A Strong and Sudden Thaw

I see this book first and foremost as a coming-of-age and love story, and then a science fiction. The science fiction aspect takes a backseat to the romantic plot and that's perfectly fine, since it really is the least interesting out of everything in the book.

David is a great protagonist, very well characterized and likeable, and you can really see how he grows and matures as the story goes on. Callan pales in comparison, and I felt his character was never as developed as David's was. I liked the way their relationship developed, it was very sweet and believable.

The only disappointing thing is that the questions revolving the dragons and basically all the science fiction elements were never answered despite that they seemed like such an important plot point throughout the novel. I understand there's supposed to be a sequel so maybe these things will get resolved then. The romantic relationship, however, does get fully resolved by the end and it was such an engrossing and excellent read that I'm very satisfied overall. ( )

Another gay romance that manages to carry off having an actual plot without getting bogged down under the weight of same. ( )

I'm loving this so far!

This easily becomes one of my personal top ten favorite gay themed novels, I am surprised on how much effort was put into developing the storyline that gave me the satisfaction of reading a well-planned and plotted novel. The willingness to terminate a sub-dominant character added the feeling of realism into the story. Amazing book. ( )

This is one of those books that mostly everyone recommended me to read; I have to admit that I delayed the reading since I’m not really a fantasy lover, and, I don’t know why, I also had the feeling that the romance in the story was not really the main theme, and so the other reason why I sometime read a fantasy novel, the romance, was excluded. But this last point is not true, there is a romance in the story, even if it’s on a Young Adult level, making this a Gay novel that I’d have no issue at all to recommend myself to a teenager reader.

But lets go back to the story and its main characters: David is the narrative voice, a 16 years old guy; the age of David is an important details of the story since, not only it makes this a Coming of Age story, it also determines the balance between David and Callan, who is 23 years old. The story is set more or less 100 years in the future, when, after another Ice Age, the world reverted to a Pre-Industrial Revolution period; this is again not an irrelevant detail, while in our modern society, a 23 years old man having an affair with a 16 years old guy would be considered a criminal, in a country farm society of the XIX century, 16 years old is considered almost adulthood, and indeed David’s mother is pushing him to marry.

Of course, when the relationship between David and Callan comes out, there is the hint from more than one townsfolk that Callan is corrupting their children; I think the author simply stroked through this hypothesis making David being the first having sexual thoughts on Callan. The very first time they met, when Callan has not even his “own” voice in the story, David thinks that it would be nice to have the hands of the young healer on him. It’s for sure an innocent thought, David has no sexual experience, let alone same sex sexual experience, but it’s nevertheless the first hint of their future love story.

Aside from the relationship between David and Callan, the other strong point of this novel is the setting, and the contraposition between Sci-fi and Fantasy genre: the environment where all the characters are moving is a mix between reality and legend. Who is old enough to remember the time before the Ice Age, tells stories about a world where machine and artificial energy made life easier; people know the stories are true, since simple reminders of that past, like the iron fences, are still there to prove that. But then comes the strong contraposition with a total fantasy element, the Dragons: Dragons are flying in the sky and those dragons is something that was not “real” in the past, and that now are very real, killing animals but also small children. The author will try to explain the presence of a fantasy element like Dragons with a sci-fi expedient like a scientific experiment gone wrong, plunging again the story more on the Sci-fi theme than the Fantasy, but still maintaining all the characters living in this “old fashioned” setting.

The social environment was another interesting point; other than reverting back to a farm society, loosing all the modern infrastructures easing the lives of people, also the mentality of the people did the same. Homosexuality is yet again a crime, and people conveniently forgot what little civilization society reached just before the Ice Age. Plus the “government” (an outside force to their community) has become the enemy and so everything coming from outside is an enemy as well. It’s quite a claustrophobic environment, but in a way it’s also easier to manage: you know well who is against you, but you know also who can be your friend, and so it’s also possible to prove the simply fact that being homosexual it’s not automatically being the bad guy.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590210638/?tag=elimyrevandra-20