THE SECRET LIVES OF COUNTRY GENTLEMEN, first of a duology that could easily be longer (hint, hint)

THE SECRET LIVES OF COUNTRY GENTLEMEN
KJ CHARLES (The Doomsday Books #1)
Sourcebooks Casablanca (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Abandoned by his father, Gareth Inglis grew up lonely, prickly, and well-used to disappointment. Still, he longs for a connection. When he meets a charming stranger, he falls head over heels—until everything goes wrong and he's left alone again. Then Gareth's father dies, turning the shabby London clerk into Sir Gareth, with a grand house on the remote Romney Marsh and a family he doesn't know.

The Marsh is another world, a strange, empty place notorious for its ruthless gangs of smugglers. And one of them is dangerously familiar...

Joss Doomsday has run the Doomsday smuggling clan since he was a boy. When the new baronet—his old lover—agrees to testify against Joss's sister, Joss acts fast to stop him. Their reunion is anything but happy, yet after the dust settles, neither can stay away. Soon, all Joss and Gareth want is the chance to be together. But the bleak, bare Marsh holds deadly secrets. And when Gareth finds himself threatened from every side, the gentleman and the smuggler must trust one another not just with their hearts, but with their lives.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!

My Review: The way I know I'm reading a KJ Charles story is when the men falling in love have their life's work established, are busy doing it, and do not need anything to make life more complicated for them. Then they meet/reconnect when they're just about out of strength. After that, they need the other to be able to do their work because strength supported is powerful in all new ways.

I love this story dynamic.

So I was sure to be a happy old reader, and mirabile dictu in light of recent disappointments, so I was. Joss made me smile with his assumption of the mantle of Head of Household. He clearly was born for the role. The ways in which his Head-ness manifested weren't always clear because he would use them in the interests of everyone, of the family he heads but also the community at large.

Gareth, the baronet "in charge" of the whole community, sees Joss's activities from a high-control perspective. He's expected to enforce The Law. He doesn't much like this burden because he isn't naturally assertive. In the course of doing his duty, he and Joss come into conflict. Nothing makes your feelings clearer than conflict. Gareth and Joss...well...there's a reason Author Charles writes romances. Their bond, as she depicts it, is powerful and undeniable. This cross-class pairing allows each to understand the nature of the social system they live and love within.

As is usual in the genre, the romance succeeds...more believably than a cross-class romance usually does because rhe men are each the head of their world; because the men are each the inadequately trained inheritors of their power; and because they are similarly happy to reform their youthful bond.

I think prospective readers should know going in that the story is told in a regional voice, a dialect of sorts that is rooted in a specific place and its people; others, outsiders within the story, comment on its peculiarity so this is very obviously meant to convey the social bonds that exist in the great mass of the people. I found it effective at that and, for my reader's ear, quite musical and engaging. Others might not. As part of the author's larger purpose of creating a world as a setting for her story, this works very well. As a facet of worldbuilding in general it's very hard to pull off. Author Charles's previous books have made it clear she is a Master of this art. The Marsh, a real place I'm told, is vivid in my mind's eye without feeling overdetailed.

Straight people are strongly cautioned. Not safe for "eww-ick" homophobes. I'd call the steam level moderate, but I can—and have—fallen asleep during a porn film. The sex in the story is not of prurient intent. It is there as an enhancement of the reader's understanding of the development of each man's connection to and acceptance of the other. It is also a clear signal of the characters' increasing awareness of the world outside their Marsh as different, as Other...and this Othering lets them gain space for their Forbidden Love to grow and nurture not only their partner but their fellow Marsh inhabitants.

Since I read these stories for fantasy fulfillment, I got what I wanted. I hope you'll try Author Charles's many terrific tales. Starting here is a good idea.

SUBTLE BLOOD, third and (almost) final Will Darling Adventure, and HOW GOES THE WORLD, tidy-up small tale to complete this series

SUBTLE BLOOD
K.J. CHARLES (Will Darling Adventures #3)
KJC Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit relationship with Kim Secretan--disgraced aristocrat, ex-spy, amateur book-dealer. It’s starting to feel like he’s got his life under control.

And then a brutal murder in a gentleman’s club plunges them back into the shadow world of crime, deception, and the power of privilege. Worse, it brings them up against Kim’s noble, hostile family, and his upper-class life where Will can never belong.

With old and new enemies against them, and secrets on every side, Will and Kim have to fight for each other harder than ever—or be torn apart for good.

ANOTHER GIFT FROM MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. HE TRULY IS THE BEST.

My Review: This is how you end a series...not with a whimper, but a loud, resounding bang.

The entire world could've finished exploding and I'd've ignored it. I needed to know how this tale ended. I needed the series to live up to the start. (It did.) This is a rare enough occurrence that I wanted to mention it especially, and early in my review. If you're looking for a series to read, read this one; it's got the exciting action and the romantic tension and the period details that make a good read a superior one. Take a look at The Sugared Game's review to see how serious I am...despite the w-bomb Author Charles dropped on me, I still recommend the series. (Might not've had there been another one in this book. But there wasn't.)

In this last planned story of Will Darling and his belovèd Kim Secretan, we're treated to the strange spectacle of Kim without commitments to anything more than Will's bookshop, Will's bed, and Will himself. It's sweet, it's domestic, and it's peculiar! It also is destined to be but an interlude, as we know since the series is called "The Will Darling Adventures" not "The Will Darling Stories." As Kim's life is...unmoored...so Will's is ever more firmly anchored in Kim. Their expanded time together suits Will so completely that he can only be happy, even though...well, there's the little problem of boredom, isn't there, in the dailiness of life.

The list, as he well knew, comprised most of {his bookselling rival}’s hopes, dreams, and sexual fantasies, since he shared the deceased Lord Aveston’s love of Elizabethan and Jacobean music. Will couldn’t tell a madrigal from a macaroon, but he hadn’t got the job for his bibliographic skills. In fact, he’d spent much of his time with the Avestons simply chatting to the new viscount, a pleasantly dim young man who was far more interested in swapping war stories and rattling on about cricket than in anything that might be classed as intellectual pursuits.

Fear not...the long arm of Author Charles isn't about to leave us mired in the muck of Life as most people live it.

Will sighed. “We didn’t all go to Eton.”

“Aristocracy means ‘rule of the best’, and I can’t think of any company in which Chingford would be counted as best, including the average gaol. Yet the hereditary principle demands we grant power, authority, and vast swathes of land to a man who couldn’t run a whelk stall if you gave him a copy of How To Run A Whelk Stall with corners turned down to mark the good bits.”

–and–

Will felt a whole-body wave of refusal. It was bad enough Kim being Lord Arthur Secretan: he couldn’t become a marquess. It would be impossible. He’d vanish into a world of stately homes and impossible wealth, somewhere Will couldn’t hide and would never belong. They’d never belonged together in the first place. Everything between them had been built piece by piece over a chasm, and that bridge had proved fragile enough in the past without having to bear the crushing weight of Kim’s heritage. They wouldn’t survive this. He’d lose him. “Oh shit,” he said.

It's Kim's family, you know it's bad and going to get worse; you also know that Will's anxiety about Kim's privileged upbringing, Kim's membership in the aristocracy, and Will's unworthiness to be with such a Personage is going to hit overdrive...along with Kim's complete and utter indifference to anything except what keeps him apart from Will. Which, if he has any say whatever about it, will be nothing now, nothing to come, nothing ever.

Kim, like most members of his class, has a lot to say about what happens in the world.

And, as noted above, we're whisked from Will's inherited bookshop into Kim's ancestral manse, with Kim driving the vehicle of their love-match at the destination of not inheriting the worldly goods he so deeply detests.

“Because even if they did think we were fucking, they wouldn’t believe I was anything more than your bit of rough, would they?”

“No,” Kim said. “That’s the daily drip of insult you can expect as things are now, which is why I don’t want them to get worse. Because you are everything more, and I resent to the bottom of my soul that you should feel any other way. Wait for me; I’ll call you. Be good.”

