THE BARBARIAN DUET, two gay fantasy romances telling one couple's

WED TO THE BARBARIAN
KEIRA ANDREWS (The Barbarian Duet #1)
KA Books
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Will an innocent prince forced into marriage choose passion?

Sheltered in the palace with his books, Jem’s life is peaceful. Even if he’s lonely and yearning for romance, the big, strong men he wants don’t crave small, timid princes.

Then he’s forced to marry a mysterious barbarian.

Jem must do his duty—even if it means being stuck with Cador, a brute who dismisses him as weak. Even if it means a fake marriage in name only for the sake of their homelands. Even if he must leave behind everything and everyone to journey to a forbidding island of ice and stone.

Even if there’s only one bed.

Alone with this wild—yet tender?—man, Jem discovers desire that burns hotter than he ever imagined. Can two strangers learn to trust, or will dangerous lies tear them apart?

Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending (eventually). This is the first action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet and must be read before The Barbarian’s Vow.


I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: I don’t recall reading anything by Keira Andrews before this duology, which honestly I think is best called a “Duet”...a choral piece for two voices, invoking lovely, layered harmonies and rich contrapuntal passages of musical intensity. There are things about it I didn’t enjoy, but on balance, this secondary-world fantasy is enjoyable and well worth reading.

Twenty-year-old Prince Jowan of Neuvella, in the land of Onan (!), is small, slight, and shy. He doesn’t particularly like his big, butch older brothers who have a history of playing pranks on him and making him feel picked on and targeted. His non-binary older sibling Santo is more to his taste, being artistic and far less hearty-big-guy. Jem, as he’s called by one and all, is very much a dreamer, a soft-hearted animal rescuer, a romance-fantasy-novel reader, and a deeply unwilling virgin. He’s at a seasonal summit meeting with his parents, the Queen of Neuvella and her consort; he’s bored out of his mind by the politicking and the ceremonial stuff. He decidedly is not bored by the barbarian hotties from newly-returned-to-the-fold Ergh to the north...he’s been eyeing one of them up pretty thoroughly, tall broad and handsome in his leathers and furs blond god Cador.

Unrepentant horndawg Cador can’t be arsed to look at anyone from Onan, effete little weaklings whose dark skins and eyes are signs of soft, luxurious living impossible in cold, northerly Ergh. But he, too, is bored out of his mind, and dreading his inevitable fate: Marrying one of the weakings, a Prince apparently called Jowan. Whichever one he is. But his tas, the Chieftain of Rusk and leader of Ergh, has made this marriage a duty he can not avoid...he doesn’t want to marry anyone, still less a foreigner, but he must or there will be dreadful, dreadful consequences, things that are bad will become terrible, unbearable.

And so the reindeer games begin! The culture of Onan (!) is sex positive, identity fluid, and clearly set for a major conflict. The royal alliance that’s being formalized here between Ergh and Neuvella (the one that’s about to be sprung on uninformed and unsuspecting Jem) is meant to solidify ties with the newly reunited with their polity “barbarians”. They’ve all come seeking trade, and other advantages that are revealed slowly over the course of the two stories. The cost is to be borne by Jem and Cador, unwilling husbands bound by the gods to serve their parents’ aims for their peoples.

What happens is a good story of young men who love their families and their ways of life, and whose sense of duty impels them to behave with all the honor and honesty they can in every situation. The obstacles to the pair becoming more than political mates are, bit by bit, overcome, climbed over, or worked around. They’re very, very compatible in bed. Their sex life is vigorous, once it begins. I don’t happen to like that kind of sex, not finding humiliation at all erotically enticing. Lots of flippity-flippity-flip until the “dirty talk” ended.

What I was invested in was these men’s world. I think their culture was interestingly drawn, with its clear and unambiguous rejection of binding gender roles and abundantly evident sexual freedom. The cultural conflicts over religion were framed interestingly...the clerics, male and female, are not particularly welcome in Ergh, whose people’s long-ago exodus from Onan (!) included leaving “the gods” behind. Now that there’s a major crisis in Ergh, the clerics have sought to use it to bring these lost folk back into the fold...and under the clerics’ power. This is not to Cador’s taste, nor to Jem’s, as it turns out. Neither man is eager to see the clerics expand their power over the people.

The time Jem spends in Ergh, where he and Cador live together in a rough unprincely manner, changes him. He is eager to be part of Cador’s world once their initial wary hostility is overcome, once they begin to accept and love each other for their unique selves. But there are secrets, ugly, terrible secrets, at the heart of his marriage to Cador. These come to light in hurtful, painful ways that re-open Jem’s barely healed trust wounds inflicted by his hearty dudebro brothers during his childhood. And then, as the true depths of the secrets is revealed, Jem’s new and fragile love for Cador is shattered.

That’s where this book ends, and my gift-giving friend said to me in giving me the second book, “can’t leave you without book two!” I protested then that of course, getting any gift was great!

