BRIARLEY, M/M Beauty & the Beast retelling, & HOW TO CATCH A VET, small-town M/M series romance

HOW TO CATCH A VET
ANA ASHLEY
Self-published
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.

Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in...well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

I RECEIVED THIS AS A YULE GIFT. THANKS, ANONYMOUS ELF!

My Review: Author Ana Ashley was brand new to me, but this entry is in a series of connected gay romances that wasn’t at all new...it’s the sixth in an all-from-one-town trope of small-world-building interconnected stories. In this case it’s called “Chester Falls, Connecticut.”

An Army veteran and a small-town veterinarian from the same little town get tangled up...literally...in a meet-cute that got my smiles. Hot guy falls for ordinary one works, too. The fact that it’s in an interconnected series detracted a little bit from my enjoyment because I didn’t get the in-jokes; the way they’re presented I couldn’t miss them being in-jokes. I definitely think the author relies on them being familiar more than is entirely wise.

It's worth mentioning that Santi's got a very real medical condition. It's very interesting to see it used in this way. He's going blind due to Retinitis pigmentosa, a very odd and specific irreversible sentence to a long disabled life for this vigorous, active studly man. It's a very surprising and, to me at least, humanizing choice. The perfect Godly Studly Hottie is changing into a somewhat more dependent, instead of dependable, man. It's a guarantee that he will be making big, big changes in everything about his life. I love the fact that he knows this; he sees (!) that he needs to make changes now instead of being forced to later; and he elects to offer his heart, for the first time in his life, to a regular, good, decent man. I do think it was a good choice. I don't think it was as impactful for me, this reader, because I'm starting the series at book six.

I do mildly recommend the read though with the reservation that there are eight (8) w-bombs and none of them were in any way needed to make any kind or sort of point about the characters doing it or having it done at them.

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

BRIARLEY
ASTER GLENN GRAY
Self-published
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An m/m World War II-era retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing.

Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter - only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally.

At first, the parson can't stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?

I KINDLE-BORROWED THIS BOOK FROM MY FRIEND TEAL. THANK YOU!

My Review: One thing no one tells you about being an adult is that there are no unmixed emotions.

None.

The world is so much harder to navigate without Certainty as your guide, either that you...or your leaders...are Right, Correct, Blessed By Gawd; or that you are damned, doomed!, hopeless and irredeemable! because that is also freedom from the murk and misery of figuring it out step by step, bit by bit, holding as much of a candle as you possess to illuminate annihilating blackness.

What They also fail to mention is: that blackness, the awful weight of it, the airless suffocating relentless gravity? That is the presence and substance of Them, the expectations and blames and angers and recriminations...black is the presence of all colors, weight is the sensation of gravity from so much mass, like a black hole.

White is what you see when there is nothing there. When you scrub off, slip out from under, refuse to pick up their shitty, rotten-souled, stinking cruelty, you lose their weight and your eyes clear the darkness...but unrelieved white is blinding no less than pure black.

So learn this, grasp it, hold it up in front of yourself like a sword: There is no purity in the real, honest world. There are no unmixed emotions. And that is how you learn to navigate and identify the places you are safe. They have your mix of black and white, they match the colors you've chosen and blended, the ones that give your eyes the right shine and your heart the right lift. Drop the purity filters, learn how to see in as many shades between black and white as you can find.

When you will dare anything, anything at all, for someone else, to save them and create the world they want, you are closer to that clarity than at any other time.

You'll never be so brave, so sure, so certain of your actions, as when you rise to serve the ones you love. Nothing, literally no thing, can stop that purity...except nasty old Reality. And that's why we need stories like this one.

Why, I suppose, we need all stories...they provide endings when dank, dismal Reality insists on hauling up the fucking Sun again to glare at you and highlight your crow's feet and shine blindingly on your bald patch.

But sometimes, in the gray place your shadow makes, comes that voice: "did you make the coffee?"

So do it again, Hero.

THE UNTOLD STORY, eighth Invisible Library YA adventure story...unqualified hit of a read

THE UNTOLD STORY
GENEVIEVE COGMAN (The Invisible Library #8)
Ace Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.00 trade paper, available 28 December 2021

Rating: 4.5* of five, because 92%

The Publisher Says: In this thrilling historical fantasy, time-traveling Librarian spy Irene will need to delve deep into a tangled web of loyalty and power to keep her friends safe.

Irene is trying to learn the truth about Alberich-and the possibility that he's her father. But when the Library orders her to kill him, and then Alberich himself offers to sign a truce, she has to discover why he originally betrayed the Library.

With her allies endangered and her strongest loyalties under threat, she'll have to trace his past across multiple worlds and into the depths of mythology and folklore, to find the truth at the heart of the Library, and why the Library was first created.

The Invisible Library review–The Masked City review–The Burning Page review–The Lost Plot review–The Mortal Word review–The Secret Chapter review–The Dark Archive review

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

My Review: The entire purpose of a long-running series is to entice the reader back to its (hopefully) inexhaustible wells of Story. That the story in question is about the origin of stories and storytelling, about how Storytelling is the balance point between Order and Chaos, makes it all the more impossible to resist following. (And it isn’t like I’m famous for my ability to resist storytelling in almost any of its forms.)

