Genre: Sci-Fi, Gothic Horror
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
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About The Book
Claustrophilia is a genre-bending sci-fi Gothic that dives deep into the psyche’s need for love and control while exploring the darker side of human (and non-human) relationships.
After the tragic death of his entire family, Thomas lives under a conservatorship overseen by his lover, Ethan. But Ethan’s job keeps him away. Isolated in the family’s decaying Connecticut mansion, Thomas lives a monotonous life under the watchful eye of a live-in security firm until one day, he discovers an alien hiding on the grounds of his estate.
Confronted with the challenge of helping to save an alien species from extinction, Thomas must overcome the forces that control him in his own home. In a world where reality is not always what it seems, and trust is a double-edged sword, one wrong move could turn his whole world upside down… again.
The Review
This is a marvelously creepy and yet somehow romantic book. It is a kind of weird homage to Britney Spears and her recent liberation from a longterm conservatorship (exactly what I kept thinking about as I read the book!); combined with a very different take on Jack Finney’s classic book “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers” (although in this case the aliens are way nicer than the humans).
Neat, huh?
We start with Thomas, who, as the story begins to unfold, is a quasi-prisoner in his family’s vase mansion, set in the middle of a vast wooded estate in Connecticut. The author leads us to see Thomas in a certain way. The only real bright light in Thomas’s life is his boyfriend, Ethan Chance, who rescued him from the clutches of his brutal, thieving uncle and has kept his promise to protect him.
Side note: the house, which is so big, Thomas get’s tired walking from one end to the other, actually reminds me of a house I knew once: Doris Duke’s sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey—which terminated in a swimming pool, as Thomas’s house does. I consulted with the Duke Foundation on the house, but they ignored me and tore it down anyway.
The story takes on its sci-fi angle fairly early, when Thomas discovers Adam hiding out in one of the estate’s dilapidated outbuildings. Adam’s survival—and keeping it a secret—becomes a positive focus in Thomas’s life.
And then, as Ms. Frost is wont to do, it gets even weirder.
As in all of her books (so far), Frost raises issues of ethics that actually make you think. I was totally engaged as I watched Thomas, who had been completely failed by all the humans around him, find what he needed in the friendship of a single gentle alien.
Four 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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