Miltantly Romantic

It's been a minute. 2021 was...a thing that happened. I am trying, at this time, to have one post a month. It's the 29th of January, so clearly I'm not off to what one could consider a smashing success, but also, it's not February. Calling it a win.

Other romance-related goals for this year include not losing my mind when the second season of Bridgerton releases and it's all the community can talk about for six months while I mostly want to crawl in a hole and die, getting some more trans/genderqueer titles in the rotation, being a little more willing to DNF when I'm not enjoying. 

Other writing goals for this year: to do it. In any form. Anywhere. We'll see how that goes, shall we?

In any case, as promised in the above title (and the tags, for that matter), a review. Turning this leaf over with Maxym M. Martineau's Kingdom of Exiles.

The subgenre for this one is fantasy, and the world building is truly lovely. I enjoyed the heck out of this book and only have some extremely minor nitpicks to mention.

Our female lead is Leena. Leena comes from a place where the people are known as Charmers, and they use what's essentially an innate ability to draw others to them to tame magical creatures. When the book starts, Leena has been exiled from her home for crimes she hasn't committed, framed by an ex who did commit said crimes. Understandably, she has some trust issues. She's also doing a bunch of illegal stuff to get by. But her competence is established very early, as is her tendency to genuinely care about others, even when she maybe shouldn't. Leena is an intensely likeable character from the get-go.

When a contract for a hit is put on her, Leena forces her way into the guild that has taken the contract and negotiates with the head of the guild, Noc, to get the hit rescinded. Noc, who's got ninety-nine problems of his own, makes a deal that if she can get the guild four creatures of a certain level of skill, he'll "handle" the contract.  What Leena doesn't know is that by the rules of the guild, the contract can't be rescinded, barring having the person who ordered it rescind it or killing that person, and Noc simply intends to kill her once he's gotten the creatures.

In fairness, Leena has forced her way in by way of almost killing his second, so he thinks he's dealing with some kind of criminal mastermind, basically, but I will say, I was pretty side-eye-ey about this.

Anyway, Noc and the three other assassins Leena is going to provide with creatures have to go on a road trip to go get the creatures. You'll be shocked to find out that Noc and Leena fall in love along the way. Then there's a BUNCH of exterior problems that have to be overcome for that love to be even mildly viable. For those that this might bother: this is the first in a planned six book series, and there are elements of the plot that are not resolved at the end. That said, it ends at a HFN place and it doesn't feel like you'll die if you can't begin the next book immediately.

All right, my nitpicks, and they really are minor.  I like very much that Noc is clearly queer--he's had past relationships with both men and women, there's no question that he finds both men and women romantically interesting. However, in a world where there does not seem to be an issue with queerness, at least so far as I can discern, the fact that it is his past heterosexual relationship that sets off a war, and that he ends with Leena because, as one of his male near-lovers explains, "she's the missing piece," it fronts his m/f relationships in a way that his m/m relationships are not. I don't actually think this was intentional on the part of the author. Especially as the relationship between Kost (the near-lover) and Noc has settled into deep platonic love, it doesn't feel as though it's meant to be dismissive. Even so, it would have been really easy for the relationship that began the war to be the one between Noc and his male lover because...their society doesn't have our hang ups. And sure, you have a bit of a kill your gays issue there, but not really, because a) several of Noc's past lovers are dead because Noc has been living with a curse with that as the end result, and b) Kost is still alive and we are introduced to another queer character at the end of the book that it's heavily suggested will play a larger part in the coming books/is interested in pursuing Kost.

Also, with the exception of a few minor characters here and there, for a completely different world, everyone seems weirdly pretty white.

If you are someone for whom characters keeping secrets from each other bothers you, I would tell you to proceed with caution. Both characters have serious secrets, and they are not revealed until well into the book. Some of Noc's STILL have not been revealed to Leena, which is a little squicky, if I'm being honest. They both have good reasons for keeping quiet as long as they do, everyone's motivations in this book make sense, but if that's a thing for you, well, reader beware.

And finally, there's a point in the book where Noc assumes something he is told which is exceedingly vague and he's really dumb AF to make the assumption he makes means one thing and it actually means something completely else which screws Leena six ways from Sunday. Again, it makes sense why he makes this assumption, but also, there's a decent amount of 'because plot' that happens there, which also might be a thing for some peeps.

That said, Leena's a great leading character, and Noc is pretty darn good.  Kost, Calem, and Oz are all deeply engaging, and the found family happening in this is *chef's kiss*.  As a plus, the creatures are interesting, and sometimes adorable. Most of all, I never felt like the plot got in the way of the characters or the relationships, which I feel like 99.9999% of plots do.

I'll definitely be looking into the next book sometime in the near future.

Venturing out of my histrom corner, this book had such good buzz in a number of places I trust that I decided to take a chance, and lemme tell you: NO REGERTS! 

Our hero, Zylar, is an alien who has failed at his people's mate-choosing ceremony enough times that he's on his last chance.  Through a series of unplanned events, he accidentally abducts human Beryl Bowman, of St. Louis, and her dog, Snaps.  Once he's managed to find tech that allows them to speak to each other--which he outfits Snaps with, as well, not being aware that, you know, humans and dogs don't actually understand each other as a matter of course--he explains the situation to Beryl.  At the moment, because of computer failure, he can't get her back to earth.  Beryl takes this fairly gamely and decides to go ahead and participate in the ceremony, see how things turn out while they're trying to find a solution to getting her back to earth.

