A Year Less Three Days

by Alyx J. Shaw, Mychael Black

Only love will save them…if it can survive the pits of the damned.

When Lias’s wife was kidnapped, all his skills as a woodsman couldn’t save her—or himself. Captured, sold repeatedly to different masters, Lias endures abuse, torture, and worse. By the time his latest master buys him, Lias is little more than an animal.

He is a creature of rage and hate, antagonizing his master at every turn, lashing out at his boundaries, waiting and watching for a chance to escape and return to his children—or die trying.

At times, Necromis, a knight of the Order of the White Bear, would like nothing more than to oblige his aggravating new charge, but one thing stays his deadly hand. Lias is his last hope. Long ago, Necromis made a deal with a demon named Bonecracker to gain fame, wealth, and respect.

But the day of reckoning is coming, and there’s only one way out of this bargain—capture the heart of a broken slave, or Necromis’s soul will forever belong to Bonecracker.

Mention of rape, violence.

Genres: Paranormal, M M Romance, Fantasy

133 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2016

Reviews

[SheReadsALot · Rating 1 out of 5]

ONE HEART--How to describe to describe "A Year Less Three Days" by authors Alyx J. Shaw and Mychael Black:



MAJOR TRAIN WRECK

If I could individually list all of "A Year Less Three Days" missteps, this review would possibly as long as the novella, because I honestly don't know where to begin. It was circling the 1 Heart rating from 20%, but I tend to give books a chance, maybe the plot turns in a different direction, etc

Not so with this book.

In fact, each chapter got progressively worse which is a feat in itself. It was like reading a 'What Not to Put in a Romance' how-to-guide. I have so many quotes and plot holes highlighted...*sigh* This will probably be a spoiler-y review.

What I got from the blurb: a heterosexual woodman (Lias)'s wife is presumed kidnapped and while searching for her, he is kidnapped into slavery. He he is tortured for a period of time and saved by a new Master, a knight who made a deal with a devil. Somehow master and slave, both damaged men, find a way to love one another. A romance.

What this story actually delivered: A mess of the plot. At different points, you can read the authors coming up with extraneous tidbits and plot devices with no explanation as the story moved along. Crazy things such as a wizard who is stuck as a creature, a horse who plays chess or another horse that can climb stairs, open doors and curl in bed like a dog, demons and special demon knights, a knight of some special order with no explanation, a mage that heals strangers by just knowing, a straight man who is raped and tortured but seems to have no PTSD, an adamantly straight man who by the grace of two conversations with different strangers automatically is gay when his homosexual master tells him he wants to bed him...oh while both are deathly ill...so they can have sex.



Find the plot in this mess.



While the blurb mentions two triggers, here are the additional warnings the book did not give:
- Cannibalism
- Major Character Death

I'm a reader whose limits are pretty open, but not every reader would read a story with those two warnings attached. Or are they supposed to be lumped under the "violence" warning?

Necromis is the master and knight of the white bear in a fantasy land where demons exist. He made a deal with a demon to make an abused, tortured straight slave fall in love with his master. Lias is the fifth slave to enter Necromis's mansion/castle (the dwelling types switched a few times) Lias is saved, but never shows he was traumatized or abused. And hates his master, he fights his master and looks down on Necromis being gay.

Necromis doesn't care because he's the prettiest (no lie) knight in the land, the meanest mean girl knight with long silvery hair down to the floor. Necromis likes to belittle those he deems beneath him (there was an equivalent to a "you can't sit with us" scene), takes his anger out on Lias by nearly killing him and then somehow falls in love. Without showing the reader how it happened. The instalove doesn't stop there, Lias gets told by two strangers that he should love Necromis and he gathers that he should just do it in gratitude for Necromis finding his children...that Lias figured out on his own.

I think a horror fairytale themed romance is what the authors were trying to convey. And there were one or two scenes where it got spooky, but the plot holes and wacky random ideas made the read ridiculous and took away from any semblance to a plot. The best thing going for the book is the cover- though it implies both men are equals and for the majority of the book, Lias is not. He's scarred, whipped and chained more than not...so it's not accurate.

Since I can't cover all of the problems with this book, I'll try to summarize the main areas with a few examples.

The Plot (or lack thereof) - to say it was rushed is the least of this story's problems. There were so many random things added to the tale, that it made no sense. Lias was remarried and lost his wife, who he loved. I get the plot was supposed to entice the 'make a straight man gay' theme, since it was stressed, Necromis would need to get a straight slave to end his curse. But there was no effort into trying to show either man falling in love. It goes from I hate you--I'm dying-okay, I'll fuck you because someone told me to--and fuck me too while you're at it, because butt sex will cement a relationship that literally started at 70%. Since the previous 70% was filled with the horse farts and many side characters that added nothing to the weak plot.

