Genre: Sci-Fi
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
In a race against time to save David from near-certain death as he confronts his mystical fate, his partners Bryan and Brennan are plunged into a new world of mystery and intrigue among London’s supernatural factions. Faced with new threats to their relationship greater than any they’ve known, the three men must confront what it means to love someone unconditionally.
Aided by a rogue anti-corporatist werewolf and Bryan’s own strong-willed daughter, Leap takes readers on an unparalleled journey across two continents to uncover technology giants’ sinister plots to harness the supernatural to transform the world for their own gain. Ancient prophecies, mythical beings, ethical quandaries, and the seedy underbelly of a technological corporatocracy all converge in the third book in Lilith Frost’s breakout Hard Way Home series.
Can love overcome any obstacle when they come from another world? Leap continues to blend the best of science fiction and fantasy while introducing unique themes that make it a must-read for fans across genres of LGBTQ romance, urban fantasy, and dystopian drama.
The Review
Wow. I guess I’m a Lilith Frost fan, since this is the third book in her “Hard Way Home” series and the fourth book of hers that I’ve read and really enjoyed.
In my elderly mind, Lilith Frost is a young writer. There is a certain lack of discipline in her writing that feels “young” to me. There are also moments when the characters in her books sound like my own twenty-something children. That always makes me smile, and sometimes makes me laugh out loud. Such snippets of unexpected humor are wonderful.
Whatever her periodic disregard for the details of grammar might be, they are more than overwhelmed by Frost’s enormous imagination and intense understanding of her characters. The wildly wide-ranging plots in this series, which veer from space travel, to post-apocalyptic America, to crazy futuristic technology, to fae, werewolves and vampires—all of it somehow comes together in an epic narrative that totally sucked me in and made me care for the people. And also made me think.
It’s not just the romantic triad at the center: Bryan, Brennan and David; but also the rogue werewolf, Corinthia; and Bryan’s more-than-human daughter Indira. Each of these folks gets microscopically close study from their creator. In each book, our understanding of the characters gets deeper. In this third book, Indira is the “Leap” of the title, but she is not the most important person. We learned in book 2 about Bryan (aka James) and his bizarre life. In the third book we learn a great deal more about Corinthia (aka Jane North) and her relationship to the world of werewolves. Most importantly, we dig deeply into the stories of Brennan, his big brother Colm, and David.
The dirt-poor Irish boys and the spoiled English toff seem an odd crew, even before the other-worldly American Bryan gets dropped into it. I was totally gripped by the angst and the truthful struggle of their three-way marriage. David is a hot mess, a fussy, priggish type all too familiar to me. Brennan and Colm are far more messy than mere archetypes. David, it so happens, is also the only purely gay character in a story whose players run the gamut of the LGBTQ+ rainbow. Frost is very intentional in this deliberately loose assignment of gender and sexuality. She helps me embrace a world outside my own post-Stonewall Kinsey 6 perspective.
In the end, David’s plight as an unwilling werewolf, and Bryan’s role as an unwilling superhero, somehow knit the whole thing together into a multi-faceted journey of self-discovery and family creation.
I’ve never read anything quite like this, and while this volume appears to be the last book in the series, there are a few loose ends. I wouldn’t be against reading another one. Just saying.
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.
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