Zylar is a fucking cinnamon roll hero, which I'm pretty consistently down for.  He's got super low self-esteem when we meet him due to years of what would be considered emotional abuse by family in a human society.  He's also a virgin because of how their society controls sex, although it plays differently in this book, since that's considered normal.

Beryl is a roll-with-the-punches girl.  Like, almost a little too much, until later on?  Although some of that can be put down to shock.  She's considered primitive by Zylar's species, but through her completely different way of thinking about things and willingness to make allies, does incredibly well in the trials.

Meanwhile, spending time with someone who treats him well and values him for who he is--which, for the record, is pretty great--is building Zylar up into a healthy being, a guy who is in a good place to be a partner.

The world building in this book is interesting without being intrusive, Snaps as a character is both hilarious and bone-deep enjoyable, the main characters are fantastic and a few of the side characters are great as well, including Kurr the plant-alien.  The villain of the piece is pretty one-note and basically a straight up meditation on the dangers of unchecked privilege, but he's not really the point, so that didn't bother me.

The two things that do bother me are this: one, the society that Zylar is part of has some seriously dark, post-apocalyptic, hierarchical shit going on, and it kind of just hangs out all throughout the book, ever-present, never really addressed.  Two, due to this, there is surprise!character death to spur a plot point, and while normally I'd be like "okay, I see why A had to happen to have B happen," this is a romance novel, so it honestly felt a tiny bit like the covenant was broken.  In general, I feel as though there are certain elements that leave a stain on the presumptive HEA, and these two sort of did.

Another extremely minor issue I had was that while we got to know Zylar extremely well, including his past and his motivations, I felt like Beryl was something more of a question mark.  I know she's somewhat athletic and that she has hair long enough for a pony-tail.  I know she's from St. Louis and has no family.  Later on, in what feels like a poorly-planned info drop, I learn about her family life in about a paragraph of narrative text.  But she doesn't have the same development that Zylar has, and I wish she did.

That being said, I would still whole heartedly recommend this book.  It's the first in a trilogy, so part of me wonders if at least element one of my concerns gets cleared up later on.  Plus, it's hilarious, heart-warming, the characters are super easy to root for, they make good decisions based on the information they have at any given time, they are honest and communicative with each other even when it's not easy, and in general, this is a peach of a book.

This book is why I have my Kugel Rule.  It's a contemporary, BDSM, with a significant age gap wherein one of the partners in nineteen.  On paper, this should not be my thing even just slightly.

This is the single erotic romance I've ever read, and certainly the single published BDSM work I've ever encountered that made me think, "Oh, this author actually has met humans who have kinky sex.  And possibly humans who have relationships with other humans who have kinky sex."

I should be open about the fact that it undoubtedly helps a lot that both protagonists are male.  I sincerely doubt I could have read this if this had been a male/female pairing, regardless of dynamic.

The basic premise of this work is that Laurie, who is thirty-seven and finally getting over a truly traumatic break up with a partner he'd had since college until about six years earlier, has been going to the kink clubs with a couple of his friends mostly to find a pick-up play and satisfy basic bodily urges.  When we meet him, his friends, Sam and Grace, have dragged him out to a club night.  Laurie is Not Feeling It.

Couple of shout outs here: I love that this book recognizes that a club is always going to be zoned in a warehousing district.  And is going to be a converted warehouse itself.  And that you can't really just walk in off the street, there are certain memberships or rules enforced to somewhat police the community.  Dungeon Monitors also come up, which is great.  There's also an awareness that people actually do just sit around and shoot the shit at these clubs.  Just, in general, this felt roughly one billion times more accurate than basically any other scene description I've ever read.

Anyhoodle.  Enter Toby.  Toby is nineteen, aware that he's what I call "vanilla incapable", aka, someone with zero ability to get anything out of vanilla sex, painfully aware that being dominant at that age is often laughed at due to a lack of life experience, and just wanting to see what he can see.

Laurie actually approaches Toby to tell him to get out, that he's too damn young to be there.  And Toby gives him the most beautiful what for.  He just stands his ground and makes it clear that he might not know what he's doing, but he knows what he wants.  And Laurie is enchanted by how sincere Toby is.  By the depth of his awareness that this is just what he is.  So, for the first time since his ex left, instead of bottoming, which he has done plenty of, he submits.

It's not fancy.  He's on his knees because that's where Toby wants him.  There's not even really a lot of touching.  It is incredibly spot-on about how D/s dynamics work when they do.

D/s and sex between these two might be fumbling and uncertain, given Toby's age and lack of experience, but the chemistry is just right.  (And the sex never feels like just sex, which is an extremely hard thing to make happen as a writer.)

Everything else between them is complicated as all get out, and not in a manufactured way.  As someone who knows how hard it is to find kink-compatible humans, I very much understood Laurie's hesitations about seeing the relationship as dating or real.  In fact, the least realistic element of the book to me was how smoothly his friends supported the relationship.  Since I enjoyed that, I forgave it, but the truth is, especially at nineteen and thirty-seven, people judge.

And Toby's not wrong about Laurie's commitment issues.  Even Toby's inability to just talk about things the way he should at a certain point is understandable, because he might be a mature nineteen, but he's nineteen.

However, both of them are such fully-fleshed out people, with lives and concerns and needs of their own, that the emotional ups and downs feel entirely natural.  At one point Laurie tells Toby that couples fight, it's in how you recover from it that matters, and it's so elementary and so unbelievably true.

Honestly, the only drawback to this book is that it's currently only available through the 'zon because of Riptide being Terrible People.  Worth it.  Totally, 100% worth it.