From Samhain.
Dinun can’t fly—but he could be the answer to an Angel’s prayer.
Barely tolerated by his own kind, Dinun is a self-reliant soul who scratches out a living from the great, empty lands of Quarn. Always looking for unexpected treasure, he never dreams of finding an injured Angel.

Moon belongs to a race of telepathic winged humanoids. Exquisitely beautiful, sexually playful, Angels have always fascinated humans. Dinun’s feelings for Moon take flight as they become lovers, but a planetary invasion could destroy their future together.

Centuries ago, humans on Quarn saved their race from destruction by joining their DNA with that of the Angels. Now full-blood humans are stealing Angel children—including Moon’s son—for barbaric experiments. The full-bloods are prepared to slaughter anyone who gets in their way.

Thrust into a desperate race against time to save the infants, Dinun and Moon must battle against a people with weapons far beyond anything the Angels—or their human friends—can hope to defeat. Dinun brings to the fight his bravery and a determination to be true to himself. Will that be enough to save the children, and win the Angel he’s come to love?

Warning: This title contains graphic interspecies winged sex and violence.
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Set in an alternate time, place, planet but almost like reading a western novel. It was an ok read but not great and I did find myself skipping through parts. The premise was interesting and certainly original but the language was a little annoying, names for every day things were difficult to follow - doem skins etc. The action was pretty PG 13. Gorgeous cover by Anne Cain. ( )

My friends know that I'm not an huge fan of futuristic romance, but I can be "converted" if the book is good. And On Wings, Rising is very good. Ann Somerville recreates an entire universe and mixes up legends and technology.

The setting is a post apocalyptic colony planet where people have to live more or less like in a country village of the nineteen century. Energy is a rare goods, things work most thanks to human and animal work, people live on barter but there are still the tax! and also very high! Homosexuality is not a crime, but unnecessary: in a world where procreating means having more hand at work, a man or woman who choose not to gave birth are only weight for the community. Dinun is one of that men, and even if he had three kids with a woman (it's not really said, but probably through artificial insemination...), he didn't marry, mostly since the woman didn't want a man in her bed, and since Dinun prefers to be alone if he can't be in a same sex relationship. He jokes that the childs are tax relief, since a man with offsprings pays less tax.

During one of his searching trip (Dinun collects stones and furs to barter in the village) he makes a stunningly discovery: a injured angel. Angel in Dinun's world are mythical creature but not the fairy men of our tales: they are bigger than an human, with white fur all over their body and leathery wings; their bones are lighter than human ones, and so even if they are stronger than an human, they actually are lighter and apparently delicate... very much like birds I should say.

Hundreds years before, Dinun's forefathers chose to mix Angel's DNA with the human's one to create a stronger breed, a breed who can live in the harsh condition of the newborn colony planet. They were right, since the new breed survive, while the full-blood humans wither and die; with the lost of technology, chimerical humans also lost the knowledge, and so Angels become myth and no one see them again.

Now Dinun has in front of him an Angel who can't speak like him but only shrill, who can read his mind and send him flash of image to communicate, an Angel who was harvesting his child in a pouch like a kangaroo when he was injured by a full-blood human from off-world who stole his child. When Moon, the Angel, is nursered to health, Dinun and him discover that other five Angel childs were stolen and their fathers killed. Dinun sets himself to help Moon, for the good of the stolen childs but also since he is starting to feel something for the beautiful creature.

Moon is not a simple characters; apparently playful and sexy, he is behaving like his similar: Angels live in small pack within the village, they share bodies for comfort and relieve, they don't know the concept of couple like family. Sex is not only a way to procreate, it's also a way to voice joy and belonging: when Moon starts to see Dinun as a fellow companion, it's only natural and right to share also their body. Moon is also young, he is still not a grown Angel, and so it sounds right that his character is somewhat more playful than the others; but the impression the reader can have of him as a tender "puppy" is soon shattered when we see him in battle (probably the scene that gave me more problem...): but again, Moon is behaving like his people always do, according to a natural law that found its fundamentals more in the Nature course rather than in beliefs instilled by traditions.

Dinun is an easy character to like; he is tender and caring, he follows the rule, live and let live. Even if he is alone, he is not really mistreated by the villagers, maybe he is only considered a bit odd. I believe that his loneliness is more due to his own decision rather than to a real ostracism. Sometime I found him a bit too detached from his own relatives, something that maybe allows him to be more at ease when he is far from them.

In the end I would like to add something on the erotic part of the book. I believe that in the past Ann Somerville's works was sentenced as too much cold and not enough graphic detailed... I haven't find lacking on that department this book. It was not an easy task, since we are speaking of men with real different characteristic (fur, wings, pouches...), but I really enjoyed all the sex scenes, but also the playful erotic teasing of Moon... maybe I would like to read something "more", since technically, Dinun is still a virgin, at least in one way as I said in my tags... read no anal sex. But this is book one in a series and then I'm the one who skip the sex scenes if they are too much in comparison to the plot!