The Blasted Lands

The Blasted Lands by James A. Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Emperor is dead. Murdered in his own palace by someone he welcomed as a guest. Desh Krohan, Merros Dulver, and the soon to be named Empress Nachia Krous are preparing for war against the most dangerous force they've ever imagined.

The Blasted Lands is a slow burn of a book. I was expecting war to break out immediately, but instead this book was another build up book. Many secrets are revealed before the book ends and the conclusion is jaw dropping. I wish that conclusion came much sooner as I'm left to imagine the next book will be incredibly intense.

The characters largely remained the same in the book despite many of the main ones being given new roles. The one exception is Andover Lashk. He's been transformed from the beginning of Seven Forges. He was a victim and now he's becoming a predator. His personality itself is changing slower, but the lessons provided by the Sa'ba Taalor and the Daxar Taalor change him.

The Blasted Lands was good, the ending made it intriguing, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series.

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BLACKBIRDS BY CHUCK WENDIG

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”Miriam’s been out here for twenty minutes, and she wonders why this isn’t easier. Here she is, tight white T-shirt--a tight, white, wet T-shirt with no bra in sight--and her thumb out for a ride. Prime, Grade-A Road Trash, she thinks. And yet, nobody stops.

A Lexus speeds past.

‘You’re a dick,’ she says.

A white SUV rumbles by.

“You’re a superdick.”

A rust-fucked pickup approaches, and she thinks, this is it. Whoever’s driving this junk-bucket is sure to think he can score with this thin slip of road pussy.”

To say that Miriam Black is living on the edge is almost a laughable understatement. Here she is, standing out by the side of the road, a living breathing woman, in dire circumstances, sporting a she-must-like-it-rough black eye, and she can’t get anyone to even slow down to take a lingering, leering look at the dark smudges of her cold induced erect nipples.

What’s a girl got to do?

The white elephant of a question is, how does a woman find herself in so much trouble that even a potential rapist, stopping to spirit her away, is a relief?

As she will tell you, her body is no temple. There is no vestal virgin lurking behind the zipper of her jeans. The laws of the universe are clear: ass, grass, or gas, no one rides for free.

Her life has always been a kaleidoscope of varying degrees of trouble, but recently somebody turned the fan on high and shit started flying at her faster than she could flutter her eyelashes.

She needs some ”zen and the art of repression.”

Her boyfriend, Ashley Gaynes, who is not her boyfriend, is carrying a suitcase full of stolen meth. He is a real asshole, too.

”’I figured you might be able to push it.’

‘Me? Are you kidding?’

‘You look...like you maybe do meth. Or did.’

‘No,’ she seethes, ‘I look like I do heroin--and I don’t do that either. I have all my teeth and I don’t smell like cat piss, so don’t think I’m some basehead tweaker fuckface.’”

Yeah, he is a gem.

There is also Ingersoll, whom we will just call the Hairless Fucker, well, because he is hairless, and his two hench people, Frankie and Hannah, want and need to hurt Ashley because they want the meth back.

Miriam turns out to be a pleasant surprise. She has something that is much, much more valuable to Hairless Fucker than a suitcase full of meth, even if that meth was blue and made by Walter White. It isn’t, but if it was, it still wouldn’t be more valuable than what Miriam can do.

She can tell you when you are going to die.

Now if you are a unmitigated, unequivocal asshole like the Hairless Fucker, you know your demise is probably going to be heinous, gory, and probably have something to do with fucking somebody over.

If you can know when you are supposed to die, maybe you can avoid the whole damn thing and live to a ripe old age in the Cayman Islands.

In Miriam’s experience, ”Fate is an immovable object.” There is no changing your destiny. Your life has already been woven, and the fates are plucking the strings. ”All of our lives are just a series of events carefully orchestrated to culminate in whatever death fate has planned for us. Every moment. Every act. Every loving whisper and hateful gesture--all just another tiny cog in the clockwork ready to ring the alarm for our ultimate hour.”

