The Gauntlet Runner The Tharassas Cycle Book # 2
LGBTQ Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Opera
WaterDragon Publishing
Sept 21, 2023
Kindle
376
Amazon
A guard and a thief. What could go wrong?
Aik has fallen hopelessly in love with his best friend. But Raven's a thief, which makes things … complicated. Oh, and Raven has just been kidnapped by a dragon.
Now Aik is off on a quest of his own, to hunt down the foul beast and make them give back his … friend? Lover? Soulmate? The whole not-knowing thing just makes everything harder.
Meanwhile, the world of Tharassas is falling apart, besieged by earthquakes, floods, and strange creatures no one has ever seen before. Aik's ex, Silya has gone back to Gullton to do try to save her people as the Hencha Queen, and Aik's stuck in a caravan with her mother and a damnable magical gauntlet that won't let him be. He has to find Raven, before it’s too late.
Things were messy before … but now they're much, much worse.
Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Gah. I am not a patient person, and now I have to wait for the third book in what will be the four-book Tharassas Cycle. Scott Coatsworth has kept the excitement and the emotion high in this second installment, moving the saga of Raven and Aik and Silya along, while taking care to remind the reader of what happened in the last book.
Set in the fantasy world of Tharassas, The Gauntlet Runner title refers specifically to Aik’s story – a Gullton Guard, onetime boyfriend of Temple initiate Silya, and now the beloved of Aladdin-like thief Raven. Aik is the quasi-captive of a mysterious gauntlet that gives him as-yet-unknown powers. Aik is also the current possessor of Spin, Raven’s familiar, which is in fact an unimaginably complex high-tech object that was the main drive control for the last Earth spaceship to crash-land on Tharassas, centuries earlier. In this world, concepts of space and space travel are mythical and inconceivable, and so Spin is considered magical.
Our three friends are split up here: Raven now in the verent (dragon) stronghold in the far East of Tharassas. Aik and Triya (Silya’s mother, a wealthy trader from whose country house the verent stole Raven) set out on a quest to find Raven. At the same time Silya, the newly-raised Hencha Queen, heads with her crew back to Gullton, aware that something cataclysmic is about to happen.
It’s a lot, and I was glad to realize as I read that things felt more and more familiar, including the complex system of names, and the equally complicated inner selves of the three young protagonists. Coatsworth is very good at delving into the backstories of the three teenagers (for that’s what they are). Getting to know Aik, Silya and Raven helps illuminate just why it is that they have become the collective salvation of the planet from the hidden forces of an alien race (or, I should say, another alien race).
The three personalities of the reluctant young heroes are beautifully sketched out. Each of flawed and annoying in their own way; but they also trigger all my protective parental switches. Each of them knows that there’s something they have to do – but none of them are quite sure what that is. Silya adjusts to flexing her political power as Hencha Queen; Raven sets aside his thief’s paranoia to embrace the strange, symbiotic world of the verent (dragons); and Aik simply struggles to realize that is smarter, stronger, and bigger-hearted than he ever understood. Each of them feels isolated, and yet acknowledges that they are surrounded by people who care about them.
Coatsworth also gives us constant visuals that, at least for a person like me, create a cinematic sense of what Tharassas looks like. All the plant life is in shades of purple or red, while the sky is green. I’m not sure about the science behind that on another world, but the actors in the drama have known nothing else, reminding us that the concept of normal depends on where you are and who you are. The author is also very good at describing materials, giving the reader a strong physical sense of place as the story unspools. Reading this book is an immersive experience, and a great pleasure.
On a final note: this book is a voyage of discovery for Spin as well. Clearly his role in this saga is not understood by either Raven or Aik – or, possibly, Spin himself. Spin is a strange link to our own time and place (he’s always coming up with cultural references that make the characters in the story shrug with confusion). Spin is us, and we are visitors to another time and place just as he is.
LGBT/SCI-FI/FANTASY
LGBT/SCI-FI/FANTASY – SERIES
