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I found this odd fantasy novel appealing at first, but after the first
section I stopped reading it. Still I would recommend this book for certain
types of readers.
The author gets you comfortable with the fact that the main character is gay
without being too explicit about things. I was very comfortable with the initial
presentation. It seemed that . . . though the character was gay . . . this would
not play a large role in the novel. I was OK with this because, after all, people
are people, and some of them are gay. If I can read a story from an alien creature's
point of view, I should be able to read a book written from a gay man's perspective.
Further, the author seemed to avoid more than the most general mention of such
matters: a hetero couple disturbs the camp site, by making noise somewhere in the
dark, sometime in the night. The next sex scene, however, is a little more explicit . . .
and it is gay. Note to the author: this can be extremely off-putting to your larger
audience. Not that it was that explicit, after all, this is fantasy, not porn . . .
still . . .
One more matter, that helped unravel things for me was the assumption (in a flashback)
that a one-night stand was equivalent to a long-term relationship because the main character
cooked breakfast for his chance-met companion.
Now, I'm no prude. In my single days I had many one-night stands. However I've been
married now for over twenty years, and I know that the two are not comparable. In fact,
they never will be. I freely admit that I do not know how a gay man would feel about such
things. It might, in fact, be a typical reaction . . . although I doubt it.
Despite this, I would recommend this book for gay readers or for those who don't mind
such things. It is really quite well-written, largely entertaining, and the author includes
an uncommonly-vast amount of detail about the world in which the action takes place.
This is not done in a tedious or lecturing manner, but flows quite naturally from the
narative. In short, this would be an extremely good book if just a few of the details
were left out.
'Til Next Time,
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