I’m Loving the Lizard

Jane from Dear Author recommended The Last Hour of Gann. This book featured… yep, you guessed it, a Lizardman hero. Colonizing humans crash land on a planet. The heroine, Amber, meets the hero, Meoraq (I’m sure I’m spelling his name wrong – I spell it different every time) and their crazy journey of love, sex, faith and self-awareness begins.

Now I will say there is a ton of controversy around this book. A lot of it dealing with sexual violence. There is a rape scene that I’m dreading and really hoping I can find a way to skip around it without compromising my experience with this book.

But overall this book has been a game changer for me. Because I went into it thinking Lizardhero? Seriously? And really I mean our mind goes there. This is a romance, there is going to be sex. Is it going to be gross? Am I going to be skeeved out by lizard sex? Does even reading about lizard sex make me weird? Some people were actually calling it Dino Porn.

And like the rant Molly had against the term Mommy Porn, it applies here too. Because we as romance readers get so conditioned into the self-shaming of what we enjoy. Can you imagine trying to explain to a man that you’re reading a romance featuring a lizard hero? He’s going to look at you like you’re crazy or maybe into something kinky… when it’s so not about that.

This book is about two people from two different cultures, faith and societies who fall in love anyway. It’s absolutely what a romance is supposed to be. It’s how they fall in love and why they fall in love. And you as the reader can see and feel it happening with them. So that by the time they have sex you’re so intimately connected to them and their journey that the experience is real and amazing and you’re cheering in your head… Yeah!!!! They finally did it!!!

This has nothing to do with the hero being a lizard. This has everything to do with why two people come together and sometimes how the sex solidifies that bond and creates all new problems too. It’s a reminder to me why sex in romance isn’t so much about titillation, but about the full experience of this couple’s journey.

I love this lizard. I would date this lizard. I would sit down and talk with him for hours about his thoughts and faith. And yes, I would have sex with this lizard because this book reminds me that it isn’t about what we look like or how we’re shaped. That sex, really good sex, is everything about who we are as people and the connection we have to one another.