There is something that happens, at 92% into the story, that made me put down my Kindle for a full weekend. I simply couldn’t process it, and I didn’t want to process it; I was shocked, hurt, appalled, and enraged. Obviously I picked up my Kindle again, but it was a close-fought battle between going on and simply causing all sorts of havoc and ruin to collapse onto a certain wicked Authoress. She knows Authorial Privilege…I know voodoo.

It’s a sign of how deeply invested I am in Irene, in Kai, even in Vale and Catherine, that I was able to stop percolating my fury through the ground-up outrage and betrayal.

I’m a little bit shell-shocked even yet.

I’ll stay within the bounds of propriety, though, and not discuss it in spoilery detail. Let’s say that, at this point in an ongoing series, things need to shake up and people need to bring their analytical A-game to bear on the underpinnings of the tale. Some very obvious issues have never been so much as gestured at in the first seven books, like “who exactly founded the Library, where’s the Language from, and what the Devil is up with this treaty idea anyway?!” This book is both gesture and resolution.

And this book is the point where everything, I mean everything, changes for the Scooby-group: Vale, Catherine, Kai, and Irene are never going to be the same within or without. Their entire gestalt is altered and, in my never-remotely humble opinion, for the better. They go through more testing fires in this installment than in previous ones, only this time it’s not the faintly repetitive “we’ll climb that hill when we come to it” task-oriented slog that it can feel as though they are by now. I mean…I’ve been here for seven books, I’m reading book eight, I know what to expect…and I still want to know what happens. So Author Cogman does what a smart Dungeon Master does and explains why we’ve gone round the houses this many times and uses that pent-up energy to propel the series onto a different orbitt around the same story.

There are things that I question about the Language still, so I’m primed to pick up book nine. There are ways the Big Burning Questions got answered in this book that leave me wondering what exactly it was that I saw…and that’s exactly what I want in a series read! So hasten to the bookery of your choice and pre-order this latest adventure from the Multiverse’s coolest Librarian-cum-Ninja-via-Bond private story hoard…I mean collection!...and let Irene “Winters” and Kai the Dragon Prince and their brood ring in 2022 with you.

AFTER THE DRAGONS, nice and subtle multilayered title

AFTER THE DRAGONS
CYNTHIA ZHANG
Stelliform Press
$7.99 ebook platforms, available TODAY!

Shortlisted for the inaugural Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Dragons were fire and terror to the Western world, but in the East they brought life-giving rain…

Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease—shaolong, or “burnt lung”—afflicts the city’s human inhabitants.

Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. Interest in Beijing’s dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons? Eli and Kai must confront old ghosts and hard truths if there is any hope for themselves or the dragons they love.

After the Dragons is a tender story, for readers interested in the effects of climate change on environments and people, but who don’t want a grim, hopeless read. Beautiful and challenging, focused on hope and care, this novel navigates the nuances of changing culture in a changing world.

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

My Review: The entire world is burning up...including the people in it.

We are in an alt-Beijing in a future based on today. Climate change has gone into overdrive, and Beijing's famously poor air quality has never been worse...or warmer. There is a new lung disease, fatality rate as close to one hundred percent as to be indistinguishable, called "shaolong" or burning lung.

Oh...and dragons are real, and are very common in Beijing. Little dragons, not like the hulking fire drakes that medieval Europeans hunted to extinction. Small, delicate, beautiful...but not particularly valued. In fact they're used much as cocks are, for dragon fights. (While this isn't gone into in detail, it leads me to remind thoose sensitive to animal harm that this factor exists.)

Eli comes to Beijing from the USA. He is a mixed-race Black and Chinese diasporan child with a working grasp of Mandarin and a strong desire to make his mark in biomedicine. Kai is a dying victim of shaolong who meets handsome, healthy Eli when he comes into Kai's...well..."job" implies he gets paid which he does not...position at a dragon sales shop-cum-dragon fight ring. Their attraction is mutual but stuttering at its start: Eli can't help noticing Kai's illness and thus sets up the pity dynamic...unintentionally, of course, but inevitably...which makes Kai resist his reciprocal feelings for Eli.

Their dance of approach and stillness and retreat and stillness was beautifully handled, while never leading to a Conclusion. They are involved...in a coupling-type thing...and it's making them both happy...today. The way we're left at the end of the story, that is all we can expect to hear about these young men. I would like to say aloud that I would love to read more stories set in this world because its depth-of-field in this novella is amazing and has not come remotely close to exhausting the possibilities it contains. What does it mean to fall in love with someone who is dying? What kind of world can you, the healthy one, believe in once you've realized he will die before you? Not things I'd know about at all....

I did not expect to think the AIDS parallels were particularly well-done or even necessary. I was wrong. The story is very much enriched by the author's quiet acknowledgment that these men face a short future and a rough road to the end. Nothing is made of that, as in there are no set pieces built around it, but it pervades their oddly tender yet standoffish dynamic.

Anyone who can make the Bird's Nest from the 2008 Beijing Olympics into a ratty-tatty old hulk where wild dragons swarm is someone who needs to delve far more deeply into this world they have made. The details that bring it to life...the drought causing the poor to pay so much for water while there are still fountains in the wealthy part of town, for example...made my greedy little story bandit within coo and gurgle.

This is the second novella I've read from Stelliform Press (after The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, reviewed here), and they have both been excellent cli-fic books with stellar (!) production and design values. It is clear that this press has a very well-defined mission and is using the best kind of writing...tense, intense, high-stakes storytelling...to get your attention. You will enjoy the trip even while you're unhappy with the implied destination.

More, please. Soon, please.