–and–

It wasn’t just that the place was so big and so lavish and so horribly empty. It was that as they walked through room after room, decorated with trappings Will didn’t know how to appreciate, the tomblike silence of the place descended on them both. Kim’s descriptions were mannered and forced, and when he didn’t speak, it was not in the usual way they were quiet together, but in a nothing-to-say way that made an empty space between them. And how could Will talk when it felt like he was on a Cook’s Tour of a stately home, and everything he said was an advertisement of how little he belonged?

Of course, this being a situation that Cannot Be Discussed with Kim's laughingly-termed-family, and his odious brother Chingford is going to make things hard for the faggot loser traitor brother he's spent his entire life detesting, despising, and resenting, despite the fact that the aforementioned man is doing his utmost to prevent Chingford from being hanged for murder.

He's not only ungrateful and a jackanapes, he's deeply stupid. Every action he takes in the course of this story is evidence of the fact that Chingford is all that is bad and unworthy about the aristocracy. And there is not a single second at which he changes course. In some people, there is no impulse to decency. Chingford is one of those people.

But Kim, with his Will standing ever vigilant and always prepared for violence, at his shoulder, does not give up. He runs out of ideas for actions to take on Chingford's behalf; he loses his cool, abandons his self-assurance, and still...with a lot of help from Will's observational skills and his own finely honed instinct for making a lot of waffle sound portentous...comes into the very information that will allow him to rescue his clot of an elder brother and never so much as see him, or his objectionable father, again.

This being a K.J. Charles novel, you know that will not be the end of it.

Chingford, like so many thick people, snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

He led the way along, and round, and down the stairs to a corridor where they came face to face with Lord Chingford. He was wearing plus fours. Will had always thought they were the stupidest way you could wear trousers short of putting them on your head, and Lord Chingford’s appearance wasn’t changing his mind.

“Christ,” the Earl said in lieu of greeting. “Must you be underfoot all the damned time?”

“I’d prefer not to be,” Kim said. “Perhaps we could have the conversation that I came here for, and then I can remove myself from your presence.”

I can sense your despairing moan from here. You're correct: This is Chingford dodging the shield Kim is prepared and able to offer him, so he can make a much, much worse hash of things.

But that is just the icing on the cake. The rich, buttery madeira cake. The full-bodied, overloaded friutcake. The truly astounding stupidities that Chingford commits aren't for this brief review to reveal. For one thing I don't want to be shouted at about spoilers and for another, there is so very much pleasure to be had in the journey this story takes to get our men to their Happily Ever After that I want to leave it to you to explore and experience. It is...absolutely...bloody...perfect.

I can't recall too many times I've said that. I can recall that, each time I have, I've meant it.

A three-plus book story about a pair of gay men in a time and a place that doesn't like that mode of existence, that brings them together over class lines and around high-stakes spy-story threats, and brings the pair of them and their found family safely home believably (within the universe depicted) is a beautiful thing. In this story cycle, a man damaged by what he had to do to survive in the Great War's trenches meets a badly damaged aristocrat, a queer younger son with quirky (by the standards of his class) moral principles, who declines to serve in that war in any way, and from those opposite poles they fall in love. Along the way, spycraft is used to bring very, very nasty people to justice, if not always via the law. In the course of this, our main men hash out issues between themselves, issues that stem from their miserable pasts, and they discover the true joy of the tales being told: Making a Life out of what was only an existence.

Their discussions of the problems they've faced already, of the issues they can foresee, and the deep-seated terrors of Being Together in the Cold, Cruel World that any couple of any configuration must face are very real.

“A future. You know the concept? The shape you want the rest of your life to take? I want mine with you, all of it. A future, a forever. I love you.” He said it quite calmly, as if it was an established fact. “People say I love you to madness, but I love you to sanity, because loving you is the sanest thing I have ever done. You are everything to me, Will, and I cannot lose you to my miserable family and an accident of birth.”

–then–

“Stop being strong at me. You weren’t ready for that conversation, that’s all.”

“No. I wasn’t. Thanks for understanding that. I just...”

“Panicked.”

“I did not panic.”

“I don’t think the less of you for it. But you definitely panicked.”

“Sod off.”

“It’s merely an observation.”

“Sod off.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’m still more of a shambles than you.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Will muttered. He brushed his lips over Kim’s fingers, and felt the sense of—not panic, obviously, but extreme nervous tension recede.

Real conversations. Ones I can hear myself having. Ones I have in fact had. And that's the beauty of the whole-series read, as the capstone of a series of stories wherein we've made an emotional investment in the characters: It's not life, it's better than, more organized than, and more fully fleshed than the life mere mortals can expect to lead.

Will, I think, has the best way of putting his—probably all of our—feelings into his relatable perspective.

So he’d do better. He had to: he wasn’t giving this up now. There was something in Kim that called to something in himself with a fierce urgency like the baying of hounds on the scent, and that was all that mattered. Yes, there were going to be problems and he’d have to make sure he didn’t add to them by, for example, punching any more rich people. But he’d never felt the sort of connection with another human soul that he did with Kim, and he wasn’t letting it go either by choice or by stupidity, and that was all there was to it.

That is, in fact, all there ever is to it.

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

HOW GOES THE WORLD?
K.J. CHARLES (Will Darling Adventures #3.5)
Author's website
Free PDF download

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The Positively Final Appearance: a two-part epilogue with Daniel and Archie at a house party and Kim and Will in a gentleman's club, because those are definitely settings that go well for them.

Epilogue to Think of England/Will Darling Adventures.

My Review: As the author says: "This isn’t a standalone story at all. It will make sense only if you’ve read Think of England, Proper English, and the Will Darling Adventures trilogy, and contains spoilers for some of those."

This is absolutely true, and one would do well to heed her words.

Bill and Jimmy, Pat and Fen and Daniel: at dinner, they all looked to Archie almost as they had twenty years ago, with no glare of electricity to expose weary eyes and wrinkles. That in itself made him reflect on quite how much they had, or had not, changed.

–and–

“...I’m sure I told you I met him in my club? Not the Symposium. And...well. I saw him look at Curtis.”

Will, it is safe to say, does not have the gift of spotting people’s inclinations and affections. If there is a direct opposite of that gift, in fact, that’s what he has. At least he takes my word for these things.

“Really? Sir Archie? Bloody hell.”

Will and Kim meeting Daniel and Archie...it is a heart-filling, eye-watering, nose-blowing moment. It means a lot to see the world from one's agèd viewpoint acknowledged and made part of the future. It was inspired of Author Charles to have Archie and Will meet, but to tell it from Kim's point of view. We don't need to hear the two of them connecting, in fact it would feel so invasive as to cause embarrassment. Daniel and Kim, however...well. Sneaky, weaselly bastards the pair of 'em, can't violate their space since they'll violate yours without a qualm.

But only if they must. And that really is one of the main messages of this series. Boundaries, while they are there to be pushed, must also be respected. And that was the burden of the refrain throughout these delightful reads.

I don't know about you but I need to believe this world can exist. It contains an honor and honesty so much more deeply rooted than the stereotypical conceptualization of the concepts we're accustomed to. It doesn't shy away from hard choices or minimize risks behind lazy, or worse, dishonest screens of Propriety.

Neither Archie nor Will would consent to be in harness next to a dishonest man. A liar, well...clearly that's got to be done, doesn't it, to accomplish the goals. As to those goals, it's the clever ones that figure those out. Archies and Wills feel the trust they feel for their men because they see what the sneaks point at and are smart enough to get it, though utterly incapable of articulating it for themselves.

In this short read, we cap five books and a story with the assurance that, come what may, these men whose love and whose lives are valued at little to nothing by the rest of the world are all right, will be all right, and have made their place in that unforgiving and intolerant world big enough to bring more of our kind into, their safety to assure.

World without end.

THE SUGARED GAME, second of three Will Darling gay spy adventures, and TO TRUST MAN ON HIS OATH, its coda

THE SUGARED GAME
K.J. CHARLES (Will Darling Adventures #2)
KJC BOOKS (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded down because even though we went alllllmost a whole MM romantic mystery without a single w-bomb splattering my Imperial aesthetic hems, there the bastard was, so call it four...well, no, leave it at four-and-a-half stars because it was bloody good fun

The Publisher Says: It's been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn't expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway?

But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he's been dragged back into Kim's shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings.

