Strange Fortune (Audible Audio Edition) Josh Lanyon David Lazarus Books
Download As PDF : Strange Fortune (Audible Audio Edition) Josh Lanyon David Lazarus Books
Valentine Strange, late of his Majesty's 21st Benhali Lancers, needs money. Happily, the wealthy Holy Orders of Harappu are desperate to retrieve the diadem of the Goddess Purya from an ancient temple deep in the mountainous jungle-an area Strange knows well from his days quelling rebellions. The pay is too good and the job seems too easy for Strange to refuse. But when Master Aleister Grimshaw, a dangerous witch from a traitorous lineage, joins the expedition, Strange begins to suspect that more is at stake than the retrieval of a mere relic.
Grimshaw knows an ancient evil surrounds the diadem - the same evil once hunted him and still haunts his mind. However, experience has taught him to keep his suspicions to himself or risk being denounced as a madman. Again.
Harried by curses, bandits and unnatural creatures, Strange and Grimshaw plunge onward. But when a demonic power wakes and the civilized world descends into revolution, their tenuous friendship is threatened as each man must face the destruction of the life he has known.
Strange Fortune (Audible Audio Edition) Josh Lanyon David Lazarus Books
Quite a bit different from the other Lanyon works I've read, but definitely an enjoyable read. I thought the magical plot was quite interesting, I really enjoyed the characters, and I found myself quite drawn into this other world. I thought the relationship between Aleister and Valentine was wonderfully built and paced, and I very much enjoyed the ending.I will say that I thought the world building could have used some work. It was a little too confusing, and it took me much longer than I would have liked to really understand the players and the background of the different peoples and myths. All of the politics and religions etc. played a large role in the plot, and it felt like, at times, Lanyon assumed the reader had a much greater understanding of this world than I actually did.
Also, a small, silly thing, but all the sex scenes were implied/fade to black, which was disappointing. Perhaps it wouldn't have been if I hadn't many of Lanyon's other works and hadn't come in with an expectation of something more explicit, but I did feel a little cheated.
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Strange Fortune (Audible Audio Edition) Josh Lanyon David Lazarus Books Reviews
Warning This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.
Rating 7/10
PROS
- The story has an exotic feel to it. Many of the characters are larger-than-life (without falling into the realm of caricature), the setting is unusual and mysterious, and the events are fantastical and, for the most part, exciting. (see cons below also)
- It took a while for me to figure out whether the setting was historical or fantasy, which is a mark of a good fantasy setting, in my opinion--that it mimics real life so well that it seems real itself.
- This is an example of a story in which the two men dislike each other at the beginning and only very gradually learn to like each other. In many "enemies to lovers" stories, the transition seems forced or too fast to me; here it was believably slow and incremental. First dislike, then indifference, then tolerance, then amusement, then friendship, and then at last, romantic interest.
- There's some dry humor in the exposition that amused me. Strange thinks at one point late in the story, when he and Grimshaw are already quite attached to each other emotionally, "For personal reasons he would prefer that Aleister not be killed....His own survival was also of some interest."
CONS
- The story drags in several places. The journey to the monastery is long, the time spent AT the monastery is long, and the final battle/showdown is long.
- The sex isn't graphic at all, which is often totally fine with me--some writers don't enjoy writing scenes like that and some readers don't enjoy reading them. I was a little disappointed with this story, though, because we get some teasing scenes with a decent amount of detail, but when the guys finally go all the way, we see nothing. It seemed as though the author was setting me up for some bedroom scenes with at least as much detail as the teasing scenes, and then I was let down because I felt that he didn't follow through.
- I've read a lot of stories in this genre, and the vast majority of them are terribly edited. It still shocks me when I read sentences that have obvious errors in them, though "We're lucky the lot of us go with it"; "And he fairly sure the end was near" (missing words--"didn't" and "was," respectively). I don't understand how that sort of thing doesn't get noticed before a book is published.
Overall comments I thought this was a pretty good adventure story, but I wouldn't recommend it for people who are looking for a lot of romance. The romantic relationship here is secondary to the plot, and the characters are so busy fighting for their lives that they don't have time for much sweetness or passion.
