The Phoenix by Ruth Sims

One of the disadvantages of writing books is that the time to read them for pleasure is so curtailed. It makes the ones I do have time to read all the more precious. Beginning October 2006 I will, from time to time, post reviews of books that I enjoyed or that moved me.

Captain's Surrender

Alex Beecroft

Publisher Linden Bay Romance ISBN-10: 1602020892 ISBN-13: 978-1602020894

I must say right off that I have always lived smack-dab in the middle of corn-and-soybean country in the US. I have never seen, smelled, or heard the sea except in films and I'm scared to death of water and I've never been a particular fan of adventure stories. Plus I'm addicted to long, fat books. So why am I am enamored of this little book (less than 200 pages) with enough raging sea, heaving decks, booming cannon, salt spray and decks awash in blood?

Well, for one thing the protagonists, 20-year-old red-haired Josh Andrews and Lt. Peter Kenyon, are well-drawn, intelligent, and sympathetic young men who just happen to be hotter than a cannon barrel at Waterloo. And each has a secret that could get them hanged in the King's Navy. For another thing, the writing is excellent; the author has a facility for description that lets you taste the salt air, feel the pain of a flogging, hear the wind screaming through the lines in a storm, feel the deck, slippery with blood, lurch beneath your feet. Either Beecroft's research has been incredibly thorough or else we have a two-hundred-year-old author in our midst.

Under the best of circumstances life was brutal in the closed-in, isolated world of a ship at sea. And when the captain is a vicious man who enjoys blood sport--especially if the blood is that of one of his men--it's unbearable. (That captain, by the way, is not the surrendering captain of the title!) On the first page a young sailor is hanged for being a "sodomite." So it is that from the opening sentence we know what kind of ship Andrews and Kenyon are aboard. We also know that 20-year-old, red-haired Joshua has a secret that could send him to the gallows. And very shortly we see that Josh is nearly undone by his fierce attraction to the lieutenant, Peter Kenyon.

This is a book packed full of excitement; when Josh and Peter finally get together the sex scenes are graphic without being overwhelming the story. The course of love does not run smooth, especially with a potential bride thrown into the mix. And as a bonus you'll probably learn a great deal about sailing vessels. For instance, I didn't know that after a battle the blood literally poured down the sides of the vessel from channels created for that purpose. See what I mean about the research?

The only thing I didn't care for, and which I'm sure the author had nothing to say about, was the cheesy cover, which is, unfortunately, typical of too many m/m romances. The book deserves better, not to mention you'd want to hide it from your mother and maiden aunt.

The story is highly recommended and I'm looking forward to Beecroft's next book. And after you read it, if you find yourself suddenly addicted to movies like Mutiny on the Bounty, Master and Commander, Moby Dick, etc., you can blame Alex Beecroft.
Author's website: http://alexbeecroft.com/

Dispatch to Death

Martha Miller

New Victoria Publishers ISBN-10: 1892281201 ISBN-13: 978-1892281203

There are times a girl just can't catch a break.

Case in point: Trudy Thomas, cab driver. One ordinary, soggy Illinois day Trudy picks up a rain-drenched fare, a mysterious young Hispanic woman named Anita Alvarez, and drops her off near the governor's mansion. It was the last ordinary day Trudy would have for a long, long time.

A routine cleaning of Cab Number 4--which is lavender for reasons that have nothing to do with being gay--turns up a key. And then all hell, as they say, breaks loose.

Within days Trudy finds a co-worker murdered in the ladies' room, Cab Number 4 broken into, and her own personal information missing from the office files. It's all downhill from there for the hapless Trudy. Before it's over, she is shot, hospitalized, stalked, threatened, and locked in a trunk God knows where. And that's just scratching the surface of the perils Trudy ("I'm not a hero. I'm a cab driver") faces in this lively mystery.

I really like Trudy. She's an ordinary woman struggling to support herself and her mutt dog on what she makes as a cab driver. That she is a lesbian is neither a big secret nor a big deal. She loves her Harley and her dog, and asks for nothing more out of life than to get by and be left alone.

Dispatch to Death is a great get-wrapped-up-in-a-quilt-on-a-chilly-evening book, with a cup of hot chocolate and marshmallows on the table beside you.

