Gay romance on the high seas: The Buccaneer by M.S. Hunter

At last, just when you thought the beast would never come along ... there it was! A novel that is at one moment an adventure, a romance, exciting, colorful, up-beat, well-written, well-researched, long enough to be a satisfying read, and ... gay!

Alyson Publications put out this volume in 1989, and I do not know why a raft of others answering the same description didn't follow it. They didn't all have to be historicals, like M.S. Hunter's The Buccaneer. They didn't have to be "gay pirate novels," like this one. So long as they delivered the goods according to the short list above, I'd have been happy to keep buying books as long as Alyson kept putting them out!

An exciting gay adventure romance that's well researched and written, at least 250pp long, and fun. What was so hard about that? Apparently it wasn't just hard, it was completely impossible. There's a handful of gay novels that I'd group in the same part of the bookshelf as The Buccaneer ... and I think most of them have been penned by Mel Keegan! I'm thinking about Fortunes of War, Dangerous Moonlight, The Swordsman, The Deceivers ...! They're all Keegans, and shelved with Keegan.

Now, MK didn't start publishing with GMP, and (you're going to shriek when you hear this) I missed the first few books entirely, they just blew by me. I used to get my books out of the Bulldog Books mailorder catalog in those days and my brain must have been out for pizza, because the first Mel Keegan book I saw, bought, read and fell in love with, was Fortunes of War -- which is a tale of gay buccaneers in the Elizabethan era, same time and location as the Errol Flynn movie, The Seahawk. (Oh ... joy of joys! Because Fortunes of War could easily have been a project written for Errol Flynn who would be playing Dermot Channon, and I still have endless fun trying to "cast the part" of Robin Armagh.)

But -- enough about Aricia and Mel and Errol Flynn.

Suffice to say, M.S. Hunter's The Buccaneer came along like a life-saver. I got this one when it was hot off the press and just arrived in Australia, late '89 or early '90 ... I remember it being hot weather, which to us means Christmas plus or minus a couple of months. It was love at first sight. First, I was enthralled by the fact that one of the characters in the main romantic pair was African.

(Do you want to "cast the part?" You couldn't go past Will Smith ... and I'm being wicked here; and I admit it; but with Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey on the big screen in a gay movie right now, I can't resist "seeing" movie versions of the really great gay novels!)

The romantic aspect is between Ozei (known as Ozzie) and Tommy Cutler (known as The Cutlass), and there are some steamy scenes as well as the romantic. The supporting cast in the novel is huge, and most of the characters are very well drawn, which is unusual in many adventure books. The novel is long, at 316pp of smallish type, and M.S. Hunter wrote extremely well.

Sadly, you'll notice the past tense there. M.S. Hunter is another loss to the art form of gay literature. He passed away some time ago, after having written only a little gay fiction ... and after a lot of digging to try to find some info on him, much less an obituary, I came up empty handed.

The Buccaneer is therefore his legacy to this art form, and I can only recommend it. The story is huge, and a bit rambling. It centers on Tommy and is told in the first person with Tommy as the narrator. It's a tough act, but Hunter makes it work superbly. You like the characters in this book, and the story of ambition, desire, derring-do, hazard and sensuality will keep you turning pages. Sometimes the plotline is a little bit easy to predict, but when you've read upwards of five hundred books, very little is going to take you totally by surprise, and that's not the writer's fault! What should amaze you is the research that went into this.

Does the novel have a downside? Well ... a little one, maybe. The author keeps butting in with short "documentary" segments, which you might find make it hard for you to keep your disbelief suspended. The first time I read this, I just skipped over them, didn't read them at all. The second time, the same -- but when I was done I went back and read the documentary parts separately. Nothing wrong with this, and you actually get two reads for the price of one here. The doco segments are set off into arial or some plain font, and are ostensibly about Hunter's personal experiences while researching the book. In fact, they're very interesting, it was just the interruption to the flow of the fiction that didn't quite work for me the first time through.

Highly recommended! AG's rating, 5 out of 5 stars. The Buccaneer is long out of print (god knows why) but you can get it from Amazon, and ... please do!



If you're into gay pitate novels don't miss Fortunes of War by Mel Keegan, and also have a look at this article: Were the Pirates Gay? by W. A. Hoffman, who's written a gay pirate novel called Raised by Wolves. I haven't read the novel, but I was impressed by the article, and will get to the novel in due course.

