Rating: WORTHY!
Well I have posted fifteen reviews today. That's a personal record for me and a warning never to get so far behind again! LOL! This was an amazing story set in the LGBTQIA world of San Francisco, and featuring four main characters, one of whom is a religious nut-job who is planning on unleashing a sarin attack on a gay event to teach all those sinners a lesson. How such a lesson would be internalized by dead people is a bit of a mystery, but religion is not big on logic, and the parallels with the nightclub slaughter down in Florida recently were both chilling and sobering for me.
There's no end of religious nut-jobs, and the hypocrisy of Christians who purportedly preach love, but actually spew hatred is as staggering as it is entirely unsurprising given the brutal content of the Bible and the bloody history of Christianity. if oyu don't believe me, check out this link on CNN's website: "Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" Sacramento, California, pastor Roger Jimenez said from the pulpit the Sunday of the shooting. "No, I think that's great. I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight ... The tragedy is more of 'em didn't die."
The main villain here is named, hilariously, Randy Peter Tytus. I had a hard time taking that seriously, I confess. Ego te absolvo. Thank you father! Randy hails from the loins of a psychotic religious dad who runs a church of hatred which is very possibly modeled on a certain "church" which delights in harassing gays, but Randy's problem is not that he's very likely homosexual; it's that he can't face this truth, and can't deal with his reality. His 'solution' is to poison others with chemicals, mirroring the way his own mind has been poisoned by his father and his religion.
Arrayed against him is a startling trio which consists of Charley, a CIA operative who is temporarily suspended from duty because of some irregularities with taxes and expenses. He's a female to male transgendered person who is rather anguishing over whether to pursue what several reviewers have termed "bottom surgery"! I find this term odd and misleading. He's not, of course contemplating surgery on his ass, but on exchanging his vagina for a penis. Charley meets two females and through this acquaintanceship, a vital trio is formed.
The first member is an ex-navy lesbian police sergeant named Frankie. The second is a pseudo celebrity known as "The Society Dominatrix." Pamela has moved to SF to get away from the publicity on the east coast, but seems hard-pressed to shed it, despite changing her name to Electra. Some reviewers have described her as professional dom, but in fact she was just having fun with the husbands of some of her acquaintances. She doesn't become a professional until she starts to embrace who she really is and become Elektra in more than just name.
I must say I found the character names a bit clichéd! Frankie and Charley? Elektra? That seemed a bit over the top for me, but all four of these main characters are in pain in one way or another. Frankie is mourning her deceased wife, and struggling with corruption in the SFPD, a struggle which has put her in the sights of the corrupt powers-that-be, so she's been benched on trumped-up 'charges'. Charley is struggling with the loss of his job and with his indecision about when or even whether to undergo further surgery. Elektra also suffers loss - her daughter won't speak to her, and she's away from her comfort zone. Randy is simply a dangerous mess. I've seen some reviewers complain that this story needed to be "punched-up" with intrigue and sub-plots and what-have-you, but for me, it was perfectly told exactly the way it is. This is not a movie, and trying to write it like it was a screenplay would have been entirely wrong and would have destroyed it for me.
I'm not averse to a good action-adventure, even one with clichéd slo-mo departures from explosions which always seem to have a disturbing (and polluting) amount of gasoline in them, but this is not that story. This is much better. Watching these people move and interact, and grow and coalesce was wonderful, and poetic in the way it came together. It was a real pleasure to read and I wouldn't change a thing about it, except maybe to have given Frankie more of a role. She really took a back seat to Charley and Elektra, but since this was named Transformed: San Francisco, I wonder if it's to be the start of a series of 'transformed' novels set in different cities.
It wasn't all plain sailing. There were some issues, such as sentences like, "In the meanwhile, the final glory hole of hell he would personally reap upon the blasphemers was nigh." That made no sense whatsoever! Maybe this is what oyu get when ytwo writers are editing the same novel! LOL! I think it would have been better worded: "In the meantime, the final Hell he would personally wreak upon the blasphemers was nigh." I wonder if the authors actually know what a 'glory hole' is - or more to the point, whether Randy knew what one was and would ever use that term, even in his own mind. At another point, I read, "Thy will be done, not mine, he incited." I think the authors meant 'recited', but these are minor considerations and every author trips up with the language now and then, so they didn't bother me.
Overall, this story was excellent, I loved it and read it with appreciation and warmth, and I recommend it.
