book review

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"The Missing Butterfly, by Megan Derr"

Title: The Missing Butterfly
Author: Megan Derr
Genre: mm rockstar
Notes: 143 ebook pages
Website: Less Than Three Press.

Summary: Cassidy Monarch had dreams—to sing, to be famous, to tour the world at the head of his own rock band. Then his parents were killed in a tragic accident, leaving him to raise his two siblings. Determined to hold on to what remained of his family, Cassidy settled into an ordinary life, his dreams of fame reduced to occasional nights of singing at karaoke dives. But his careful, ordinary life began to fray with his new job, and the beautiful, charming boss who reminds him of all the things he tried to stop wanting.

Malcolm Osborne is a classic rags to riches story, a foster child who wound up with the perfect family and more money than he knows what to do with. He’s wealthy, beautiful, successful, and completely miserable. Then he hires a new worker for his office, a young, hard-working man with a sadness in his eyes that Malcolm aches to banish, hoping that in doing so he will be rid of his own loneliness as well.

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Cassidy had to give up his rock and roll dreams with the death of his parents, and his determination to keep his siblings together is really touching. At eighteen years old, he discovers that his parents have left debts he has to pay off and he has to change his life plans to keep his brother and sister with him. He doesn’t hesitate to make the sacrifice.

Nine years later, he’s working as an office drone with the hots for his boss. He goes out on occasion to sing karaoke or play pool, but basically he lives his life as though it’s already over. He’s “a … Read the rest “RE BOOK: The Missing Butterfly, by Megan Derr”

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"Alone In My King's Harem"
Alone In My King’s Harem
Author: Lily Hoshino
Released by: Digital Manga

Summary borrowed from Wikipedia: Alone in My King’s Harem (ハレムでひとり Haremu de Hitori) is a 2004 manga by Hoshino Lily. One of the first titles released by Digital Manga Publishing. Alone in My King’s Harem is composed of six stories, with only the last two stories containing the same characters. The stories are largely romantic in nature with some erotic tones. The stories focus predominantly around the “ultra-femme” uke character, with the seme character taking more of a supporting role.

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This book here has had a profound effect on my life. The artwork is oddly endearing and almost hauntingly cute, if such a thing can happen. It’s as though someone took the art styles of 80’s anime — the Q-tip hair, general androgynousness, and the open expressions — but ran them through a filter of sexiness, cuteness, and just basic moe! kawaii!

Lots of male/male romance, not too much graphic depictions, more sweet than anything. Everything is kind of dreamy and her stories are set in fantasy worlds that are very familiar, yet are also very different. It honestly feels as though you’re stepping into a brand new culture, and that very much appeals to me.

The titular story, “Alone In My King’s Harem,” is about an adorable male concubine that catches his king’s eye. So to please his little love, the king decides to take over his corner of the world so that he can lavish all of his love and everything else on the concubine. Unfortunately, at some point his dreams surpass reality and he forgets about the concubine, ends up with dozens of others, and just basically becomes a titanic jerk. Reality reasserts itself, he loses a big battle, … Read the rest “RE BOOK: Alone In My King’s Harem, by Lily Hoshino [manga]”

Title: Merchanter’s Luck (Company Wars, #2)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Genre: sci-fi
Summary: The fateful meeting between the owner of a tramp star-freighter that flies the Union planets under false papers and fake names and a proud but junior member of a powerful starship-owning family leads to a record-breaking race to Downbelow Station — and a terrifying showdown at a deadly destination off the cosmic charts.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a great book. I liked Cyteen, but I didn’t like a lot of the other Alliance-space novels as much. I just wasn’t that into the ideas behind them.

“Merchanter’s Luck” has a different feel from the Alliance-space novels, at least it does to me. It’s about a man alone on his merchant ship that comes to a station and meets a girl. It just so happens that the girl is from a powerful merchant family that numbers in the hundreds. They’re like a nation all their own. And he’s just one man.

After she bails him out of jail, he gets talked into taking the woman and a couple of her cousins on as crew. They basically take over his ship, which has him freaking out. Then they go to deliver a cargo they manage to get and the story starts.

This is a “classic sea tale,” but on board a spaceship. It features a protagonist coping with severe mental trauma who now has to deal with strangers invading his personal space. It’s not some socio-political treatise on the life and times of people in the future. It’s just a straight up story with interesting, likable characters and entertaining scenes of action. And maybe a little bit of romance.

Title: Exquisite Corpse
Author: Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: horror, serial killer, mm

Summary: After escaping prison, serial killer Andrew Compton heads for New Orleans to pursue the art of what he calls “the art of killing boys.” He joins up with a dissolute playboy who has pushed his art to limits even Compton hadn’t imagined. Together they set their sights on a young Vietnamese-American runaway, whom they cast as the perfect victim.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely NOT for children or anyone with a weak constitution or any kind of gag reflex. Seriously, the stuff in this gets pretty heavy-handed and pushes the limits of everything that’s right in the world.

“Exquisite Corpse” is, at its base, a story about someone looking for a soul mate. Someone that is alone in the world and sees the people around him, but has no real connection to them in any emotional capacity. Oh, and he’s like Jeffrey Dahmar.

This is basically Dahmar (or a character startlingly like him!) somehow escaping from prison and going on the lam. He kills a bunch of people on the way, and somehow manages to find his way to the French Quarter in New Orleans (where the vampires and ghouls live, because that’s where I would live if I was a vampire or ghoul. Though honestly, I’d probably move to Alabama, which my nephew firmly believes is overrun by zombies and that’s why we don’t go there. Or Amsterdam.)

He meets a man that shares his morbid interests and they get together to have sex amongst the rotting corpses and plot to kill a somewhat wide-eyed street kid that was probably the most interesting character in the whole book (a male Vietnamese prostitute? Hell yeah.) From there, things get hinky.

All … Read the rest “RE BOOK: Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z Brite [horror]”

Things I like: bacon. Bob's Burgers. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. cats. cheese. chocolate. crossword puzzles. Dredd. eggrolls. fried chicken. gochujang. Hannigram. HEAs. HFNs. jigsaw puzzles. kimchi. lo mein noodles. mushrooms. nectarines. Nintendo Switch. paperback books. pineapple. pizza. potstickers. raspberry jam. Rick and Morty. sleeping in. snickerdoodles. spaghetti. strawberries. sudoku. tacos. tomatoes. vacations. vaccinations.