This time, though, things are underhanded even by Kim standards. This time, the danger is too close to home. And if Will and Kim can't find common ground against unseen enemies, they risk losing everything.

MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER KNOWS TO BUY ME EVERY RELEASE FROM THIS AUTHOR. HE IS THE BEST.

My Review: I did not see the ending coming. It's very hard to fool someone who's been reading as long as I have about something this central to the story for two whole books. I am clearly a sociopath because, as the finale debuted in the theatre (note misspelling intentional) of my mind I, the audience, was on my (mental) feet shouting for more gore. Gore there is, be forewarned.

But oh how satisfyingly deployed.

In my review of Slippery Creatures, I commented that the story resembled Notorious (Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant {who is the perfect model of Kim Secretan IMO}, Nazi spies) only with 1940s hunk Steve Cochran (my mental casting director's choice for Will Darling) in the Bergman role.

This time, as Richard Hannay is directly referenced in the text of the story, I thought of The Three Hostages because we're doing a similar amount of worry about and protecting people from unseen assailants and malefactors. But honestly, I say seek your parallel in the twists and turns, the puppetmaster-pulling-strings artfulness of North by Northwest. The hostages, their fates, the supporting characters' various interrelationships...similar enough that I kept picturing Will in Eva Marie Saint's wardrobe.

I will say that it was a tad disturbing. Nothing compared to what Will would've thought of it, of course.

This outing is more, shall we say, meaty than the first...we're starting from what every lover dreads, being ghosted by the belovèd:

“Don’t look at me,” Will said. “I’ve no idea what he’s up to. I haven’t heard from him since I don’t know when.”

He knew exactly when: the second of January. It was currently the twenty-second of February. That was a sore point he had no desire at all to discuss, so he added, “I’m not sure if he ever uses the title. It’s not compulsory, is it, if it’s one of those whatsits?”

–and–

Will wasn’t a country girl, courted and cast aside by a London seducer, and it would not do to give the impression that he felt jilted. Kim’s demeanour gave no indication of regret, still less a desire to resume relations, and Will was damned if he’d embarrass himself by behaving differently.

Only you very much are, Will, you're in love so far out of your league it isn't remotely funny. The wonderful part is that, unlike the incredibly unrealistic plot of Maurice, we're not left wondering what on Earth the two of you will talk about the twenty-two hours a day you're not actually fucking. And Kim's world has already cast him out, to the edges and fringes at least if not all the way out, so there's little danger of you having the awful luck of attending too many of the parties that Author Charles skewers so beautifully in this story...and where Will acquits himself creditably, if not brilliantly, all to serve his mate Maisie as she and Phoebe, Kim's fiancée and Will's friend, start Maisie's rise in the World of Fashion:

"...You need to dress for your own body, not pretend you’ve someone else’s, don’t you think?” (Quite revolutionary, Maisie!)

–and–

“I don’t know how to break it to you, dear boy, but if Maisie pursues a career in fashion, she is likely to meet people of the homosexual or sapphic persuasions. Try not to be shocked.”

“So?”

“So Phoebe thought she should learn to react in an environment where a misstep wouldn’t hurt. As it turned out, she is sure-footed, and a quick study. I see why you both like her so much. I’d like to know her better myself.”

From Kim, that is the highest praise imaginable! And it makes me think more of him as Maisie is the simplest kind of person to underestimate: The honest, forthright, always-herself good-mannered cheerful soul. It doesn't do to underestimate them, yet people so often do. And here's very aristocratic Kim, son of a marquess, seeing her and valuing her appropriately. I enjoy that facet of the character quite a lot. It's of a piece with his genuine, growing love for Will. Who, need I mention, is utterly in love with Kim. Being men, things aren't great in the communication department...but the sex is smokin' so the connection is there.

Ahhh...so, about the sex...yep, it's there and belongs there. It is decidedly not straight-people friendly. You know your own tolerance for reading about sex, listen to your instincts. If you're willing to be adventurous, this series will definitely reward you with a cracking good spy story and a couple seeking their happiness in spite of a hostile world...which does not include any of the people that matter the most to them.

In this entry the stakes for Will and Kim are astronomical and the results are long-lastingly resonant. They're required, in the course of resolving the matter of the first book's primary antagonists, to confront demons within and without human forms to which they each...both...have deep ties. It's clear that Kim possesses facts he isn't sharing, and while that can be good spycraft, it's unmitigated hell on relationships:

He didn’t delude himself that asking Kim to tell him the truth meant it would happen, either. They’d been honest with one another as far as it went, and that was something, maybe even a lot, but Will had a feeling all it had achieved was to dig their foxhole deeper.

–and–

“Go on, go,” he said. “Don’t come back. Keep your precious secrets if that’s all you care about, and leave me alone. This isn’t forgivable.”

Kim went. He didn’t even have the decency to give Will a fight or slink out shamefacedly; he just picked up his coat and hat and left. The door closed behind him, setting the bell jangling.

–and–

Will had more self-respect than to trail after him any more.

Horseshit. There is, in every love story, the moment when communication breaks down, both parties are backed up against different walls, and things are at an impasse. In that moment, one feels as though "The End" has appeared on the screen and it's time to gather one's detritus and toss it into the bin on the way out of the theatre. This is almost never true in real life, and pretty much never, ever in fiction. Self-respect and being in love are two ends of one balance beam only in the most simplistic stories, and Author Charles does not traffic in those.

But, as usual, it takes Very Very High Stakes to overcome the grumpy pride of men and compel them to reassert their pair bond. The stakes in this story, which were already quite high, elevate to existential-threat levels. There is so very much riding on Kim getting this issue, the one from last book, resolved...so very much for the men, for their found family, for the U.K. as a whole...that the savvy reader knows the price for Kim will be high. Will, given the choice of what to do and how to do it:

“Do you know Lepanto?”

“The Chesterton poem?”

“There was a bit I was trying to remember...I looked it up afterwards. ‘Dim drums throbbing in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall.’”

Kim’s lips parted. Will held his eyes, willing him to believe. “That’s you.”

–and–

“I,” Kim began at last, and had to try again. “I would like to be—not alone.”

“Shoulders right here. Suitable for leaning on, crying on, or standing at for the purposes of a fight.”

Have you ever, in all your born days, heard a more moving, more vivid and intensely felt, declaration of love than that? This is the spine-stiffening speech, the statement of commitment, that Will uses to arm Kim for a confrontation his entire lifetime's worth of guilt and insecuritites tells him he can only lose.

It's no spoiler to say that Kim and Will prevail...it's a series! this is two of three!...but there are the necessary costs to the men. They are deep, painful extractions of value, they are seriously out of proportion to the success the men have delivered, and they are going to lead to a fireball of a series-ending book three, Subtle Blood.

...if only she hadn't befouled the experience with that w-bomb at 89%/page 214....

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

TO TRUST MAN ON HIS OATH
K.J. CHARLES (Will Darling Adventures #2.5)
Author's website
Free PDF download

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A Will Darling Adventures interlude.

Set a week after the ending of The Sugared Game (so contains mild spoilers for that book).

My Review: It's important to understanding the gestalt of Will and Kim to read this short piece. It feels to me like it was clipped off the end of the book, and made into its own thing, instead of being the epilogue it feels to me like it should've been.

I was very moved by the sweetness of Will's acceptance of Kim's faults, amply displayed in previous instalments of the series; and his acceptance of Kim's worthiness of trust. It takes a lot to expose your vulnerability to someone whose track record of treating you is spotty on the plus side. Importantly, though, Will acknowledges that Kim has always come through when the stakes are high and the situation is grave.

I'm also very moved by the way the author frames the conversation, as it accords well with what I know of biphasic sleep: a period of wakefulness in the middle of one's night that disinhibits the usual censorship functions, that allows one's conversation to open doors and breach walls that seem impossible during ordinary daytime. Then, when the needful things are said, sleep returns and the day that dawns, dawns brighter than it would have otherwise.

I was charmed; I was also better prepared for Subtle Blood, so I recommend the read to you, too.

THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING, exciting and artful while showing sharp teeth

THE GENTLE ART OF FORTUNE HUNTING
K.J. CHARLES
KJC Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Robin Loxleigh and his sister Marianne are the hit of the Season, so attractive and delightful that nobody looks behind their pretty faces.

Until Robin sets his sights on Sir John Hartlebury’s heiress niece. The notoriously graceless baronet isn’t impressed by good looks, or fooled by false charm. He’s sure Robin is a liar—a fortune hunter, a card sharp, and a heartless, greedy fraud—and he’ll protect his niece, whatever it takes.

Then, just when Hart thinks he has Robin at his mercy, things take a sharp left turn. And as the grumpy baronet and the glib fortune hunter start to understand each other, they also find themselves starting to care—more than either of them thought possible.

But Robin's cheated and lied and let people down for money. Can a professional rogue earn an honest happy ever after?

THIS WAS A LOVELY SURPRISE GIFT FROM MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANK YOU, MY LOVE.

My Review: It requires a particular kind of innocence and faith to be a gambler. I have never had that innocence and I don't think the gods like it when one uses words like "faith" in connection to cynical, bitter people like me. So the fact that a significant portion of this tale takes place in gambling hells and among those who see some...merit? value?...in the damnfoolishness of gambling chafed on my nerve. I was, of course, perfectly prepared for the fortune hunting. After all, it's in the title. And I myownself have never had any negative judgment of fortune hunters who live up to their bargain. (I also see no problem with porn models and other sex workers getting paid to do things I did for free back when there was interest in having me do them. To me, it means they're better at business than I was, not immoral or broken or bad.)

An entirely different conversation, one far more impassioned and full of moral thunderation, would be had if we were to discuss the system that makes these options not only viable but desirable and even, on sadly frequent occasions, necessary. That is not where we are in this particular Regency romance.

It does, however, come very close to being the conversation that Robin and Hart end up having, in several different forms, several different times. What makes the read worth its frustrations (I am impatient in the face of self-righteousness and annoyed by selfish, self-serving blinders on powerful people) is the fact that Author Charles writes the scenes of conflict between privileged and petitioner without for a moment forgetting that each is, in the final analysis, correct; only their viewpoints need to be altered, their idées fixes challenged at the source. And it's no surprise to me that Author Charles knows the essential truth of change: to work, it has to be to not merely from. Which requires a huge jolt of Want. A clinging tendril of need can't help but speed up the fall of the old and the triumph of the new.

Does anyone know a better way to add powerful want and many tendrils of need than to use sex? I don't. And with Hart's Position and his Code, well...them changes were a-gonna smother before moving anything a millimeter. Robin's wantonness, his unfeigned joy in the glorious work of sensual pleasure, means he is in a unique and effective position (!) to effect badly needed, salubrious changes in the essentially caring heart within Hart.

“Sorry? You want to kiss me?”

Hart was still looking away, but Robin could see his ears redden. “You need not, if it is not to your taste.”

“Jesus wept. Of course it is to my taste. I thought it would be spikes and a dildo.” Hart made a spluttering noise.

There it is. Reduced to its essence, there is the book: Are we having the same conversation about the same subject? Do we trust each other enough to find out? And in the end, are there words for what we need...from Life, from each other?

Finding one whose ability to offer that which one actually needs and still isn't overmatched by their own needs...that is a dim, receding dream for many, if not most, people throughout history. It makes the offer of Happily Ever After one of the romance genre's sweetest siren songs. Add onto that dismal truth the way the world has (and still does) treat gay men...the need for a dose of unreality in the form of seeing others, imperfect others more like we actually are, succeed in its attainment is ever urgent. This story's achievement of the HEA is quite dramatic, very theatrical, and damn near begs to be committed to film. I'm not at all sure the sex scenes would make it onto the screen...hell, I'm quite sure they would not because the sex...it's really not suitable for straight people. I can say that, while I get it and would never demand that straight people open their minds a bit more as a group, some of the more willing to challenge their boundaries would do very well to make this book a toe-dipper into thinking without judgment about gay sex. There is absolutely no coercion, no forcing, no shortage of imaginative and playful coupling in the story. I think many IRL couples could do worse than emulate Hart and Robin's ways and means.

Why I'm rating this four stars, instead of the five it sounds like I'm awarding, is easily explained: These men are damned abrasive. The effort of reading while screaming in the first third of the story told against the thrill of the ball. It's not like everyone needs to be likeable or that all the traffic lights need to turn green immediately...the struggle to connect was effective, and it felt as though this HEA was earned.

The problem was the relentlessly self-righteous Hart and the revoltingly self-serving Robin. It was sold to me as "this is how these men are." It wasn't ever UNsold. It was a lot to ask me to simply...jettison...all that, even with the later pillow talk that blew the cobwebs away. Had it been more evenly apportioned throughout the book, say to other characters as well not simply the men in their safe cocoon sharing, I might've been less brought up short at the ball scene's events. I might've been more willing to invest in that sharing. As it was, I was already too set in my response of them being damaged to shift easily into feeling them to be as wounded, hurt as they each actually were.

It is not a fatal flaw. It was a case of seeing the road to the highest peak go on after I got off the ride. And yet, make no mistake, I'd go on the ride again! This read was a pleasure and a badly needed one for me. Author Charles makes her stories fizz and snap and sparkle. Come join the fun with this one.

BAND SINISTER, another QUILTBAG delight from K.J. Charles

BAND SINISTER
K.J. CHARLES
KJC Books
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sir Philip Rookwood is the disgrace of the county. He’s a rake and an atheist, and the rumours about his hellfire club, the Murder, can only be spoken in whispers. (Orgies. It’s orgies.)

Guy Frisby and his sister Amanda live in rural seclusion after a family scandal. But when Amanda breaks her leg in a riding accident, she’s forced to recuperate at Rookwood Hall, where Sir Philip is hosting the Murder.

Guy rushes to protect her, but the Murder aren’t what he expects. They’re educated, fascinating people, and the notorious Sir Philip turns out to be charming, kind—and dangerously attractive.

In this private space where anything goes, the longings Guy has stifled all his life are impossible to resist...and so is Philip. But all too soon the rural rumour mill threatens both Guy and Amanda. The innocent country gentleman has lost his heart to the bastard baronet—but does he dare lose his reputation too?

My Review: I read this delightful fluff in a sitting. (A lying, to be more precise.) I'm pretty sure I was expecting the chuckles I got, but not the lesson in how to make explicit consent offered by the debauchee to the debaucher so well-integrated and even steamy. I've always contended that the largest sex organ is the brain, so really all it took was a bit of imaginative effort to make consent part of seduction and foreplay. Author Charles did this deftly, erotically, and satisfyingly.

I liked Guy, our virginal debauchee, more and more as time went by. He annoyed me to no end at first. I think he was expected to. His deep devotion to his younger sister was disarmingly sweet, so he wasn't one of those characters one wants to smack in the occiput with a niblick, but he did try my not-legendary (lack of) patience to its uttermost extent.

He looked different, he was sure. He looked as though he’d eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and everyone would be able to tell it on sight.

Rookwood is, not to put too fine a point on it, too good to be true. Beautiful, rich, thoughtful...*sigh*repine* (Speaking of rePineing, have y'all piped Chris Pine's lovely genitalia in Outlaw King on Netflix? If not, get thee hence! I suppose he had lines and stuff, but ya couldn't prove it by me.) So, Rookwood. Yes. Lovely man, his past is very deftly integrated into his present-day actions, as is Guy's; this being a KJ Charles book, that is unsurprising. She just does that. Part of the service. So why mention it? Because it's both satisfying and anachronistic for men to reveal their hurts and scars to...anyone, really...and Rookwood is an aristocrat, so his upbringing is simply not going to include emotional honesty. How Author Charles side-steps that issue is one of my great pleasures taken from this story.

Lord Corvin and John Raven, well, window dressing has never looked so good. Heh. Read the Society of Gentlemen books, y'all. Read KJ Charles. This is escapism done well.

“Country folk fuck,” Corvin said. “Well, they must; it’s not as if other entertainments present themselves. Plant things, dig things, knit things, fuck things. Make cheese.”

I laughed hard enough to forget (almost) the two (2) w-bombs Author Charles dropped on me.

