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A review by honnari_hannya
Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie
5.0
GAYS IN SPACE
GAYS IN SPACE
GAYS IN SPACE
A tense, incredibly fun, extremely high stakes space romp that includes (as you may already have guessed) GAYS IN SPACE.
Ettian Nassun has spent the last few years trying to survive the fallout of his planet's hostile takeover by the Umber Empire. To that end, he works hard to become the top space pilot at an elite academy training the Empire's newest generation of military leaders—all the while picking up slack for his charismatic, audacious best friend, Gal Veres.
But things can't ever be that simple. When a routine training exercise turns into an assassination attempt, Gal's biggest secret is revealed: he isn't Gal Veres but Gal emp Umber, heir to the empire that conquered Ettian's home. Ettian must fight enemies on all sides to keep his best friend (also coincidentally the love of his life) alive, long enough to get him safely to the seat of the Umber Empire to take the throne.
A bit of a slow start for me, but this book definitely picks up around a quarter of the way through and just doesn't stop from there. You can tell that Skrutskie has definitely written a fair few fanfics before—there are moments that are quite tropey, but in the most enjoyable way. Ettian is a delightfully complex character who is trying his best, and Gal is a god damn disaster who should be so lucky to have Ettian saving his ass all the time—and we love that for them.
Lots of tension, of both the sexual and political kind, sometimes both at once. Some applicable AO3 tags include: Friends to Lovers, Sharing a Bed, Secret Royalty, and probably a few more that I'm not thinking of.
GAYS IN SPACE
GAYS IN SPACE
A tense, incredibly fun, extremely high stakes space romp that includes (as you may already have guessed) GAYS IN SPACE.
Ettian Nassun has spent the last few years trying to survive the fallout of his planet's hostile takeover by the Umber Empire. To that end, he works hard to become the top space pilot at an elite academy training the Empire's newest generation of military leaders—all the while picking up slack for his charismatic, audacious best friend, Gal Veres.
But things can't ever be that simple. When a routine training exercise turns into an assassination attempt, Gal's biggest secret is revealed: he isn't Gal Veres but Gal emp Umber, heir to the empire that conquered Ettian's home. Ettian must fight enemies on all sides to keep his best friend (also coincidentally the love of his life) alive, long enough to get him safely to the seat of the Umber Empire to take the throne.
A bit of a slow start for me, but this book definitely picks up around a quarter of the way through and just doesn't stop from there. You can tell that Skrutskie has definitely written a fair few fanfics before—there are moments that are quite tropey, but in the most enjoyable way. Ettian is a delightfully complex character who is trying his best, and Gal is a god damn disaster who should be so lucky to have Ettian saving his ass all the time—and we love that for them.
Lots of tension, of both the sexual and political kind, sometimes both at once. Some applicable AO3 tags include: Friends to Lovers, Sharing a Bed, Secret Royalty, and probably a few more that I'm not thinking of.