There is the possibility that Miriam is wrong. What if we could change our fate by making different decisions? On the day we are supposed to be splattered all over the front of a Greyhound bus, what if we stay home, locked in the bathroom, curled up in the tub, waiting for a new day to dawn? Does the bus crash through our house and splatter us anyway? Or does the Grim Reaper find us, snickering at our feeble attempts to trick him, and we are found in the tub split from head to toe by a weapon that the coroner can’t identify because it hasn’t been used to cut wheat in a hundred years?

*Sigh*

Would you want to know?

Me, you’re asking me?

No way, no how. I want to be the most surprised person on the planet when my heart explodes in my chest, or a burst vessel sprays hard pumping blood all over my brain pan, or a meteorite blows through my head at a thousand miles an hour. Knowing the ending would certainly screw up the middle pages of my autobiography.

Miriam needs to get away, as far as she can, from the Hairless Fucker and from Ashley Gaynes. The only problem is, she can’t ever run far enough or fast enough to outrun herself. The same old face will still be staring her in the face in Milwaukee as it was in Phoenix.

You will cringe. You will laugh. Your sphincter will pucker. Your stomach will churn. Your head will ache. You will emerge from the pages of this book a different person, tasting tarnished pennies in your mouth and needing to spend the rest of the day with the shades drawn, Tom Waits on the turntable, and slowly working your way through a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Wait! Miriam?!?! Is this how I croak? Shit! No, no, for the love of Odin, don’t tell me.

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A Policy of Lies

Astrid Amara
Horns Press
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 4 stars

Summary

Twenty years ago, Levi Kaszeri survived a brutal rebellion on the mining colony of Tarus 9. Now as an aspiring reporter, Levi has a mission: to expose the massacre to the public, and bring the men responsible to justice.

But after a violent attack, he is rescued—then seduced—by Tiergan Seoras, a young doctor with a dangerous past and a slave tattoo.

Soon Levi finds all of his investigations leading him back to Tiergan. And he begins to fear that the best lover he's ever had may also be his worst enemy.

My Review

I bought this title because I so thoroughly enjoyed Astrid Amara’s fun, sweet, humorous and romantic stories in Tangle.

The fun begins when investigative reporter Levi Kaszeri is walking through the worst district in the city to collect a piece of evidence, a memory implant he needs to complete his story of a massacre that took place on Tarus 9, a mining colony where Levi spent his childhood and where his family was brutally murdered. He is attacked by a mugger and promptly rescued by Tiergen Seoras, a gorgeous doctor with many secrets, who runs a free clinic nearby. Their attraction is instant, and Levi finds his growing relationship with the doctor is complicated by what his investigations reveal.

There is much to like about this story. I loved the future setting and independent space colonies with domed biospheres and simulated seasons. I loved the exploration of corporate crime and abuse. I loved the fast pace and suspenseful scenes and the well-drawn secondary characters.

What frustrated me most was the character of Levi. I expected a bit more “street sense” from someone who managed to survive a brutal massacre as a child and is now working as a reporter which requires a certain amount of discretion and common sense. I was able to figure out who the bad guys were long before Levi did and I really wanted to strangle him for his stupidity. He was so obsessed with revenge for his family’s murder and his sex life that he failed to see there was another side to the story at Tiergan’s peril.

Despite its flaws, I found this story difficult to put down and look forward to more of Astrid Amara’s work.

From the Mounds

From the Mounds by James A. Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From the Mounds can be downloaded from here for free.

Tusk is a fierce warrior and a king. This is the story of how he became king.

This story was intense. Learning more detail of Tusk's story just shows how insane life is for the people of the Seven Forges and how dedicated they are to their gods. Tusk is terrifying to say it nicely.

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AMERICAN GODS BY NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

***Now a celebrated TV series on Starz.***

“‘I read some book about brains,’ she said. ‘My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.’

‘I like my theory better,’ said Shadow.

‘What’s your theory?’

‘That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.’”


Shadow Moon is played by Ricky Whittle. Excellent casting.

There are few experiences that will teach someone more about himself better than going to prison. It is a microcosm. It is like shoving the world into a shoebox. There are rules, not prison rules, but prisoner rules, and you better get them figured out in a hurry. It is one of the few places remaining where people really have to interact and deal with other people. Inmates learn how to cooperate, or really bad things happen.

