Fiction Too Grim for Me
When there's nothing left in your life and nowhere to go before you become something other than human, you return to the Gray Zone, a broken, hopeless place that forms an uneasy boundary between the humanity in Atlanta and the Dens of the Kin.
Adam has returned to the Gray Zone after five years away, his needs such that he has little choice but to face the memories and ghosts of his complicated and traumatic childhood.
As he approaches the change that will transform him into a Kin/human hybrid known as LesserBred, his hungers for sex and blood have sharpened beyond the point of him being safe among humans.
Though he's been away a long time, he can't help but hope that the one source of comfort he had as a child is still around, a young boy who had been both his best friend and his first love.
The young human raised by Kin to be food was a nearly feral child who didn't know what love was, but he'd claimed Adam as his own so very long ago.
Like Adam, that boy would now be on the cusp of manhood, That boy named Ean.
Ean had grieved for his Adam, the Kin Batu having told him that his boy had died five years ago, Now there is a new man in the house Adam had once lived in, and he smells like memories and yearning and a need Ean doesn't understand.
Coming face to face with the interloper kindled the sort of joy that Ean hadn't known existed, His Adam hadn't died as he'd been told, His Adam had come home, And Adam needed Ean in ways that Ean was more than familiar with and more than willing to satisfy, There's nothing Ean wouldn't give, wouldn't be, to ease Adam's transformation, Even if the cost is his life,
Ean may not know love, but more than anyone, he understands sacrifice, and for his Adam, no price is too steep.
Every once in awhile I come across a book that confounds me, disturbs me, or just generally makes it difficult to rate.
sitelinkTo Adam With Love is one of those books, As much as I appreciate the occasional darker, edgier romance, especially when coupled with paranormal elements, too much of the world and mythos created here by Wilder crossed that hardtodefine line between dark and edgy and grim and hopeless for me to be able to say I liked it, and there were a few too many storyrelated issues for me to fully embrace it on an artistic level.
It was certainly imaginative and original, It had sultry, sexy moments and reflected a genuine, believable sense of the innocence of youth and the otherness of the Kin in wellwritten flashbacks of the shared childhood history of Ean and Adam.
I found it almost compulsively compelling in that regard, as the everpresent sense of impending doom was too visceral to tear my gaze away for long lest I miss a crucial piece of this complex, complicated story.
I can even say with all honesty that I easily understand why this book would be wildly popular among fans of darker fiction.
Yet I can't say I liked it,
As much as I appreciated the Glossary at the beginning, I felt there was a noted overuse of the italicized words from the Glossary in the narrative.
Part of my problem with that is simply how my mind works and remembers things, I pick up and understand more when terminology that is created for the world and mythos for a story is explained and defined in contextual situations.
Not only does that help flesh out the world and define the parameters of the story for me, but having to flip to the front to refresh my memory as the story progresses interrupts the flow of the narrative and pulls me out of the story.
I also had some problems with some of the plot threads, There were too many questions posed either directly or indirectly that went unanswered, and the romance arc that had been strong from the start ended up going a little awry for me at the end.
The world and the characters were a little too dark and foreign for my personal taste, and I thought the mythos was hard to follow in part because of the problems I had with the terminology.
The sexuality included in the book and the descriptions of Kin feeding pushed at my comfort levels a little, and the romance didn't offer enough of an HEA for me to balance out the emotional trauma the characters suffered throughout the book.
I also never really felt Adam or Ean had matured into adults or had advanced beyond the development levels seen in the many flashbacks.
That probably sounds like a lot of negatives, but in all fairness I can't help but admit that for all of that, something about this book was genuinely captivating.
Both the story and the characters have stuck with me days after I finished reading their tale, I wish a few things had been different, or had shaken out with a less grim existence for LesserBorn and their food.
I couldn't help but feel a bit hopeless about the Gray Zone and its inhabitants, the Kin and the Dens, That's just not a comfortable feeling to have at the end of my romance reads and it definitely affected my overall impression of this dark and edgy book.
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Dreamspinner Press via NetGalley, This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own,
ed for sitelinkOne Good Book Deserves Another, At first I was intimidated by the Glossary and that was only a partial Glossary with the rest at the author's website, I was relieved when I immediately submerged into the Grey Zone and realized the Glossary wouldn't be needed, Flashbacks in general can be iffy, but in this case I looked forward to them at the beginning of every chapter, Being given those glimpses of Adam and Ean growing up, becoming friends and beyond was beautiful to me in contrast with the gritty and sort of ruthless environment around them.
A star off for some areas where I had to fill in the blanks with my own version of what I hope happened and the abrupt HFN ending.
Otherwise, a solid read that left me intrigued to visit the Gray Zone again, When Adam was a child, his father attacked and almost killed him, His mother moved him to the Gray Zone in Atlanta to keep him safe from any further attacks, See, the Gray Zone is the area right outside the Den, the home of the Dragon Queen of the city, and is a buffer between the Kin and humankind.
Dragons, or wyrms, are a different species of being, but genetically close enough to humans to allow interbreeding, And Adam is a Lesser Bred, one of the line of offspring between a human and a Kin, one of the pure blooded Dragons.
To Adam's racial purist father, that is enough reason to kill him,
Ean has been raised by one of the Kin, Batu, a Dominant Male, to belong, as a part of his household.
When he and Adam meet in the Gray Zone, they become friends, Ean wants to take care of Adam, for him to belong, He will always take care of Adam and keep him safe, But Ean, for all of his wanting, is human,
But Adam's father catches up to his wife and son, and Adam disappears, leaving the city and Ean, He returns to his home in the Gray Zone five years later, having testified and put his father behind bars, to begin his transformation from human to Lesser Bred.
