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claudiereads's review
5.0
Well… to be honest, this was a bit of a clusterfuck, but that’s only to be expected with so many women added to the mix.
kaje_harper's review
4.0
Part Three in the Raised By Wolves extended novel. 3.5 stars
This book was my least favorite in the series. The interactions between Will and Gaston sometimes felt a bit like... too much. Too much discussion and searching for ever-extended metaphors, too many swings from love to madness and back, too many choices made for murky reasons that complicated an already sticky situation.
As part of the series, the events in this book will clearly drive the conclusion. This one is about family and society, about losing that harbor of two-men-together-and-okay. This could have been the most fascinating part. Until now, the men have lived in an isolated world where they were allowed the freedom of their relationship. But there was no doubt that, unless they sank into obscurity among the rest of the Brethren, this would change. I just found the directions of that change to be sometimes irritating.
This book is full of women, most of whom are unfortunately not wholly sympathetic characters. Although in turn, one has to have great sympathy for the fact that all the men, including Gaston and Will, see the women as more tools or burdens than people in their own right. This is probably true to the era, but it grates a bit. I'd have liked at least one woman with wisdom and maturity who would engender their full respect. They damned well need a good mother, but don't find one. A wife capable of standing up to them would be a good alternative, but they don't get that either. All the women here are broken or limited in their own ways.
Gaston urgently wants children, but I wasn't hugely sympathetic about that. Someone who is known for hurting his lover in his madness, and for having to run off for extended periods in the wilderness to recover himself, is being selfish to create children, or to ask his lover to do so for him. I can see that both men want to redeem their unloved childhoods by loving their own children, but kids also need security, consistency, and stability, to thrive. The way both men doted on each other, to the point of excusing and catering to selfishness, made me sympathize a bit less. There are more than enough forces ranged against them and their relationship, and I was disappointed that their acumen wasn't strong enough to see that complicating things to this incredible degree was unwise. I decided to attribute some of it to the strength of their needs to please the distant fathers they felt they had always failed, even through Will's hatred of his.
There is an increasingly D/s and mild BDSM aspect to their sexual relationship. This was actually well done, and apt to the complex pasts of both men, but it may bother some readers. There are also M/F and M/M/F scenes, again fitting to the plot, but disconcerting to some after the intense M/M monogamy of the early relationship. Some parts of those worked for me, given the times and the social pressures.
The end of the book picked up, as more familiar characters returned to add to the action. And as I moved into the fourth book, I'm enjoying the series more again.
This book was my least favorite in the series. The interactions between Will and Gaston sometimes felt a bit like... too much. Too much discussion and searching for ever-extended metaphors, too many swings from love to madness and back, too many choices made for murky reasons that complicated an already sticky situation.
As part of the series, the events in this book will clearly drive the conclusion. This one is about family and society, about losing that harbor of two-men-together-and-okay. This could have been the most fascinating part. Until now, the men have lived in an isolated world where they were allowed the freedom of their relationship. But there was no doubt that, unless they sank into obscurity among the rest of the Brethren, this would change. I just found the directions of that change to be sometimes irritating.
This book is full of women, most of whom are unfortunately not wholly sympathetic characters. Although in turn, one has to have great sympathy for the fact that all the men, including Gaston and Will, see the women as more tools or burdens than people in their own right. This is probably true to the era, but it grates a bit. I'd have liked at least one woman with wisdom and maturity who would engender their full respect. They damned well need a good mother, but don't find one. A wife capable of standing up to them would be a good alternative, but they don't get that either. All the women here are broken or limited in their own ways.
Gaston urgently wants children, but I wasn't hugely sympathetic about that. Someone who is known for hurting his lover in his madness, and for having to run off for extended periods in the wilderness to recover himself, is being selfish to create children, or to ask his lover to do so for him. I can see that both men want to redeem their unloved childhoods by loving their own children, but kids also need security, consistency, and stability, to thrive. The way both men doted on each other, to the point of excusing and catering to selfishness, made me sympathize a bit less. There are more than enough forces ranged against them and their relationship, and I was disappointed that their acumen wasn't strong enough to see that complicating things to this incredible degree was unwise. I decided to attribute some of it to the strength of their needs to please the distant fathers they felt they had always failed, even through Will's hatred of his.
There is an increasingly D/s and mild BDSM aspect to their sexual relationship. This was actually well done, and apt to the complex pasts of both men, but it may bother some readers. There are also M/F and M/M/F scenes, again fitting to the plot, but disconcerting to some after the intense M/M monogamy of the early relationship. Some parts of those worked for me, given the times and the social pressures.
The end of the book picked up, as more familiar characters returned to add to the action. And as I moved into the fourth book, I'm enjoying the series more again.
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