The Silver Lake
Warriors of Estavia: Book One
Includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered characters; GLBT positive world.
. Not Recommended.
January 3, 2007 | Revid 390 < prev | next >
The Silver Lake is an adventure story about the birth of a new Godling into a colorful pantheon of deities. The setting was interesting and unique—ancient Istanbul. I did like the imagery the author used to describe the Gods and their home in the lake.
Here's the plot in a nutshell: Spar and Brax are two young street urchins who get caught up in the birth of the new God. Spar is a seer and Brax pledges himself to the War Goddess, becoming her champion just in case the new God turns out to be less than benign.
Because Spar and Brax are so young, they are assigned guardians from the Temple of the War Goddess. These guardians, Kemal and Yashar, are my favorite characters. They're strong, protective and trustworthy. These two (male) warriors are also lovers and as affectionate as they are fierce.
In today's media, gay men are often portrayed as irresponsible at best and pedophiles at worst. It was refreshing to read a story about gay men who are reliable, honorable and good parents.
So why not recommend this book? Because there's nothing else to the story—reading this book was like reading a long plot synopsis. It was just an outline of a novel, not the novel itself. There is an awful lot of narrative instruction and not enough storytelling.
There are so many different point-of-view protagonists, I lost track of who was who. In one single paragraph, three different characters narrated the story. For a few lines, the story was seen through the eyes of a dog. Then the point of view changed before I learned anything meaningful. As soon as I was interested in a character, the POV switched to someone I knew nothing about.
Reading this book was frustrating. I bought this book from Amazon and frankly I think I deserve my money back.
© All Rights Reserved
