Dangerous Ground by Josh Lanyon

TITLE: Dangerous Ground
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 30k)
GENRE: Gay suspense erotic romance
COST: $4.99

As agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt were partners for three years before a shooting nearly killed Taylor. Its timing couldn’t have been worse. Just hours previous, Taylor had admitted his feelings for Will, only to be firmly rebuffed. Now, less than two months later, their relationship is on the line, both professional and personal. Will invites Taylor out on a camping trip in a desperate bid to reconnect, and though Taylor hates to camp, he agrees, just as desperate to salvage what they can. Except it doesn’t work. And when they find a crashed plane and the missing money from a never-solved bank robbery, their situation goes from bad to truly dangerous…

Josh Lanyon is one of my auto-buy authors. I don’t even read his blurbs or excerpts anymore, because I trust him so implicitly. Color me a little surprised then to discover that Dangerous Ground is written in third person. It made for some interesting changes while I sat down and read this story.

In one wonderful way, it’s to the story’s advantage. Lanyon is already a master at setting up scene, but here, the mountain wilds is as much of a character as the two men. Nature is both their friend and enemy throughout the course of action, and the author highlights this with his wonderfully tight details. When Taylor and Will are forced to take shelter in a broken-down mining shack, you feel every scrape over bruised skin, the claustrophobia of their situation. When they indulge in a found hot spring, you experience the soft rush of relaxation as they sink into the steaming water. It’s one of the most effective uses of setting I’ve read in recent months.

There are points, however, where the perspective isn’t as tight as what I would expect from Lanyon. The story starts out with a bang, after much of the conflict between the two has already been established and on the brink of everything collapsing for them. With no backstory yet in place, a reader is left finding hooks into the story through the characters. The very first character mentioned is Will, wiping sweat from his face, and it’s followed immediately by, Ten thousand feet up in the High Sierras, the sun was still plenty warm despite the chill spring air. He gets the first line of dialogue, too. What this introduction did was put me in Will’s place at the story’s start. I thought it was his reflection that the sun was so hot, especially since he was the one acting at the time. But not too long after this, however, it becomes clear we’re in Taylor’s perspective, and it really threw me. So much so that I went back to re-read, thinking I’d missed something. Throughout the first chapter, there were occasional lines that popped up, that without yet having a firm grasp on each man’s personality, left me questioning whose head I was really in. Because of this, and the fact that so much is left unknown at the beginning, it took me longer to sink into the story than normal. Eventually, however, even those borderline sentences disappeared.

Part of my difficulty discerning the two personalities at the start ends up being one of the most fascinating aspects of the story. Both Taylor and Will are alphas, though throughout the course of the story, those alpha tendencies get displayed in very different ways. It creates a double-edged sword. On one hand, in order to survive the action and tension of the external conflict regarding the robbery, they must be capable of acting effectively, both independently and as a team. On the other, having two alphas in a romantic relationship can often be a recipe for disaster as they compete for the same responsibilities within the pairing. Lanyon ends up creating distinct personalities that not only portray exactly why these two are such an effective team, but gives a reader hope that they can actually make it work past the ending of the book. If I didn’t quite believe Will’s sudden switch in the middle of the story to alter the direction of their relationship, that’s minor in the overall effect Lanyon achieved.

Tight pacing and real danger glue all of this together into a package that’s uniquely Lanyon. When it comes to creating men who seem like they could walk and talk in the real world as well as the page, he stands tall in a very elite group.

Readability	8/10 – In spite of sections where POV isn’t as tight as I’d expect and a rocky start, this is typical Lanyon prose – intelligent, lean, and meaningful.
Hero #1	8/10 – Not your typical alpha, though his impetuosity, humor and obvious anguish make him easier to sympathize with.
Hero #2	7/10 – His shift in desire halfway through the story seemed to come out of nowhere, but otherwise, he’s a wonderfully assured, strong silent alpha.
Entertainment value	8/10 – A tight, suspenseful read with believable characters and real emotions.
World building	10/10 – Location is its own character, and Lanyon’s details make it shine.
TOTAL:	41/50