Genre: Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
People talk about the marriage of true minds, but Alexander doesn’t think this is what they meant.
After a cruel experiment binds him to the soul of Rota, an old god, Alexander has one mission: find Rota’s body. Having a godly boyfriend is great, but it would be better to have one that he could actually touch. Unfortunately, even Alexander’s ability to command Rota’s divine power hasn’t helped.
A rare book of poetry may finally provide the answer. The expertise they need translating it brings them to Oleander Logue, a young man with plenty of problems that seem at odds with his cheerful nature. Ollie is happy to help, but he’s in trouble with a gangster who demands that Alexander and Rota solve a series of murders first.
Desperate, Alexander and Rota accept the case… but it’s not that simple. The gangster’s threats to Ollie’s safety disturb them both, but is that because they’re both growing more attracted to Ollie… or because he’s a potential host for Rota? If they can’t solve these murders, they may never find out.
The Review
Given that this is book 6 of a loosely-related series, and that the whole series revolves around romantic pairings between humans and non-human deities, I was surprised at how easily I fell into the rhythm of K.L. Hiers’s prose. The author is good at providing enough backstory to make the current book’s plot seem part of a coherent whole; but I would not recommend just randomly picking up this book without reading the others in the series—it seems to me that Hiers builds a world one step at a time, and coming in on book 6 leaves you feeling a little under-informed.
The central characters, Alexander and Rota, are a human and a disembodied god—who have found love with each other through the sinister machinations of other deities. The problem is, Rota is a spirit, bound to Alexander’s physical human body by torturous magical means. Rota’s body is somewhere else, and to fully, um, commune, Alex and Rota need to find Rota’s physical body—hidden away in some hidden little world.
You see what I mean. There’s a lot here for someone just dropping into this world unannounced.
One of the people they seek out is another human, with the marvelous name of Oleander Logue. He’s a big redheaded dope called Ollie, and becomes a person of real interest to Alexander and Rota—on several levels. Ollie is a supremely good, compassionate person, in addition to having special gifts that Alexander needs for his quest. That goodness becomes a sort of fulcrum on which Alex and Rota’s spiritual bond tips into something more. It’s a really lovely use of the romantic triad idea.
Of course, Rota is a god, and as such hasn’t got a human-type body. Let’s just say that there are tentacles, which is an odd trope in fantasy romance. But used extensively and in great detail here. It’s not really my jam, but I found Hiers’s descriptions surprisingly tender and emotional in spite of the intentional (and demanded by the audience) graphic descriptions.
My constant sense of slight disorientation in reading this really means I need to start at book one and work my way back to this. I’d suggest other readers do that too.
Four stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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