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Gay Westerns done right: Cap Iversen's Dakota trilogy

You'd think the idea of the "gay western" was so obvious, this kind of book would be common, there would be plenty of these novels when you fancied a romp with gay cowboys.
Surprisingly, there's just not that many. The genre is usually traced back to a novel I've never read, but would if I ever found a copy -- Song of the Loon, by Richard Amory, published in 1966. It's been described as an "erotic saga," but how hot it would be, you have to wonder, because not only was it published in '66, but it was also so popular, Amory was either invited or allowed to do two sequels.

But the sluice gates did not exactly swing wide open on gay western novels. I've found it hard to track any more down before the 1990s. Then, you can hunt down books by William H. Henderson, Michael Jensen, Ken Shakin and Cap Iversen.

I'm going to look at Cap Iversen today for several good reasons: he writes a very good novel without getting at all "arty;" his books are the absolute archetype of the Western novel with one exception ... the orientation of the heroes; and he wrote a trilogy about a very good character called Dakota Taylor, so if you're in the mood for a gay western, you've got something to sink your teeth into!

The trilogy started off with Arson! and went on with Silver Saddles and Rattler! I have a copy of the first, read a borrowed copy of the second, and was never able to get my hands on a copy of the third. From a writer's POV I guess it's like the Law of Diminishing Returns. The more you do, the less you get -- the more books you produce, the less you sell, and then the publishers decide not to do any more, and what was billed as a "series" at first, turned into a trilogy. That's fair enough. The publishers know their business...

I'd love to show you the Rattler! cover, but I never did track down the book, as I said. I remember enjoying Silver Saddles a lot, but can't actually review it because it's got to be about twelve years since I read it and the details have slipped my mind!

However, I read Arson! again not long ago, and I'd forgotten what a good book it is. It doesn't attempt to be "arty." It is exactly what it is: a Western. Where the guys fancy each other.

The story is your "right down the middle" Western plot, about sheepmen on one side, cattlemen on the other, the little dusty town, the simmering heatwave, land rights, water rights, the gunfighter, the smoking Colt revolvers ... the works.

And Cap Iversen wove in the gay sub-plotline with a very very subtle hand. This book is NOT erotica. There's a lot of so-called "gay cowboy stories" out there, but when you get right down to it, it's just erotica about very young men getting down to business while wearing Stetson hats and chaps (or at least wearing them till some other young dude rips 'em off; which is cool in its own way). If you want a real, genuine Western, you'll look a long way...

CI's characters are the real thing, too. The central character is obviously Dakota Taylor, who's a big, rough, tough gunslinger with a heart of gold, a lot of courage and a fancy for guys. His best bud is Ryder, who answers to the same description. The two have been in bed together for years, though they're not in love -- the bond is "merely" friendship with sensuality as a side order. Then Dakota meets a lad called Bennie Colsen, who's grown up gay on the ranch and has no idea what to do about it. He's done his reading, knows what and who he is, but in that era, what did you do next? Dakota falls for Bennie like the proverbial load of bricks, and Ryder is skeptical, especially when Dakota gets "suckered" into working for the young man, who's running sheep, and up against the cattlemen. The plot thickens with a drought that's killing huge numbers of cattle ... and everybody knows that sheep can survive twenty times better in drought conditions than cattle ever will.

So, Dakota is working for Bennie while Ryder takes the skeptical high ground, and the cattlemen are losing stock; Dakota has fallen in love with his young boss, and ... suddenly the ranch goes up in flames, and it weren't no act of Nature.

Arson! is a very good read. If the book has a downside at all, it's that most readers today would have liked the love scenes to be more frequent, and a lot more steamy. They're "matter of fact" love scenes, along the lines of, "we made love and then made a fresh pot of coffee." Even so, for gay readers (and gay-friendly readers) it's so nice to have a proper Western with the gay orientation. Like a breath of fresh air.

The book was put out by Alyson Books in 1992 and never reprinted. They also did the two follow-ups that make the Dakota trilogy, and you can get good deals from Amazon.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4.5 outta 5 stars, gosh durnit.




Here's a good article on the development of the gay Western:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/western.html


... ...Amazon does have Song of the Loon, as I have just discovered! The much better look at the cover is a scan from the History of Gay Publishing in America. I must see if I can get this.

