• Reviews

    Review: Kirith Kirin by Jim Grimsley (2000)

    “”I leaned over him and felt as if I were staring into a seething cauldron, fires licking the rim of his face. Breathless, I kissed the maelstrom.”

    Kirith Kirin, Jim Grimsley

    Rating: ★★★★½
    Genre: High Fantasy
    Categories: M/M, wizards/magicians, royalty and political intrigue, fated lovers
    Content Warnings (highlight to read): Significant age-gap between the romantic leads, in the way of “just-barely-of-age-fantasy-protagonist.”
    Description: Told from the point-of-view of Jessex, a magician reflecting back on his youth and the series of events that caused him to pursue his fate. Kirith Kirin is very much high fantasy and floral prose—the kind of fantasy novel that has FIFTY PAGES OF APPENDICES with all the names and places and rules about magic.

    The story follows Jessex, a simple farmboy, who learns that he has a secret magical lineage and a daunting fate. In this world, immortals known as Kirith Kirin and the Blue Queen regularly ‘take turns’ as rulers in order to maintain their immortality, but the Blue Queen has decided that she’s had enough of sharing and is plunging the world into chaos. Jessex makes his way to the side of Kirith Kirin, destined to be his faithful magician—and, you know. More.

    The Blue Queen, upon resuming the throne while King Kirith Kirin’s eternality is renewed in the Arthen forest, has partnered with a magician of the dark arts. No longer does she need to leave the throne to renew her eternal nature. Swayed by promises of the magician, she has claimed the throne forever and is extending her influence to the far corners of the world.

    Malleable grey clouds, sidewinding wind and intelligent lightning bolts made the trip across the vast Girdle nearly impossible. Out of nowhere, the Blue Queen’s Patrols made haste to kill the boy and the warrior before they could safely reach the deep forest of Arthen. Riding upon two magnificent stallions, one a royal Prince out of Queen Mnemarra, Jessex and his uncle Svisal reached Arthen despite the deadly storm that reeked of magic. Thus begins Jessex’s new life as he arrives in Arthen and enters into the royal court of Kirith Kirin.

  • Reviews

    Review: Stormhaven (Whyborne & Griffin #3) by Jordan L. Hawk (2013)

    Rating: ★★★★★
    Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Romance
    Categories: M/M, mystery, eldritch
    Content Warnings: Highlight to read: Abuse of the mentally ill. References to previous rapes, and an onscreen attempted rape.
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Investigating a man’s murder is complicated enough without some god from the depths of the sea attempting to communicate with museum philologist Percival Whyborne. But that’s what he and his lover, the private investigator and ex-pinkerton Griffin Flaherty have to deal with, taking them to the horrors of the asylum and memories that Griffin can’t escape. And if that’s not enough, Griffin’s family have come to visit, making him have to pretend to live a normal, heterosexual life in front of them—and they’ve brought a young lady along for him to court.

  • Reviews

    Review: Threshold (Whyborne & Griffin #2) by Jordan L. Hawk (2013)

    Rating: ★★★★½
    Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Romance
    Categories: M/M, mystery, eldritch
    Content Warnings: N/A
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Having survived one eldritch horror already, philologist Percival Endicott Whyborne and his lover and partner, private detective Griffin Flaherty, are two of the few people able to answer his father’s request to investigate paranormal happenings in a mine in Threshold, West Virginia. But what they find in the mine is much older, and much more horrific, than simple tommyknockers or other such mine superstitions.

  • Reviews

    Review: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (2014)

    Rating: ★★★★★
    Genre: Fantasy
    Categories: Fairies (elves/goblins), Political Intrigue, Royalty and Nobility
    Content Warnings (Highlight to read): References to past (offscreen) child abuse
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Maia, the youngest son of the elven emperor, was somebody nobody thought would inherit the throne. Half-goblin and the result of a loveless political marriage, he has lived his entire life in exile. Yet, when every family member closer to the throne dies in an airship crash, along with the ruling emperor, he finds himself at age 18 taken to the capital and thrust into a role he has barely been prepared for. He has no friends, and barely knows which of his supporters he dare trust. Even so, Maia must negotiate the bewildering tangle of court political intrigue, arranged marriages, parliamentary disagreements, and, of course, investigating the deaths of his family.

  • Reviews

    Review: Widdershins (Whyborne & Griffin #1) by Jordan L. Hawk (2012)

    Rating: ★★★¾
    Genre: Paranormal, Horror, Romance
    Categories: M/M, ghosts/spirits, mystery, eldritch
    Content Warnings: N/A
    Buy It At: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Repressed scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne prefers to hide away in his museum office with books in dead languages to avoid any and all attention—and so, when attractive ex-Pinkerton private detective Griffin Flaherty asks for the help of the museum’s ciphers’ specialist to translate a book that his employer thinks might be a clue to a case he’s working on, Whyborne would rather not have anything to do with the gorgeous man—especially since the time is such that his own attraction is illegal, which is rather dangerous when the man he’s attracted to is a detective! But despite his misgivings, the two are drawn very close together on the case, which goes deeper than a mere murder and into realms of necromancy and Lovecraftian horror.