Haji’s Exile by Alan Chin

Reviewed by Cole at Reviews by Jessewave
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Press
Genre: Western, Horses

Length: Short Story (8k words)

Rating: 4.75 stars out of 5

Review Summary: It may not end with an HEA or HFN, but this short story of young and naive love by Alan Chin is beautiful nonetheless.

BLURB
Nathan has cared for horses all his life, but Haji is the first he’ll train on his own. When the Arabian stallion arrives at Bitter Coffee Ranch, Nathan thinks he is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And then he lays eyes on Haji’s handler, Yousef. Nathan has much to learn about horses, about pride, and about love, but with the ranch’s hopes riding on Haji, he’ll also learn that all things have their price.

A Bittersweet Dreams title: It’s an unfortunate truth: love doesn’t always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.

REVIEW
I’ve long been a fan of Alan Chin’s. His words seem to melt of the page and flow through me as I’m reading. His prose is often decadently smooth, with a rolling gait. So it is in his latest story, and aptly, as the story deals with the training of a particularly proud and regal horse.

Nathan is a recent high school graduate who, after falling on hard times, is taking the pace of his father’s foreman and taking over the training of the family’s race horses. The story begins as he sees their newest buy arrive on the ranch — Haji. The beautiful sorrel is from North Africa and brings with him a stable boy, Yousef. Both are thrilling and exotic to Nathan, and as he grows into his responsibilities and his own awareness of his life, so do both of them grow with him, one on the track and one in his bed and as his newfound love. Add to that the harshness of life in Nevada and the racial inequality of the time (which is unmentioned, but could be recent historical or contemporary), and the situation becomes somewhat complicated.

The best part of this story is the beautiful prose. Alan Chin has a way of matching the prose to the story and here I often found the prose very musical, with a tempo that matched whatever action the horse is making at that time in the story — a rolling gait, or the ferocious pounding beats of stampeding horses. Also, I found that the most interesting character of any in the story was in fact the horse, Haji. His story is a parallel to Yousef’s. Though we know very little about Yousef (as does Nathan), we can understand him because Nathan understands horses more than people, and as such can understand Haji. He brings together the two characters, and in the end brings about their separation (you know I won’t say more than that, but it is a Bittersweet Dreams title).

A lovely horse is always an emotional experience for me, the kind that is spoiled by words. All my life I have often talked about horses — hell, most of the time I seem to talk of nothing else — but I have never been able to unravel my love of them using the commonplace adjectives of my limited vocabulary. To me they are a beautiful dream, to be admired but not scrutinized, lest they disappear before I can voice the words.

This is a story of young love, the period that is on the cusp of true adulthood, where your awareness of the world tilts to such an alarming degree. Many things can bring that change about and here it is the awakening of love for another man after Nathan’s whole childhood purely spend on his love of horses. They help him understand the change in his life, and through them they also help him see his naivete when he feels that first sting and the first touch of the coldness in the world.

More than anything, though, this story is really about the love of animals, and how they can define and explain the things in our lives, or help us change them:

I believe with all my fiber that until a man has loved an animal, a large part of his soul remains unawakened.

The Bittersweet Dreams titles from Dreamspinner are certainly not for everyone, and this story won’t be either. I won’t deny that the ending made me quite sad, but I’m also a realist, and I think that Alan Chin does a wonderful job with this story in portraying the shift between the idealistic adolescent and the reasoning adult. At the same time, the story is beautifully written and offers much more than the ending of a love affair. Definitely recommended.

http://tinyurl.com/3wq85k7

Shattered Wings by Bryan Healey

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: CreateSpace (April 29, 2011)
Pages: 249


John is confident, a bit cocky, and happy with his life. He and his lover, Charlie, are proud parents of a darling little girl. Charlie is a stay-at-home daddy while John brings home the bacon with his mid-level management position in an IT department. John is living the dream in their lovely suburban home. The only thing missing is the sheepdog.

And then an unexpected layoff shows John just how fragile a foundation his perfect life is built on. John’s search for a new job brings only emotional strain. He spirals into despair, which triggers a relapse into alcoholism, lies, and deceit. All it will take to recover his dream is a job—any job—but can he find one in this down economy before he loses everything?

I had a love/hate relationship with this novel. The story itself is simply terrific. It’s like watching a train wreck from close up, and knowing that at any moment the whole damned thing could explode, but there is nothing you can do, not even pull your eyes away. It is a gripping story, and John is a compelling character. He’s both sympathetic and pathetic at the same time, making all the wrong moves for comprehensible reasons.

