Genre: Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay, Lesbian
Reviewer: Tony
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
Varon Cambeul has made it to the top: Royal Magician of the Kingdom of Lothia, at the right hand of the king, who is his lover. He has always kept the promise he made to his mother and his apprenticeship master: he has used his magic for good.
This promise is tested when the king asks him to make a curse that will be cured by the king so everyone will love him. Helping the king is using his magic for good, right? But is Varon doing this because he has fallen in love with the king? What about those who will suffer from the curse and slowly be transformed into ghosts, people like Theo and Russell in the town where the curse is released?
Can Varon undo this great wrong? Can he save Theo and Russell and the others as they turn invisible? How can he love someone who is not doing good?
The Review
Susurrus by Warren Rochelle is a story that may bring back some less than pleasant memories of the ongoing pandemic. It is set in a world of magic and ruling royal families of doubtful morals.
Varon Cambeul is a greenwitch who becomes the Royal Magician in the court of King Aloysius, ruler of Kingdom of Lothia. The king is not a popular leader, and he wants to be loved by his people. As he is not a particularly good man who does not even love his own wife and children, this is not a likely proposition, yet this is what Varon is tasked with.
Since his appointment, he has become the secret lover of the King’s alter ego Alo, and will do everything to make Alo happy.
The king wants Varon to create a curse that causes panic in the population when it ‘infects’ those it has come into contact with ‘transparency’. Then the king will then go around the kingdom and cure the afflicted. Nothing is simple, as it seems as Varon has not made the cure yet and the pandemic he created is getting out of hand.
There is also a parallel story of two lovers, Russell and Theo, who contract the curse and face the difficulties of the imposed lock down and measures put in place by the king.
This is an interesting take on the concept of lovers who would do anything for each other. It’s not without issues, as there is a lot going on that is not addressed directly in the writing. It’s a story without a happy ever after – instead, it’s about one about taking ownership of one’s mistakes, and making the ultimate sacrifice.
Varon is misguided, but he is a good guy. I’m unconvinced that he would want the position of Royal Magician to an unloved and unlovable king, and that his choice of sexual partner goes against the laws put in place by the same king whose bed he shares most nights.
And all we really know about the king is that he is unpopular. We don’tt get to experience why he’s universally unliked until we see the practices he puts in place to deal with the curse / pandemic. Even so, most of those practices are reasonable if unpleasant.
In the end, the king is still the same man, and will probably continue to do his own thing in his own way. We may not know exactly what happens to the afflicted who escape the King’s administrations, but we can hope it is a better outcome than for those who remain with their disturbed king and his hypocritical views on whom they are allowed to love.
The Reviewer
Tony is an Englishman living amongst the Welsh and the Other Folk in the mountains of Wales. He lives with his partner of thirty-six years, four dogs, two ponies, various birds, and his bees. He is a retired lecturer and a writer of no renown but that doesn’t stop him enjoying what he used to think of as ‘sensible’ fantasy and sf. He’s surprised to find that if the story is well written and has likeable characters undergoing the trails of life, i.e. falling in love, falling out of love, having a bit of nooky (but not all the time), fending off foes, aliens and monsters, etc., he’ll be happy as a sandperson who has just offloaded a wagon of sand at the going market price. As long as there’s a story, he’s in. He aims to write fair and honest reviews. If he finds he is not the target reader he’ll move on.
