Lust & Other Demons Hammer Falls Book #1
Romantic Fantasy, Gay romance, LGBTQ Fantasy
Independent
Aug 5, 2022
Kindle
489
Amazon
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
I confess that my anxiety built almost immediately when, early in the book, I learned not only that Jin Harding was half-Korean and half demon; but that there was a terrible doom hanging over his head that had resulted in a wretched childhood in order to save him. This is not a spoiler – this is the establishing premise of the story.
Yikes. That’s when I noticed how long the book was, and realized that I’d have to survive all that melancholy before I knew how Jin’s fate turns out. At over 600 pages, it is surely the longest m/m/paranormal novel in my extensive reading list. You have to admire an author who thinks he can maintain a story as emotionally complicated as this one is for so long.
How, I asked myself, is the author going to maintain this plot arc for 600 pages without pushing me over an emotional cliff?
Well, you’ll be glad to know, he did it; and he did it by going deep into his characters, getting to know the key players until you feel like you live in Hammer Falls, too. The fact that Hammer Falls is a town in the Scottish Highlands, and that the locals speak with a local lilt was a captivating detail for a drab American like myself.
Jin Harding is a complicated young man. He’s been to Hammer Falls before, when he was a kid (that’s only ten years earlier, by the way). Then he met Keith Galbraith, and formed a sort-of-alliance with him. This time, a few months before his eighteenth birthday, Jin is back, dumped on his fake-uncle Phineas Fell by his feckless and selfish mother. Chief Inspector Fell (as he happens to be) doesn’t seem to want Jineither, but he has agreed to feed and shelter the difficult teenager for the time being.
Jin has a remarkable chip on his shoulder, and he disguises it with outlandish fashion and glittery eyeliner. Imagine his surprise when he immediately runs into a high-school crew who are not what he expected. First, there’s half-Asian Mei Han-Munro, whose mother is the head of school and thus has been assigned to take him under her wing. Mei seems to be part of a rather non-traditional peer group of girls – Mara, Kit and Rowan. Jinthen looks to the boys to find the expected homophobia and racism against which he has learned to build his personal walls: Nate Crow, Sam Gillespie and the archetypical blond jock Marshall Mason. Triggered by Nate, who reacts in a strongly negative way immediately, Jen is convinced he’s found his unhappy niche in yet another backwards school in another miserable small town where nobody wants to know him.
Surprise, surprise. Nate Crow and Sam Gillespie are easily as interesting as Jen is, and the author pulls us into their personalities as they days in Hammer Falls flick past. They are far more than they first appear to be, and the irony is that Jen’s unacknowledged friendship with them simply increases the danger he faces in the future. Sam is one of the most endearing teenagers I’ve ever encountered, and Nate is, if possible, even more complex than Jen himself. Marshall Mason only gets drawn into the action later on, and I did feel that he wasn’t quite given his due. He was too easy to dislike, and that didn’t seem fair.
The horror of it all is that Jen should not and cannot be loved. How can this possibly not end badly?
There you have it, a fascinating teenage story seething with emotional discomfort at odds with young people’s yearning to be comfortable in their skins.
I loved the ending, which is as bombastic and satisfying as you could want – and totally unexpected if you’re not paying close attention.
And there’s a second book, too, Sons of Heaven and Hell.