the aspect of the book I appreciated most was that both men had serviceable, happy marriages that still accommodated their sexuality. One was bi and had an almost worshipful relationship with his wife who encouraged him to take male lovers. The other was gay and married to a lesbian, but had an obvious platonic love for his wife.

I liked the fact that Witt managed to show that love and sex don’t have to  look the same way in every marriage and that having sex with someone else, when done in an open and accepting relationship, doesn’t automatically invalidate the legitimacy of that same love for your spouse. Unfortunately, it also created a situation in which I very strongly felt that in order for a ‘romance’ to develop Witt had to get rid of the inconvenient wives and that sort of compromised the message a bit.

More than any of that though, the romance just wasn’t necessary for the plot to work. In fact, I think it cluttered up what might have be a perfectly readable sci-fi novel otherwise. And it was an acceptable sci-fi. I thought it got bogged down in endless dog-fighting at times and the solution came about with shocking ease, just before the book ended rather abruptly. But it was an all right read.

For Real

Book Review of For Real, by Alexis Hall

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For RealI received a copy of For Real, by Alexis Hall from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Laurence Dalziel is worn down and washed up, and for him, the BDSM scene is all played out. Six years on from his last relationship, he’s pushing forty and tired of going through the motions of submission.

Then he meets Toby Finch. Nineteen years old. Fearless, fierce, and vulnerable. Everything Laurie can’t remember being.

Toby doesn’t know who he wants to be or what he wants to do. But he knows, with all the certainty of youth, that he wants Laurie. He wants him on his knees. He wants to make him hurt, he wants to make him beg, he wants to make him fall in love.

The problem is, while Laurie will surrender his body, he won’t surrender his heart. Because Toby is too young, too intense, too easy to hurt. And what they have—no matter how right it feels—can’t last. It can’t mean anything.

It can’t be real.

Review:
Another stellar read from Alexis Hall. I really shouldn’t be surprised. I’m getting pretty close to card-carrying fangirl status, if I’m honest. I thought this one was quite different from anything else I’d read by him; Shackles maybe coming closest. (Though, I haven’t read his whole catalogue.) But I was skeptical picking it up because of the BDSM theme. I simply haven’t had great luck with such books.

I get that BDSM is having its moment in the book world, right now. There seem to be an unusual number of ‘romances’ coming out using it as a schtick…or a theme, maybe. But I find that as much as I like the idea of it, I’m almost always disappointed, if not disgusted by them.

Because, here’s the thing, I don’t know what it’s like in a real-life BDSM pairing, but the overwhelming number of books I’ve read with BDSM read like what my dear mother, who despises anything that removes the sacred from the sexual, calls ‘mutual masterbation.’ In other words, the characters in the scenes feel not like two people engaging in  a meaningful way and having sex with one another, but two people individually using the other as an object for masterbation, connected by nothing more than proximity and ocular availability. And I rarely find that anywhere near as sexy as it’s intended to be. (My own interpretation of Dalziel’s jadedness, coloured by my own experiences of course, was that he was sensing this same tendency to force a partner into a fantasy mold that you act upon, instead of engage with on a personal, human level.)

This is where For Real shined for me. I understood both Dalziel and Toby’s needs and how/why they filled those needs for one another. I saw how hard they each worked to make the other happy and I understood the BDSM aspect of their relationship as something other than a fantasy one individual perpetuates on another. I didn’t need a narrator to repeatedly reassure me that the scene wasn’t abuse because the sub really was enjoying it, because I could see that and I understood why. And. It. Was. Beautiful.

Both Dalziel and Toby were wonderful characters. I especially appreciated that they weren’t flawlessly gorgeous people, beautiful to eachother, sure, but Dalziel was blunt and often angry looking and Toby was too skinny and had acne. I really love finding relatable, normalish people in books. I also thought Toby’s teenaged voice was marvellous, though I was admittedly skeptical about a man/boy who got a D and an F on their GCSEs having the vocabulary, poetic familiarity and general depth of thought of an Oxford scholar. But I was able to roll with it.

There were some fun side characters—the bisexual best friends with an obviously open relationship, Angel with the purposefully vague gender, Dominic the Dom (who played the alto-sax and seemed to be an unbearably nice guy), the free-love mother, the academics. Man I’d love to see Jasper and Sherry get their own book.

And as always, Hall managed to rip my heart out with the unintentional cruelties of lost love. I was never sure if I wanted Robert to suffer horribly or not—not for ending a relationship necessarily, relationships die, but for not seeing the ongoing injury his actions cause. Does such a person deserve to go on and be happy if he’s so unaware of his own destructive wake? Or am I just truly so unforgiving?

My complaints are few on this one: the overly intellectual nineteen-year-old I mentioned above, the fact that anyone as open and honest as Toby would be hard to find in real life, the fact that I didn’t feel I got to know Dalziel outside of his submission very well, and a couple of the scenes took on such a dream-like quality as to stand out as somewhat unmatched to the rest of the book.

All in all, I loved it. I’m not one who usually rereads books. My recall is such that I remember too much to ever have that fresh new feeling with a story. But unusually, I could see myself reading this again just to re-experience it.