Author: Alessandra Ebulu
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
The last novel I read from Less Than Three Press I rated positively, but this one I was not able to enjoy in the same way at all. It's one novel where the cover was actually better than what was between it! There was a prologue to this story which I skipped, as I do all prologues. If the author doesn’t think it worth including in chapter one or beyond, I don’t think it worth time reading it. I went straight into the story, but unfortunately it read more like fanfic than an actual story. I read about three-quarters of the way through and skimmed the last 25%.
This is a very short novel - only some 80 pages - but unfortunately, the story made no sense whatsoever to me. Superficially, it begins with two apartment dwellers. One of them is Ray Zielke, and he's disturbed by the loud music and TV show noise from his across-the-hall neighbor. When he goes to complain, he meets Cata Nanuq, a very feminine-looking guy who despises either label, who dresses Asian, and is into anime and manga. It turns out that Cata owns the apartment block, and a physical attraction quickly develops between the two of them, but it’s not a romance - it’s all lust and sex.
There's a twist to this story, however, since the story itself has anime elements to it. Ray isn’t human and is there to protect Cata, who is a Baeci (which describes a person who is externally one gender, but internally of mixed gender). Cata and other baeci are being hunted by another non-human who bathes in and drinks their blood, but Cata knows nothing of this, and Ray has not told him the truth despite being sexually intimate with him.
This is where the story makes no sense. We're told that Ray is specifically there to protect Cata, yet he evidently has no idea who Cata is when he goes over to complain about the loud music as the story begins. He's supposed to be watching over Cata yet he's working a job which occupies a heck of a lot of his time, so he isn't actually free to stand watch, which adequately explains how Cata is apparently abducted from his apartment while Ray is otherwise occupied.
Even then it makes no sense. There is blood on the walls of Cata's apartment, but when advised to seek Cata's 'flame' inside himself, Ray has no problem picking it out and determining that Cata is still alive - yet they still insist upon matching the blood in the apartment with DNA from Cata's toothbrush. Why? If Ray can see he's alive, then why does the blood even matter, and how come he cannot simply track Cata down to his location by his "flame" and save him?
Worse than that, Ray spends the next week not doing a thing to find Cata, but instead, sitting around in Cata's apartment hugging Cata's pillow, and watching anime on Cata's 72 inch TV! If this has been a longer novel, I would have quit reading it right there. Cata then shows up out of the blue with no explanation for his absence and no sign of any abduction or injury.
I cannot recommend this novel at all. It made no sense and had no rationale to it. The relationship between the two main characters had no chemistry at all and was purely sexual, so where was the story? I couldn’t find one to enjoy.
