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In Light's Shadow
Gavin Booker, a school librarian, leads an orderly, normal life. Work, jogging, friends from work, his son every other weekend. Gavin is also a secret. He is a hybrid, or part-fairy. And in the Columbian Empire, hybrids are under an automatic death sentence.
In this alternate version of the USA, magic is illegal. So is loving another man. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, and magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi, are kept in zoos. The others, tree and water spirits, talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding.
This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is ministers preach against people like him constantly. Hating the other is a part of every school's curriculum.
But things are changing fast, and seemingly for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms are frequent occurrences. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body's glow isn't working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead.
The Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the coming catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved earlier in life? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams before it is too late?
In this alternate version of the USA, magic is illegal. So is loving another man. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, and magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi, are kept in zoos. The others, tree and water spirits, talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding.
This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is ministers preach against people like him constantly. Hating the other is a part of every school's curriculum.
But things are changing fast, and seemingly for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms are frequent occurrences. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body's glow isn't working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead.
The Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the coming catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved earlier in life? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams before it is too late?
- GenresFantasy
330 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 3, 2022
13 people want to read
About the author
Warren Rochelle
15 books43 followersWarren Rochelle lives in Crozet, Virginia. He retired from teaching English at the University of Mary Washington in 2020. His short fiction and poetry have been published in such journals and anthologies as Icarus, North Carolina Literary Review, Forbidden Lines, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Collective Fallout, Queer Fish 2, Empty Oaks, Quantum Fairy Tales, Migration, Clarity, Innovation, The Silver Gryphon, Jaelle Her Book, Colonnades, and Graffiti, as well as the Asheville Poetry Review, GW Magazine, Crucible, The Charlotte Poetry Review, and Romance and Beyond. His short story, “The Golden Boy,” was a finalist for the 2004 Spectrum Award for Short Fiction.
Rochelle is the author of five novels. The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010),were all published by Golden Gryphon Press. The Werewolf and His Boy, originally published by Samhain Publishing in September 2016, was re-released from JMS Books in August 2020. His fifth novel, In Light’s Shadow, was published by JMS Books in September 2022. His first story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories was published by JMS Books in September 2020. His second collection, To Bring Him Home and Other Tales, was published in September 2021, by JMS Books. A third collection, The Great Forest and Other Love Stories was published by JMS Books in November 2024.
A stand-alone story, “Seagulls,” was released by JMS Books in September 2021.
A second stand-alone story, “Susurrus,” was published by JMS Books in November 2022
Rochelle is the author of five novels. The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010),were all published by Golden Gryphon Press. The Werewolf and His Boy, originally published by Samhain Publishing in September 2016, was re-released from JMS Books in August 2020. His fifth novel, In Light’s Shadow, was published by JMS Books in September 2022. His first story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories was published by JMS Books in September 2020. His second collection, To Bring Him Home and Other Tales, was published in September 2021, by JMS Books. A third collection, The Great Forest and Other Love Stories was published by JMS Books in November 2024.
A stand-alone story, “Seagulls,” was released by JMS Books in September 2021.
A second stand-alone story, “Susurrus,” was published by JMS Books in November 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 14, 2022
Loved this book ! I am not a big fantasy fan but this novel of an alternate universe had me hooked from the start..........beautiful writing and characters you routed for and were hooked on finding out their outcomes
October 20, 2022
This dystopic urban fantasy blends a sweet m/m romance, a coming-of-age story, and a horrific alternate-history world. Magic and magical creatures exist, although throughout the history of this world’s United States, the Columbian Empire, they have been progressively more restricted and then criminalized. Even a hint of returning the “the Relaxation” is enough to ignite assassination attempts. Meanwhile, fairies are locked away in ghettoes or have gone into hiding, and magical beasts, such as gryphons and unicorns, are kept in zoos. Hand in hand with oppression of magical beings comes proscriptions against same-sex relationships and freedom of speech. Church, school, and state unite in systematic brainwashing and instilling fear and hatred for anyone who deviates from a rigidly conformist norm.
Gavin Booker has grown up in such an environment. His half-fairy mother was so traumatized by discrimination that she has become pathologically secretive. Although “passing” for human-normal by marriage, she imparts her paranoid to Gavin. He has always known he was different, but with the stirrings of his earliest childhood attraction to other boys, his very life is now at risk. His mother is terrified that such close friendships may cause them both to be revealed as hybrids, and she pressures him to “pass” as straight. At the same time, she takes him to a healer who dispenses medicines to suppress the beautiful golden glow of fairies and teaches him psychological suppression methods.