What was up with all the horse farts? Every other page would have a description of someone or something farting. If it was supposed to be funny, the timing is way off. And if this was supposed to be a parody...it should have been clear. I can't see this story as something serious.

The Plot Holes - they were abundant, they overtook the story.



Filled with ass gas? Maybe?


Here are a few:

- Since the story tried to jam in an entire novella's worth of sex in roughly 20%, it seemed that the men didn't spend enough time together previously to know how the "exact way" Necromis would want to be stroked off during their first hand job scene.

Too vague?

- How about Necromis making a deal with Bonecracker, the big bad demon in this story to be rich enough to buy his original love...and becomes a white bear knight. Does being a knight automatically mean you're rich? I'm guessing not if there weren't as many rich knights? Is there a parallel the reader should just assume?


- It's told that Lias comes from a modest section of the country, where nakedness is kept behind closed doors. He even reacts to Necromis's exhibitionist side negatively. How is it that Lias's comfortable to be naked and fondling another naked man in front of his children? And his children from the same part of the land don't react to the nakedness? They're cool about it? No hiding their faces? No reaction?
Here's a better question: why wouldn't the adults cover up in front of the children? Is their fucking that important? Must everyone see their big ol' dicks?

- The tortured, abused, raped slave has no problems with having sex, gay sex at that. In fact, he can deep throat without an issue.

I won't even touch the actual penis sorcery performed to make an already humongous dick into tree trunk proportions. Because sex can't make up for the lack of development which leads to...

The Characters - they were as dimensional as a pocket of air. No explanation as to what the knights did. Necromis is a knight of a white bear. What does that mean? Someone was a knight of a boar. Why are animals being thrown out without explanations? These "knights" were worse than children. All of the adults read like sulky, bratty teens. We have the head knight telling any one how beautiful he was with his long silver hair to the floor, which makes no sense in battle to me, but I guess makes sense in this world. The characters just like the plot holes and plot were random and flat. Any emotion couldn't and wasn't shown, just told. Lias kept talking about how uneducated and straight he was. I guess to hype up the GFY/ slave angle. If written differently, he could deliver more than that. There was promise in the beginning but the poor writing style ruined any chance of the promise being realized. More yelling at the slave, threatening him and treating him like an animal rather than talking to him. It just was a big...horse fart bubble.

The Writing Style - All telling and junior high school telling at thatt with nothing shown. I will give the story something, it read like one voice rather than two, so at least the tones melded. But the story couldn't stick to one lane - horror, erotica, a mystery, paranormal, fantasy. It's not like it couldn't be done - I've read it written in more competent hands.

I had an imaginary red pen going through just about every paragraph and was left too many questions. Simple questions could have easily shaved this novella in half - did this add to the story? No? Then, it's a throwaway.

An example:

"It is as my mistress says, men who favor other men are all romance and foolishness."

Why this quote was even used in a gay romance novel when it adds nothing to the plot or overall story? It was said by a tertiary character who basically had one scene and did nothing for the plot.

This was a throwaway scene and character. Not needed and inflammatory for no good reason.

I've read one of the authors in this pairing in the past and enjoyed. But this...was a mess all around. I don't know if it was a first draft? The lowest that I can rate on Netgalley is one and I feel it's still too high. It's memorable for all the wrong reasons. The romance is dumped the moment the former slave who said he will never fall in love with another man other than Necromis...does the opposite and falls for another man after his lover dies.

Not recommended to anyone I know who can read.

Maybe not even non-readers either.



A copy provided via Netgalley for an honest review.

[Vanessa theJeepDiva · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a love story that heals the broken souls that are mentioned in the blurb back away from this book. There’s broken men to be sure, we’ve got sex in the mix, but this is in no way a romance. This is one of those books that has so many possibilities yet it just doesn’t deliver.

There is so much crazy going on in Necromis’s home. He basically has a castle sitting on the edge of Bonecracker’s very own Hell Mouth. This residence was all part of the bargain that Necromis made with Bonecracker. A home provided by a nefarious demon provides the catalyst to the oddities. Too many of these little eccentricities were mentioned yet not explored or explained. You cannot drop in there that the horse plays a mean game of chess without touching on that. A completely different horse opens doors and sleeps in human beds. Not all members of the household are human. Some belong to Bonecraker but are all team Necromis, and others are there because Necromis is their friend and fellow knight.

