Favorite Novels of 2008

To round out my lists of favorites this week, I present my favorite novel length reads of the year.

4th Runner Up
A Greater Art by Ainsley Davidson

Certain genres have to try harder for me to engage with it. Science fiction is one of them. So when I find a truly fabulous story, I get excited. A Greater Art has dense world-building, sympathetic leads, and a complex plot. I read this in a single sitting, much to my family's chagrin, but I absolutely couldn't put it down.

3rd Runner Up
I Bid One American by Amy Corwin

Guess what another genre is that has to try harder with me? Yep, historicals. And yet, this charmer made me laugh and smile more than any other book in my top 5 this year. The vast majority of the cast is quirky and fun, and the story rolls along at such a brisk pace that you don't even realize it's over until you've turned the last virtual page.

2nd Runner Up
Death of a Pirate King by Josh Lanyon

It's no secret I'm a fan of the Adrien English Mysteries. I reviewed all four books this year, but this is the one I think is the best of the bunch. Not only is this the one with the most complex emotional map, but it's also the one that took my sheer dislike for Jake and turned it on its ear. I have serious problems with abusive characters, and Jake's actions in the previous book had - I thought - cemented my feelings for him. Lanyon's talent is such that I was wrong. And I'll gladly be wrong again.

1st Runner Up
Highlander's Challenge by Jo Barrett

This sat on my TBR pile for far too long. When Teddypig recommended it, I should have bumped it up my list. This one thrives because of its powerful leads. Colin is one of the best alpha heroes I read all year, and Tuck epitomizes the best of what makes a good heroine. Their chemistry is through the roof, so much so that I absolutely had to order a print copy of this as soon as I finished it.

And my favorite novel of 2008 is...
Border Roads by Sarah Black

I give out few 10s when it comes to the entertainment value of my scoring system. To me, those are the best of the best, the keepers that have pushed me to react in ways other stories haven't quite done. Border Roads not only has exquisite details as it builds its world, but it also has a wealth of memorable characters, men and women who leap off the page and tug at every single heartstring I have. There is power in this story, in the raw depths of the angst, in the rich descriptions of their interactions, in the sheer number of chances that the author takes that could have backfired. I love this story to pieces. I only wish Loose Id would release it in print so that I could have a physical copy for my keeper shelf.

Border Roads by Sarah Black

TITLE: Border Roads
AUTHOR: Sarah Black
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 58k)
GENRE: Contemporary drama
COST: $6.99

Brothers are not always born. In the case of Chris, Gary, Clayton, and Luke, they are forged in the Marines, and bound together by honor and experiences nobody will ever have. After the foursome leave Iraq, they return to homes they don’t recognize to rebuild lives they’re unsure they want. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Always, they needs their brothers to make it right.

Loose Id has this labeled as GLBT erotic contemporary on the website, but honestly, I don’t think either the categorizing or the blurb do this story any favors. For one thing, there are three distinct relationships going on with the four Marines and only one of them is gay. There’s no warning that there’s het sex in the story, so someone buying it thinking they’re going to get a gay romance could be seriously upset. There are erotic elements, but they're tastefully done and few and far between. Secondly, though the relationships these men seek out after their return play their part, none of them is any more important than the other, nor is that the primary focus. This is the story of how these four men rebuild their lives, and it’s not just about them. It’s about their families, and the damaged souls that they take in. It’s a story of stark desperation, and it’s painful, poignant, and easily the most gut-wrenching, moving story I have read in a long, long time.

Black doesn’t sugarcoat anything. The scenery is as uncompromising as the men’s situations. The prose is practically tactile, and once she gets over some really passive writing in the opening of the story, it sucks you in and refuses to let you go. You’re left as parched as the unforgiving desert, panting for breath. Even when it hurt, I kept on reading.

It’s not just the description she doesn’t hold back on. She doesn’t just wound one of the vets by giving him a little scar or a limp. Oh, no, she blows half his face off, and leaves a garrulous man now mute. That’s brave. Not only that, it works beautifully, because it does almost as much as the prose in convincing a reader that nothing is safe in this. Nothing is secure. Life for these men is almost as tenuous here at home – if not more so – than it was in Iraq.

There’s an entire world of other characters surrounding the central four. The fact that there are two segments of a 15 y/o autistic boy named Juan that hit me just as hard as any of the others is testimony to the story’s power. But it’s all of them – Chris and the broken Melody, Clayton and Luke, Gary and everyone – that had my heart in my throat throughout most of the novel. I’m a tough sell for angst in written word. I often find it manipulative, or over the top, or maudlin. If this was any of that, I didn’t see it. I was too busy fighting off tears for most of the story.

I gave up fighting them at one point. Sometimes breaking is necessary before being able to put it all back together again. Just like in the story.

Readability	8/10 – Excessive passive voice in the beginning slows down what turns into a compelling read.
Characterization	9/10 – Rich and realistic, with only a couple not making an emotional impact on me.
Plot	8/10 – Some of the angsty turns might seem manipulative, but this is minor in the grand scheme.
Entertainment value	10/10 – I cried. I’ll admit it. This reached into my gut and absolutely pummeled me.
World building	9/10 – Everything in the physical world leapt off the page. My primary difficulties came in visualizing all the different men.
TOTAL:	44/50

Partners in Crime by Josh Lanyon & Sarah Black

TITLE: Partners in Crime
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon & Sarah Black
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 67k)
GENRE: Gay erotic romance
COST: $6.99

Murder and love are the themes of these two novellas, from the glamour of Hollywood to the arctic wilderness of Alaska.