Gavin’s life becomes one of unending denial of his deepest feelings and his true nature. The price of exposure is not just immediate public execution without trial. It has consequences for the family and friends of the accused. Suicides by gay, fairy youth are rampant, and Gavin himself, a teenager drowning in despair, attempts to end his own life. One of the few consistent bright spots in his world is his relationship with a golden fairy boy who visits him in dreams. Their emerging love and sexual bonding sustain Gavin through the deaths and disappearances of every other boy he’s cared about.
The Columbian Empire is alarmingly like our own United States. Rochelle fleshes out Gavin’s daily life with details like news reports by Walter Conkrite, popular obsession with “the royals,” and almost-accurate bits like Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Summer” (my favorite).
Rochelle’s portrayal of the intense psychological devastation of unrelenting fear, the toxic nature of secrets, and the impact upon self-esteem is chillingly accurate. I grew up in the 1950s, when my father was the target of a McCarthy Era probe and a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department to take away his citizenship. Although I was too young to know about the FBI surveillance of our family or the relatives who went “underground,” I have vivid memories of the anxiety my family endured. Yet even in those dreadful times there were beacons of light: friends, family members, sympathetic and courageous attorneys, organizations like the ACLU, labor unions, and Quaker and other religious groups who, often at great risk to themselves, stood up for the rights of those under suspicion.
Although in Rochelle’s world, there is an underground of sorts, I found the absence of public resistance disappointing. The Columbian Empire arises from the same traditions of rights and limits on power as the United States today, dating back to the Magna Carta and earlier. At the same time, the unrelenting targeting of both gays and hybrids is an important dramatic element in how much it intensifies the pressure on Gavin and others.
One of the strengths of this book is how many different ways a reader can look at it. Certainly, it’s a gay love story. It’s also a psychological and political thriller. It’s an examination of the corrosive effects of ignorance and hatred. In all these areas, it has broad appeal.
Gavin Booker has grown up in such an environment. His half-fairy mother was so traumatized by discrimination that she has become pathologically secretive. Although “passing” for human-normal by marriage, she imparts her paranoid to Gavin. He has always known he was different, but with the stirrings of his earliest childhood attraction to other boys, his very life is now at risk. His mother is terrified that such close friendships may cause them both to be revealed as hybrids, and she pressures him to “pass” as straight. At the same time, she takes him to a healer who dispenses medicines to suppress the beautiful golden glow of fairies and teaches him psychological suppression methods.
Gavin’s life becomes one of unending denial of his deepest feelings and his true nature. The price of exposure is not just immediate public execution without trial. It has consequences for the family and friends of the accused. Suicides by gay, fairy youth are rampant, and Gavin himself, a teenager drowning in despair, attempts to end his own life. One of the few consistent bright spots in his world is his relationship with a golden fairy boy who visits him in dreams. Their emerging love and sexual bonding sustain Gavin through the deaths and disappearances of every other boy he’s cared about.
The Columbian Empire is alarmingly like our own United States. Rochelle fleshes out Gavin’s daily life with details like news reports by Walter Conkrite, popular obsession with “the royals,” and almost-accurate bits like Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Summer” (my favorite).
Rochelle’s portrayal of the intense psychological devastation of unrelenting fear, the toxic nature of secrets, and the impact upon self-esteem is chillingly accurate. I grew up in the 1950s, when my father was the target of a McCarthy Era probe and a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department to take away his citizenship. Although I was too young to know about the FBI surveillance of our family or the relatives who went “underground,” I have vivid memories of the anxiety my family endured. Yet even in those dreadful times there were beacons of light: friends, family members, sympathetic and courageous attorneys, organizations like the ACLU, labor unions, and Quaker and other religious groups who, often at great risk to themselves, stood up for the rights of those under suspicion.
Although in Rochelle’s world, there is an underground of sorts, I found the absence of public resistance disappointing. The Columbian Empire arises from the same traditions of rights and limits on power as the United States today, dating back to the Magna Carta and earlier. At the same time, the unrelenting targeting of both gays and hybrids is an important dramatic element in how much it intensifies the pressure on Gavin and others.
One of the strengths of this book is how many different ways a reader can look at it. Certainly, it’s a gay love story. It’s also a psychological and political thriller. It’s an examination of the corrosive effects of ignorance and hatred. In all these areas, it has broad appeal.
November 6, 2022
When i began reading this book I expected a bit of light fluff; some sort of Harry Potter magic world versus the Muggles. Boy was that wrong!. The author has created a whole alternate US with an alternate history to our own but incorporating and adapting many real events and persons. Gavin's struggles to pass as "normal", when the slightest mishap could result in immediate execution, are always present. Not being able to trust anyone, even family members, due to the constant brainwashing by the media and the church is offset by the whole hidden culture that the fey community has evolved to cope. I wasn't sure how the story would end, and it didn't end like I thought it would, but as I approached the last few pages I kept thing no, no, no. I wanted the story to keep going I was so into it. I am surprised this book hasn't gotten more notoriety, though I have some suspicions why. Pity as I highly recommend it to all Fantasy genre fans.