The strange doesn’t just take place at Necromis’s house of weird. A major turning point for Lias(the very straight heterosexual Lias) takes place during an outing. He sees someone from his pre-slave life. While being shopped for his slave potential another notices something on his shoulder that lets everyone around know something, I have no clue what that something is nor do I know what the mark is but it is a big deal. A big enough deal that a healer knows to drug him so he can get out of town. This is the turning point for Lias where he decides Necromis is the man for him. He decides this even though Necromis is not around and hasn’t been around for weeks.

The thing that really soured my opinion of this book though, there are two men together by the time we get to the epilogue one of which is not even mentioned in the blurb. So at this you’re probably thinking menage perhaps multiple partners, nope. One of the main characters that is in the synopsis does not make it, he’s killed off. What the hell? Going into A Year Less Three Days I thought I was getting a fantasy romance. I need a happily ever after with my romance. I need some nature of a love story with my romances too and that is a whole other gripe with what is going on within these pages. Where this may have been a two star read for me the killing off of a major character dropped it to one.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with this book. I read one review that summed it best for me: train wreck.

This is one of those times I truly wish there were half-star ratings. I feel as if I am being overly generous with a 3 star rating. If the story had been unreadable, I would have given it one star, it was interesting enough to complete, barely.

Too much didn't make sense. How did a straight slave adapt to gay sex so adroitly? How the slave's wife was abducted which set up the story in the first place. There was much belief that had to be suspended in reading this story.

The reviewer received a NetGalley ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[The Novel Approach · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 Stars ~ A Year Less Three Days is a dark fantasy story set in a world where demons and demonic imps wreak havoc on its human inhabitants. The metric ton of story potential in the blurb intrigued me, and I bought into what I learned at the beginning about why Lias, our erstwhile woodsman, is not only enslaved but is far more animalistic aggression than human behaving now. Lias has been made a slave by the very traders who’d kidnapped his second wife, but from the moment he ran off with the hope of becoming her rescuer, his life dissolved into the stuff of nightmares.

It doesn’t take much to grasp how and why Lias behaves like the beast he’s been groomed to become by his captors and owners, so why would he act anything less than hostile and violent towards his new owner, Necromis? Lias doesn’t disappoint, trust me. What the slave doesn’t know at the time, though, is that he’s been bought as a challenge, a last resort for the beauty, Necromis, to fulfill a bargain he’d made with the demon Bonecracker. As Lias is introduced at the start of this story, it’s almost impossible to believe there will be any way Necromis will succeed in his quest to win Lias’s love. And in the end, it was, because the authors didn’t take the time to tell the story that needed to be told in order for their relationship to be convincing.

I thought this story started off pretty well, and I was into the idea of the enemies-to-lovers aspect of it because I love the challenge of the trope when it’s done well. It doesn’t take much to get that this is a beauty and the beast story, a fairy tale complete with an evil stepmother and two stepdaughters. Necromis gives Lias no quarter in their contest of wills—he gave as good as he got from the slave while still trying to sooth his beast. But, here’s where this story lost me—Lias was portrayed as so broken and irredeemable that his quick turnaround came at the expense of all intelligent reason. I actually liked these two men better as enemies than I did lovers, which is weird, I know, but that interaction was more believable to me than their romantic relationship was throughout the rest of the book.

What started with some promise ended up limping toward an end that was too rushed for what the premise of this story asked it to accomplish, not the least of which turned out to be that Lias, a lifelong straight man, is gay not only for one man but two. Is he bisexual? Not so much, it would seem. He’s straight. Then he has a couple of conversations and presto, magic peen, he’s in love with one man and, at the end, is heading that way with the second—a mind-boggling love interest who was introduced at the eleventh hour. So much in this story was excused, it seemed, because that’s just the way it is, it’s fantasy, and I should expect to suspend all disbelief even if things could have been better fleshed out. And, it didn’t work.

The climactic scene and resolution of A Year Less Three Days felt a bit manipulated for the sake of added melodrama, but then it lacked the emotional impact it was supposed to deliver. Why? Because the two men who claimed to be in love with Necromis projected so little emotion over something that ought to have carried a bit more weight to it. I had to read the scene twice, in fact, because I was sure I’d missed something. I can only say that the push to deliver this dramatic twist then ended up falling flat for me because the characters themselves were so meh about it.

In the end, A Year Less Three Days was a rare Samhain miss, with too much story left untold for me to buy into what otherwise seemed a promising idea for a fairy tale.

Reviewed by Lisa for The Novel Approach Reviews
http://www.thenovelapproachreviews.co...

[Natosha Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is nothing like I thought it would be and definitely did not turn out how I thought it would either. None the less it was a book full of magic, demons, curses, love that passed and new love that transpired. It was truely an intriguing read that I really enjoyed.

