Genre: Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
After an encounter that left both of them bitter, can spiritual advisor Sai-Jun and son of the general Shen-Fei overcome their differences in time to survive the buried secrets that threaten them?
As the youngest spiritual advisor of Foshana in over a century, Sai-Jun performs his duties with a single-mindedness that comes from years of study and training… or at least, he’d like to, except that a fateful encounter with a certain young man nearly a year ago continues to invade his thoughts. Worse still, that young man is Shen-Fei, son of General Shen-Ya, whose dangerous temper has inspired Sai-Jun’s intense dislike.
For all his father’s ambitions, Shen-Fei has no wish to follow in his footsteps as a warrior. Instead, his passion is for drawing—something the general will not tolerate. He also hides a dark secret that he dares not share with anybody—not even the one person who might be able to help.
With emotions threatening to come to a head amid the ever-present game of politics, will secrets be exposed too late? And even once they’re revealed, will Sai-Jun and Shen-Fei be able to resolve past misunderstandings and rekindle their lost love?
The Review
Diana Waters has created an elegant little romance, which would be unexceptional if she hadn’t chosen to place it in an undefined distant past in a world that is distinctly Asian. It brought to mind the snippets of Korean historical dramas I’ve seen on television, but for, of course, the central romance between two young men, Sai-Jun and Shen-Fei.
If you stripped away the Asiatic trappings (which, I hasten to note, are beautifully rendered and imaginative), you’d have a simple farm boy with special talents, falling for the deeply repressed son of a powerful military man. By creating the setting she does, both familiar and alien to most readers, Waters transcends the classic storyline and makes it into an epic tale of love conquering pain and violence.
Sai-Jun, the boy of humble background who finds himself in a position of political and spiritual power because of his talents, is set in counterpoint to Shen-Fei, a childhood schoolmate, a born aristocrat whose father has always been a figure of ominous authority. In a way that reflects both their youth and their restrictive cultural setting, the boys fail to understand each other, inflicting needless emotional pain. The turning point in the story is the moment when Sai-Jun begins to understand the ugly truth behind Shen-Fei’s reticence and past rejection.
The calculated strictures of the fantasy world allow the author to ratchet up the emotional impact of the young men’s situation. Frustrated yearning ultimately gives way to growing wisdom, as Sai-Jun emerges from his cocoon of uncertainty and becomes a force to be reckoned with. It is a lovely process to witness.
Four stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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