Rebecca Ore
Completed 8/18/2018, Reviewed 8/19/2018
3 stars
This was an odd book.
It’s a collection of interrelated short stories about a 14,000-year-old gay
man who can travel through time. It follows
him from cave man times to the present where he has a relationship with a
thirty something cop. It’s an intriguing
premise but not necessarily always executed well. I found myself sometime stumbling over clumsy
prose, but pushing through because it was so interesting. In the end, I had to say I was satisfied with
the book, I just wished it was written a little better.
The book is about Vel who is nearly immortal. He can die if mortally wounded, but otherwise
has been living since Paleolithic days.
He is accepted by the tribe, taking care of children who otherwise would
have been have been strangled by their mothers who could not take care of
them. He also hunts with the tribe,
killing mammoths and helping process them for food and clothing. The stories about Vel in the past are told
from Vel’s point of view. They jump
around in time from the Stonewall riots in NYC in 1969, to 18th century
London where he helps a young male prostitute escape his predicament and the
sodomy laws of the day, to a pre-Roman period where he is a minor deity of a
spring. These stories are interwoven with a narrative told by
Thomas, Vel’s present day lover, who knows the truth about Vel. Thomas worries about growing older while Vel
remains the same age.
The stories were all interesting. My favorites were a tale about Vel, Thomas,
and Vel’s descendants gathering for a traditional prehistoric Yule and the tale
of the 1726 London and the male prostitute Vel tries to rescue. The Yule story is full of great descriptions
of the ritual. It includes a scene where
a young girl is made to swear that she will never tell anyone of the secret of
Vel’s longevity. The London story is a look
at how gay men lived in the eighteenth century with the brutal sodomy laws that
resulted in many hangings. I also
enjoyed following along with Thomas’ tale in the present day.
Some of the stories included sex scenes which may not be for
everyone. However, one of them was very
interesting in that it described Thomas’ problems with sex being a survivor of
sexual abuse. It is graphic yet very gentle,
showing Vel’s patience and compassion with Thomas.
My only real problem with the book was that the prose was
choppy at times. There were parts where
I couldn’t follow the sentences. It was
like they didn’t have any structure, or parts were missing, like the
subject. I don’t know if this was style,
or an editing problem, but I didn’t like it.
It happened mostly during the Paleolithic stories. At first, I thought it was supposed to be
like “cave man talk”, but the story was being told from the present reflecting
on the past, so it was fluid at other times.
The prose was inconsistent at best.
I give the book three stars out of five. It’s good, but could have used a better
editor. The book is short and
interesting, so it makes for a compelling read.
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