Epic gay fantasy: The Lords of Harbendane

This novel should carry a warning: do not start reading when you get home from work at 7:00pm, even if the book is sitting on your doorstep ... because you're going to look like a zombie tomorrow, after having read till four in the a.m. to finish!

There's a certain "something" we've all come to expect from a Keegan novel. I'm still not entirely sure what it is but I should think scientific research could quantify it. Whatever it is, The Lords of Harbendane has it by the truckload. This one is Keegan pure and simple, with qualities that remind you of Fortunes of War and The Swordsman, Nocturne and Dangerous Moonlight. What qualities? Truth. Passion. Intelligence. Vision. Lyricism. And the "A-list" quality of a writer who's been on top of this game for two decades.

Picture this: it's a dark, dirty night, bucketing down, muddy, cold. The quintessential tall, dark, handsome warrior (he's a knockout -- trust me) is on a mission, and when he gets waylaid in a nasty little town, and aided by one of the most enigmatic and irresistible of Keegan's heroes, well, the story explodes from a chance event to the fantasy-scenario equivalent of world war three.

"Tall, dark and smoldering" is Rogan Dahl, who's been a prince, a hostage, a soldier, a cavalry colonel. "Drop dead gorgeous" is Tristan Carlin, who's been a peasant, a warrior, a scribe, and a wedlocked husband. Life is a rocky road for each of these guys; put them together, and you get a inferno waiting to go up --

And Keegan is going to make you wait! Everything you can imagine (and a bunch of plot twists you absolutely can't!) gets between these two guys, and when they finally get it together it's as exhausting for the reader as for the characters. And Mel Keegan manages to do this while staying on "this side of the line" that divides Legitimate Fiction from erotica. Harbendane will stand your hair on end -- at the same time as being absolutely legit.

The backstory is huge. It spans centuries of history and generations of the Halloran family. The Hallorans are Rogan's adoptive clan. He was sent to them as a hostage when he was a small child (in the traditional sense of the word "hostage," which meant the guarantee of someone's good behaviour). The Hallorans are the clan at the head of the great kingdom of Harbendane -- and as the story opens, Harbendane is up for grabs. They're beleaguered, surrounded by enemies on three sides, with nowhere to run and no one to turn to. They're fighting at capacity in the north, and when the ambitious, murderous chief from the next neighboring "superpower" in this land takes them on, they're hanging by a thread. The freedom of a whole people depends on tactics, strategy, and the willingness to take outrageous risks.

And that's the backstory, the scenario, not the plot! Against this monster backdrop, Mel Keegan's story is about individuals, how their lives are being twisted by duty, how their dreams and desires are being wrenched away, how they're still struggling to make something of themselves, how they all interact as they play their parts in a strategy that just might keep Harbendane out of the hands of its enemies.

I can't say much about the details of those personal stories, because I'm in plot spoilers instantly, and most readers absolutely hate to be told, "Tristan's real problem is..." and "Rogan's plan is..." I can tell you that the book is written with a great lyricism, imagery that comes to life, characters you're going to love, others you're going to hate. Obviously I adored Rogan and Tristan. (It's huge fun "casting the parts" as if Harbendane were a movie. I play this game with almost every book I read. Adds to the fun.) But I also loved Damiel and Morgan Halloran, which is a bit unusual for me. I don't usually "identify" very strongly with the female characters. These two are just amazing -- particularly Morgan ... the character blew me away.

The book is thrilling in many places, intriguing in others ... and keep the Kleekex handy, because there's a couple of places where you might need them. Fair warning: one of the major characters gets killed. (NOT Rogan or Tristan; but MK will make you care a lot about most of these characters, and one of them at least doesn't make it through to the end.)

Does the book have a downside? If it does, I didn't find it. The cover art is the best DreamCraft has ever done. Jade must have been absolutely inspired. (You get used to digital "art" ... but this is a painting, the way books used to have real artwork covers years ago. You feel kind of spoiled at the luxury.) The production values are very high throughout, and CreateSpace does a fantastic job with the paperbacks.

