Book Review: Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale

So S_ told me that listing the books I've read this year in the sidebar is no longer sufficient, that I need to write something about each one or at least the ones that moved me especially.

Fine. >.<

I read Wicked Gentlemen two weekends ago on my trip to Atlanta. Gay sex, steam punk and descendants of redeemed fallen angels sounded like a good antidote to attending a convention of 3,000 Applied Linguists.

It's a set of two novellas, each from a different POV. In an alternate, steampunk-lite world where the Inquisition convinced the Fallen to repent and leave Hell, their no-longer-fallen-but-still-in-disgrace descendants are now loving among us as the downtrodden lower caste members of society. I love the concept and the writing is good. In short order, we are introduced to the two main characters, and they begin a professional relationship with some fringe sexual benefits. The fact that the two main characters are in a gay relationship seemed perfectly normal in the course of the story, but perhaps I am enured to this sort of thing after Sarah Monette.

I love that you see the relationship, and what it means, from each side - one POV in each novella. The fact that they spar with each other in humor and sarcasm seems right to me for two men. They also don't really discuss their relationship that openly or easily, which I also think reads right. It was exactly right for a novella - I felt the world was much wider that what we were given to glimpse, I wanted to know and read more, but I actually did not need more to understand and appreciate the story.

There, S_. I hope that is sufficient for the required literary analysis.