Diesel Ebooks has a page of gay Westerns, but I have no idea of the quality, not having read any of these! Worth a look, though, if you're in the mood, but I'm certain some (most?) of what's on this list will be of the erotic variety, and when you're looking for an actual novel...!

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Greek guys and ... Persian lads

This is the most popular book of the "Alexander Trilogy" by Mary Renault ... but it's the fact it's become a cult-followed gay book that's made it so popular. Scholars don't like it too much! (And literary fiends don't like the first one, Fire From Heaven, too much; and gay fic fans can't seem much point in the third one ... so with this series, you really have to take what you want and leave the rest behind. If you're a Greek scholar, you'll go for the first and third. Literary fiends will go for the third. Gay fic fans will pick the second.)

The truth is, the so-called "Alexander Trilogy" isn't really a trilogy at all. It's actually three separate books that are loosely associated because they're set in the same approximate time, and some of the same characters run through the narrative...

The first one, Fire From Heaven, was about Alexander and Hephaistion growing up in the long shadows of Philip of Macedon (Alexander's father) and his weird, shrewish mother, Olympias. (If you saw the movie, Alexander, you know them: Val Kilmer and Aneglia Jolie played thm. I wrote about Fire From Heaven yesterday. Here is the post (or you can link to it from the title in "Books Reviewed"): http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/legend-boys-men-alexander-and.html. The third book takes place after Alexander and Hephaistion are dead -- Funeral Games is about the political wrangling following Alexander's demise. The great leader left a vacuum behind him, and about fifty different people figured they had a chance of filling it. The first book and third book are told in third person narrative, but they are utterly unconnected, except by the time they take place in. And as for he second part of the trilogy...

The Persian Boy is told in the first person by the character known as Bagoas. He was a eunuch who fell in love with Alexander and traveled with the army on its march into India. So, if you're looking for a gay read, The Persian Boy is your title -- but you should at least know what the other two books are about, so as to put this one in context, otherwise it really seems like it's hopping about on one leg.

The story really is about Bagoas. You're about ten chapters in before be meets Alexander ... but the early part of the story is one of the most interesting segments of the book. You see the world through the eyes of a young man who's being groomed into a courtesan for the king's bedchamber. You watch the process of the grooming...

This is a very different story from anything Ann Rice had to say in Cry to Heaven. In AR's book, Tonio Treschi was almost full grown and wanted women. In The Persian Boy, Bagoas is not too unhappy to be made a eunuch and serve the king. (Here's Cry to Heaven: http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/gay-novel-with-history-music-blood-and.html)

The depiction of Persia, before Alexander arrives and during the war in which Persia fell, is amazing. By the time Alexander arrives, Bagoas is grown and mature enough to be interesting, and when he enters the Greek camp it doesn't take too long before Alexander notices him. Bagoas is besotted with the general, and remains devoted to him for life.

The whole story of the campaign you saw in Oliver Stone's movie is told through the eyes of this eunuch courtesan ... which puts a spin on the material which is totally different, unexpected. To me, it was brilliant to tell it this way, because it made the story fresh. It's a tale that's been told so often, it's like the Arthurian story ... everybody knows how it turns out and there's always a major challenge thrown out to new writers who have to figure out how to make it fresh.

A fair number of reviewers have problems with The Persian Boy. I can see their point some of the time ... but I don't actually agree with them. The narrative sounds like Mary Renault is so obsessed with Alexander, she only knows how to worship him. Is this so -- or is it Bagoas who worships him? I think it's Bagoas. In his world, he understood "god kings." You did worship the king. MR wrote this into his thoughts and behavior.

Other reviewers have problems with the fact she has Alexander fancy Bagoas and be seduced by him. There's still a strong movement that wants to "defend" Alexander against the charge of being gay! Mary Renault was a "gay advocate" at a time when you were a voice crying in the wilderness if you wrote positive material abut gay people, or put them in heroic roles. I guess this is what reviewers and critics mean by her having "gay agendas." Writing in 2008, it's all a bit sad now.

The book is vast in scope, and yet is only about 350pp long, which means you don't get a fully developed examination of any particular event. You're like Bagoas, drifting through history, touching down here and there on a mighty journey. This is probably a good thing, because readers today don't have that much time or attention!

