Genre: Western, Dystopian, MM Romance, Action-Adventure
LGBTQ+ Category: Bisexual
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
“Some things are worse than death.”
These are the words that continually haunt Ezra “Two Shots” Smith, a ruthless outlaw shaped by blood and hate beside the river.
Obsessed with revenge, Ezra is a man who takes from the powerful and answers only to himself. At least, that’s the way it is until a twist of fate lands him helpless in the dirt, staring at the faintly haloed shadow of Alexander “Good Times” Davis.
A member of The Resistance, Alex is everything Ezra isn’t: insightful, steady, patient, and discerning. He’s the kind of man who isn’t afraid of truth, enabling him to look past the hardened outlaw’s reputation and into the helpless boy the vicious cowboy used to be. Recognizing the pain beneath the facade, Alex refuses to let Ezra hide behind it.
But Ezra knows better than most how dangerous vulnerability can be. With enemies from his past closing in, he’s keenly aware that any sign of weakness could cost him everything.
With the powers that be threatening to bring him to his knees again, Ezra is forced to choose between the revenge that’s kept him alive and the life Alexander dares him to believe in.
Dangling High is a queer anti-western MM romance about the necessity of tenderness, the cost of violence, and what it means to be truly free.
The Review
I ended up loving this book because it surprised me. The writing is good—including the tricky part of writing dialect—and the story, while presented as a “western”, is also a dystopian cautionary tale that echoes our world right now a little too neatly. Finally, the main characters, Ezra Smith and Alex Davis, are complicated and, ultimately, profoundly good. It is a story that is often uncomfortable, because the themes of vengeance resonated a bit too much, and reminded me that none of us can be perfect in a world that is cruel and unjust.
One thing that threw me off at first is that this dystopian vision is set a thousand years in the future. Honestly, it didn’t feel that far in the future to me; but I guess that’s a quibble. Let’s just say that the nation we know, after the Second Civil War of the 21st century, has become the world that exists for Ezra and Alex: a divided continent in which they inhabit the New Old West (N.O.W.), a separate country that seems to have devolved into some version of the Wild West as memorialized in movies and television, right down to the mistreatment and isolation of indigenous people. Its counterpoint is the Liberal Alliance of Democratic States (L.A.D.S.), which more or less means the two coasts and the much of the eastern Midwest.
In a horrific prologue, we meet Ezra Smith, the teenaged son of a couple who identify with the Resistance. What happens to Ezra at the hands of the N.O.W. president and his spiritual advisor is the trigger for the rest of the action in the book. L.A.D.S. barely figures into the narrative, except as a reminder that there is another country that has moved on over the course of the last millennium. (I’ll note that there is no mention of how Indigenous people are faring in L.A.D.S., and no mention of any other immigrants or people of color at all, which makes me presume that they all moved to L.A.D.S.)
The gist of the main plotline is Ezra Smith obsessing about his dream of vengeance against the rulers of N.O.W., and Alex Davis somehow falling in with his way of thinking once he learns his story. Somehow it all works, and I found it moving and emotionally involving. I certainly won’t forget Ezra and Alex any time soon.
4 Stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