I meant it. But, you see, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about because I would’ve gone *stark*staring*MAD* if I hadn’t had book two to dive into the very second I finished book one. The story has a great hook for my readerly interests. Religious folk being the bad guys? Say hallelujah! But not being the bad guys because they are persecuting gay people for being gay? Bring the jubilee! This world, this secondary world of “love who you love and be who you are,” is one I’d read about all day long. The fact that the religious establishment is gender blind, solemnizes marriages between people with any plumbing whatever, and is *still* evil...well, it’s like the author ripped my convictions about the nature of religion out of my head and wrote them into this story.

It’s reasonably clear that there is some kind of interesting history to this world, permaybehaps one of colonization from Earth in a past not remembered. How else are there dark- and light-skinned people, living separately, but not divided along “racial” lines? The conflicts in this story are no less bitter and hateful, I grant you, but there’s no sign that the differing skin colors of Jem and Cador feature in any way in their societal conflict. That’s something I approve of, and of course the absence of sex-based or identity-based phobias is much to my liking as well. No sooner did I finish this read than I went on to book two.

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THE BARBARIAN'S VOW
KEIRA ANDREWS
KA Books
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: He claimed an innocent prince—and surrendered his heart.

Cador only married a pampered prince from a faraway land to save his people. He never expected he’d grow to respect Jem. He never expected to find comfort with him. He never expected to want him with a fierce passion.

He never expected to fall in love.

Now Cador must secure his people’s future and win Jem’s heart. For without it, he has no future at all.

The Barbarian’s Vow by Keira Andrews is a gay romance fantasy featuring enemies to lovers, an age gap, forced proximity, first times, and of course a happy ending. This is the second and final action-adventure romance in the Barbarian Duet. Wed to the Barbarian must be read first.

I RECEIVED THE DUET FROM AN EXCITED ELF. YOU WERE SO RIGHT: CAN’T BE WITHOUT BOTH!

My Review: Finishing Jem’s and Cador’s story...after the ending of book one, I was wondering how the hell the author was going to get the necessary HEA out of the place she left us! And had my sweet elf not gifted me both of these books, I think I’d’ve behaved like Jem does in this book, scratching at my scalp until it bleeds just to distract myself from the awful agony within.

Luckily this was not necessary.

As the book opens, the badly betrayed Jem and contrite, desperate-to-reconcile Cador are embarking for Onan (!) to meet with Jem’s mother, the Queen of Neuvella, and the clerical hierarchy to solve the pressing issue that’s driven the entire plot. Cador’s initial reasons for marrying Jem have come to light and, as they were truly terrible reasons, base and cruel reasons, Jem is understandably not well disposed towards Cador. He is his husband...he is absolutely not Cador’s friend just now.

As this is a perfectly reasonable response to the things he’s discovered, the hurts that have been inflicted on him, there’s no blame attached to him for being as cold, withdrawn, snarky, and/or unkind as he’s got a mind to be. Yet here he is with Cador and several other of the Erghians who conspired to cause him serious harm. He’s actively working to solve this terrible problem. He’s got all the Good Boy Points in this scenario.

What transpires from the moment the ship lands can only be described as a clusterfuck. There is not a single, solitary moment when Jem (still angry at all the Erghians) and Cador (trying, trying hard, to make up with Jem) actually communicate. I get it, Author Andrews! Jem’s angry and hurt...but the number of silly and frankly incredible excuses made for them to stay away from having a real conversation stopped working around halfway through the book. It became ridiculous and repetitive.

There were a few other problematic things...Cador’s tas, the chieftain, being absent from his post while the place is in a crisis, for example...but honestly it’s just the silliness of the inner excuses and rationalizations (“I’m so tired, we’ll talk in the morning”) and external obstacles (...and then {someone} came pounding on the door! Or “the Queen commanded us to…”) put in the way of these men having a simple conversation that wore on me. The more there were the less credible they were.

Worldbuilding issues were present as well. Why, for example, are there maple trees and horses and chickens and goats and boars...but also sevel fruit and tew trees and dillywig birds? Speaking of sevel fruits, there is a reason that these are precious that is made obvious to us. But how the effect these fruits have could simply have gone unnoticed by humanity for so long is utterly unclear, unexplained. The issue of the condition sevel fruits prevent is one that has haunted humanity for millennia. It’s unlikely that people have forgotten it, given its horrors. And the moment Jem has his realization about the implications of the sevel fruit’s effects being known to some, withheld from others, really demands a lot more story space!

The ending of the tale was, to my mind, about the most encouraging part. For Jem and Cador, their prayers were answered, and for Ergh and Onan (!) as a whole, the best possible changes came about. With the leaders changing, the generations rolling into new grooves, it sounds to me like their futures are indeed bright. I was so enrapt in the story, so invested in its telling, that I am sure I’ll try more of Author Andrews’ stories soon. This duet being over, however, I bid my farewells to Cador and Jem and their families with a happy, wistful smile. If, by some good chance, I see there are new stories set in this world, I am so there!

Just stop with the revolting w-bombs.