DAVID R. SLAYTON'S PAGE: Adam Binder series, 1 & 2...WHITE TRASH WARLOCK; TRAILER PARK TRICKSTER

WHITE TRASH WARLOCK (Adam Binder #1)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Guthrie was a good place to be from, but it wasn’t a great place to live, not when you were like Adam, in all the ways Adam was like Adam.

Adam Binder hasn’t spoken to his brother in years, not since Bobby had him committed to a psych ward for hearing voices. When a murderous spirit possesses Bobby’s wife and disrupts the perfect life he’s built away from Oklahoma, he’s forced to ask for his little brother’s help. Adam is happy to escape the trailer park and get the chance to say I told you so, but he arrives in Denver to find the local magicians dead.

It isn’t long before Adam is the spirit’s next target. To survive the confrontation, he’ll have to risk bargaining with powers he’d rather avoid, including his first love, the elf who broke his heart.

The Binder brothers don’t realize that they’re unwitting pawns in a game played by immortals. Death herself wants the spirit’s head, and she’s willing to destroy their family to reap it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Kinda like Harry Dresden and October Daye had a gay son.

Brothers Adam and Robert (Bobby growing up) have a troubled, lower-class upbringing in common. They're as different as chalk and cheese, with Robert running as far and as fast from his background as he can; Adam, well...he wasn't given the luxury of that choice. Robert even had him slung into the psych ward because he was "hearing voices."

It never occurred to Robert they were real.

As this story opens, the brothers are reconnecting (not very willingly) because Robert's had to confront the "hearing voices" he so thoroughly denied was reality, was not hallucination.

"People aren't less just because they don't live the way you do."
"I didn't say that," Robert said.
"You think it," Adam said. "You think we're all trash because we don't have nice cars and ugly houses. Life isn't just about money."

I squirmed for Bobby-that-was; I was just as accused as he was. I'd want my weirdo little brother who "hears things" to get fixed, to be normal, just like Robert does...just like Bobby did. In spite of the fact Robert needs Adam's "weirdness" to cope with his own wife's, um, unusual (murderous, possessed) behavior with that weirdness. Adam should be able to help, right? Well, yeah, there's a lot under the bridge between them, they're ultimately branches from the same unhappy, unloving mother and runaway father, so Adam will help:

He thought back on all the clear signs that Annie loved Bobby... If Adam had that, he wouldn't make the guy his second priority. He'd—well, he didn't really know what he'd do with a guy in the long term. He'd be like the dog who finally caught the car.

It's worth noting that Adam isn't worried about being gay, hiding being gay, or denying he is who he is. Big bonus points. No, he doesn't know what he'd do with a guy, long term; but not because he's a guy but because Adam's never been able to do more than scratch out day-to-day survival. Poverty has no sexual preferences. He's been locked up and treated for schizophrenia (those voices now acknowledged as real by Robert) for long enough that the idea of a forever (or more than a night) with a guy he loves is far out of his reach.

But once upon a time, before the hospital, there was a certain someone; an elf, one who lives in Denver among his kind, so there's a good personal reason to help Robert in spite of Bobby's long-ago betrayal....

It's a joy to go here with a QUILTBAG sibling, one struggling with anger, one whose "voices" are real but give him only the most limited abilities that he now has to level up to help Robert. And maybe their vanished bastard-wizard father can finally be found. But about that love long gone...well, now he's gone and hooked himself to this cop who was about to be offed, and now they're...it's getting...the situation is...

...complicated. Like the story itself. But all in a good way, honest. Vic the cop and Adam the low-power witch and Robert the rotten brother with real, honest motives, are all learning as they go, are discovering they're in a very different situation than the one they saw themselves as being in.

And that's why it's a series.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

TRAILER PARK TRICKSTER (Adam Binder #2)
DAVID R. SLAYTON
Blackstone Publishing Inc. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: They are my harvest, and I will reap them all.

Returning to Guthrie, Oklahoma, Adam Binder once again finds himself in the path of deadly magic when a dark druid begins to prey on members of Adam’s family. It all seems linked to the death of Adam’s father many years ago—a man who may have somehow survived as a warlock.

Watched by the police, separated from the man who may be the love of his life, compelled to seek the truth about his connection to the druid, Adam learns more about his family and its troubled history than he ever bargained for, and finally comes face to face with the warlock he has vowed to stop.

Meanwhile, beyond the Veil of the mortal world, Argent the Queen of Swords and Vic Martinez undertake a dangerous journey to a secret meeting of the Council of Races . . . where the sea elves are calling for the destruction of humanity.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I understand why it needed to be this way, but Vic and Adam spending the whole book apart was really a bummer. After what happened in the first book, these guys have a metric love-ton of baggage to unpack. But the main arc of the series, the murders of Adam's family members, needs to take first priority, naturally.

I'm still grumpy about it. I reminded myself quite sternly several times, "It's a series, chill out! We'll get there!" And still the grump continued, casting a foggy pall over the whole read.

It's also a widge weird that our low-powered hero doesn't need to prove himself against the phenomenally powerful elves more than he does. They sort-of accept him at his word that he has these powers but they're more-or-less psychic ones so of course they aren't much stacked up against elven world-altering ones...and no one checks...? Much more space goes into dealing with Vic's utterly altered status...not only is he now emotionally connected to a man for the first time in his life, he's become a Reaper (this is what it sounds like), and the man he feels intense love for is not around to help him work any of it out!

Well, it's book two in a series. There are things to do, and plot points that must be accomplished; if you want a relationship novel, go get one. This is a gay urban romantasy, so it serves different masters. When we're building a magical world, we must do that first so the characters have a solid playhouse to do their various things within that make story-sense.

...and I still want the couple to do some talking...these are guys, I remind myself, they'd rather be tortured than talk about their feelings. They're also, unlike 90% (unverified statistic) of gay love stories, working class, so big points for that. I'm picking nits in my cavils. I'm aware of problems because I'm unsatisfied with the lack of communication between the main couple even though it's down to temporary story circumstances.

As a dual-reality story, the series is as much fun as that ever is. Y'all urban-fantasy lovers are going to feel right at home. As a romance/romantasy, this entry in the series is wanting, but the framework is really solid for that to change. As a book-two, the ending...a serious cliffhanger...will require you to have book three on tap or you (and the author) risk losing momentum.

That really would be a shame.