Love Has No Boundaries: Short Stories & Short Reviews Part 1

These short stories were written as a part of the M/M Romance Group's "Love Has No Boundaries" event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story.

The Tail of a Dog by Summer Devon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cute. Told from the dog's point of view, and shows how two kind-hearted men find themselves through an unfortunate event. My favourite parts were where Javier was confiding in the dog, because people do talk to their pets and tell them things they wouldn't dream of saying to another human being.


Falling Away by Lisa Henry

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It was written in third limited, so that's one good thing about it. It also had that good meh-like thing going on until it promptly fell flat on its face with that ending. I liked Dark Space, but this made me doubt whether I want to read The Island or not.


Smoky Glimpses by Nicole Forcine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Left me slightly weak in the knees. It's told in third person limited but Kaden's voice is clear and personal. Also it's a paranormal that left me wanting more of the story and the world.



Last First Kiss by Piper Vaughn

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It wasn't bad but neither was it anything especially good either. An angsty short story that touched subjects far too big for its ~10k word count. Especially because a third of it was dedicated to the sex. Friends to lovers trope.


#First Impressions #Second Chances by Heidi Belleau

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another friends to lovers story. It started out really well, then took a dip with the reveal, and only partially recovered. Cute but skimpy on the reality details.

Review: The Island by Lisa Henry

Book info:
Form: pdf e-book
Genre: m/m romance, suspence/thriller
Target audience: adults only

Synopsis:

Adam Shaw is smuggling a stolen Cezanne, The Boy in the Red Vest, to a private tropical island somewhere in the Fiji archipelago. The island is owned by a rich drug warlord called Vornis who is also the buyer of the painting. Shaw hopes to earn a lot and to gain precious business contacts as well – happy Vornis has invited some of his buddies (read: high-profile criminals, filthy rich and influential) to celebrate the Cezanne acquisition . Shaw is also rewarded for his troubles with more than money– as a welcome gift he is lent a young man who is supposed to fulfill all his sexual fantasies. A fuck buddy. A live toy. A sex slave. All depends on your own definition of morality. Soon enough Shaw feels responsible for the fate of Lee although it is absolutely against his own best interest.

Stolen from Zurich, recovered in Serbia on April 12, 2012

The normal life for Lee Anderson ended when he was captured by Vornis men during a DEA raid in Colombia. All his team dead, he caught the eye of Vornis himself and was allowed to live. And suffer. First he was imprisoned, then transported to the private island while repeatedly beaten, raped, drugged, tortured, debased and humiliated by a very gifted sadist and anybody from his entourage who expressed such a wish. He was moulded into a thing, treated worse than an animal, reduced to a form of casual and very cruel entertainment.

When he is sent to Adam Shaw’s hut he expects nobody else but another monster who wants to take advantage of his helplessness and hurt him. To his surprise he meets with cunning kindness and compassion instead. He starts to hope against hope that somehow he will be saved before it is too late. But will he, really?

What I liked:

I am not a fan of m/m romance but this novel was really good and I can appreciate a good story when I read one. The character of Shaw was really ambiguous enough to make me forget his constant repetitions which after a while, could be construed as whining. Well, they were not. They bordered philosophy. I am a sucker for philosophy in novels. Shaw fought hard and long to manage his position with grace, not to succumb to the charm of Lee’s innocence. He fought and lost because he was not a monster. Still he felt really uncomfortable being where he was – on an indecently beautiful island, dined and wined by Vornis, a real monster BDSM sadist who had to be deceived and cajoled because he could turn vicious and murder his guest any time. Only near the end you find out why Shaw was so willing to play his role to the bitter end. I wish he was reading Nietzsche.

The ordeal of Lee was horrible but I really loved the fact that the author didn’t stop half-way and didn’t end her narration right after the successful rescue (as it often happens in such a books). The fact that she showed Lee’s struggle afterwards was the most compelling part of the book in my view because being rescued is one thing and learning to live with your burden of experiences is quite another, sometimes even more daunting task. It is not a coincidence that some Holocaust survivors committed suicide years after being rescued from Nazi death camps.