This is a detailed study of a man slowly disintegrating. He keeps grasping for help, but at every turn, people turn their back on him until he is pushed beyond his endurance. It is a sad story, and bitterly real. I would love to award this tale a five-star rating, but I can’t overlook the numerous issues that annoyed me.

This story desperately needs a competent editor with a large red pen. The writing—with numerous typos, misspellings, bad punctuation, switching from past tense to present and back, and repeated phrases—make this one of the worst written books I’ve seen in print. The writing continually pulled me out of the story, and tainted an otherwise compelling read. It is the curse of self-publishing, and why I generally shy away from writers who publish their own work.

Although John’s character has significant depth, the other characters in the story have little or no depth at all. I kept wanting them to show more of themselves, but that didn’t happen. In defense of the author, this story is told by John in first person, and he is totally self absorbed through most of the story. Yet, I wanted more.

There is one other issue I’ll mention. It seems that half of the book is told in flashbacks. There is a pattern where every four or five pages the author cuts from the current storyline to give several pages of backstory. Back and forth, back and forth. My issue is that too many flashbacks kept breaking the rhythm of the current story. Normally I could overlook that, except that in this case most of these flashbacks did little or nothing to advance the storyline. They seemed to slow the story down for no reason.

My opinion is that this book is not ready for prime time. With significant editing, the rounding out of some characters and the deletion of several flashbacks, this could be a fantastic read.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Wings-Bryan-Healey/dp/1456398350

Harlan’s Race by Patricia Nell Warren

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Wildcat Press
Pages: 325

Years after the shooting death of Billy Sive, Harlan Brown is faced with the arduous task of coming to terms with the loss of his lover. While trying to be a father to Billy’s son, Vince Matti (Billy’s best friend) drifts back into Harlan’s life, and the two struggle to form a troubled relationship. Each person in Harlan’s life—Billy’s son, Vince, Billy’s Father—keeps Harlan tied to his tragic past.

Then the unthinkable happens. Another shooting at another race, followed by a note from the shooter letting Harlan know that the shooter is stalking him. Harlan hires two gay, Rambo-like bodyguards, and their investigation reveals that the killer pursuing Harlan was also involved with Billy’s murder. Harlan goes into hiding, but finds himself constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for the next bullet.

If all this weren’t bad enough for Harlan, it’s the late ‘70s and he finds that many of his friends are dying of a mysterious new disease that is affecting gay men. Caught between a tragic past that won’t let go of him and a future that holds only death and sorrow, Harlan Brown must find a way to survive the violence and challenges of changing times.

Harlan’s Race is Patricia Nell Warren’s long awaited sequel to The Front Runner.
The author mentions in the forward that she intends to write a third installment in the story featuring Falcon, Billy’s son, when he reaches his teens. Harlan’s Race is a dark bridge between Billy’s and Falcon’s stories.

This is a very dark and moody story. With Billy’s death haunting Harlan, and nothing to look forward to but the AIDS epidemic, there is little to feel good about here. The plot follows Harlan, Vince and others, as they all seem to self-destruct after Billy’s death.

Although the book is superbly written, I closed the book feeling disappointed. This is a murder mystery where the stalker/murderer is revealed at the end, and it is meant to be a shocking disclosure. I, however, figured out who the murderer was halfway through the story, so the ending fell flat for me. Not only was it flat, much of the plot felt too contrived to be believable. Although I must say that there were moments in the romantic bond between Harlan and Vince that were touching and rang true.

Although Harlan’s Race can be read without reading The Front Runner, I think that would be a mistake. Harlan’s character is well developed, but many of the supporting cast are not, and one needs to read TFR as background to these characters in order to fully appreciate the depth of this story.

I have enjoyed reading several Patricia Nell Warren books and think she is a terrific talent, but Harlan’s Race is not a book I can highly recommend. I am, however, looking forward to reading the third book in the series, Billy’s Boy.

http://wildcatintl.com/press.cfm

Song On The Sand by Ruth Sims

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Pubisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Pages: 19

Tony Dalby is a wheelchair-bound man living his twilight years in a convalescent home. In his youth he had been a Broadway actor/dancer. Now he is a bitter, self-centered, irascible, old man with nothing to look forward to. He keeps his life history in a scrapbook—grainy photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, keepsakes. The staff at the home try to get him to stand, to walk, but he hasn’t the heart to even try during his therapy sessions.

But then Tony notices a sexy young man who shows up daily to visit Jesse, the victim of an accident that has left him a vegetable. After several days of admiring the young man from a distance, a chance encounter allows Tony to meet this young man, whose name is, Drew. Tony discovers that Drew and Jesse are lovers.