Like all Josh Lanyon books this is a beautifully written novel with deep and realistic characters, succulent world-building and nuanced plot. But despite the high quality, I would say this is the weakest of any of Lanyon's works and I have never before come across one book or novella from this author that I couldn't call 5-star. It feels.... Younger. Not as complete or polished. (I could be completely wrong, but this feels suspiciously like an early Lanyon book.) In the m/m mystery fantasy/horror genre (sub-genre? Sub-sub-genre? um...) this book falls noticeably short when compared to the reigning champion "Whyborne and Griffin" series. Why? This book is not deep enough. For a story that relies not on a plot that is dynamically-driven but character interaction and the socio-political saturation of the setting, there just doesn't feel like there is enough material. Not in the critical skeleton and articulations, but in the added flesh that fills out a story like this. There isn't enough detail shown to the reader in the interactions surrounding the plot to bolster the story's depth, or in lieu of a detailed web of interactive characters and forces, detailed character history to give multi-layered grounding and understanding to the social and political elements that weave throughout the novel. The reader knows what is happening and why, and we have the important outlines and facts, but the juicy detail necessary to add meat and deepen a story of this type and make it 5-star are missing.
Lanyon does have a unique way of using the impersonal narrative voice, omniscient in nature and yet only giving the reader carefully crafted snapshots of the characters and plot that build up to a whole without giving everything away up front, and always before this has been used to brilliant effect, but this time...the field of view was too narrow and the reader ends up missing detail and even scenes that really need to be there to give the whole picture.
The following is SPOILERS so BEWARE.
----
Where was I rambling? Oh, yes. Let me explain what I was talking about. In this book, often, the reader is too removed from scenes or action that they really need to be in the thick of, like taking a photograph from a far off vantage point when you need a close-up. For example, At the climax, we're watching the only dialogue between Dakshi and our resident Evil Overlord from Strange's perspective - this ancient relationship that has been built up over the entire novel, and it happens in a language we can't understand with no subtitles. And if the relationship and dynamic had been filled in more previously, or there was more non-verbal and emotive nuance to the scene, or we got some sort of substitute experience from Grimshaw, that would have been fine, but instead it's all too little, too removed, and ends up feeling pointless and anticlimactic. Or take for instance, Grimshaw and Strange's relationship - sexual tension and prominent physicality has underlined their entire relationship from day one, and yet sex and physical intimacy gets the barest mention when they finally get together, and there didn't have to be a sex scene or the like but instead there needed to be an emotional and/or psychological interpretation from at least one of the characters. In the end a large part of their relationship, the physicality and physical intimacy which is so important particularly to these two characters considering their circumstances and the sparse sexual options that have previously been open to them when it comes to men, is basically missing. The reader doesn't get to know what happens or the impact, or even the resolution of their physical and emotional issues - ALL of that happens in a narrative blindspot.
------ SPOILERS OVER.
This sort of narrative loss of detail or scenes litters this book. Not in critical ways that stop it from being high-grade reding material, but for this book with this kind if immersive fantasy that relies so heavily on the characters and not the plot, it stops this from being more than just a good book. Whether this could have been a 5-star book with just added detail or if it would need something more, I don't know, but as it is this book is 4-star.
Quite a bit different from the other Lanyon works I've read, but definitely an enjoyable read. I thought the magical plot was quite interesting, I really enjoyed the characters, and I found myself quite drawn into this other world. I thought the relationship between Aleister and Valentine was wonderfully built and paced, and I very much enjoyed the ending.
I will say that I thought the world building could have used some work. It was a little too confusing, and it took me much longer than I would have liked to really understand the players and the background of the different peoples and myths. All of the politics and religions etc. played a large role in the plot, and it felt like, at times, Lanyon assumed the reader had a much greater understanding of this world than I actually did.
Also, a small, silly thing, but all the sex scenes were implied/fade to black, which was disappointing. Perhaps it wouldn't have been if I hadn't many of Lanyon's other works and hadn't come in with an expectation of something more explicit, but I did feel a little cheated.
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