“Cards on the Table” by Josh Lanyon revisits familiar territory for Lanyon fans. Told in 1^st person, the story starts with our hero, Tim North, an ex-reporter now writer, getting a threatening tarot card stuck to his doorway. It would seem that somebody doesn’t like the fact that he’s writing a book on the fifty-year-old murder of a Hollywood starlet. Tim goes to the one person he thinks might be able to tell him whether or not he’s overreacting – the cop in his apartment complex he slept with once who dumped Tim the next morning. A cast of fifties glamour marches across the page, while Tim and Jack the cop settle into an odd friendship again as they work to solve the cold crime.

I think it’s pretty obvious I adore Lanyon’s writing, but I have to admit, this one probably isn’t one of my favorites. For once, I didn’t connect as strongly with the narrator, in this case, Tim. While Tim is definitely likeable, I found his slightly contrary nature – deliberately opting to go against Jack’s advice out of his hurt about their break-up – veering toward the TSTL category. Tim is epileptic, a result of a major car accident eighteen months earlier, but he does a lot of things that are a danger to him unnecessarily, a fact Jack ends up having to point out to him. It’s a side effect to progressing the murder mystery along, unfortunately, and I think Lanyon has handled it with better aplomb in other stories.

All of this is countered by a colorful cast of supporting characters and a romantic interest that felt wonderfully human to me. Jack is at varying times hard as a rock or so vulnerable I wanted to give him a hug. He reacts in realistic ways – which means he doesn’t always make the nice guy choice – but he’s probably one of the nicest guys I’ve read by Lanyon so far. He’s secure in his sexuality, and any failings he might have are a result of being human, not because he happens to be gay. I love that. It’s a shame the HEA gets short-changed, then, which is really my biggest criticism of the story. Oh, it’s there, don’t worry about that. But it’s literally less than 1k, and them actually being happy? About 300 words. After everything I’d gone through with them throughout the story – and how badly I wanted them to work things out – I needed more.

“Murder at the Heartbreak Hotel” by Sarah Black is the second story in this story. Peter Moon runs a hotel in a remote part of Alaska that caters to the gay community. When the story opens, he’s in the throes of a one-night love affair with a guest – something he says he never does. Less than 24 hours later, the young man is dead, and with a hotel full of guests and a lover who has come back to claim Peter for his own, Peter wants nothing more than to find the killer.

I find myself in a quandary when it comes to this story. When it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, skimming is all I can manage.

Let’s start with the good. The author has some exquisite detail in this. The wilderness of Alaska is vivid, so vivid that I felt like I was there. Easily. She enriches with just enough real knowledge to make me as a reader believe 100% that these people are exactly who and where they say they are. I also adore Sebastian, Peter’s Athabascan lover of twenty years. I thought he was gruff and wonderful without being obnoxious. There was just enough vulnerability in him to take the edges off, and I loved that about him.

Part of the problem lies in just how much detail the author provides. There are times when she feels far more interested in the food Peter is preparing than the characters surrounding them. The characters divert into odd tangents sometimes in conversations, which normally wouldn’t be a bad thing because that's how people are, but in a story of this length, with a murder to solve and other stuff going on, there isn’t time for it. It gives me a feeling of odd disjointedness, and there were large sections I found it difficult to get into a flow.

That flow is also disrupted by unrealistic dialogue. Most of these people don’t sound a thing like anybody I know. They talk in very pretty prose, which looks good on paper but doesn’t make the character feel alive to me. The dialogue is also hindered by the fact that everybody nearly always addresses the person they’re talking to by name. People don’t do that in real life. They especially don’t do it twice in a two-sentence chunk of dialogue where the other character doesn’t speak or react.

As for the overlying murder…I’m not convinced this is the genre for the author. Her victim is put on such a high pedestal that I disliked him from the start. Our brief interaction with him has him painted practically perfect, most likely to create an atmosphere of, “Who would possibly want to kill such a wonderful man?” That’s not what it did for me. It made me roll my eyes every time somebody else started crying about a man they’d known for less than two days, because it was all just too, too much. He wasn’t real to me. He was a paragon. And I just can’t connect emotionally with that.

All that being said, the author shows tremendous potential. Her love scenes for the most part are wonderfully sweet and hot. I think if I’m going to try her again, it would be on something outside of mystery or suspense. That’s not where her strengths lie.

Readability	7/10 – Too much unnatural dialogue and over-detailing in the second story drag this score down.
Romance	6/10 – An abrupt resolution in the first and a hero in the second I’m ambivalent about mar some wonderful moments.
Characterization	8/10 – Lanyon’s characters are sharply etched, while Black’s are quirky if uneven.
Entertainment value	7/10 – Though there’s potential in the second, I’ll only ever re-read the first of them.
World building	9/10 – Both authors excel at placing readers in the time and place.
TOTAL:	37/50