You can get it from Amazon.com in paperback. The Kindle version should be available by the weekend (it's been stuck in "publishing" for days now, and an email was just sent to technical support to get it "unstuck"). You can order the Mobipocket format for your Kindle, smartphone, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, and many other devices. It's available as a PDF for your iLiad, Palm, PC and Mac. And if you're reading on an iPhone, get the Kindle for iPhone applet. A hardcover version is being planned, and will be available from Lulu -- it'll make a great Chrissy pressie when the silly season comes back around.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars, and a gold sticker added on for excellence of presentation: the cover is amazing.



PC/Mac ebook:
$9.95 -- and identical in every way to the paperback.298pp. (Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

Screenreader ebook:
US$9.95 -- properly formatted, complete with cover art and map; over 430pp.(Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

and,
BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

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LA's deep, dark heart ... Jackal in the Dark

David Patrick Beavers is a writer I don't know much about beyond the standard bio (born in California in 1959 and so on). Jackal in the Dark was his debut novel, and he went on to do at least six others, one of which is a sequel to Jackal... which stands on its own plot-wise. (I was never able to get a copy of that one in the 1990s; you can get it now, but with the shipping and exchange rate it'd come out at about forty bucks, and ... well, another time.)

Jackal in the Dark came out in 1994, and you knew from the first few pages, this writer was on his way to great things. Or should have been...

I wish I could tell you more about this gifted novelist, but his in-print career seems to have hit the rocky shoals at the same at as Mel Keegan's -- and probably for the same reason. (Josh Lanyon was another casualty). What happened? Well, it's a long sad story!

GMP was bought out by Prowler, which was in turn bought out by Millivres ... and Millivres decided, around 2000, that they had no interest in continuing their paperback list, so authors like Keegan, Lanyon and Beavers found themselves in limbo. MK tells the story in a few places. (If you're interested to know what happened -- what landed at least three great writers in the realm of the POD People, have a look at this: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/07/blue-genes-and-gay-publishing.html.)

All three writers are presently marketing their own work, and I think they're succeeding. At least, I hope all three are doing fine, because they're all way too good to be stuck in this rut. Mel Keegan is online here, Josh Lanyon is online here; and I can't find a page for David Patrick Beavers anywhere, so I'm going to let Amazon take care of it for me:



Using those links as a start, you should be able to find DPB at Amazon -- but one could wish he'd get himself a website or a blog!

Jackal... is a deceptive book, just as DPB is a deceptive writer. It's a quick read (only 129 readable pages), and just right for a wintry afternoon, or maybe an interstate bus trip. It also has a sort of "neon art" cover which won't get anybody upset on a bus or train! The covers on a lot of gay books would easily get other passengers irate, but this one is okay.

The subject matter is ticklish. It about 1978 or '79, and this 19-year-old boy is running wild. It's all discos and drugs and sex. Retrospectively speaking, it's a wonder he survived, because AIDS was just showing up at the time, though it wasn't called AIDS yet. I recall it being referred to as GRD, which stood for Gay Related Diseases. Talk about passing the buck.

Jackal... is told in the first person by our 19-y.o. "hero" who is off the rails, and it can be a bit of a "weird read" for sober souls! But it's also funny, and sometimes touching, and the characters ring so true that what's really weird is that you feel like you've been there! The book is set in LA, which everybody on earth knows from tv shows. You also know the era from the same shows. If it wasn't Starsky & Hutch, it was SWAT or something. We all watched them.

So, this is the era and the place: the stage is set. Our wild hero careens through a lifestyle that's dangerous, and runs into some characters that show you just how dangerous it could get. Like Taylor, who's a barely-of-age hustler who's getting badly beat-up by his pimp. It's only a matter of time before our hero starts to wake up to himself. One day he starts to want love instead of sex ... he wants to belong, instead of drifting through an ocean of druggy parties and anonymous encounters.

Well, too bad: you can't always have what you want. Life isn't like that, and Jackal... is an up-close, in-focus look at the way it too-usually turns out. Unrequited love, callowness, fear, vulnerability, self-destruction ... death.

Jackal... sneaks up on you. At the start you think it's going to be a romp, an absolute blast that you'll enjoy with guilt because you know how dangerous all this is. By the end, you'll wish you had a tissue handy.

