reviews_and_ramblings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2009-05-27 07:22 pm
reviews_and_ramblings) wrote2009-05-27 07:22 pm
Top 100 Gay Novel: Zero at the Bone by Jane Seville
This is a classical thriller story but with the hand of a woman in the doing, and so it doesn't lack of romantic elements. BUT this doesn't mean that the thriller part is not strong and cold, but it's a neat cold, not bloody and messy like sometime it's if the writer is a man. Sorry, but I'm really convinced that you can recognize the hand of a woman or that of a man, as I'm convinced that there are "limbo" zones where it's almost impossible to distinct. In this case I felt the hand of the woman when the characters got sentimental, when they share their feelings, when their dreams all in all convoy in having a suburb home with a dog in the back garden. Or maybe this is only the ordinary and the thriller author I read in the past lacked in describing it.Jack is the good guy of the story, probably the only one. He is a surgeon in Baltimore, a divorced man who realized later in his life that he prefers men over women, and he is a so good guy that he managed to get a friendly divorce and rebuilt a life of his own. Now he is quite the workaholic type, even if sometime he indulges in his pleasure. He has not a bad life, and probably with time, he will also improve it, adding the above-mentioned home and dog, and maybe also a partner. But all of this crashed down when Jack witnesses to a murder and he is the only one who can recognize the killers. He is taken into custody waiting for the trial, and relocated in another city... all his life is shattered and he has no hope to regain it.
Enter D, an hit man with a personal code of behavior: he only kills people who deserve it. Since he is the better in the field, he can choose, and what he doesn't want to do he passes on. But this time he can't refuse, he is blackmailed into killing Jack. Only that when D meets Jack, he really isn't able to kill the man, the innocence of the man is clear in his eyes and D is tired to let people die due to an event that isn't their fault. So D turns from enemy to protector, and he appoints himself the only protector of Jack. He kidnaps the man and runs all over the United States with his precious load.
The two men are at the opposite: Jack is open and friendly, without any secret in his past, who he is, is plainly displayed in his face. Jack is not a temperamental man, he is quiet and serene, he is the classical doctor that inspires you trust. Jack is upright and trusting, he doesn't hide his feelings and he is easily hurt since he is so open. But Jack is also unable to hold a grudge and he is the perfect partner for D since he is able to see behind the facade D presents to the world.
D is not cold and aloof as he seems; he doesn't even choose to be who he is, someone else at the beginning of all made that choice for him, and D followed the path it was presented to him. Times ago, D probably had the same dreams of Jack, of an home and a family in some nice places. Then a tragic fate, something he has no guilt of, shattered his world, and D claimed himself an avenger, and in his own particular way, he tries to correct the fate for whom has no guilt. And sometime he kills the one he judges guilty.
Where Jack is gay, and has already made his path out of the closet, D is still in the limbo. He is not actually in denial, since he simply excluded any personal relationship from his life, both with women than men. When he meets Jack, he is more drawn by the innocence of the man than by the man himself. In a way, their relationship is another joke of the destiny, since probably D would have fallen in love of a woman, if she was as innocent as Jack, but since he met Jack, Jack is the object of his love. D becomes Jack's protector, and Jack becomes all D's world, from not feeling anything, D passes to feel even to much, and all his love is poured on Jack.
As I said there is a lot of emotion flowing throughout the novel, and also some very nice sex scenes, but there is also a good level of tension, and the novel is also very long, and so we have also the chance to reach an apex, slowly come down, and suddenly reach another apex, all the time with some new details and events that maintain a fastpacing rhythm.
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/currenttitles/zeroatthebone/zeroatthebonebuynow.htm
Amazon Kindle: Zero at the Bone
Amazon: Zero at the Bone
Jane Seville's In the Spotlight post: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1230266.html
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
Cover Art by Paul Richmond
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There were moments when I thought "oh damn, I wish I had written that" and that's meant as a huge compliment. I am reccing this book everywhere and I read it in a day, yesterday.
Sucked me right in on the first page and spit me back out, 300 pages later, dishevelled, exhausted and very satisfied.
Okay, so I found the written-out accent a tad annoying and hard to read (and D sounded like an East Londoner in my head, because of the yer, and that made it kind of strange) but the story is so good and the characters are so 3-dimensional and well written (and some of the language is just beautiful!) that I really didn't care.
Jane pulls no punches, and that's - obviously - right up my alley.
Brilliant.
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I fell in love with both characters right away. The plot holds you hostage - literally! LOL - until the very end.
I would put this book on the same shelf with Grisham novels. It absolutely deserves it!
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