Necromis made a deal with a demon to save the man he loved from being a slave. But the demon tricked him and Sterling did not make it. To break the curse Necromis had to make a slave that was straight fall in love with him and the feat was not an easy one. But it did happen and Lias did eventually fall in love with him and broke the spell. But that is not where it ended and it was heart breaking what transpired.

At first I was not a fan of Necromis but the more I read of the book the more I realized that everything that Necromis did he did for the love that he had felt for Sterling and it may not have all played out the way he hoped but everything that happened to him led him to Lias and a love so strong that each of the two men was willing to sacrifice themselves for the other. There was a sacrifice but I will not say or spoil which man made the sacrifice nor will I say what the sacrifice was. I will say that I found myself crying and asking why it happened the way it did. But even with crying I still enjoyed this book and I still loved how this book played out. Alyx did an amazing job with this book. I look forward to reading more by this author in the future.

I was given this book for free by inked rainbow reads for an honest review

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Year Less Three Days by Mychael Black and Alyx J. Shaw is a very different kind of MM love story. I like the almost middle ages feel to this futuristic tale. The only thing for me that made this book not my favorite is the ending. Up until that moment I was in love with how raw and gritty this book is. There are places that get very gritty and real but I felt those moments were essential in the telling of this tale.
Lias he is really who this story is about. He is a simple woodsman. With a family he loves. His wife dies, and he ends up getting a nanny for his kids. After a while he marries the nanny, not out of love for her but for the kids. When she is captured by traders, he tries to rescue her, only he gets kidnapped and sold off himself.
He is one ticked off prisoner. He does not cower, nope he fights with everything inside him. It will take a special kind of owner to tame the fire inside of this slave.
Necromis is a fair, but tough man. He is a knight making amends for a mistake made long ago. He takes slaves that no one else wants and makes them people again. Only he did not count on falling for Lias.
Most of this book is in Lias's point of view, it is his journey from enslavement to the light again. I really enjoyed it. Like I said the ending was not my favorite but the story itself is a MUST read.


Four Twinkling Stars

[Kris Mielke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lias is a broken man. A mere shell of the husband and father he once was. He has all but, had the life beaten out of him. As he comes to terms with the fact he may never see his children again, he is sold one last time to a new Master.
Necromis is damned by the devil. In the hopes of spending the rest of his life with his lover Sterling, Necromis is given status of a Knight by Bonecracker in exchange for something else. After the deal is made Sterling’s Master kills him to spite Necromis. Necromis is distraught with anger and guilt for not saving Sterling. To save his own life now he must save the life and earn the love of another man. Not just any man, a man who has only had feelings for women in the past.
Lias must learn to trust Necromis and understand that not all Masters are evil. And Necromis must show Lias that he can love a man just the same as loving a woman. And it just may be possible the relationship is better than either has ever experienced.
This is a fantasy story, so if that is not your cuppa this book is not for you. The book is well written and kept me hooked from beginning to end. I received a free copy of his book from Inked Rainbow Reviews in exchange for an honest review.

[H.L. Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first 60% of this book. It was well written and had some interesting ideas in it. Lias was an interesting character-I'm a sucker for the damaged and bitter character. Necromis was okay despite continually saying how pretty he was.

Then it all seemed to go into fast forward. It felt like in the space of about ten pages ( in reality, I'm sure it was more) that Lias had decided out of the blue, after not giving it any consideration, that he could indeed have sex with a man. Then he was immediately in love. Then miraculously Lias got his daughters back, and everything was suddenly hunky dory.

I was not a fan of the ending. Again, it seemed a little rushed: Sterling suddenly appearing without any real build up, and then the couple at the end not being who you would expect, but strangely both happy to go along with it.

There were just far too many plot holes and questions left unanswered for me: Why did Necromis have Ursine? What was his purpose? How could Merdine just walk straight into the house to confront Lias? How come, Hawthorne, despite making it clear, he had a wife and daughter seemingly just move into the house for weeks/months? Why was there a wizard living there?

I really wish the last half of the book, could have matched the first half.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to know just how to rate this book. It began so well that I had convinced myself that the rest of the book was going to continue to be just as amazing. I was disappointed when the characters seemed to suddenly change their personalities and I was at a loss. I preferred their original personalities, which had more depth and feeling.

Plot-wise the book was pretty good. I liked the curse aspect and I enjoyed the slave/master parts of the story. I just wish that the characters had continued with the same strength.

I've decided to rate this book as a solid three stars. It was a good book and quite interesting, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for M/M fantasy.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me a copy to review.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you are looking for a sweet book, this is not for you, this books is dark and crazy lol I never though I would like something like this but I'm not going to lie I enjoy it and the ending was freaking surprising

[Lada · Rating 1 out of 5]

What did I just read? A parody? Or something written while tripping on acid? And it's published by Samhain, too!

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the cover.