The Rake, the Rouge and the Roue

At least one is a red herring

I’d been saving this one for near the end because it is far and away the longest of the stories. That unfortunately meant that I’d built a set of expectations around The Rake, the Rogue and the Roue by Eric Alan Westfall which were doomed to be crushed under the reality. But reality is a funny thing, and this tale did not so much fall short of my expectations as side-step them entirely.

I’m not going to tell you what I thought this might be, but instead I will focus on what it is. And that is a very long, very good, very period, very filthy novel. And I mean filthy in probably every way you can think up.

It’s set in a ‘alternate England’ where gay sex is legal (but still frowned upon)–it felt to me like being gay in the 1990s (as represented by the media, and my childish memories), minus AIDS, and set back in England in the early 1800s. So free, easy, and carefree– at least until the “neddy-bangers” show up. Or your dad finds out and disowns you. Or your neighbors find out and ‘cut’ you the next time they see you.

The period language was a bit dense, but fun, since I don’t have to read it all the time. It also …improved the sex for me or something, since I read way more smut in this book than I am wont to do. Way more. I don’t know that I skipped very much at all. And this book was about 90% sex. They were having sex, thinking about sex, planning sex, talking about sex, or mourning not having had sex for seven pages CONSTANTLY. There was one short scene where they did not have sex (because the one character went to see his accountant), and then there was a longer scene later where they didn’t have sex because the rather heart-wrenching Plot Twist bore down upon their necks for a bit. But then they had some more sex, so it worked out in the end.

And it was all filthy, crude, nasty, unapologetic sex, too. Which I guess is good.

So, you know, I can’t even begin to guess if you should read this. I’m not even sure if I should have read it. But I liked it.