Title: Line and Orbit
Author: Sunny Moraine & Lisa Soem
Genre: m/m fantasy & futuristic
Print length: 325 pages
Publication date: February 5, 2013
Rating: Five Stars
Blurb: What he’s been taught to fear could be his destiny…and his only hope.
Adam Yuga, a rising young star in the imperialist Terran Protectorate, is on the verge of a massive promotion…until a routine physical exam reveals something less than perfection. Genetic flaws are taboo, and Adam soon discovers there’s a thin line between rising star and starving outcast.
Stripped of wealth and position, stricken with a mysterious, worsening illness, Adam resorts to stealing credits to survive. Moments from capture by the Protectorate, help arrives in the form of Lochlan, a brash, cocksure Bideshi fighter.
Now the Bideshi, a people long shunned by the Protectorate, are the only ones who will offer him shelter. As Adam learns the truth about the mysterious, nomadic people he was taught to fear, Lochlan offers him not just shelter—but a temptation Adam can only resist for so long.
Struggling to adapt to his new life, Adam discovers his illness hides a terrible secret, one that the Protectorate will stop at nothing to conceal. Time is growing short, and he must find the strength to close a centuries-old rift, accept a new identity—and hold on to a love that could cost him everything.
Warning: This title contains brief scenes of explicit violence and mild but potentially triggering homophobia.
Review:
Wow. I mean, holy crap.
I held off doing this review 'cause I wasn't sure what to say or how to say it. I'm still not sure so just bear with me.
This has everything! Everything you might want or need from a sci-fi/romance/fantasy. There's action, there's mystery, there's intergalactic warfare, genetic modification, there's humanity and grief and love and just holy crap of everything good.
I don't even know where to start. Bideshi! How to even describe them? At first I though they were the descendants of Romani, but as I kept reading more about their ways and traditions, they struck me more as a mix of gypsies and Israelites with just a touch of Native American. The combination to just blow your freaking mind. Their ship (one of the three we are introduced to) defies any descriptions. Sure, I could give it a try, but it won't be the same. You gotta read the book to get the feeling of it, the connection, the beauty.
I love the plot. Just love it. To the point where I found myself offended when someone mentioned that this book 'tried to take on the issue of genetic modification and failed.' Really? Humanity, man. Humanity is what it's all about. We're not talking about some technical sci-fi genetic handbook here. This reaches for the root (excuse the pun) of what makes us human. The wonderful fragility and imperfection of our place in the world. There's such a wealth of failure and triumph in this, such a ravishing collection of joy and pain and mystery, a joining of everything conceivable to make you just FEEL.
And the romance! I never, ever fall in love so fully with both characters. Usually, one of them will feel incomplete. Adam and Lochlan are so different, so real, both flawed in different ways and equally frustrating. But together, they're bloody magic. You gotta love the detail put into their connection, into the time during which they circle each other. It's so well done, it's like a mating dance set before the beginning of time.
I have no complaints. None. Not even a smidgen. Just being able to say that is so rare for me that I can count the times on the fingers of one hand. I rarely ever recommend a book too, but Line and Orbit, you gotta read this. Your world will be richer for it.
Buy it from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Line-and-Orbit-ebook/dp/B009IV9K76/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_img_3
More titles by Sunny Moraine:
Title: In the Pale Moonlight
Author: Sunny Moraine
Genre: m/m paranormal
Print length: 47 pages
Publication date: October 4, 2010
Overall reviewer rating: Five Stars
Blurb: Moonlight can show a great deal more than sun…
For years, Rhys has lived alone on his isolated patch of land, far from his brothers and sisters, shunning all human company. For years, it has been enough for him to hunt alone, without a pack or mate, and for years he had been sure that it would always be that way.
But certainties can play tricks on a certain mind. One night, Rhys finds a young man, James, huddled in a ruined hut on his land. And when--against his better judgment--he agrees to offer James shelter in his own house, everything begins to change. Haunted by a past he can't escape, Rhys finds himself far too tempted by the presence of young human flesh. James becomes far too curious about his mysterious host. And one fateful night could seal the future for both of them, the moonlight revealing too much to be denied.
Review by Elisa ( Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer ):
A short paranormal/historical novella set in an undefined country, probably England or Scotland or Ireland; actually aside for an epilogue there are only two men in all the story and they have both similar experience in their past: shunned by their parents and families since they prefer the company of men. The only difference is that Rhys, older and stronger, has his own land where he can roam at night and living in a peaceful, but isolated way during the day; James instead, barely eighteen years old, has no mean of substance on him, and when Rhys finds him in his land, the boy is almost freezed to death.
Rhys's first instinct would be to kill the stranger, but then loneliness makes him take another decision; he brings the kid at home with him, like someone would do with a stray pet. He feeds and shelters him, but when James doesn't want to share his own story, so Rhys doesn't reveal his true nature. Day after day they establish a good cohabitation, but there a sexual tension underneath, something neither James or Rhys speaks aloud but that is clear will lead them towards a decision point. In a clear similitude, the sexual tension will cross path with the true nature of Rhys which needs to be freed, and that will be the moment for both James and Rhys to take that decision.
The sex that will come next will be a little awkward, no one of them is experienced and most they go on by instinct, but it will be good; so good that there will be only one logical decision to take, one that will allow James and Rhys to be together forever, so that loneliness will be no more an issue for both of them.
Rhys's first instinct would be to kill the stranger, but then loneliness makes him take another decision; he brings the kid at home with him, like someone would do with a stray pet. He feeds and shelters him, but when James doesn't want to share his own story, so Rhys doesn't reveal his true nature. Day after day they establish a good cohabitation, but there a sexual tension underneath, something neither James or Rhys speaks aloud but that is clear will lead them towards a decision point. In a clear similitude, the sexual tension will cross path with the true nature of Rhys which needs to be freed, and that will be the moment for both James and Rhys to take that decision.
The sex that will come next will be a little awkward, no one of them is experienced and most they go on by instinct, but it will be good; so good that there will be only one logical decision to take, one that will allow James and Rhys to be together forever, so that loneliness will be no more an issue for both of them.
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