I also loved how the romance between Lee and Shaw was developed – slowly, steadily, without the unnecessary rush (mind you I mean here romance, not sex, which is not the same). It made the final much more real and gripping, especially that you didn’t know what to expect practically to the last page.

What I didn’t like:

In short: lack of research. I could stop here but I decided to give my darker side an opportunity to charm you. :)

I admit I wondered how come Shaw, being on an inhabited tropical island in the middle of Pacific with just a laptop enjoyed a decent Internet connection (small wonder, taking into account the fact that my own Internet was shaky at that very moment I was simply jealous like hell) but I could write such a blunder off. I wondered how come Vornis didn’t attempt to hack into Shaw’s computer to check his mailbox but perhaps he wasn’t that curious and/or safety-crazy. I admit I smiled with indulgence while reading that a certain woman called Irina (a nice Russian name) said ‘ukochany’ (a Polish word) twice but still it was just a fluff, who can distinguish between all those Slavic people and their strange languages (certainly not an Aussie). But after a while I reached a major slip-up. Really major and completely Anglo-Saxon if not straightforwardly American. Let me present my case properly.

One of the main characters, the hapless and much abused Lee Anderson, just 22, is a simple boy, apparently without any university degree or/and experience. His dad and mum own a small, local hardware store somewhere in the Midwest so they are neither influential nor rich. According to the author Lee wanted to join the police force but somehow he happened to find a job with the DEA; he was even taken on one of their foreign special missions which actually was the beginning of the whole ordeal. You might start thinking now that the DEA is something like a soft option for those who don’t qualify as cops but aren’t completely hopeless either. And here everything goes down crashing, at least for me.

I am aware that Ms. Henry is Australian but hey, I am not an American as well. Still even a very perfunctory and basic Google search (I made it really short and sweet) allowed me to gather plenty of ammunition for this section of my review. Yes, call me anal, call me anything you want; still the facts remain as follows (I am quoting here the Wikipedia and the official DEA website, both sources easy to find and completely accessible to the wider audience):

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States. WITHIN mind you, not abroad (more about it later).

Yes, they can employ you but not without a training and, according to their website, the average age of the students is 30 years. 30, not 20. Why? Approximately 60 percent of all trainees arrive with prior law enforcement experience, while 30 percent come from a military background. In addition, the majority of the students possess a bachelor’s degree and nearly 20 percent have some post-graduate educational experience. After receiving a conditional offer of employment, recruits must make it through a 19-week rigorous training which consist of firearms proficiency including basic marksmanship, weapons safety, tactical shooting, and deadly force decision training. As you see they don’t offer entry positions for barely adult wannabe cops and you don’t have to be a genius to realize that in real world somebody like Lee would never stand a chance of employment.

Could he go abroad with them? Yes, he could – but once again only theoretically. You see, DEA has a section called Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST – isn’t it a nice acronym by the way?). Still the selection for FAST is extremely difficult; attrition rates are usually above 50%. Selection is rumored to last 8 weeks where events such as timed runs, timed ruck sack marches, land navigation and many others are conducted daily. Once selection is complete, advanced training begins with emphasis in small unit tactics, and close quarters battle. Only after such a training the FAST agents are sent abroad. It definitely sounds more like SEAL or SAS than a job opportunity for young, undereducated police hopefuls without any skills. Now tell me, can you imagine Lee as one of FAST agents? I have to admit that I can’t – not with the characterization he was given.

I really do understand why Ms Henry needed Lee to be a bit gullible and as young as possible. She had to present him as a puppy-cute youth, vulnerable, impressionable, mentally fragile but also full of the desire to live, with his whole adulthood before him. Shaw, the older and more experienced guy, was sometimes literally hurt just imagining the wasted potential Lee represented. Still making him a DEA agent ruined the whole premise for me because such an individual would be noticeably older, more devious, definitely better trained and not so innocent and defenseless as the fictional Lee was, even facing such a monster as Vornis. Perhaps such a hardened version of Lee would make the whole story better, who knows. It would certainly made me a happier reader.