Plenty of bad things happen anyway.

Time keeps traveling at a normal rate outside, but inside the box, this minute is the same as the last minute, and when a person emerges from prison, it is like being dropped into a different world because his brain is still shackled in place, in whatever decade he first went into prison. A person spends a lot of time with himself in lockup. They become either a better version of themselves or a horrible twisted version of who they were supposed to be.

Shadow lost his temper and lost three years. He came out of prison probably a better person than who he was going to be. He learned to ignore the bullshit and focus on what was most important...living.

The universe is not done fucking with Shadow, not by a long shot. Prison is just the beginning, the burnishing of his character. He barely has made footprints in the dusty highway of his new life when he meets a god. Like it would with any of us, it takes a while for him to really believe he has met a god. This supposed god doesn’t glow or have a thunderous voice. He is abnormal, but in a kooky uncle sort of way, who besides being weird also happens to be a con man. He is frankly...kind...of...annoying.

Gods have fallen on hard times in America.

This god needs Shadow to work for him.

“The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new. Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, to get by on what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. And to get by as best we could.”

Christianity commits deicide. The whole convert or die thing sort of makes pagans and what would be considered alternative religion types to quickly reevaluate their level of faith in the old gods. It is easier, after all, to focus on one god than figuring out the pantheon of gods they were trying to please before the first bedraggled priest washed up on the shores of their community. Christianity simplified faith. This left all the old gods, used to receiving tasty animal sacrifices, fresh fruits, virgins, bereft of not only sustenance but also...love.

We brought these gods to America with us and then abandoned them.

The new gods who are putting the final nail in their celestial coffins are the new deities, such as internet, media, and cell phones. They hurl insults like these: “You-you’re a fucking illuminated gothic black-letter manuscript. You couldn’t be hypertext if you tried. I’m…I’m synaptic, while, while you’re synoptic…” It is hard to be insulted by a compliment, isn’t it? These new gods are even starting to chip away at the strong foothold that Christianity has on the minds of the American people. If he doesn’t watch out, JC is going to be bumming rides from truckers on the interstate and hoping for the kindness of his former people, eyes focused like zombies on the screens before them, for a handout.

Not to mention the fact that Shadow has televisions asking him, ”Do you want to see Lucy’s tits?”

I’d explain that, but it is more fun for you to find out for yourself.

Needless to say, things are dire.


Ian McShane plays Mr. Wednesday, brilliantly of course.

Shadow’s boss, Mr. Wednesday, you can probably figure out who he is, decides it is time to wipe the new kids off the block (a version of Titan vs Olympian) and seize the power the old gods so passively let slide through their fingers. Shadow is caught right in the damn middle of it. He is Odysseus in the midst of the Trojan War.

Shadow naturally asks himself, why me?

When Neil Gaiman first submitted this book for publication, his editor/publisher suggested that he cut 12,000 words out of the manuscript. If you are having deja vu feelings of The Stand by Stephen King, you are on the right fright frequency. Gaiman won a plethora of awards for American Gods, so how can you argue that the cuts weren’t a good idea? The thing is, those orphaned 12,000 words were still whispering to Gaiman, and when the decision was made to put out a tenth anniversary edition, he decided it was time to put the kids back with their parents. I would highly suggest reading the 10th anniversary edition. I do not feel the book is bloated. All the scenes are relevant to the larger arc of the plot. I would be nervous to lose the experience of reading any part of this book.

I was skeptical when I began reading this book. Gaiman introduces these gods from different cultures and does not exactly explain who any of them are, or at times he is even being cagey with their names. He is expecting a certain sophistication from his readers that is not only refreshing, but startlingly bold. I thought, in the beginning, that he has the Stephen King magic figured out with the easy accessibility of the writing and enough interesting factoids to make people feel like they are learning something as they work their way through the plot. He has those things, but he doesn’t just let us dog paddle on the surface of the water. He snags our ankles and thrusts us deeper beneath the waves to where things get dark, and we have no choice but to examine ourselves in the context of this story.

And what a pleasant surprise it has been.

”Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.”

With books like this, we resume a richer life.

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Futureshocks

Edited by Lou Anders
Roc Books
Reviewed by Nancy
3 out of 5 stars

Summary

In this stunning collection of short fiction, 16 of today's masters of speculative fiction reveal the terrors, triumphs, and seeming impossibilities awaiting humanity in the years to come. Featuring never-before-published stories by Kevin J. Anderson, Paul Di Filippo, Alan Dean Foster, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Louise Marley, Sean McMullen, John Meaney, Paul Melko, Robert A. Metzger, Chris Roberson, Adam Roberts,Mike Resnick & Harry Turtledove, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson.

My Review

Overall, an enjoyable collection of stories that offers diverse visions of the future.

★★★★★ Shuteye for the Timebroker by Paul DiFilippo – One of my favorites in this collection. An exploration of the effects of anti-somnolence drugs on a near-future society. Sure, people can increase their effectiveness and accomplish more, but there is always a price to pay.

★★ Looking Through Mother’s Eyes by John Meaney – Told from the perspective of a newborn who is aware of its own birth and the effects on both parents. Nicely written, but kind of icky. I don’t enjoy stories about pregnancy.

★★★★ The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alan Dean Foster – In the future, acquiring knowledge is as simple as downloading data directly to your brain. There is a limit, however, to how much information one’s brain can process at once. In the hands of specialists, knowledge is disseminated gradually without danger to the recipient. Some people, however, are just not satisfied and crave all the world’s knowledge much as an addict craves drugs.

★★★ The Engines of Arcadia by Sean McMullen – A man builds a time machine to escape his dull, safe life only to find that millions of years later, some things never change.

★★★★ The Pearl Diver by Caitlin R. Kiernan – Recurring dreams, the consequences of deleting unread company correspondence, and transformation. A sad and lovely story.

★★★ Before the Beginning by Mike Resnick & Harry Turtledove – A humorous story that shows why God’s chosen people have lasted so long.

★★★★ Man You Gotta Go by Adam Roberts – An AI is enlisted to help solve the problem of FTL travel. Human consciousness becomes obsolete. A little long and drawn out, but interesting and thought provoking.

★★ Homosexuals Damned, Film at Eleven by Alex Irvine – A bleak and sad story that portrays the downside of living in a theocracy. A geneticist who attempted to save the life of his son fears he may have caused his death. I may have liked this story better if it was longer and the characters more developed.

★★★★Contagion by Chris Roberson – Jaidev Hark is a Vector employed to carry data-encoded retroviruses in his blood. He lives in a society divided by castes; the higher the caste, the more they can afford protection from disease. Pursued by data-thieves, he reveals to his employer that they are looking for Panacea, the mythical (or is it?) cure of every human infirmity. In order to survive, he goes to work for the other side. This is a thought-provoking story that makes me wonder about the dreadful state of our health care system and if we will ever achieve affordability and equity.

★★★★Absalom’s Mother by Louise Marley – This hard-hitting and powerful story moved me to tears. In a society where children as young as 11 are drafted for service, a group of mothers hides their children and volunteers to go in their place. The characters are strong, rich, and vibrant.

★★★Job Qualifications by Kevin J. Anderson – Politicians have to work hard to be all things to all people. In the distant future, Berthold Ossequin’s clones help to make him a more suitable candidate for grand chancellor of the United Cultures of Earth.

★★★★The Teosinte War by Paul Melko – After reading Melko’s novel, The Walls of the Universe, I knew I could count on him to write a fun and thought-provoking story about the bad things that could happen when an ambitious professor uses an MWD to mess around in other universes and involves his TA, Ryan Greene. Though Ryan is kind of a jerk, he is ultimately a sympathetic character as he witnesses one disaster after another and learns that one can’t play God.

★★Slip by Robert A. Metzger – Getting what you ask for doesn’t always result in a positive outcome.

★★All’s Well at World’s End by Howard V. Hendrix – Memory erasure, annihilation. It would have been more interesting if too many scientific terms hadn’t made my eyes glaze over.