June 16, 2023
Let me start off this review by saying the world building here is astounding. I mean, it's sort of our world with some recognizable elements, but it a total revisionist history world where Rochelle has thought out almost every aspect. Political, religious, social. In fact, in the back of the book you get a detailed timeline for this alternate development of what we know as the United States. His grasp of this world is so total that it makes for a completely engrossing experience.
The story itself is fantasy, but grounded in the real world. It doesn't feel jarring, but he intertwines the fantasy elements with the world so expertly that it the preternatural feels natural to the reader. It is also a story about oppression and bigotry, with the powers that be in this world having decided that all magical beings are to be feared and hated and either locked up or killed. Sadly, this is something that feels all too familiar to those of us living in this world in this time. By introducing this into the fantasy milieu, he allows enough distance for us to really examine the absurdity and cruelty of bigotry from a new perspective. It doesn't come off as a lecture, because he also introduces characters that you get invested in, and you are simply following them on their journey through life, feeling their pain and wanting to see them succeed.
We follow main character Gavin through most of his life, all the challenges his face trying to hide that he has magic within him, the ways he tries to hide it, the way he tries to rid himself of it, the way he tries to be "normal." And queer people can relate to all of this.
And that's another plus of the novel. It is unabashedly queer. In the current political climate where all queer positivity is trying to be erased from library shelves, books like this are so important because they show the basic humanity of queer people and illustrate that queer love is not dirty or shameful but something to be celebrated.
The ending of this book is quite explosive, a natural denotation of all the smoldering passion and need that has been building throughout the story. If I had one complaint, it would be that the book ends right at the start of something new and exciting and I wanted to follow along and see what happened next. Plus the fates of two characters in particular were left unresolved, and while I understand this was intentional, the part of me who had lived in this story for a while desperately wanted to know.
I definitely recommend this book for fans of fantasy and queer fiction, but also for people who think they don't like those kinds of fiction. I think you'll find yourself surprised.
The story itself is fantasy, but grounded in the real world. It doesn't feel jarring, but he intertwines the fantasy elements with the world so expertly that it the preternatural feels natural to the reader. It is also a story about oppression and bigotry, with the powers that be in this world having decided that all magical beings are to be feared and hated and either locked up or killed. Sadly, this is something that feels all too familiar to those of us living in this world in this time. By introducing this into the fantasy milieu, he allows enough distance for us to really examine the absurdity and cruelty of bigotry from a new perspective. It doesn't come off as a lecture, because he also introduces characters that you get invested in, and you are simply following them on their journey through life, feeling their pain and wanting to see them succeed.
We follow main character Gavin through most of his life, all the challenges his face trying to hide that he has magic within him, the ways he tries to hide it, the way he tries to rid himself of it, the way he tries to be "normal." And queer people can relate to all of this.
And that's another plus of the novel. It is unabashedly queer. In the current political climate where all queer positivity is trying to be erased from library shelves, books like this are so important because they show the basic humanity of queer people and illustrate that queer love is not dirty or shameful but something to be celebrated.
The ending of this book is quite explosive, a natural denotation of all the smoldering passion and need that has been building throughout the story. If I had one complaint, it would be that the book ends right at the start of something new and exciting and I wanted to follow along and see what happened next. Plus the fates of two characters in particular were left unresolved, and while I understand this was intentional, the part of me who had lived in this story for a while desperately wanted to know.
I definitely recommend this book for fans of fantasy and queer fiction, but also for people who think they don't like those kinds of fiction. I think you'll find yourself surprised.
May 14, 2025
Wow! Just Wow! What an amazing trip to a world we 'Don't' want to live in, disregarding the fantasy part of it with the paranormal side. Although this was written in '22, I fear if we don't stop what is happening in the US ATM, we're heading headfirst toward something similar to this.
While reading, I kept telling myself, that could easily happen to us.
Extremely well written. Good, strong characters. The world-building is phenomenal. Worth the time to sit and read this through. Well done, Mr. Rochelle. And Hello from the coast of VA.
While reading, I kept telling myself, that could easily happen to us.
Extremely well written. Good, strong characters. The world-building is phenomenal. Worth the time to sit and read this through. Well done, Mr. Rochelle. And Hello from the coast of VA.
March 27, 2023
_In Light's Shadow_ by Warren Rochelle receives five stars from me. I found the book engaging, tense, with good themes.
First, this is like the third or fourth book I've read by Rochelle, and I'd call it his best due to the world building, the themes, and the characters (those less so cause he usually has good characters).
