Isolated, lonely scholar Percy tries to live a quiet life
under everyone’s notice, living with his haunted past and hoping no-one learns
the secret of his sexuality
When a private investigator enters his world, demanding
his expert help and dragging him into
world of dark mystery and death – and sex.
Some books are written with delicate nuance, carefully
crafted writing and gentle subtlety that gracefully introduces you to the
world, the characters and the plot line, allowing them all to grow and be
revealed with beautiful, natural flowing style.
And some books handle the plot with all the gentle
subtlety of a sledgehammer being wielded by a drunken carnival barker. Guess
which category this book fits in?
Our hero, Percy Whybourne is awkward and clumsy and self
hating and self-conscious and isolated and hates company and his family hates
him and has a desperately tragic past which he feels terribly guilty about but,
because he’s the hero, of course he isn’t actually to blame for it but he feels
all sad and guilty about it anyway.
This is all dumped in ridiculously vast detail very early
in the book. In fact, Percy feels the need to clumsily reference the childhood
friend who died by page 16, his dad hating him by page 18 which also includes a
full description of that child’s death. Seriously this is just info-dumped in
there, the book hasn’t even started Percy’s clumsy awkwardness is referenced
about once every other page. In all this time he’s missed the bus and arrived
at work. Subtle, it ain’t, nor is it particularly endearing to the character. I
can’t even picture Percy as a character because he’s more a collection of
tropes – the awkward, clumsy, tragic closeted gay academic who doesn’t love
himself.
Unfortunately, this lack of nuanced writing pretty much
tells you how the romance is going to be depicted.
We meet designated love interest Phillip. Who is hot. So
very hot. And Percy mentions this a lot, in between stammering, being clumsy
and being all tingly every time Phillip touches him (which he does a lot,
always through layers of clothes but super-hot – this heat is always mentioned.
I’m sure he has 3rd degree burns from all this heated touching
through clothes), stands near him, breathes on him or glances in his direction.
We also have repeated mention of malachite eyes and lips. Oh gods the lips.
By page 37 there are 24 separate references to the
hotness of Phillip and Percy’s red hot reaction to him. It most certainly does
not reduce as the book goes on but I did get tired of counting. Not only is
this rather dull but it’s somewhat damaging to the world setting – this is a
Victorian era setting where being gay is persecuted by law. Percy’s existence
as a gay man is a crime and I have never known an LGBT person who is just this
bad at hiding his arousal. Even as a horny teenager, most of us are simply
better at hiding than this even when we don’t live in a world where discovery
will arrested and imprisoned. Percy, how can you be this bad at this!
It’s also about the only desperate reasoning behind some
severely forced plot. After having the obligatory Misunderstanding (why do we
have to have these in romance? Why?) which is quickly resolved, Phillip then
invites Percy to join him for a bit of late night breaking and entering
And Percy agrees
Whyyyyy? Why would Phillip invite this complete stranger
with zero relevant skills to illegal activity? This makes no sense – the only
possible explanation is that he’s using Percy’s powerful family name to try and
escape consequences. But Percy just had a convoluted, misunderstanding epic
shitfit over the idea that Phillip was trying to use his family name not 5
minutes before – and the idea doesn’t even occur to him now!
This is the problem with this book – because between the
romance there is a potential plot there, but it’s handled carelessly, often put
on hiatus (despite major threats, monsters, and chthonic beings ready to break
through) so we could focus on the romance which is the overwhelming purpose of
this book, which is the problem I have with it. I was told this book was an
Urban Fantasy and not a Paranormal Romance… well that’s blatantly not true.
There is a plot there, but it’s there to display the romance – mooshing these
two characters together as soon as possible is the point of this book and it’s
clear from the very beginning and we never get far from that. I love the book
has gay characters and I’ve read so very few books in this genre with any LGBT
protagonists and definitely few with a gay male protagonists which I really
want to see. But I really want a story with a gay male protagonist – and not
two gay men pushed together to have sex and then a plot sort of built around
that. And honestly that kind of covers the romance as well, beyond the
requisite Sad Pasts both characters have I have little feel for them as people
beyond The Sad Past and their attraction for each other which they act on
within, perhaps, a week of knowing each other DESPITE the homophobic setting.
It wasn’t developed it just happened – I see him, he’s hot, angst angst angst,
misunderstanding, sex. Oh and plot, sort of, tucked in between.
Which annoys me as well, this is a world where being gay
is a crime, but there’s very little about their interactions to indicate that’s
a concern for them. I mean, Percy worries about it as part of his eternal
angst, but they both still end up in bed within that week despite neither of
them being in any situation where it would be safe or expected for them to
reveal their sexuality. A lot of LGBT people in a country where being gay is
legal would be wary hitting on a guy after a week’s acquaintance when not in a
gay location or knowing the other guy is gay – let alone in a place where being
gay is illegal. It strikes me as undeveloped world building, it’s there to
cause tension but the full concepts of it has hardly been properly developed.
The plot, as I’ve alluded to, could have been interesting
– chtonic monsters in a nicely Victorian setting? Dark and sinister magic? Archaeology,
cryptography and sinister resurrection? Sure – but it wasn’t really followed
through. Parts of it were dragged around with little reasoning (like Percy
going housebreaking because of course), the two main characters themselves
seemed to get surprisingly distracted from this life and death, world-ending
issue and we had frequent interludes for Percy’s moping, angst and Convoluted
Misunderstandings (words cannot describe how much I hate this romance trope)
where the plot would just be dropped.
One real bright spot in this book was Dr. Christin Putnam
– female archaeologist, master of the scathing put-down and bale to put someone
in their place with 3 simple sentences. She was awesome. She was interesting.
She challenged the misogyny of the era and her profession with style and wit
and force, she expressed her struggles and problems which comes from the hyper-scrutiny
she’s under and the inflated standards she has to meet. It’s almost sad, I was
recommended this book as inclusion of gay male protagonists but had little
interest in the collection of shallow, tired tropes attached to genitals that
constituted their “characters” and was far more interested in this side
character.
Thre are no POC in this book at all, that I can remember,
despite an expansive cast.
The whole problem of this book is regardless of the
potential plot, regardless of the potentially interesting world building and
regardless of an actually interesting side character, none of this changes that
not just the main – but the sole – purpose of this book is to watch these guys
have sex. Only enough attention is given to the rest to allow that sex to
happen – character development, plot, world setting – it’s all given enough
attention to be there but not enough to actually work and hold together.