★★★★Flashes by Robert J. Sawyer – Unlimited information from a technically advanced alien planet renders human knowledge and theories obsolete. This gripping and sad little story explores the dire consequences of information overload.

★★★★The Cartesian Theater by Robert Charles Wilson – A performance artist uses advanced technology to duplicate living creatures. This chilling story explores life, death, and the question of the soul’s existence.

Scars

Scars by James A. Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read Scars here for free

While Wollis March escorted the people of the Seven Forges to the Empire, they discussed their scars. I wish I could write more, but that's basically all that happened.

2.5 out of 5 stars

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THE PRONE GUNMAN BY JEAN-PATRICK MANCHETTE

The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

”’Basically,’ said Maubert, ‘anyone could do your job. I bet they pay you well, but anyone could do it. You’re paid for running the risk. For the responsibility. I mean, if you’re nabbed one day, you’re nabbed as a killer--that’s what I mean when I say risk. They don’t pay you for your skills.’”

Martin Terrier is a hired killer who decides it is time to retire. He had, before venturing out in his chosen profession, elicited a promise from his childhood sweetheart, Anne, to wait for him. He will return in ten years.

Now unless you are going off to fight the Trojan Wars and your sweetheart is Penelope, the chances of any person waiting for anyone to reappear after ten years is somewhere south of zero. If you have seen the movie Before Sunrise, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have trouble hooking back up after a year apart. Even if Anne is a woman of immense fortitude and stoically waited for ten years,...Martin is a bit late.

Things in his life do not go as planned.

Killing for hire doesn’t come with a retirement plan. In fact, “The Company” he works for is reluctant to let him go. He is, after all, a ticking time bomb of knowledge. He has the type of information knocking around in his brain that a government would pay large sums for or they may just toss him in a dank hole in some undisclosed location in some third world country willing to look the other way as they explore his ability to be reticent.

First problem is that The Company is not going to just let him walk off into the sunset. The second problem is that Anne is married. She will not go down in literary history as the woman who waited. She didn’t wait years, nor months, barely a matter of weeks. Out of sight, out of mind, and I’m not sure that Martin deserved any more consideration than what she gave him.

The reunion is...interesting.

”Terrier gave her an ironic smile and poured her a stiff shot of J&B. Anne sighed and sat down on the bed. She took a sip. Terrier sat down next to her, took her by the head, and kissed her. She let him do it. Her mouth was passive, studious, plump, and tasted like scotch.

‘Stop,’ she whispered after Terrier released her.

‘Undress.’

She took off almost all her clothes.

‘The panties, too,’ said Terrier.”

Jean-Patrick Manchette is a student of hardboiled noir, and as you can see from this example, he must have had grit in his teeth at the end of each day of writing. I love the description of her mouth. When I look at synonyms of the word studious, which seems like an odd descriptive term to put with passive, there are several interesting interpretations of what he could mean with the use of that word.

I also find it interesting that Martin’s favorite drink is J&B Scotch, which also happens to be the drink of choice of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Is there some correlation between drinking J&B and having murderous impulses? I’ve never drank J&B, but I may have to snag a bottle the next time my wife is safely out of town for the weekend and see if I start to develop fiendish ideas in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of way.

If you love the hardboiled genre, you can not ignore Manchette. He pares down all the excess baggage in every sentence he writes. His books are short, clean, and laced with the right amount of cynicism. He is the French response to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. So grab a bottle of J&B (well, you might wait until we see how my experiment goes first. :-)), and look through the crosshairs with Martin Terrier for a few hours.

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Dan Stout's "Titanshade" is a winning combo of cop investigating murder on an alien planet with magical elements

What do you get when you mix alien murder, dark world building, a retro 70’s aesthetic and elements of magic and science fiction?  If you are lucky, you will be reading “Titanshade”, Dan Stout’s entertaining debut novel which combines politics, murder, aliens, magic and a charging plot in a boomtown city on the edge of catastrophe. It’s a mix of cop cars and dying magic, disco music and necromancy.  And a great portrait of a cop who lives for the hunt and solving crimes.  Stout’s gritty hero is Carter, a homicide cop, who is always in trouble with the brass, but finds the investigation of the murder of a Squib diplomat has far reaching consequences for his city and the people who live there.  Stout’s writing is spot on and the noir detective story with magic and modern technology works really well.

