Genre: Romantasy, Comedy, Portal Fantasy
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Get It On Amazon | Apple | B&N | Kobo | Smashwords | Universal Buy Link
About The Book
SOMETIMES ORDER BECOMES CHAOS
Leopold Lane—after being “collected” for the Office of the Lost by Crispin Eladrin Moss’caladin—is tucked away cozily with his beloved office fae in their treehouse. Happily ever after, right? Not so fast.
Before Leo can even get settled, Crispin’s mother disappears, leaving Crispin in charge and his brother Aspin in a panic. As Queen of the Fae, she has also left them a little surprise: a bit of oxymoronic magic that turns their world upside down.
Crispin and Leo set off in search of the queen and a solution to their predicament. Aspin tags along, with some less-than-helpful friends. On the way they will discover important family secrets and learn new things about each other… and themselves. Nothing is simple when Chaos and Order get involved. Besides, it wouldn’t be a proper quest if it was straightforward, would it?
The Review
Is this the ultimate “opposites attract” romance? Its precursor, “Office of the Lost” presented us with Crispin, the slightly disappointing younger son of the Queen of the Fae; and sent him off on an adventure to Earth to collect something missing (which is his job). What that turned out to be was a human slob living in a squalid apartment in Sacramento, by the name of Leopold Lane. The punch line is that Leopold is Chaos Incarnate, while Crispin turns out to be Order Incarnate. Clearly this quest was not an accident. As this sequel opens, Leopold and Crispin are sharing a cozy treehouse in the world of the Fae, and trying to see where this life of togetherness might take them.
Then something else gets lost, and Crispin – again, since it’s his job – has to go bring it back. Thing is, what’s lost this time is Crispin’s mother, and he and Leopold are joined by Aspin, Crispin’s annoyingly perfect older brother.
Because we have Chaos and Order in a love match, you can imagine that things go haywire easily enough. The young men find themselves cast into a series of worlds that are even stranger than the Earth world where Leopold came from. Also, oddly enough, these worlds seem influenced by human children’s stories that Leopold remembers from his all-too-brief happy childhood. This is especially fun for any of you who were once children.
So, what on the surface is another giddy roller coaster of danger and misadventure, is gradually revealed to be a surprisingly heartfelt voyage of self-discovery and – I know this sounds stupid – learning. The details are too much fun to give away, but suffice it to say that both Leo and Crispin learn a lot about each other, about themselves, and about the idea of family. They even learn more about Aspin, who nobody likes (at first). While the ending seems sort of neat and tidy, I’m assuming that Crispin and Leopold have more to do in their life together, and that these clever authors will make sure that happens.
Five 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.