SLIPPERY CREATURES, first in a trilogy of post-Great War spy romantic thrillers

SLIPPERY CREATURES
K.J. CHARLES (Will Darling Adventures #1)
KJC Books (non-affiliate link to Amazon)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

30 November 2022: It's FREE for a limited time at this link.

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Will Darling came back from the Great War with a few scars, a lot of medals, and no idea what to do next. Inheriting his uncle’s chaotic second-hand bookshop is a blessing...until strange visitors start making threats. First a criminal gang, then the War Office, both telling Will to give them the information they want, or else.

Will has no idea what that information is, and nobody to turn to, until Kim Secretan—charming, cultured, oddly attractive—steps in to offer help. As Kim and Will try to find answers and outrun trouble, mutual desire grows along with the danger.

And then Will discovers the truth about Kim. His identity, his past, his real intentions. Enraged and betrayed, Will never wants to see him again.

But Will possesses knowledge that could cost thousands of lives. Enemies are closing in on him from all sides—and Kim is the only man who can help.

THE AUTHOR PROVIDED ME WITH A REVIEW COPY. THANK YOU!

My Review: If you remade Notorious with Steve Cochran

*swoon*
...opposite Cary Grant instead of Ingrid Bergman...

*double swoon*
...it would feel a lot like this read. And I hope y'all've been paying enough attention to me to know that I mean this as a deep and sincere compliment.

A lovely period piece in the vein of the above smoldering-hot film about finding Nazi spies. Will is the Ingrid character, damaged and fragile on the inside but a tough survivor. Kim is Cary's Devlin, a master manipulator. Kim is a man whose core principle is survival, and not necessarily yours, before love or friendship or even sex. (Imagine!) And he's not the least bit sure, when he meets Will, that he wants to alter his priorities. To his credit, Kim is clear that he is not reliable, and Will would do well to be cautious with his feelings around Kim. Since when has that ever mattered to a man in love, may I ask?

He had no idea what civilians, or civilised people, would say in these circumstances. Thanks for that, old chap, much obliged, perhaps? Ought he apologise for coming in his mouth? Would this be a good moment to restart the conversation about where Kim had learned to use a knife? Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath.

“Cup of tea?”

But there is, as one expects when one reads Author Charles's books, A Reason for Kim's dishonesty, dissembling, and frequent disappearances. He is a spy to serve his country, though not for ordinary reasons and not in ordinary ways. The secret is one you should discover on your own, but part of it is being gay in Edwardian England wasn't fun if it became too obvious or if it couldn't be politely ignored. Kim's used his upper-class manners and mores to keep problems from surfacing that could have terrible consequences for other people:

“I realise it’s none of my business. It’s just that there’s clearly something up, I liked the little I knew of your uncle, and mostly I am insatiably curious. It’s my besetting sin. So I will ask once more whether you’re really all right, and if I can help at all.” He raised his hands. “And if you say no, I’ll drop the subject.”–to Will early in the story
–and–
"...Kim says, Well, that needs to be dealt with, and he deals with it, and then you’ll be sorry. Whereas most people say, Oh, how dreadful, you poor dear, and they don’t do anything at all. Or they don’t say anything nice and they blame the person in trouble, so maybe Kim is kind by comparison even if he isn’t sympathetic in the slightest."–to Will from Kim's, umm, special lady-friend

Kim, then, is a Man of Action, if also a man of most pliable morals. And Will is a soldier, a man whose war was spent in the trenches, and a man in so far over his head in the peace that the additional stress of his late uncle's unknown-to-him secrets that bring Kim into his life almost sink his sanity as well as his badly needed and only way of making a living:

You couldn’t go out for a drink, you were ashamed of the shabby state of your clothes, you feared people might expect you to touch them for cash so you withdrew first rather than endure that additional humiliation on top of poverty’s many other insults. (US readers note that "touch" is used in the UK sense of "borrow")
–and–
He went through another box of his uncle’s letters at his desk, working mechanically, serving customers out of bloody-mindedness rather than enthusiasm. None of them seemed surprised by his attitude. Maybe he was getting the hang of bookselling.

Shades of Bernard Black! And such a very Will thing to do: His goddamned duty, no matter he hates it, no matter it makes no sense to him, D.U.T.Y. before all. In the end, that really is the thing he shares with Kim, as both men know what it is to do the right thing no matter the difficulty or personal cost:

"... But I’ll tell you this, young man, he asked me a few years ago not to believe anything he hadn’t told me himself, and I haven’t and shan’t. So if you want to know why he didn’t go home, it’s because not many people know him like his nanny, and them as should, don’t. But if I needed help, there’s nobody in the world I’d turn to before Master Kim. You remember that.”

Will, to his credit, does; Kim, to his credit, honors Will's trust with weird, off-kilter but effective help. It is a lovely and heartening thing to see, even if only on the pages of a novel.

This was as much fun as I can remember having in ages. And, as a note to lazier writers, I will point out that, at precisely no time did Author Charles drop a single, foul, heinously overused w-bomb. Not one. I assure you that the opportunity was present any number of times...I went back to re-read a certain bookstore scene to be quite, quite sure I hadn't simply elided the ghastly thing, it was so juicily ripe for one...but Author Charles never once depressed the giant red button.

For that, and for the delights of Will and Kim's wounding word-play, I am most profoundly grateful.

A FASHIONABLE INDULGENCE, Regency England romantic novel featuring men in love with each other

A FASHIONABLE INDULGENCE (Society of Gentlemen #1)
KJ CHARLES
Loveswept
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In the first novel of an explosive new series from K. J. Charles, a young gentleman and his elegant mentor fight for love in a world of wealth, power, and manipulation.

When he learns that he could be the heir to an unexpected fortune, Harry Vane rejects his past as a Radical fighting for government reform and sets about wooing his lovely cousin. But his heart is captured instead by the most beautiful, chic man he’s ever met: the dandy tasked with instructing him in the manners and style of the ton. Harry’s new station demands conformity—and yet the one thing he desires is a taste of the wrong pair of lips.

After witnessing firsthand the horrors of Waterloo, Julius Norreys sought refuge behind the luxurious facade of the upper crust. Now he concerns himself exclusively with the cut of his coat and the quality of his boots. And yet his protégé is so unblemished by cynicism that he inspires the first flare of genuine desire Julius has felt in years. He cannot protect Harry from the worst excesses of society. But together they can withstand the high price of passion.

My Review: Don't dismiss Romances without reading at least one KJ Charles romantic novel first. This Regency possesses all the charms of the best in the field at conveying the sense of an exquisitely beautiful lifestyle lived by rather dreadful people being, nonetheless, quite extraordinarily tempting an offer. Harry Vane, legitimate son of a pair of narcissists from wildly different social milieux, has that offer made:

No, I don’t want to be sober and restrained {like his older Vane cousin}. I want to be beautiful. Bright. Confident. Perfect. I want to be you.
he thinks of his mentor, Julius, lusting and admiring and trying so hard to please:
“Again. No. With grace.”

Harry bowed hopelessly, a clumsy movement. “I don’t feel graceful.”

“Of course you don’t. You aren’t. You resemble a cart horse attempting to caracole. Very well, stop.”

Harry's noble father ran away from power, money, position to marry his mill-owner's daughter of a mother, and neither was ever going to be welcomed home because they embraced the Ned Ludd radicalism that led to them racing ahead of the hangman's noose to France. Napoleon's France. The one still reeling from their aborted revolution. And at daggers drawn with England.

Harry, in short, was never ever going to feel safe anywhere...but then his fortunes changed when his paternal grandfather needed him, now that he's twenty-three and has lived hand-to-mouth in London (after the parents had the balls to die at the same time) to carry on the family name. And it is here, my olds, that the action springs to life.

Julius is a man in misery, sadly, and the kind that warps one's view of humanity as much as Harry's uncertain upbringing does: He is Other, a queer gent in a time when that was a hanging offense; he is not on good terms with his family, not for his sexuality (one receives the distinct impression that they are in the dark about the subject), but for a tragic accident that took place at Waterloo. (No, not talkin' about it here. Read it for y'all's selves.) These two men, so young...Julius turns thirty during the story, and that's a big, big part of the story...and so damaged, gravitate together.