The Squibs are an alien amphibian race who live and work in Titanshade, a boomtown, which has been awash in a sea of greenbacks from the discovery and oil drilling.  But what happens when the oil runs out.  Cities try to get a new investment and reinvent themselves. Titanshade is deep in negotiations with a Squib delegation, who are interested in making a new investment in Titanshade by turning the oil fields into wind farms, when one of the members turns up dead in a sleazy hotel. This is not a novel for the squeamish, as the victim seems to have been involved heavily with human and other alien prostitutes.

Carter has been joined on the case by Ajax, a young Mollenkampi, another alien race that made its home in Titanshade.  As part of the investigation, Carter calls on the services of DO Guyer, a magic user, who can, with the use of manna, examine the entrails of a dead person or even call up the dead through a type of necromancy.  Manna, a magical substance used to power spells, that once was abundant in Titanshade, is also disappearing from the city, making all magical spells much more expensive. As a reader, unless you are in a world of total magic, the less magic that is used in a world the more believable the world becomes. Magic is like having a superhero run rampant through your story. So Stout’s limited use of magic in the story increases the velocity of the cop elements of the story by focusing it on investigation and not miraculous cures.

The Titanshade elites want the investigation wrapped up quickly, but Carter will not be pushed into arresting the wrong perp.  And there are a lot of crimes going on. An entire family is murdered. Is it connected?  The elites want it to be.  And there are a lot of power players.  Ambassador Paulus, a leader, and prime magic user in the government and her assistant, the diplomatic envoy Gellica, who has her own secrets, soon reveal themselves to be involved in some way.  Harlan Cedrow, the current head of one of the old oil families, who has the most to lose from the oil field devastation,  and there is Flanagan, a disgraced ex-cop, who has fallen in with a religious cult.  Carter takes a flame thrower approach, everyone who touches the investigation is burned.

Stout mixes all of the elements well and sets his bulldog investigator to follow the clues to the killer. It’s a complex investigation, but Carter is not going to walk away. 

This is what we as readers want in a cop story set in an alien landscape peopled with interesting characters and situations.

It is a find. Go discover it.

Blind Blondie

Scarlet Blackwell
eXtasy Books
Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Artist and playboy beach bum Sam's life is turned around when he meets blind Kieran and falls hard for him. Kieran is fiercely independent and doesn't need a man like Sam in his life. But Sam needs a man like Kieran and it's up to him to persuade Kieran he's worth a shot.

My Review

This story is told by Sam, who happens to be cruising down Main Street in the summer, catching glimpses of the gorgeous male bodies strolling around. Right away he spots Blondie, carrying a walking stick and using a sign to hail a taxi.

Sam pulls over and learns Blondie is on his way to the animal hospital. Blondie is gorgeous, but Sam doesn’t need the hassle of dealing with a blind guy or his dog, so he drops him off, never expecting to see him again.

Blondie knows Sam is no cab driver and calls the cops to prevent him from picking up other vulnerable people. After the cops pay him a visit, Sam is furious with Blondie and knows he should forget about him, but it’s just not happening.

Sam continues to pursue Blondie and is rejected at every turn. It takes a lot more than bribing a prickly concierge, a dog toy, flowers, and gifts to warm Kieran’s heart and melt his resistance. Kieran is perfectly capable of taking care of himself and knows that very few men are interested in dating a disabled guy. Sam is persistent, however, and won’t give up until Kieran relents.

Sam is a fun-loving, slutty guy with a big ego. He’s also a very talented artist who lacks ambition. He is starting to fall for Kieran and must prove to him that he can be the kind of man Kieran deserves. It’s a tough challenge for Sam, but he gradually changes and matures. Kieran is a tough nut to crack and it takes a tragedy to finally make him see that Sam is perfect for him in every way.

I loved Sam’s inner thoughts, his artistic expression, Kieran’s dog, and the kinky sex.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable, funny, sweet and heartwarming romance. Blind guys need love too.