Martha Miller's writing is crisp, clear, and unmuddled. The story is written in first person, a notoriously difficult technique, but she does it well. Her characters are three-dimensional and real, and the plot is a dizzying series of twists that will keep the reader guessing until the low-key, satisfying conclusion.

My only criticisms are few and very minor indeed. I really didn't need to know that Trudy likes to wear boxer shorts. And the frequent appearance of brand names dropped into the text quickly became distracting.

But these very minor things aside, I highly recommend Dispatch to Death to anyone who wants a fast-moving, enjoyable mystery to read. It would also make a darn good TV movie. I see Joan Cusack...
Author's website: http://www.marthamiller.net/

Standish

By Erastes

P.D. Publishing ISBN-10: 1933720093 ISBN-13: 978-1933720098

One of the characters in Standish does nothing--doesn't move, doesn't speak, doesn't think. And yet this character controls emotions and actions and passions just by existing. It is a house called Standish. Like the Rochester mansion in "Jane Eyre" or the cliffs in "Wuthering Heights" Standish is a place so important to the story that it almost takes on life.

Standish is the vanished patrimony of Ambrose Standish, impoverished grandson of the man who lost the place to Gordian Goshawk in a gambling game and lost his life in a duel soon after. Ambrose is studious, intelligent, and bitter at a fate which has him toiling as a tutor to support himself and his two spinster sisters. The house, Standish, is his obsession, his dream, his torment.

When Rafe Goshawk, who inherited Standish from his father, returns from many years abroad to take up residence there his life is set on a collision course with Ambrose. The Goshawk family's reputation is that of "venal, predatory raptors" and Rafe himself is a cold-eyed man, as bitter as Ambrose but for a different reason. He was born in Paris, raised as an aristocrat, and was a young boy when the Terror sent his mother to the guillotine, destroyed his world, and sent him and his father fleeing to England.

Ambrose hates the Goshawks without ever having seen one of the infamous breed who ruined his family. And then through circumstances or fate, he finds himself hired as tutor for Rafe's son; for the first time he sees the house he has obsessed about, up close. It is everything he dreamed it would be. It's a given that Rafe and Ambrose will end up in each other's arms but if you expect roses and violins and a predictable ending...surprise!

I won't go further with the story because it has so many twists and turns and I don't want to write a spoiler. The writing--descriptions, dialogue, everything about it--feels real and authentic. Erastes is an author who must research and research and research. And yet the research never overwhelms the story. It never intrudes. The author handles violence and sex with equal ease and knows the fine line at which to stop.

It-s superb, well-crafted storytelling at its best.
Author's website: http://erastes.com/

The Filly

Mark R. Probst

Cheyenne Publishing ISBN : 978-0-9797773-0-1

Age: YA and up

Reading THE FILLY brought a wave of nostalgia. As a young person some of my favorite books and movies were Westerns. I read every horse story in our public library, and still remember whole scenes from My Friend Flicka, Smoky the Cowhorse, The Red Pony, and The Tiger Roan. I never missed the Western matinee movies on Saturday afternoon (two movies, newsreel, cartoon, superhero serial, singalong, and previews for twenty-five cents!). The film "Red River" made a huge and lasting impression on me; it was and still is one of the best. And, of course, as an adult I never missed an episode of "Rawhide" on tv.

Mark Probst's THE FILLY has a lot of things in common with Red River. They are both built around a cattle drive of hundreds of miles, they both have dust, raging storms, collapsing cattle, hardship, exhausted men, fights, threats, and death along the trail. Both "Red River" and THE FILLY have protagonists--in this case two of them, Ethan and Travis--who are brave yet sensitive, not violent by nature but willing and able to fight when necessary. The big difference is in "Red River" Montgomery Clift and John Wayne beat the daylights out of each other, and in THE FILLY Ethan and Travis fall in love.

Seventeen-year-old Ethan is a dreamer and a bookworm who wants more than anything in the world to own his own horse, a filly he can raise and train. He has no sexual experience and is rocked by his inexplicable attraction to the new cowboy in town, 22-year-old Travis. Travis, on the other hand, is attracted to Ethan but he knows the score and decides to do something about it. He convinces Ethan to join the cattle drive. Over the months and the miles Ethan and Travis became friends long before they explore either their feelings or their physical need. The explicitness of the sex scenes in The Filly is just right for my taste. Finally, with the cattle drive ended and money in hand, they are free to begin their new life. Suddenly harsh reality and violence from an unexpected source stop them dead in their tracks.

