Hammer and Air
I went back to the elibrary and tried to find a decent gay fantasy book. My first three choices were already checked out (guess I’m not the only one…), so I went with Hammer & Air by Amy Lane, and it was…uh. Well, the sex was hot.
I’m going to do the spoilery thing, because I don’t actually think anyone should ever read this book, so if you plan to do so, you should maybe just go acquire it and do that. Otherwise I’ll save you a few hours with the following summary:
They had sex–actually, no, let’s try to summarize the story leaving out all the sex, as an exercise to see if that makes it seem legit. So.
Take 2:
Two friends, Hammer and our first-person protagonist (Eirn?), have grown up together in an orphanage, where Hammer always watched out for the MC. The story begins with them realizing it’s time to deepen their relationship, and setting up plans to do so in a few days. Then MC gets struck at work just before their meeting, and they decide to skip town, but first Hammer returns and offs the striker, so they really, really have to leave town. They spend a few months in the wilderness surviving on their skills with modest success, but once winter hits they get attacked by a giant cat, and Hammer is wounded. From there they stumble their way into a Snow-White and Rose-Red fairy tale–I mean, an enchanted cabin, where Hammer heals. A bear comes to visit, who we then learn can turn into a man, and who develops a crush on MC. The relationship between the three deepens (I said I’d leave the sex out). MC and Hammer apparently haven’t learned the word “love,” but eventually they figure it out, explain repeatedly to the Bear that they don’t want him, try to leave, have a run-in with a bear hunter on the way out, have to save the bear, who turns out to be a king. Then they live happily ever after (but just the two of them, in case you were wondering).
That doesn’t sound so bad. But just go back through, add at least one sex-scene at the end of each sentence, make every single secondary character a rapist (or potential rapist), add in a few issues of consent with the bear, and make sure you assume everyone is madly in lust with MC, plus include plenty of whining on the part of MC about how ZOMGwonnerful Hammer is. Oh. And then go back through again and change every instance of the word ‘was’ to the word ‘were,’ for authenticity of dialect. And then you might have a fairly complete representation of this novel.
The sex was sort of crude and hot, and I caught myself reading more of it than I usually do, but that’s not really high praise, and it’s not the reason I choose to read a book. I would not read this book again, and I wouldn’t really suggest that anyone else read it, although I think I might give the author one more try, since I can get them from the library, and it might have been an off-day, y’know? (plus I gotta support my name-sisters), but I don’t have high expectations. And I have a bunch of stuff to try and read before I get back to her.