Driven to impress young Drew, Tony puts all his heart and soul into his therapy sessions, and over time gets to the point where he can walk with the help of only a cane. But then, for the first time in ages, he begins to think about someone other than himself. He tries to help Drew’s lover recover. As it turns out, Jesse and Tony had both acted in the musical, La Cage Aux Folles. This thin thread, they soon discover, has the power to turn tragedy into an unexpected joy.

Ruth Sims is one of my favorite writers, and once again she has managed to impress. This is a bittersweet tale of finding courage and compassion. It is beautifully written, almost flawless in its execution. The main character is completely believable, and lures the reader into his narrow view of the world, but then lets his world expand, giving both the character and the story greater depth.

Often times I can see where a story is going long before the last page, but throughout this tale I kept wondering how the author could possibly wrap up all these threads. Sim’s did so in a way that was both surprising and delightful. When I finished the last page, I sat in silence for a rather long time, not analyzing what I had read, but simply feeling the wonderful emotions that this story evoked.

Ruth Sims is a huge talent. And Song On The Sand is a little gem that I highly recommend to all readers.

http://ruthsims.com/

The Last Deployment by Bronson Lemer

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (June 2011)
Pages: 221

How a Gay, Hammer-Swinging Twentysomething Survived a Year in Iraq

Bronson Lemer joined the National Guard during his senior year of high school as a way to help pay for his upcoming college expenses, but he also had a secret reason for joining. For years he had lived in the shadow of his more athletic brothers, and because Bronson was gay, he felt the need to do something dramatic to prove to his parents that he was his own man. He wanted to make the family proud of him. He chose the National Guard because he assumed he could do his one weekend a month and never be sent to war. He was wrong.

In 2003, after being trained as a carpenter and serving five and a half years in the North Dakota National Guard’s engineering unit, Bronson was deployed in Iraq for a year. He left behind college, his family, and a lost love. He found himself in a war zone that he and his fellow soldiers called ‘The Sand Box’ – living in tents, sand everywhere you looked, 120 degree temperatures, and constant apprehension about the impending dangers.

Bronson spent a year in and around Bagdad using his carpentry skills to help rebuild the city. He had a deep conviction to aid the Iraqi people, but the longer his deployment stretched out, the more he felt the US military was doing more harm than good. On a more personal level, he struggled because of a lack of support structure. He didn’t have the close family ties, a wife or long-time girlfriend that most other soldiers had. He felt a need to reveal his sexuality to his buddies, so that they would understand him. But, of course, he couldn’t do that. His only release was in the form of letters to his lost love.

The Last Deployment is a well-written, often provocative memoir of the author’s struggle to reconcile military brotherhood with self-acceptance.
If you are looking for gun battles and roadside bombs ripping limbs from bodies, then you should keep looking. The author never came under fire. This is a tale of internal struggle and the absurd nuances of a soldier’s life in the ‘Sand Box’. It is more about loneliness, fear and fitting in than guns and battles.

The author spent very little time talking about the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. I recall only one place where he summed up his views about it as: The policy creates an environment where it is OK to ridicule someone because of their sexuality because gay men and women cannot stick up for themselves or others without fear of being ostracized and outcast, and that is the last thing a soldier wants during a deployment. The policy reinforces ignorance and stupidity by forcing the people who are gay—the ones who would speak up and support gay men and women when others were ridiculing them—to keep their mouths shut. It also stifles a community that cannot grow, trust, or support each other because some of the members aren’t allowed to speak up or express who they are.

Being a gay man who spend four years in the navy, I was also surprised that Lemer didn’t talk about falling in love/lust with any of his fellow soldiers. That was one of the hardest things for me to deal with while in the military: feeling love for my buddies but being unable to divulge it in any way. What Lemer does express repeatedly was a feeling of not fitting in, mainly because he had to hide so much of himself. Now that was something I related to perfectly.

Lemer's chronicles of a soldier’s daily life in the ‘Sand Box’ make for an interesting and poignant read. It is also a strong argument why the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy harms morale, rather than doing any good. Regardless of how you feel about the war, this memoir is well worth reading. I can highly recommend it to all readers.

http://uwpress.wisc.edu/

Traveling Light by Lloyd Meeker

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: MLR Press
Pages: 281


Ian McCandless is a gay hospice nurse in training to become shaman. On orders from his mentor, Ian goes home for the holidays to make peace with his estranged family. Ian’s brother, Will, picks him up at the airport, and the old conflicts bubble to the surface before they can exit the parking lot. On the way home, Will interrupts a convenience store robbery and is shot, dying in Ian’s arms. Ian vows to use his shaman powers to reap vengeance.