And everything he hated, the saliva, the fleshiness, the taste of other people’s food and breath and teeth and sweat, was here. Harry’s skin was as flawed as anyone’s close up. He had wide pores and what looked like red pinpricks, hairs in his nostrils and the sharp brown points of stubble, the first hints of what would be wrinkles when he aged, and stray hairs under his thick brows that could have been plucked away. He was imperfect flesh, like any man, and Julius buried himself in that imperfection because it was alive.

Harry's imperfections bother Julius; Julius's perfection bothers Harry:

“When my namesake, the great Caesar, rode in triumph,” Julius said, “he was accompanied by a slave whose role was to whisper to him, You are but mortal. To remind him he was merely a man who would one day die like any other.

If I could, I should have you at my side to remind me that I am alive, because I have not felt alive in so damned long, and with you, I do. No, I don’t want you to marry, any more than I want you to return to your dirty democrats. I want to show you the world, and see you smile, and keep you with me while my soul grows back. Don’t gape like that.”

The last line is directed at a completely overawed, overjoyed Harry, slackjawed that someone who opens his mouth and just spills this kind of guff verbiage would consider taking him as a pupil, still less as a lover!

So there are plot twists; Harry is banished forever (lasts about two weeks) from Julius's side because he wasn't completely honest once; Julius and the other men in their circle rally round Harry as some exceedingly horrible events transpire; a murder, a suicide, a long-awaited restoration of ma'at all occur. In short, it's a romance. And a fine one, replete with period details (look up "gamahuche"! Haw), and like all Author Charles's books, agreeably smutty and louche. (Straight-straight people: NO.)

I'd be deeply remiss if I didn't mention one major thread running through the read: Harry's parents flight from England cost one of their very staunchest supporters a flogging, which is no small matter in today's world but could then, if the flogged was unlucky, be fatal in the form of infection. Their supporter, Silas, nonetheless opens his home and his seditious printing shop to orphaned Harry when he has no one (certainly not his noble relatives!) to turn to. Harry, after being fished out of this cesspool of democratic radicals, leaves them all behind but with many a guilty twinge. He does finally go back after being Banished Forever by Julius (as if!), to talk to Silas:

He planted a thick, ink-stained finger on the table in front of Harry. “And here’s Mr. Aristocrat Vane, the clothes on your back enough to feed a family for a month, I’ll be bound, come crying to me because you’ve squabbled with a fop over a pink coat. Because you’ve sold yourself and you don’t like the price. Is that the best you can do?”
–then–
“If you can’t be happy, then be something else. Be useful, that would be good. Decorative, if you like. Selfish, if you must. But don’t whine about it.” He scowled, rubbing his hand over his short-cropped, brindled hair. “And be careful.”

It is that last that shows Silas for what he truly is: A mother hen of a man, always taking good care of whoever needs it and be damned to his own needs.

The usefulness of any read is what the reader needs from it at the time of the reading. I needed something to help me combat crippling wretchedness by reminding me that there is love, compassion, and commitment in the world. This story was exactly that for me. Is it Dostoevsky? No. I didn't want Litrachure and its many, many tedious foibles, as I needed to be convinced that the world has always been filled with better people than I am used to seeing on the news.

Success!

ANY OLD DIAMONDS, first entry in the Lilywhite Boys series of caper novels

ANY OLD DIAMONDS
K.J. CHARLES (Lilywhite Boys #1)
KJC Books
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Lord Alexander Pyne-ffoulkes, the younger son of the Duke of Ilvar, holds a bitter grudge against his wealthy father. The Duke intends to give his Duchess a priceless diamond parure on their wedding anniversary — so Alec hires a pair of jewel thieves to steal it.

The Duke's remote castle is a difficult target, and Alec needs a way to get the thieves in. Soldier-turned-criminal Jerry Crozier has the answer: he'll pose as a Society gentleman and become Alec's new best friend.

But Jerry is a dangerous man: controlling, remote, and devastating. He effortlessly teases out the lonely young nobleman's most secret desires, and soon he's got Alec in his bed—and the palm of his hand.

Or maybe not. Because as the plot thickens, betrayals, secrets, new loves, and old evils come to light. Now the jewel thief and the aristocrat must keep up the pretence, find their way through a maze of privilege and deceit, and confront the truth of what's between them... all without getting caught.

THIS WAS A YULE GIFT FROM MY YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HONEYBUNCH AND YOU CAN READ IT NOW.

My Review: Three instances of the vile, not-to-be-countenanced w-bomb. Two heinous, one of those so so so horrible (ON THE LAST PAGE!) it alone cost that quarter-star dock. One actually not that awful.

I can not believe I just typed that.

The cover art of this book makes me smile big'n'pretty. I'd've read it just to have that on my Kindle, had I known nothing of KJ Charles's previous ouevre. (I did...see my The Magpie Lord et seq. reviews.) But lucky me, this is vintage Charles! This is a lovely excursion into late Victorian London via a young, hard-up aristocrat who finds some jewel thieves to do his wicked stepmother dirt by relieving her of an £11,000 (about £150,000 today) diamond parure.

Hijinks ensue...as always...but let me just warn you that there are quite some several events on the way to resolution that cause the sensitive reader some serious collywobbles. I came close to invoking Cthulhu's attention to Author Charles during one or more of those moments (e.g., 63%, 86%), pulling back from the brink of madness barely in time. After all, we're taught from the cradle to praise Cthulhu...He hasn't noticed you yet. So. There's that.

But what a treat the good bits were. I am a sucker for Dominant/submissive romantic reads. This is clearly something Author Charles gets to the tips of the typing digits. These scenes are just flat wonderfully imagined, created, and inserted into the narrative. (Yes, that was me *not* making the dirty double entendre. You're welcome.) In this book, the submissive's consent and limits are so deftly woven into the narrative that I had to flip back to be sure they were there (even when they weren't one memorable time). Yeah, that's my story and you can't prove that's not why there's a finger-dent in my Kindle's screen.

Which brings me to a point I should make very clear: I am not recommending this to my heterosexual acquaintances. You will blench and clutch your pearls at least four times. Not straight safe! No! Don't!

Then there's the other great pleasure of this read. The big one, maybe, since it's something I like in series reads. We're dealing with new stories populated by characters from books past...but honest and truly, that's not a requirement to understand the motives and impulses front and center in this book. The relationships are there, but they aren't foregrounded. Whatever you need to know in order to enjoy this story is put there on the page, economically but unstintingly.

Anyone into the D/s lifestyle will find a welcome, sensitive aura of acceptance here (as in The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, which is also excellent); anyone inclined to read MM romantic fiction should already know Author Charles's work; but don't hesitate to adventure into these waters, caper-story readers. At its heart, Author Charles has given us a well-made caper with twists and turns to satisfy all but the sexually squeamish among us.

FEAST OF STEPHEN, charming Christmas coda to the third A Charm of Magpies series

FEAST OF STEPHEN
K.J. CHARLES (A Charm of Magpies #3.5)
KJC Books
FREE DOWNLOAD, also included with Flight of Magpies ebooks

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A Charm of Magpies Christmas coda.

Stephen and Crane have finally got away on their long-awaited Christmas break, along with Crane’s henchman Merrick and Jenny Saint. A promised gift is made, and a request unexpectedly and magically fulfilled…

EARLY BIRTHDAY GIFTS FROM MY KIND YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HEAPS, SWEETNESS.

My Review: A trip away from London to celebrate the new family's first Yule together. Stephen Day and Jenny Saint, guttersnipes elevated by Lord Crane's love for one and acceptance of the other, revel in fine new clothes, fine old brandy, and good company with many tales to tell.

But here's what you should really know: The entire series is about making what many of us, and sadly many QUILTBAG folk around the world, do not come with automatically: a logical family instead of a biological family. Crane and Merrick are closer than most people ever become, bonded by their adventures and their utter aloneness in the world. Day, always different, always apart and other, comes to bask in the inclusion he feels when he's with the two men. Now young Miss Saint, whose magical talent is never going to win her friends in the staid community of witches, comes at last to feel what the men are offering her.

She is home.

