Genre: Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Universal Buy Link | Amazon
About The Book
Blood is Stronger Than Magic
Ander Forrest renounced blood magic to become a nurse-healer in his rural hometown, far from the drama of wizardry and espionage his sister Kate craved. When Kate goes missing in action, Ander finds himself the legal guardian of her gifted twins and receives a cryptic warning from Kate’s husband to protect them before he, too, disappears.
Six months later, his former lover crash lands in the kids’ bedroom via a spell only Ander’s sister could have cast. Druid Cai Piper doesn’t remember how he got there, but he knows he never stopped loving Ander, and that he was sent to protect him and the twins. Cai is strangely drawn to Forrest House and the land it stands upon.
With the secrets of a clandestine wizards’ order hanging between them, Cai and Ander must remember how to trust each other as sinister forces move against the Forrest family—magical terrorists who want to exploit their rare sorcery and bring the world to its knees.
The Review
This is really good. The writing, the world-building, the internal logic of the (rather complicated) reality of magic as it functions through the characters—all is well done and keyed with authenticity and real emotions.
I’ve read quite a bit of gay romantic fiction set in alternative worlds where magic is simply part of human existence. Ms. Hamill makes her particular take on all of this clear without over-explication. Ander Forrest is the Warden of Forrest House, a rambling (presumably Victorian) house in rural Missouri. Ander guards the Forrest family legacy—which dates back centuries and into Europe. Ander’s sister Kate has married into an old Welsh magical family, tying the Forrest heritage to the Piper legacy.
Now the Forrests are Druids—whose ability to use and control magic is innate and closely tied with nature; while the Pipers are wizards, who use magic has to be learned through the manipulation of words and elements. Druids can be trained as wizards, but wizards do not have druidic skills. I think I got that right, and it’s essential to the story.
The story kicks off at a moment of crisis, after Ander’s sister has magically transported her seven-year-old twins, Remy and Raven to Forrest House from Wales to keep them safe. Someone has attacked the Piper family, who are part of the magical Fellowship in Wales.
The central mystery of this increasingly emotional crisis is who would attack Kate and why. Ander fears for his sister’s well-being, but relishes caring for her children—who themselves are more powerful Druids than anybody really understands outside the immediate family. Indeed, Ander himself holds onto a magical secret that he fears would put his entire family at risk. He has more or less retreated to the isolated Forrest House and is working as a magical healer at a local Emergency Room in order to avoid dealing with the wider magical world and its complications.
Fascinating snippets of magical folklore presented as history add a kind of weird gravitas to the narrative, and the traumatic romantic link between Ander and his sister’s brother-in-law hinges on the same magical secret that now seems to threaten the future of both families.
There’s a lot going on, and Hamill keeps it under strict control as this tale of international magical intrigue and politics unfolds with sometimes hair-raising results. It’s a wild ride.
Five 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.