I have only two very small niggles with the book, and they're small ones which certainly don't affect my rating. The first is that, for his age and the era, Travis is a little too calmly self-understanding in his acceptance and explanation of his own homosexuality, giving a very slight feel of being off-kilter historically. The other relates to a time gap at the end, which I won't detail because I don't want to write a spoiler. This is Mark Probst's first novel, and that's how writers learn. I'm very much looking forward to another book from him...perhaps a sequel?

This is a book that could be given without a qualm to anyone open to a love story between men, but especially to a gay teen. The cover, incidentally, is very attractive and well done; you don't have to hide it from your granny.

Highly recommended!
Author's website: http://www.cheyennepublishing.com/

IMMORTAL JOURNEY: The Death of Innocence

Ruth A. Souther

Laruso Publishing ISBN: 097210030X

Ruth Souther’s incredible first novel begins with a vision of horror and ends with an endangered, motherless baby lying on an altar.

IMMORTAL JOURNEY: THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE is like nothing I've ever read before. The passion, the clarity, the absolute believability of this story about gods and goddesses and other dwellers of the immortal realm is amazing.

In this first novel, which is the first in a planned trilogy, the reader experiences the agony of immortal beings who have no choice but to live their destiny. Though they are gods, they are not infallible and they cannot control their own endless future. They love carnally and deeply. They hate their enemies and sometimes their own brothers and their hate is the stuff of legends. They grieve for their lost children. Just as the lesser beings do, they yearn over unrequited love, and seek jealous revenge when thwarted. Some are mischievous; some are horrible almost beyond belief: the description of Enyo devouring mortal souls is almost unbearable.

But the story that towers over them all is that of Ares the Destroyer, (War) his conscience-ridden son Deimos (Terror), and the simple priestess they both love: Niala who is far closer to the immortals than she knows. The reader comes to know the sound and the smell and the horror of destruction and death. And the reader feels and experiences the eroticism of sex, both sacred and profane, and the agony of childbirth and death.

I can't even begin to imagine what the author has in store for the rest of the series. I hope we don't have to wait too long to find out!

The author’s website, http://www.ruthsouther.com/ shows Volume Two in the trilogy, The Rise of Rebellion is scheduled for release April 2007

The original review has appeared in print in “Out In Jersey”.

BOLD AND COMPASSIONATE NEW BOOK FROM LORI LAKE

Snow Moon Rising

Lori L. Lake

Reviewed by Ruth Sims

Author of “The Phoenix”

With SNOW MOON RISING author Lori L. Lake has created something rare: a boldly written, meticulously researched book that will take your soul, wring it dry, make you cry, and make you think.

SNOW MOON RISING covers seventy years in the life of Mischka Gallo, a Polish Roma-or Gypsy, from the free but hard life of the traveling caravan through the manmade hell of a Nazi work camp, to life as a refugee in New York without even a name that is her own, to coming together with her one true love in middle age.

It took four years of research and writing to re-create the world of the Polish Roma, who were among the forgotten victims of the Holocaust. In an interview, the author explained the structure of the book. “One of the reasons I chose the ‘bookend’ style that takes you back and forth to 1989 was that even though it diminished some of the suspense, the reader could actually make it through the horrible things that happen because at the back of her mind, she knows that Mischka is alive in 1989.” She added. “It was intensely emotional, and believe me, I do not know where this story came from!”

The book begins with Mischka, at eighty, talking to fifteen-year-old Tobar, her grandson in every way except biologically. Tobar is a typical American teenager who is unhappy about his life and hates his name. Then Mischka draws him into the story about the brave man who bore the same name, his Roma heritage, and the harrowing years between the end of World War I to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a story Tobar—and the reader—will never forget.

Though Lori Lake is well known among readers of Lesbian books for her "Gun" series, this story of human vitality and courage is sure to win her a legion of new fans among those who love historical novels and those who simply enjoy masterfully written books. I predict that SNOW MOON RISING will be an award-winning novel for Lori L. Lake.

Regal Crest Enterprises

www.regalcrest.biz
ISBN # 978-1932300-505
price $20.95 - 368 pages

Lori Lake’s website is http://www.lorillake.com/