And to find Ean again, Because he loves him and wants so badly to belong to him, But will Adam be truly safe, and can he reconnect with Ean, or has Ean moved on And will Ean become capable of loving Adam
This story this wildly imaginative, creative, intense and strangely touching tale blew me away.
The quality and depth of the characters, the detailed world building, the raw emotions and the sure handed story telling were just, . . amazing.
Adam and Ean are two wonderfully rich and textured characters, polar opposites and yet both drawn to each other improbably, Adam, raised to be human, even with his certain Lesser Bred future, and Ean, fully human but brought up with the strange, unhuman moral code of the Kin.
And yet these two come together and teach the other Adam to accept and embrace his future, and Ean to love and know his human roots.
And they form something between them so different and sweet and powerful,
Adrienne Wilder has brought the ohsofamiliar city I am a native of Atlanta to life, but layered it with this weird and wonderful, totally alien side that is so plausible, and so strange and alien, I am just in awe.
There is a danger to this world, and yet people find a way to make their lives, going about their tasks and living and loving and it just all works.
Ms. Wilder includes a glossary of terms in the beginning to assist new readers to this world with common threads from her stories this is one of a series of tales about this world, which is helpful.
But I found myself so engrossed in the story, I didn't need it to take in the wonder and terror and wildness that is the Gray Zone.
And I have to comment on the ending just killed me, "Batu put one of his massive hands against his perfect chest: "Because it hurt in here when you went away", " Holy Hell, Ms. Wilder, just perfection.
Read this and be prepared to be amazed,
Tom This would have been astar read for me but the abrupt ending just kind of threw me, Wow! Loved this despite being in tears several times in the story, Although honestly If something moves me to tears or laughter, it's usually a good sign as my emotions have been thoroughly caught up in the story
Both the main characters in this novel have been damaged in some way by their childhoods the same childhoods where they formed a friendship that was strong enough to endure separation and death before being reunited again.
There is a fair bit of emotional pain or angst, in this story, as it moves back and forth between the past and the present.
This leads me to the one area I feel doesn't hold up to the high standard found everywhere else in the novel, . . the end. Personally I think I would have preferred just a little more depth or detail to the final scene and the hope for the future.
Although this may well be a deliberate ploy as this book too, is the start of a series, . .
The world Ms, Wilder has created is interesting and complex, and has, soon to be, novellas in one series, and another novel, Blood Bonds, the first book of yet another series, all based in this world.
Despite the fact that there are no characters in common with the previous books, I think if I had not read the other novels, I might find the complex world found in To Adam with Love a bit difficult to follow.
I believe any reader contemplating reading this novel, would benefit from having read the other novel, Blood Bonds or the novella series, Darwin's Theory, before reading this novel, just to gain a better understanding of this unique world.
Just couldn't get into it, Stars:./
Overall
I put this book off again and again because going in I knew it was going to be a darker novel and I kept telling myself I wasn't in the mood.
However, while it is a darker novel, it's not bleak, It takes the reader along a twisted path full of thorns and prickers, but it doesn't rip out the heart, stomp on it, then stitch it back in.
Instead the central themes are love and emotions, as Adam is afraid of losing his humanity, and Ean is slowly trying to understand his own humanity beyond physicality.
Parts of this story dragged for me, but only because I wanted to know the ending and how the author worked out all the different problems that the characters were facing, which speaks highly of the plot that Wilder created.
I would recommend this to most, but for readers of fantasy and dystopian futures, this should definitely be something to check out,
Strengths
While he's not mentioned in the blurb, there is actually a love triangle involved in the story.
Ean and Adam love one another, but there is a young man named Brian from their past who also loves Adam, and Adam feels attraction in return.
The play of these three characters was amazingly supple, to the point where I thought I knew how things would end up, but little moments would leave me guessing how exactly the lovers would pair off.
Speaking of the endwithout spoiling everything, since spoilers would damage the enjoyment of this book, I feelI really liked how everything unfolded and was resolved.
I had one minor niggle involving Adam's father, but overall I was surprised, pleasantly, with what happened, I definitely wasn't expecting things to go that way, but it also didn't blindside me,
Wilder creates a very interesting and thought out world here, and I look forward to reading more of it in the second novel Worth.
Although there wasn't much explanation for why there was a nest of these dragons who masquerade as humans, and it's never mentioned if there are other nests, I enjoyed the ample information that was given.
The world, word usage, and culture surrounding the Kin was detailed without bogging down the story and felt organic within the plot,
Weaknesses
Most if not every chapter started with a flashback from when Adam and Ean were kids, While this was vital for supplying history about the characters and building up their relationship, especially in the beginning, it also became a little tedious toward the end when events were quickly unfurling and I wanted the story and I wanted it immediately.
In someways it interfered with the natural flow and I felt it could have been used more judiciously, but it in no way ruined the book.
There is a glossary in the beginning that goes over many of the terms that are used pretty consistently through the book.
While this works in paperback from, in ebook form it becomes pretty much inaccessible, For the most part the reader can use a single reading of the glossary and context of sentences to know what is happening, and by the end the words are second nature.
However, I found two words chela, which means claws, and chetra, which means humans to be near enough in spelling that the first instance of chetra had me confusing it with chela.
A minor inconvenience that was easily fixed by context clues, but for readers who have difficulty with learning new vocabulary, be advised,
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