It makes the fact that we're not getting another tale with these four as its focus for...well...who knows. And that's okay.

(Actually no it's not okay at all and I'd like to take this moment to let Author Charles know that I have a voodoo dolly and a working knowledge of the operations of plantar fasciitis and I'm not afraid to deploy both in service of the need for more stories.)

FLIGHT OF MAGPIES, third book in A Charm of Magpies series

FLIGHT OF MAGPIES
K.J. CHARLES (A Charm of Magpies #3)
KJC Books
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Danger in the air. Lovers on the brink.

With the justiciary understaffed, a series of horrifying occult murders to be investigated, and a young student flying off the rails, magical law enforcer Stephen Day is under increasing stress. And the strain is starting to show in his relationship with his aristocratic lover, Lord Crane.

Crane chafes at the restrictions of England’s laws, and there’s a worrying development in the blood-and-sex bond he shares with Stephen. A development that makes a sensible man question if they should be together at all.

Then a devastating loss brings the people he most loves into bitter conflict. Old enemies, new enemies, and unexpected enemies are painting Stephen and Crane into a corner, and the pressure threatens to tear them apart...

EARLY BIRTHDAY GIFTS FROM MY KIND YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HEAPS, SWEETNESS.

My Review: Wow. What a way to lead out of these characters' time as the focus of this universe! I am truly amazed at how deep and visceral my emotional response to this story was. Author Charles made me go there, that dark and violent place of fear, more than once in this read. Stephen and Lord Crane are stretched to their individual and collective breaking point by the stupidity and venality of the Victorian society they live in, they are each brought low by their shared but challenged love and respect for each other, and they are as far away from (and as close to) their richly deserved Happily Ever After as two can be. From here on, it's
************SPOILERVILLE************
so stop if you don't want to know!
************************************
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.
.
.
My favorite scene of the entire series happens in this story. Lord Crane, goaded by Stephen's evident lack of care for his own safety and health, blows up and has it out with him. In that special way that only those committed to each other by bonds stronger than romantic love can afford to risk, Lord Crane lets loose the concentrated and deeply buried agonies of a law enforcement man's spouse:

“I quite understand that you can barely spare the time for us, to see each other, or wake up together, or take a few days at Christmas. I understand that you’re too preoccupied with your daily agenda to deal with a murderer who wants me dead. However, I struggle to see how you were too busy to even mention a significant threat to my continued existence instead of letting me believe it was under control!”

This howl of resentful fearful worry for self and spouse can't happen between romantic partners. It's the sole province of the spouse. It's real and it's raw and it's why Author Charles has legions of dedicated customer/reader/followers. This isn't fluff romance, this is full-blown and genuine relationship fiction. If one of the parties was female, this story would be in hard covers and have a Noble Profile lady with a Big Brute walking away down rainy streets. What keeps Crane there?

“I'm a very busy man," Crane said. "But I suppose I could force myself back here, lick you all over till you're begging for my cock, and then fuck you so hard they'll hear you screaming in the street. If you insist.”

There are several other wonderful scenes, of course, as Stephen battles the all-too-human idiocy of the Justiciary (the bureaucracy that polices magic in this universe); but few to top that one for utter fidelity to the reality of being an ordinary person's mate. Another fun moment later in the story is:

“Listen. Whatever the hell is going on...we will face it together. You and me. No more pissing about, Stephen, no more trying to do it all yourself, or to run the world single-handed. You will ask for help, you will take it, and you will put us first. That's not negotiable, understand?”

Lord Crane's had his fill of being the supplicant waiting for Stephen's time to free up, and not one second too soon if you ask me. Stephen's talents as a crime-fighter are being stretched too far quite deliberately. He's even set on the trail of someone quite reminiscent of the young Stephen, and of whom he says:

You're remarkably uninteresting for a flying trollop.

Savor that for a moment...the pungent tang of sarcasm, the rotting reek of jealousy, the chilly snark of condescension...leading at last to the moment when Stephen realizes:

Arrogant, beautiful, domineering Lord Crane, with the caring that made Stephen’s heart break, and the vicious streak that made his knees bend, had chosen him among all the men’s men of London, and treated him with a loyalty, generosity and almost painful honesty that made Stephen’s heart hurt. And his reward was a few doled-out crumbs of Stephen’s time in a country he hated.

Thank the good goddesses it's positioned where it is, at the ending of this strand of the story, because I dearly want these stories to remain fresh!

A CASE OF SPIRITS, the interstitial between-2-and-3 short story that brings strands together

A CASE OF SPIRITS
K.J. CHARLES (A Charm of Magpies #2.5)
KJC Books
*included with volume 2*

The Publisher Says: None so blind…

As torrential rains wash away the stench of a London heat wave, another kind of wave is sweeping through the city streets. A rash of ghost sightings, followed quickly by madness—and horrifying, eye-melting blindness.

The outbreak hits close to home when Lord Crane’s manservant, Merrick, becomes the newest victim. Desperate to find the cause of the malady, Crane and his magician lover, Stephen Day, are in a race against time—to put an end to the magical assault and put to rest the painful memories resurrected by ghosts of the past.


Warning: Magical horror, strong language, and strange brews disguised as strong drink.

EARLY BIRTHDAY GIFTS FROM MY KIND YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HEAPS, SWEETNESS.

My Review: I belted this down like a Bombay martini! Got rid of my Lucien-and-Stephen hangover. I love these men. Their quiet moments aaalways go messily awry. This one, with its memories and regrets theme, was a pint of ale on a hot day.

The sorcery was creepy; the house was creepy; the payoff was so sweet. I was most interested to learn about gin.

I love the people K.J. Charles invents. Merrick and Stephen, Lord Crane's two most beloved mens, learn to get on at last. Crane learns what to do to keep himself from losing his lover to the insanity of magic.

Happy happy, joy joy

A CASE OF POSSESSION, second book in A Charm of Magpies series

A CASE OF POSSESSION
K.J. CHARLES (A Charm of Magpies #2)
KJC Books
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Magic in the blood. Danger in the streets.

Lord Crane has never had a lover quite as elusive as Stephen Day. He knows Stephen’s job as justiciar requires secrecy, but the magician is doing his disappearing act more than seems reasonable—especially since Crane will soon return to his home in China. When a blackmailer threatens to expose their illicit relationship, there's only one thing stopping Crane from leaving the country he loathes: Stephen.

Stephen has problems of his own. As he investigates a plague of giant rats sweeping London, his sudden increase in power, boosted by his blood-and-sex bond with Crane, is rousing suspicion that he’s turned warlock. With all eyes on him, the threat of exposure grows. Stephen could lose his friends, his job and his liberty over his relationship with Crane. He’s not sure if he can take that risk much longer. Crane isn’t sure if he can ask him to.

The rats are closing in, and something has to give…

EARLY BIRTHDAY GIFTS FROM MY KIND YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HEAPS, SWEETNESS.

My Review: Not quite five...although it was set to be...because when the enemy was vanquished, there were still things to be done that weren't. The dead men, the story that inspired the hideous plague of rats were not tied together anywhere near well enough.

But the men are, as always, a delight, and the magpies in their various forms are outstandingly well used. There is nothing not to like in the character development department. That's the main delight for me. These men love each other, are infatuated by each other, think constantly about how they feel connected and understood and treasured:

“You look like the cat that swallowed the cream," Stephen said softly.

"That comes later.”

Dirty talk! Not explicit, but plain, and used within these two men's private space. I approve.

“My life changed four months ago, and I utterly failed to understand that until just recently, and therefore… I may have omitted to tell you that I love you.”
He took a breath.
“That’s all.”

Sweet talk! Clear, precise, unambiguous love-making. It's a refreshing characteristic of written MM romances that is all too frequently missing from MM real-life loves. (That was not a dig, Rob, I promise. I love you!)

There could be a lot more of this majgickq system used and explained, but that's the fun of a series, making discoveries as we go along! And Author Charles already knows the answers to the questions I'm thinking up. I am confident of that. These reads make that completely clear: I am in confident, powerful hands as I read, following a competent guide through a well made maze.