The writing style is so sparse, it's virtually bald, which is something you're either going to like or not. For me, it worked well. If the book has a downside, it's the baldness of the narrative (some people don't care for it, I know) and also the shortness of the book. It's only about 50,000 words.

The length of the story also makes me say, be careful what you pay for a used copy. The Millivres edition has been out of print for a long, long time, but copies are changing hands at alibris for $45! You can get it in a new edition from Lulu.com, published POD -- and I hope this indicates that DPB is going to follow in the footsteps of MK and JL and take charge of his backlist. I think the reprint from Lulu.com costs about US$17 ... but you can also get the original at a good price from Amazon.

Also, if you don't mind reading on-screen, you can get the ebook version of Jackal... free! There's a link through from this page: http://online-novels.blogspot.com/2008/08/gay-and-lesbian-novels-1.html. Scroll down to Jackal... and click onwards.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

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Murder and mayhem with a gay spin: Adrien English

I read this one for the first time way back when ... in the days when it was a GMP title with a purple cover with scarlet lettering -- clashing colors that didn't do anything to make you want to buy the book! (GMP had a long track record of tacky covers. They almost made a tradition of it. I'm glad I did order the book, because if I hadn't, I'd have missed a damned good one.)

Fatal Shadows is #1 in the Adrien English series of mysteries ... meaning, it's the first in the series, not the best. This one is a very good book, but others are better -- the series gathers momentum as it goes.

I think it's Josh Lanyon's style of writing that hooked me into the series and kept me there; and his characterization. He's brave enough to take risks with his characters ... for example, our hero, Adrien, is "bookish," with a gay bookstore; he's a cute (also mature, intelligent, and funny) young gay guy, but there's more to him than all this.

JL also takes risks with other characters, such as Jake, who's gorgeous, and a detective, and isn't shy about making his homophobia known. (The only other time I recall where one of the main characters in a drama is both a homophobe and a nice guy (you'd think it was mutually exclusive) is in the Midsomer Murders series in tv, where DS Gavin Troy is both a nice guy and ... has a big problem with gays.)

I should think it's very, very hard to write this kind of characterisation well enough to pull it off, esp in a novel where you don't have the natural charm of a young actor working for you. JL does it very well indeed. The character of Jake is one you definitely remember -- which is true of many of JL's characters. Jake develops along the way ... I don't want to give the plot away, so if you hate spoilers don't read the rest of his sentence! ... and becomes intimate with Adrien. Turns out, Jake is gay and his closet door is painted shut!

The plot of Fatal Shadows is a pretty straightforward murder mystery. What makes it delightful is the gayness, the great characters and witty style of JL, and ... Adrien himself. He's a really fascinating character, what with the cardiac complaint, the bookstore, the authors' group he runs, and all. Then the murders start, and an unusual character rises to several challenges -- of which Jake is a major one.

If you get to the end of Fatal Shadows and think it seems like the start of something,you're right. It's part one of a series that has run to four books to date. The whole series (so far) is: Fatal Shadows; A Dangerous Thing; The Hell you say; Death of a Pirate King.

You can now get the first two books under one cover, which is good because the series gets better as it goes ... and it's cheaper to buy two books under one cover!

The first two books were done by GMP. The third one was done by JL himself after GMP melted down and rights reverted. In the last few years, it's been an impossible battle for gay writers to find conventional publishers (have you heard Mel Keegan on the subject?!) so JL went his own way. Bravo.

Does Fatal Shadows have a downside? Only the length. It's just 150pp, which is a very quick read. When you're used to meatier, heavier mysteries, this one comes off as a bit lightweight -- but for me this is more than made up for by the characterisations (which I loved) and the street-wise wit of the style (hits the spot).

Also, the fact the book is short is made up for by the series ... there's four now, and since they're starting to come out in anthologies, you don't get hit so hard with purchase and shipping. Every little bit helps these days.

My favorite of the series so far is The Hell You Say, but I'm not going to get into that one right now, because this is more a review of Fatal till get I around to it: http://www.who-dunnit.com/reviews/326/

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars for this book ... 5 out of 5 for the series as a whole, because it starts well and gets better as it goes!

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