BTW I am not a fan of the cover art either. Just a torso with artificial abs ? Not impressed. Give me the island instead!

Final verdict:

A surprisingly good story, flawless when it comes to the psychology, told in an interesting way, with some nice characters. As long as you don’t explore the DEA angle too closely you’ll be fine even if you don’t like m/m romance.

Rameau's Review Archive: Dark Space by Lisa Henry

Originally posted on Goodreads February 1st 2013.

Synopsis:
Brady Garrett needs to go home. He’s a conscripted recruit on Defender Three, one of a network of stations designed to protect the Earth from alien attack. He's also angry, homesick, and afraid. If he doesn’t get home he’ll lose his family, but there’s no way back except in a body bag.

Cameron Rushton needs a heartbeat. Four years ago Cam was taken by the Faceless — the alien race that almost destroyed Earth. Now he’s back, and when the doctors make a mess of getting him out of stasis, Brady becomes his temporary human pacemaker. Except they’re sharing more than a heartbeat: they’re sharing thoughts, memories, and some very vivid dreams.

Not that Brady’s got time to worry about his growing attraction to another guy, especially the one guy in the universe who can read his mind. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just biochemistry and electrical impulses. It doesn’t change the truth: Brady’s alone in the universe.

Now the Faceless are coming and there’s nothing anyone can do. You can’t stop your nightmares. Cam says everyone will live, but Cam’s probably a traitor and a liar like the military thinks. But that’s okay. Guys like Brady don’t expect happy endings.


Dark Space by Lisa Henry

This review can also be found on Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell-blog.


Are you interested in reading an M/M, scifi, military, mind connection, mostly character study book with creepy angels aliens?

That’s how I recommended this book in a tweet the day after I finished reading it. I threw after a warning about sibilant hisses galore but forgot to mention the rape triggers. I also might have persuaded someone by saying “you’ll like the ending” vaguely implying I was less than satisfied. And I was, but it didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying everything else.

Dark Space is set in an unknown future where humans fight a terrifying alien race called the Faceless. There are space stations that orbit the Sun (presumably) at the edges of our solar system and keep watch. These stations are manned—quite literally—only by human men because women are too precious to be put in danger like that. This was the world building detail that most annoyed me, but if the alternative was reading about poorly constructed female characters I’d suspend my disbelief for a short book any day.

Some of the world building details I liked were every single thing that made Brady Garrett the nineteen-year-old conscripted recruit three years into his ten year military service—fifteen should he choose to become an officer—trying to keep his head down, and out of trouble while helping out at the medical bay. I loved the idea of stark class differences, refugee camps, factories, and all the problems that were only implied instead of infodumped on the reader. That includes the alien race, which—as creepy as they were—was nothing compared to the Weeping Angels.

Cameron Rushton is an officer—three or seven years older than Brady depending on how you look at it—and a prisoner of war who has just been returned to home. Or as close to it as Defender Three, Brady’s space station, is. The doctors make a mistake and Brady becomes a temporary human pacemaker to the man who no one trusts. They’re locked together in a room and have to spend prolonged periods of time together adapting to this new situation. Their connection forces them to learn much about themselves and about each other.

Because it’s an M/M novel, sex is a big part of that learning process. And because I liked it, you can expect to read about dark themes, and horrible things being done to the characters.

The pacing is pretty much perfect. Whenever I started to think “that’s a bit much” the author would make shift that not only made sense within the story but also advanced the overall storyline. There weren’t any unnecessary scenes or exposition for the sake of exposition. The repetition that was there—like Brady thinking of his home and family—felt natural to the cycle of human psyche and the way humans think. We get stuck on something, move on, and come back to it when the time is right again. Brady also didn’t accept the mind melt connection unreservedly. He had doubts and he fought it, but he also learned to trust his own judgement about the connection.

And the heartrending goodbye… Well, I’ll let you read about that on your own.