In 13th century Anasazi, another shaman apprentice, Ta-Kuat, is given the task of journeying through the spirit world, through time and space, to retrieve the magical Door Stone which will free his village from famine and will allow them to live and prosper.

As Ian enters the spirit world on his hunt for revenge – which is forbidden to shamans – he meets up with Ta-Kuat. Ian’s pursuit not only puts himself in conflict with the spirit world, but it also endangers Ta-Kuat. The two apprentices forge an unholy alliance in the spirit plane that has dangerous ramifications in the physical world.

Lloyd Meeker’s debut novel, Traveling Light, is a winner. This is one of the most delightful and imaginative stories I’ve read in years. This paranormal tale weaves time travel with dabbling in the spirit world, unique spirits who guide or hinder, and wise old shamans who expound spiritual wisdom without making it into a sermon. In short, it is a unique and absorbing read.

This is the story of two seekers who span both the spiritual realms and the physical world in order to find what they think will make them whole. Ian seeks justice for his dead brother. He searches for his brother’s spirit, and plans to harm his brother’s killer. What he doesn’t realize, and what his mentor must show him, is that, for a shaman, there is no such thing as justice. Ta-Kuat, on the other hand, seeks to save his people by finding the Door Stone. He travels time and space searching for something that doesn’t exist, because it was conjured in the mind of an impure soothsayer.

The two meet on the spirit plane, and are drawn together by a need to help the other, but then both are pulled into a growing love that spans supernatural dimensions. And yes, they manage to make love in both the physical and spiritual planes. “He couldn’t bear his own ecstasy, yet knew it without effort, just as he knew Ta-Kuat’s. They formed one being, one matrix of power, one undulating wave on the vastness that lifted them, drowning them. “

It is a complex plot played out on several levels. Between bouts of lovemaking, the apprentices must help each other unravel riddles and mysteries. They must battle internal emotions gone mad, and evil shamans. By the end, they uncover universal truths that each of us, in the empty and lonely parts of our lives, must confront. I walked away from this book feeling a little wiser. I don’t see how anybody wouldn’t.

My one minor issue is that I wanted the author to spend more time developing the supporting characters who appeared in the physical world. I was particularly keen on having both shaman teachers, Ang and Chiyuskanek, take a larger role in the story and reveal more of themselves.

That one issue aside, I felt this was a delightful and mystical journey, both for the characters and the reader. Utterly enjoyable. I can highly recommend this book to all readers who like to tickle their imaginations.

http://www.lloydmeeker.com

Slant by Timothy Wang

Reviewer: Alan Chin

Publisher: Tincture (an imprint of Lethe Press)
Pages: 211

James, an Asian college student, thought coming out of the closet would be his toughest task. What he couldn’t foresee, but experienced head on, was the discrimination inside Boston’s gay community. The road to love is never easy, especially for a geeky Asian inside a sea of white, round-eyed faces.

After months of failures, James catches the guy of his dreams, Stan, but can only hang on to him for a few precious months. Stan is a man who lives on the edge and goes through boyfriends as fast as he goes through clean socks. Once the relationship slides from lovers to friends, James begins dating a doctor who has it all – hot car, glamorous flat, money to burn – in order to make Stan jealous and lure him back. But as I said, the road to love is never easy, or what you expect.

A wonderful debut novel… I must confess that I’ve grown tired of coming out stories, but this is not your typical coming out story. It has true depth, grace, and vividly drawn characters that entice the reader into this beautifully crafted yarn. It delves into the racism that is rampant in the gay community, and also of one person’s struggle to assimilate. The emotions and concerns are genuine, and carry the reader along.

The first half of the story focused more on discrimination Asians experience within the gay community. For James, this leads to self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, and then grows into self-hate. The second half deals more with relationships and the needs of partners with a relationship.

What struck me even more than the insightful observations was the superlative writing. Timothy Wang tells a simple yarn with an unrivaled voice. Wang writes with the refinement of a seasoned professional.

I did have two minor issues with this story. The first came when James, after complaining bitterly about the discrimination directed at him for being Asian, shows that he is equally prejudice against rice queens – older men dating young Asians. As a gentleman of some years, I found James’s age discrimination a bit distasteful and thoroughly hypocritical.

My second issue is that I felt the ending fizzled. Wang kept both the tension and my interest high until the last ten pages, and then I closed the book feeling slightly let down. I’m not sure I would have preferred a different ending, but perhaps a bit more thought into what was gained and what was lost would have made the ending more satisfying.

Those two minor issues aside, I can highly recommend Slant.

http://timothywang.tumblr.com/AboutMe