I want to say, "the book could have been steamier," but it was published in 1972. Any more explicit than this, dealing with gay characters and situations, and it'd have either been banned, or classified as porn. So you do have to use your imagination a good bit ... and it helps if you've seen the movie, Alexander, because a lot of the background and details of "things" will be easy to visualize. MR doesn't spend a whole lot of time describing what things actually are, or look like. You're supposed to know. Well ... watch the DVD, and then you will!

Does the book have a downside? To me, yes -- but a lot of people will tell you this 1) doesn't matter, or 2) what are you talking about?, or 3) what are you complaining about? Here's my own problem with the book: when I think about Alexander, I'm always drawn to the relationship between him and Hephaistion. But in The Persian Boy this relationship seems to have disappeared. Alexander goes with Bagoas instead, leaving Hephaistion I'm-not-sure-where. It's a very difficult question. Scholars will tell you flat out, it's only an assumption, an educated guess, that there was anything between Alexander and Hephaistion anyway! And if you're not at least a bit of a scholar, you don't know enough about this to care one way or another.

The other thing is, Mary Renault probably wanted to write about Alexander's gay aspect, and in 1970ish it might have been too controversial to write about him having a relationship with another guy who was older than himself by a small amount. It was safer to sneak the gay scenes in, if she wrote about Alexander and a eunuch. This, I understand. But wouldn't it have been nice to have a depiction of the real thing, the relationship between Alexander an Hephaistion? You can dream...

The Persian Boy is highly recommended. A great historical, even before you look at it as a gay book too. You can get multiple editions and most of them are available through Amazon. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

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The legend, the boys, the men: Alexander and Hephaistion

Some of the real ground-breaking fiction that had a gay "aspect" came out in the early 1970s, and it's gone down in publishing history as a classic. It's Mary Renault's "Alexander Trilogy."

I want to look at the first two of the books separately ... because they're so different ... and because the name of this blog is 'Aricia's Gay Book Blog,' I'll probably skip over the third book. The last part of the trilogy certainly ties off the story of Alexander neatly, as it needs to be tied off, but since Hephaistion an Alexander are dead, and Bagoas (the Persian boy himself) is now an old man, there's not enough -- to my way of thinking at least -- in Book 3 to qualify it as a "gay book."

In fact, there's actually not much in Fire From Heaven to qualify it as a gay book, either! But you need to read this if you're going to make much sense of the second one, so you're compelled to plow through it ... so, you might as well know what you're getting yourself into!

Fire... might not be a hot-blooded gay book (and I wish somebody would write one about Alexander and Hephaistion!) but it's still a good book, although I don't rank it among the "classics of modern literature." What hits you between the eyeballs is MR's research. I'm no kind of a specialist, but it seems to me that what she doesn't know about the history, region, people etc., isn't to be known. I've heard that a few of the details are wrong -- but I've also heard that the research was state of the art when the book was written, something like the late 1960s (published 1970).

The first book in the trilogy tells the tale of Alexander's boyhood and growing up. MR gives the youth homoerotic tendencies which will become more apparent in adulthood, but the extent of the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion in Fire... is a great fondness between two boys, and Hephaistion's total devotion to Alex. But ... but ... but ... you have to hunt for the characters among an enormous narrative with a cast of thousands and a million details and location shifts and changes of backdrop. Eventually you can't get past the fact that the characters get lost in the panoramic drama. You just go with the flow, and end up using your own imagination to bring the relationship between Hephaistion and Alexander to life.

Fire... is a lot less specific about anything that passes between them than the movie, Alexander, was. This sort of "handle with tongs and talk in riddles" treatment was typical of MR in general. Also typical of the way gay subjects were handled in mainstream fiction at the time. So you really have to use your imagination, fueled by images drawn from the movie with Colin Farrel and Jared Leto.

If you love ancient-world historicals as a genre, you'll enjoy this. If you know a bit about Greek history and religion, you'll also enjoy this -- you don't have to be a scholar, but it's probably a good idea to watch the movie first! The book is fairly easy to read. MR's writing style is plain enough to be readable by modern people, but still has a bit of the poetic flair of classic fiction. The narrative is a long way from what I'd call 'technicolor,' but it's evocative enough to carry the book.

If there's a downside, it's that the characters get hopelessly lost in the scope of the book, and you wish there was more about individuals, esp. Alexander and Hephaistion, who are probably the main reason you're reading it in the first place. There are some very nice "moments" featuring them, but you do have to hunt them down. Also, the book seems to be a lot longer than it is (up to 450pp depending on the edition) for some reason.

But you won't get to the "gay book" part of the trilogy without reading Fire From Heaven, so tough it out, fill in the blanks with your imagination and images from the movie!

Recommended for the research and the fact it puts in the foundations for The Persian Boy; also recommended as a purely historical novel, if you discount the under-written, understated gay aspect. AG's rating: 3.5 stars out of five.

You can get the trilogy under one cover, but if you're looking for a gay read, you can probably concentrate on The Persian Boy and skip the others, so I'm giving the links to get the three separate books at Amazon ... and I'll write about The Persian Boy tomorrow.

There's a couple more reviews on line at these urls, but the reviewers are NOT tackling these books with any interest to the "gay aspect." They're a lot more interested in the historical accuracy and literary merit of the work: http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~mreames/Beyond_Renault/renault.html

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2008/09/book-review-fire-from-heaven/

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Gay historical fiction at full throttle: Mel Keegan's DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT

You think "Mel Keegan," and you probably think "science fiction." MK has published more SF than any other genre. But what you don't know if you're not "behind the scenes" is that MK has written more fantasy than any other genre (it just hasn't been put between covers and stuck to a webpage yet), and there are also loads of historical novels that have yet to see print ... and a gorgeous collection of historicals that are in print already.

Till recently my favorite was Fortunes of War. First off, I like pirates, and second, the book has absolutely everything. I will be reviewing it soon, but to fill in the blank till I get round to it, there's a great review of FOW on Squashduck so I'll put the link in here: http://www.squashduck.com/ltd/reviews/fortunesofwar.htm

But in the last year or so, my favorite MK historical (or anybody's historical!) has been Dangerous Moonlight, and I can't fathom what MK would have to write to change this around. The book is that good. About once a year you read a book that blows your mind. Usually it's SF that blows my braincells across the bus, but I also like historicals, and this one ...!

First, it's a BIG book. It's about 450pp and the type is not padded at all with whitespace. It's the length of two or two-and-a-half ordinary books, so it's not just "bang for your reading buck," it's a BIG bang, esp if you get the ebook which is about ten bucks for how much reading?

The story follows the adventures of Harry Trevellion (highwayman and smuggler) and Nick Grey (bastard son of a rich businessman). One night, Harry holds up Nick's coach -- sparks fly, it's high-blood-pressure time! But Harry robs him, so Nick is more furious than romantically inspired even though he fancies Harry ... a lot. The plot thickens with Nick's legitimate brother, Paul, who's a demon in human skin, and their frail aged father. Knowing what the legit son is like, the old father changes his will to favor the bastard ... and All Hell Busts Loose.

It's highway robbery, storms at sea, pistols and swords, noble houses, London brothels, casinos, fortunes changing hands in card games, wrongful arrest, murder, prison ... and if you've been looking for a book that gives some great steamy scenes, this is the one you want!

The book is Keegan at full throttle, and it's been getting great reviews everywhere. Check out The Rainbow Reviews one: http://rainbow-reviews.com/?p=552, and there's also a great one on Speak Its Name: http://speakitsname.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/review-dangerous-moonlight-by-mel-keegan/.

I was privileged to read Dangerous... about three months before anyone else, because I'm a proofie at DreamCraft. I read it three times "for work" and -- here's the ultimate compliment for a book! -- it was thrilling every time. A lot of times, you start to get bored by the time you finish the last proof "pass" ... not with this one.

Does the book have a downside? I haven't found one yet. The dialog is NOT written in that kind of hokey fake-Shakespeare style a lot of writers adopt, forsooth. The sex scenes are hot enough to steam up your glasses, but delicate enough to not get anyone upset (unless they should have been reading a bible and picked this volume by by mistake). The characters are so well-drawn, you seem to have a movie playing in your head.

And the research into the time of the novel (set in 1727) is amazing. I'm positive MK has a tardis parked somewhere, and jaunts back to a certain time, and then returns to the present and writes the book.

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

Note that the Amazon version is wearing a smart new cover:

You can now buy this title in paperback, hardcover, and ebook version. The hardcover is only available from Lulu ... Aussie and New Zealand readers: if you order from Lulu, your book will be manufactured in Australia and you'll have it in about a week. Northern Hemisphere readers -- it's your call: Lulu or Amazon, as suits your whim, for the paperback.