Rochelle also usually has good world building, but for this novel, I felt that the world building was more complex; therefore, it needed to be more developed. I felt he did well on this. The location in this alternative universe where Fairies and other magical creatures are real is what we call the USA. In the novel it is the Columbian Empire, a religious regime which oppresses magical creatures, with a current emphasis on hybrids. I loved how the setting had elements that I could hold on to and say this is America (elements like North Carolina, UNC, etc). Yet there were elements that were just eschewed like the White Palace, and Coupland's Appalachian Summer. These little details helped build a world that is similar too our but reminds us it isn't.
The political world that he builds is also excellent and worthy of note. First let me say that I love dystopian literature. The regime is always explained, the rituals and ceremonies were there and strong. But keep in mind, this is all from the perspective of someone who isn't involved in government, so it is the layman's view of the government and their actions. Which brings me to one of the stronger elements of the novel: the black buses. The black busses really bring out the terrifying nature and brutal nature of the regime. I felt that was a very smart move on the part of Rochelle. They are not in every chapter in every scene, but they are always remembered and feared.
The tension was something that I hated enjoying. I find most dystopian novels tense. However, in this one, I wouldn't read as much because I was afraid for the characters. This goes back to the world building and how believable it was (maybe current regimes like Iran help in that believability.). Every time the characters kiss, or show any kind of homosexual traits, the reader feels scared for them because they can be caught at any time and killed right away (along with family). Not only did I feel scared for Gavin when he was with a lover, but when he tried to pass as a straight non-hybrid person, I was scared for him. Being in an intimate relationship exposes one.
Theme. To be brief. The them of injustice is strong. The magicals are treated inhumanly, as second class--second class isn't correct they are classless, the bottom of the barrel as it were and treated injustly because of it. The injustice of other religions, of people of non heterosexual leanings, people of non white backgrounds. All through the book this theme is developed. It will be easy for people to do readings of the book where the magicals are symbols for anyone who is / has been oppressed.
Recommended: yes. If you like fantasy, you'll like this book. If you like dystopian lit, you'll like this book. If you like LGBTQ+ Lit, you'll like this book.
First, this is like the third or fourth book I've read by Rochelle, and I'd call it his best due to the world building, the themes, and the characters (those less so cause he usually has good characters).
Rochelle also usually has good world building, but for this novel, I felt that the world building was more complex; therefore, it needed to be more developed. I felt he did well on this. The location in this alternative universe where Fairies and other magical creatures are real is what we call the USA. In the novel it is the Columbian Empire, a religious regime which oppresses magical creatures, with a current emphasis on hybrids. I loved how the setting had elements that I could hold on to and say this is America (elements like North Carolina, UNC, etc). Yet there were elements that were just eschewed like the White Palace, and Coupland's Appalachian Summer. These little details helped build a world that is similar too our but reminds us it isn't.
The political world that he builds is also excellent and worthy of note. First let me say that I love dystopian literature. The regime is always explained, the rituals and ceremonies were there and strong. But keep in mind, this is all from the perspective of someone who isn't involved in government, so it is the layman's view of the government and their actions. Which brings me to one of the stronger elements of the novel: the black buses. The black busses really bring out the terrifying nature and brutal nature of the regime. I felt that was a very smart move on the part of Rochelle. They are not in every chapter in every scene, but they are always remembered and feared.
The tension was something that I hated enjoying. I find most dystopian novels tense. However, in this one, I wouldn't read as much because I was afraid for the characters. This goes back to the world building and how believable it was (maybe current regimes like Iran help in that believability.). Every time the characters kiss, or show any kind of homosexual traits, the reader feels scared for them because they can be caught at any time and killed right away (along with family). Not only did I feel scared for Gavin when he was with a lover, but when he tried to pass as a straight non-hybrid person, I was scared for him. Being in an intimate relationship exposes one.
Theme. To be brief. The them of injustice is strong. The magicals are treated inhumanly, as second class--second class isn't correct they are classless, the bottom of the barrel as it were and treated injustly because of it. The injustice of other religions, of people of non heterosexual leanings, people of non white backgrounds. All through the book this theme is developed. It will be easy for people to do readings of the book where the magicals are symbols for anyone who is / has been oppressed.
Recommended: yes. If you like fantasy, you'll like this book. If you like dystopian lit, you'll like this book. If you like LGBTQ+ Lit, you'll like this book.
December 28, 2023
This chilling dystopian LQGBTQ fantasy was a page-turner for me. It was thrilling to discover the novel’s gradual reveal of the details and logic of its world. The world is so well described that the fantasy elements become very realistic in ways that supported my generation of empathy for the characters. The terrible brutality, oppression, fear, injustice and bigotry that the characters faced is unfortunately very present in our real world. I am looking forward to the planned sequel. The author gives the reader some helpful backmatter for events in this fictional world. He also provides helpful notes about mental health resources.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews