Richard Rider's Blog - Posts Tagged "recommendation"
Book rec: When the Music Stops by John T. Fuller
My friend John has always been a massive help to me with the Stockholm Syndrome books, with advice and ideas and cheering on and more support than anyone else in the world. Anyone who's read them only did because John kept me writing :)
Anyway, he's just published his novella When the Music Stops, so I wanted to post a recommendation because I think some people on here will be really into it. More details about how much I love it and why in my review, but don't read it if you're bothered by spoilers.
Non-spoilery version: it's an erotic historial m/m romance set in a Victorian lunatic asylum, about a blossoming relationship between a doctor and a patient. If you think that sounds massively inappropriate... you're right. Obviously it is. :P But it's not straightforward wrongness - the details and layers in this thing are immense, and if you're as into repressed self-loathing Englishmen as I am (coughLINDSAYcough) you really can't do much better than Dr Archer. He is wound up so tight it ACHES. Oof. But it's still a really sweet, tender love story with fascinating, flawed, surprising characters, as well as being properly terrifying (the idea of lobotomies and the other godawful things those doctors used to do to their patients kind of gives me panic attacks), and HOT AS ALL HELL. Bonus points for Victorian religious guilt and frilly nightshirts. Swoooooon.
So yeah... please give it a go, because I think it's brilliant!
Anyway, he's just published his novella When the Music Stops, so I wanted to post a recommendation because I think some people on here will be really into it. More details about how much I love it and why in my review, but don't read it if you're bothered by spoilers.
Non-spoilery version: it's an erotic historial m/m romance set in a Victorian lunatic asylum, about a blossoming relationship between a doctor and a patient. If you think that sounds massively inappropriate... you're right. Obviously it is. :P But it's not straightforward wrongness - the details and layers in this thing are immense, and if you're as into repressed self-loathing Englishmen as I am (coughLINDSAYcough) you really can't do much better than Dr Archer. He is wound up so tight it ACHES. Oof. But it's still a really sweet, tender love story with fascinating, flawed, surprising characters, as well as being properly terrifying (the idea of lobotomies and the other godawful things those doctors used to do to their patients kind of gives me panic attacks), and HOT AS ALL HELL. Bonus points for Victorian religious guilt and frilly nightshirts. Swoooooon.
So yeah... please give it a go, because I think it's brilliant!
Book recommendation
My friend John T. Fuller's novella When the Music Stops has been getting a bit of attention lately so I'm boosting the signal: please read this story! The subject matter probably isn't for everyone (doctor/patient), but he never glosses over how inappropriate it is, which gives it proper depth and realistic drama instead of just being a cheap pulpy trope, and he writes so so beautifully it kills me. He is a genius.
Quote: (not really a spoiler but tagging anyway just in case people don't want to read ahead)
<spoiler>
GO NOW! Unlike my books, which I've stillll not got round to sorting, it's available in formats that don't make people want to smash their readers. ;) I will get mine reformatted, I swear, as soon as life calms down and I get more than 0.7 spare seconds a day.
Quote: (not really a spoiler but tagging anyway just in case people don't want to read ahead)
<spoiler>
“Archer tries not to think of his own state of purity, physically unsullied, yet now spiritually beyond redemption, his thoughts plagued by lithe limbs and brilliant blue eyes. Doctor Archer has never really understood women, nor has he ever had time for courtship; this is a sacrifice he has willingly made for his career. He thought - believed - for most of his adult life that his vocation was to tend the sick of mind. Romance was a frivolity, carnal urges something he successfully sublimated, resisting the drive to spoil himself. Now, in the overbearing loneliness of his 4am bed he touches himself in secret, panting and hungry and stunned by shame”</spoiler>
GO NOW! Unlike my books, which I've stillll not got round to sorting, it's available in formats that don't make people want to smash their readers. ;) I will get mine reformatted, I swear, as soon as life calms down and I get more than 0.7 spare seconds a day.