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A gay novel with history, music, blood and revenge: Ann Rice's CRY TO HEAVEN

When anybody quotes you Ann Rice's sorta-kinds gay fiction, they always talk about the vampire books -- and that's fair enough because those are great books too, and I'll talk about them in due course! But the one everyone overlooks, or forgets, or never even knows, is this one. Cry to Heaven.

Okay: some folks are asking already ... "Yes, but it is a gay book?" Well, yes it is, and no it isn't. But then again, the same could be said for the vampire novels. Are they gay books or vampire books? There's loads of hetero romance in there as well. So, where do you shelve Cry...? With your gay books, or with your historicals?

The story is set in Venice and other parts of Europe, way back in the 1700s, when music was maturing, and at the exact same time the authorities still embraced the, uh, well, the mutilation of children. In other words, castrating pre-teen boys for the cathedral choirs. Until Ann Rice did the research, most or even all people assumed that when the male gets castrated he's never going to feel anything sensual ever again. Not only does this turn out to be wrong, it turns out to be extremely wrong! The castrati, or eunuchs, were philandering and promiscuous -- and it gets "better." Because they'd been deprived of their gonads, the Vatican no longer recognized them as men.

Yeah. This mean homosexual relationships were "on," and Very Senior Priests could get romantically entangled with castrati without committing much of a sin. Okay. The stage is set.

Entering at Stage Right is Tonio Treschi: 15 y.o., too beautiful for his own good and annoying all the wrong people. They could have assassinated him, but they didn't. You guessed: they have him abducted and castrated. He'd had a glorious singing voice before being kidnapped, and at 15 his voice hadn't broken yet (which is probably stretching a point ... but Ann Rice didn't have a choice about stretching it. Tonio was having romantic liaisons -- which was the whole reason someone somewhere was furious enough with him to have him abducted and castrated in revenge. And if AR had made Tonio any younger than 15, modern day audiences would have had a big, big problem with the book ... we have terrible problems these days figuring out where the p*orno stuff starts when young people are concerned. There's a lot of books that are walking on a tightrope, and you could say Cry... is one of them because of Tonio being only 15 y.o. To read more on this difficult topic, I'll link you through to the new intro to MK's White Rose of Night. MK had the exact same problem with the character of Paul, in a (fantastic) 12th century novel about knights and squires and Saracens. Here's the link, go get it: http://www.dream-craft.com/tenthdimension/intro4wr.htm).

Anyway -- get past this. Understand that it's a historical. Times were different. People grew up faster. Girls were married at 11 etc. etc., and in about 1750 nobody gaver a fying f*** if a 15 y.o. was getting randy. They probably all did.

And here's the big debate: is Cry to Heaven a gay book -- or not? Because it centers on a boy who's been emasculated. In 1750, the Vatican sure didn't see the emasculated male as a man. Do we today? I think of Cry... as a gay book because there are loads of relationships and incidents between castrati and "full" males, as well as a hetero romance, which Rice seemed to throw in there to make the story resolve properly (ie., happily). Also, the hetero romance (Tonio and a young woman who's an artist) might have been added to make the book more swallowable -- or even plausible! -- to the mainstream publishing industry in 1982. It was published by Alfred A Knopf Inc., which made it as much a milestone as The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up.

I definitely call it a gay book, because there's a whole lot more gay encounters than there are in other books that are categorically gay ... and Rice's writing is a lot more frank about them (meaning, explicit) than the writing you find in other gay books.

And as per gay books, it's got to be in the Top 50 because it has so much: fantastic research, great writing, 532pp of all this -- a complicated plot that keeps you reading, characters that come to life. (A large slice of gay literature is actually not very well written. Other books are anorexic in terms of plot. Or else they're so well written and plotted, they forget to be gay -- you go for 50pp without stumbling over an element you could call "gay enough" to call the overall book a "gay book." I'm sure you know what I mean here.)

Cry to Heaven is about personal survival and, eventually, revenge. It's also about music, singing, European history, and human nature. I must have read it four or five times since I was loaned a copy back in the '80s, and it's always the "darkness" of the theme that pulls me in, and the richness of Rice's writing than keeps me there. This book is better written than the vampire novels, esp. the later vampire novels where ... is it me, or does the writing get rather slipshod? And much more readable than The Feast of All Souls, which came out in 1979.

Copies are absolutely, positively available from alibris and Amazon.

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

Here's Ann Rice at Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

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