Review: Not for everyone? Maybe; but if this is your kind of story, it rocks.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 24, 2013
Thanks for this one, R. Cooper!  A friend insisted I read "A Boy and his Dragon" so I did that first (and loved it), but I am pretty much as enthused about this fairy/werewolf duo, Cal and Ray.This sort of supernatural fantasy romance isn't everyone's taste. Cooper's imagined world - an alternate America where all sort of supernatural creatures just exist and have been dealt with for decades (except, oddly, vampires, which Ray insists don't really exist!!!).Once you just go with that premise it's sort of marvelous. Seems that each of the books focuses on teaching the reader about the deeper truths of specific creatures. I do like me a good werewolf, and Ray Branigan is a good one. But I am just the kind of gay man who loves a sugar-infused fairy, and Cal Parker is awesome. Wings aside, they seem to be my type.The sexual repression and yearning fairly buzzes off the page, and Cooper pulls the same stunt as with the boy and his dragon - that very repression of desire and love makes the ultimate payoff amazingly intense from an emotional perspective. Cooper also infuses the narrative, which is wrapped around a peculiar murder mystery with its own complications, with wonderfully imagined cultural history about these magical creatures, exposing stereotypes and false myths that misinform and confuse the characters.That said, the lavish description of scents and smells, which of course the werewolf is very tuned to, play a significant role in this book, almost a character in itself. I can find the standard "scent of love" used in many m/m novels to be irritating and over-calculated; but in R. Cooper's sparkly pen, the very over-the-topness of smell descriptions adds to the slightly halucinogenic quality (then again, it could have been the Nyquil...). Not for everyone, but very much for me.