Review: Sacred Fate (Chronicles of Ylandre 1) by Eresse
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 28, 2010
I don't exactly know why but male pregnancy seems to be the bane of Gay Romance. I have even found a place where an editor pleaded her authors to not send submission of stories with male pregnancy since she was really tired of them... and I thought, how strange, in my experience I have not found so much of them. Well, this is probably due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of fantasy or sci-fiction, and so, obviously, I skim from the beginning the possibility to find them. But when it happened, actually they didn't bothered me, on the contrary, there are some series (like Space Opera by Stephanie Burke, when will she write the third book?) that I really like a lot. True, it's not easy to write them without falling in the mistake of having one of the male involved being merely a girl with male attributes, but well, that is the only way for a man to get pregnant!So, from the beginning Eresse, in Sacred Fate, is quite upfront with the issue, and she fully and willingly commits the mistake: Lassen, the man who will get pregnant, it's not a man with female attributes or viceversa, he is simple both, probably the most common way to define him is "hermaphrodite". In the fantasy world of Ylandre women are extinct more than 1000 years ago, and the males changed to be able to naturally bear a child; all man have both male than female genitalia, and when they give birth, they are also able to breastfeed the child. Only that, most of them, preserve the manly characteristic of being stronger and bigger than a woman, and so it's quite strange to read of warrior that can be also "mothers".Lassen is an Half Blood, meaning that he is of a lower class than Rohyr, who not only his True Blood, but he is even King of his territory. When Rohyr sees for the first time Lassen, he decides to claim the "boy"; boy is a strange word to define Lassen, since he is 26 years old, but in this fantasy world, the coming of age is at 30 years old, and the acceptable age for breed even higher. So for that standard, Lassen is very young, but for the modern reader he is an adult. In this way the author cleverly avoids any claim of Rohyr being forceful on Lassen, but really, all the story has the feeling of those old savage romances where the innocent and very young heroine falls in the clutches of the wicked hero. And then don't forget that in medieval time, an acceptable age to marry among the nobility was, for women, 12 or 13 years old; I seem to remember that John Sans Terre's wife was 12 years old, and when they married, to John was asked to wait to bed his wife, but the "wicked" king didn't wait so much in the end.Anyway, Lassen's opposition to his fate is practically non-existent: when he is asked to become the concubine of the king, he quietly accepts his fate. For a good part of the book, like a perfect wicked savage romance hero, Rohyr masterly seduces Lassen to have him happy in his bed and not a sacrificial lamb. Maybe since Rohyr is a master of seduction, or maybe since Lassen for starter was not so against the idea (after all Rohyr is young and handsome and a king), Lassen is more than happy of his role, and he would be even willing to accept Rohyr official "husband" when the time comes. Lassen is in all for all the classic "damsel in distress", who gains strength from his knight in shining armour, Rohyr; if the reader wants him stronger, if he wants for him to be independent and all, well, maybe he is reading the wrong novel! Lassen here is the submissive lover, the bottom, and even if he can enjoy a variation in the bed role, in life he will never consider to be the leader, that role is of Rohyr, and to Lassen that is how things should be.Sacred Fate is a "modern" romance (man on man pair, male pregnancy...) with an old fashioned development (the damsel in distress, the knight in shining armour, even a bit of cinderfella...); for this reason I think can appeal to a lot of readers, but obviously not if you have something against you men having a bit of female inside.