“I don't believe in demons and pitchforks. But I think, if you had to define hell, you could take a good man and deny him the rites he believed in, and condemn his soul to a slow process of corruption until it was nothing but a mass of rage and hate and seething evil that his true self would have loathed. I think that would be hell.”

And that's exactly the place that this entry in the series happens, the space where free will is a commodity that any character can be deprived on in an instant. The backstory from Lord Crane's misspent youth in China is at the forefront of this story. For Stephen Day, it's as if the beguiling whiff of Difference that Crane gives off is suddenly transformed into the reek of the charnel house as the men do their dead-level best to head off a plague of grudge-holding magical meanies with their roots in China.

“Nobody ain't going to lay a finger on you, missus," said {Lord Crane's muscle/valet}. "Not while me and my lord are standing. You tell Mr. Day about it and don't worry no more."
"Since when did you talk to law?" demanded {a witness they need to hear from} in Shanghainese.
"Since his nobility's fucking it. You want the shortarse on your side.”

What fun. What a delicious escape from the dystopian epic I'm sure I fell into by accident. I want to go home now, please. But in the meantime I have Lucien and Stephen to keep me distracted.

“Everyone can do evil. Some people can be forced to it, and some fight against it, and some don't even need an invitation.”

I'd like to return to the parallel universe where fewer people fall into the last category now.

THE MAGPIE LORD is first in KJ Charles's A Charm of Magpies MM fantasy series

THE MAGPIE LORD
K.J. CHARLES (A Charm of Magpies #1)
KJC Books
FREE!! Kindle original, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lord in danger. A magician in turmoil. A snowball in hell.

Exiled to China for twenty years, Lucien Vaudrey never planned to return to England. But with the mysterious deaths of his father and brother, it seems the new Lord Crane has inherited an earldom. He’s also inherited his family’s enemies. He needs magical assistance, fast. He doesn't expect it to turn up angry.

Magician Stephen Day has good reason to hate Crane’s family. Unfortunately, it’s his job to deal with supernatural threats. Besides, the earl is unlike any aristocrat he’s ever met, with the tattoos, the attitude... and the way Crane seems determined to get him into bed. That’s definitely unusual.

Soon Stephen is falling hard for the worst possible man, at the worst possible time. But Crane’s dangerous appeal isn't the only thing rendering Stephen powerless. Evil pervades the house, a web of plots is closing round Crane, and if Stephen can’t find a way through it—they’re both going to die.

EARLY BIRTHDAY GIFTS FROM MY KIND YOUNG GENTLEMAN CALLER. THANKS HEAPS, SWEETNESS.

My Review: I've invested a lot of energy in denigrating phauntaisee and majgickq in books. I really don't like some of the stuff, the more closely it resembles Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire the less I like it, but the reality is that this stuff can be used very well. In the hands of Author Charles, who can write this:

The tide was coming in up the Thames, not far away, and Stephen sensed salt water rippling, the surge of boats, wet wood and sailcloth, the quiet throb of the garden around him, but mostly he could feel Crane, sharp and silver, standing out from the surrounding world like a knife in a drawer full of wooden spoons.

it is hard to imagine any trope could be misused. There's always a risk, of course. But I feel confident that I am not going to be let down in my gladly extended faith.

The problems I still have with books featuring majgickq are lessened when, like Author Charles, one goes to the trouble of thinking the actions and reactions necessary to make the manipulation of the world work consistently. The Magpie Lord, ancestor of Lord Crane, our main character, is never explicitly described nor is his codification of majgickq's workings explored.

"Isn’t there some other way for you to get power?” (Lord Crane is petulantly complaining to Stephen here.)
“Like what?”
“Magic wands. Magic rings. The Holy Grail.”
“You have that here?”
“If I do, someone probably carved a magpie on it. Does it exist?”
“You wildly overestimate the extent of my knowledge,” Stephen said.

I nevertheless was convinced by the fussiness and sticklerishness of Day, the judiciary of magical crimes hired to deal with the Magpie Lord's various magical issues, that the system of this world was well thought out and believable enough for me to move on.

And move on I did. I enjoyed the sexual heat between the men. I approved of the sheer unbothered indifference of Lord Crane to the heaping plate of social disapprobation he's served for being different, foreign almost. Day, no aristocrat (and seemingly almost a Republican in the UK sense), allows his family's bitter history with Crane's family to color their every interchange. It lends this story a lovely enemies-to-frenemies-to-lovers dynamic that more often than not works well for me. It affords me the opportunity to size up characters in their rounded, 3-D being, which is an index of how well I will respond to a given author's thought processes.

Author Charles, in this outing, comes through my maze of mishegas and misanthropy with nary a hair out of place. Another series to follow with eager gratitude for the pleasures I am confident I will receive.

PS it's a laugh riot on top (!) of everything else.

THE SECRET CASEBOOK OF SIMON FEXIMAL, unusually well-done relationship fiction with gay protagonists and urban fantasy underpinnings

THE SECRET CASEBOOK OF SIMON FEXIMAL
KJ CHARLES
KJC Books (non-affiliate Amazom link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: a warm and fuzzy four stars of five

The Publisher Says: A story too secret, too terrifying—and too shockingly intimate—for Victorian eyes.

A note to the Editor

Dear Henry,

I have been Simon Feximal’s companion, assistant and chronicler for twenty years now, and during that time my Casebooks of Feximal the Ghost-Hunter have spread the reputation of this most accomplished of ghost-hunters far and wide.

You have asked me often for the tale of our first meeting, and how my association with Feximal came about. I have always declined, because it is a story too private to be truthfully recounted, and a memory too precious to be falsified. But none knows better than I that stories must be told.

So here is it, Henry, a full and accurate account of how I met Simon Feximal, which I shall leave with my solicitor to pass to you after my death.

I dare say it may not be quite what you expect.

Robert Caldwell
September 1914

My Review: This isn't a novel, but a collection of connected short stories. I'm not upset by that, just noting it so others won't go in expecting something they won't get.

Most romantic fiction comes, these days, in series form. This book's series origins are in the short fiction world. Although the premise isn't unique, the untold story behind an unseen told story, it's got legs for a reason: It gives the read an intimacy, a sense that there is nothing held back, while at the same time holding back the more public face that never existed. I like that. It feels playful to me. It resembles Mark Dunn's hilarious (to me, at least) Ibid, the footnotes to a lost novel that was published in place of the novel so the publisher's loss wouldn't be total. That made me chuckle as well, for the same reason: It's playful! Too much Modren Litrachure is about as much fun to read as a root canal is to have.

Anyway, this book. I liked it for another reason: The protagonists age. They aren't 25 and 33 for the whole book. At the end of the book they're 48 and 56, explicitly stated, and have been together for 23 years. The math adds up! I damned near passed out. Too often the author doesn't do continuity like this in the world of romantic fiction.

In addition to my squeeing about the continuity thing, I need to mention the character development. As time goes by, any of us who have had any sort of long-term relationships know that the romantic urgency flies out the window at some point. You can't sustain that level of emotional excitement forever, and what takes its place in successful relationships varies. In the case of this couple, it's a shared calling/career. But as veterans of the relationship wars know, there's another powerful force that's inevitably part of the mix: Anger. People who are close, who live in close contact, inevitably rub each other the wrong way at times. In the case of Simon and Robert, the catalyst for the true, lasting anger that invades their relationship is family-based. How exactly true and accurate.

The resolution of that particular issue is just perfect. I was half in love with Author Charles before it took place, and completely infatuated after that story was finished. Oh that more romantic fictioneers would do this, would use the real stuff of living relationships to inform our fantasy of life with The One. It doesn't detract from Robert's love of Simon, or Simon's for his anchor Robert, for the story to include Robert going against Simon's well-founded and powerful desire for Robert NOT to save Simon's life.

Find bigger stakes than that. And then find another author willing to use those stakes to change the relationship the protagonists have in a new and realistic direction while still making the magical fantasy underpinnings of the story a part of that direction.

A very satisfying read. I don't give it more stars because, in the interest of fairness, I rate it based on its novelistic success and not its interconnected story success. Had it been presented to me as a set of stories, a la Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists, I'd give it more stars. As it is, I give it my recommendation to relationship fiction fans in search of realism within their fantasy life, fantasy of life, and life of fantasy.