Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay, Pansexual, Sexually Fluid
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
Quiet. That’s how he likes life, no drama to clean up…
Tai Xen-Vorsy leads a straightforward life: work, time at the local clubs where shapeshifters like him can play without fear, and the comforts of home with a cat that’s more than half attitude. After breaking up with his last submissive, he’s even taking a break from Dom duties.
Meeting Gates changes everything, and when Tai’s childhood home is destroyed, his simple life goes up in flames.
The Callensdale haven was his refuge as an orphan, a hideaway that saved his life. Now it’s time to return the favour. Bringing in the Fluff Brigade Brotherhood would make all the difference… if he could just get them back together. Tai won’t give up—he’s not that kind of unicorn. But can he reunite the brotherhood and keep his new relationship with Gates kindled at the same time?
The darkness is dragging him into the shadows, one case at a time…
Helping others is all Gates Colfaethe wants to do, being mostly unicorn shifter with a splash of Faerie. But years as an agent on trafficking cases leave him fearing just how far he’ll lose himself in the job before he burns out completely.
A random hookup with Tai might be the very change he needs. A new Dom means new rules and the chance to create safe distance from work—until his worlds collide in a twist Gates should leave well enough alone. What he knows is bad enough, but running headlong into danger could kill him.
Horn & Haven is an MM+ romance series featuring a found family of unicorn shifters brought together by tragic circumstances. Friends out to save a magical world in trouble. Family fighting to protect those they love. Lovers falling for the kinkiest unicorns this side of their universe… Welcome to the Fluff Brigade Brotherhood.
The Review
There is a lot going on here, which is only to be expected when the author names their chief inspirations as The Last Unicorn and Star Trek.
I admit that, in this first book of a series, there is not much of Star Trek to be seen, other than references to the reality of the world in which the story is set that involves other planets and solar systems. All the action takes place in one country, which does require rather a lot of time to drive across.
The extensive narrative revolves around a complicated network of relationships, familial and otherwise, but focuses on two overworked young men: Tai Xen-Vorsy and Gates Colfaethe. I use the word “men” because this is how they present themselves during most of the story. The fact is that they are both unicorn shifters, hiding in plain sight in the larger human world. Gates is even more complicated than Tai, in that he is part fae. Both of our protagonists have magic, but not in the way that mages have magic (details of which don’t appear until the last part of the book). The key issue is that both Tai and Gates are part of communities that must keep hidden, because the non-magical human world is far too curious and sadly lacking in compassion or empathy when it comes to the notion of magical beings.
Tai and Gates are strangers with mutual friends, which is how they first encounter each other. They are connected in other ways, too. Tai is an orphan, raised in a hidden community known as a haven (specifically the Calensdale haven). Gates has an intact family, but also grew up hidden from the non-magical world. Whereas Tai works in a kind of grunt job that he actually seems to enjoy, Gates works for “the ministry,” which is much like what I’d think of as “the government,” but with sinister overtones. What the reader knows pretty quickly, but our two protagonists take a long time to understand, is that Gates works on a secret project trying to figure out ongoing cultural/social problems that relate directly to Tai’s childhood circumstances.
If this sounds complicated, it is. The fact that Tai and Gates are both deeply angsty, as well as frightened by the situation of the world around them, adds to the complication. They are worriers and over-thinkers. Each desperately in need to companionship and love, but leery of anything that might expose them to emotional danger. They first meet at just the moment when Tai’s childhood haven has been attacked, and when Gates is trying to track down some disturbing patterns of disappearances and trafficking across the world.
And this is where the author tosses a monkey wrench into any notions the reader might have regarding unicorn shifters. Both Tai and Gates are seriously into BDSM, and at first meeting appear to be ideally suited to each other. Once more, the reader understands pretty quickly that they are PERFECT for each other; but the two young men are messed up enough that it is a long emotional road before they see that themselves.
I would note here that you might have to be pretty into BDSM, even if it’s only theoretical, to fully engage with the more explicit sections of this story. All m/m fiction seems to require substantial on-page intimacy, and this book is no exception. I think the author actually does a pretty great job creating scenes that are interesting and compelled by the plot. I believed what these two characters do and how it expresses what they need from each other. But I found it hard to read, a bit beyond my comfort zone. A long way from My Pretty Pony.
The book ends with a substantial and satisfying finish, but leaves us with a niggling awareness that major questions about why and who remain unanswered. This, of course, opens up the way for future books. That fact that I want to know more about both Tai and Gates is testimony to the interest I had in their characters.
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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