Okay, so I’m slowly working my way through my reading list of LGBT themed speculative fiction. I have read hundreds and hundreds of mainstream fantasy and sci fi books, but I’m now giving myself a crash course (well, more of a slow motion crash, given the limited amount of reading time I have these days) in gay sci fi and fantasy.
So I asked Jamie Fessenden which book of his I should read, and he turned me on to Saturn in Retrograde. I really liked this book, although I wasn’t sure going in if it fell more on the sci fi side or the MM romance side. I’d say it’s more of a romance, but it has a strong sci fi story to go with it.
The Saturn in the title isn’t the planet, as I first thought, but a particle accelerator that features in the sci fi plot.
But what really attracted me to the story was the intergenerational love affair between the main characters, Patrick, a middle-aged (but still fit and attractive) physicist and his protégé, Joshua, an up-and-coming physics grad student.
Jamie does a great job here with the push and pull of the relationship. My own husband and I have almost nine years in age difference between us, and while the characters’ difference is more extreme, I appreciated the fact that this wasn’t another story about two hot young twinks finding love.
The story ends with a good plot twist, which is another point in its favor.
Gotta read me some more Fessenden (if I can just find the time!).