This is 4 stars primarily because of how badly I wanted to annotate every beautifully written paragraph.

Audiobook review. Narrator: Antony Ferguson

I read this book many years ago when it came out in paperback. While looking through Audible for new LGBT books, I was surprised to see this book out as an audiobook.

I've listed to Antony Ferguson narrator the Barker and Llewelyn series and love his voice, so I was quite happy that he was the narrator for this audiobook. He did a fantastic job although at the beginning I heard 'Barker' instead of 'Harper', but that's no fault of Mr Ferguson.

Although I had read the book before, it was so long ago that I'd forgotten many details. I did end up loving the story the second time around as much as I'd loved it the first. The book is actually in two parts: the first part is in the first-person POV of Belimai Sykes, a Prodigal descendant of ancient demons, and the second part is in the first-person POV of William Harper, a Captain in the Inquisition. The parts are sequential rather than concurrent.

The author does a great job of pulling the reader into a unique world by showing us how things work, which is not an easy thing to do with a world this complicated. My only 'complaint' is that the author hasn't written more in this universe. As far as I know, this is the only book. The universe is so rich with potential, I continue to hope that one day we'll have some back-stories of Prodigal lives.

So, overall an enjoyable read but with enough weak points to keep it from being a great one.

Character, plot and world-building were all fairly good, but no better than that. The strongest aspect was the dialogue between characters, but everything else just seemed like a framework that hadn't been filled out. I wish Hale had taken everything further, because so much of the worldbuilding is fascinating and theocracies are just a cool concept for fantasy in general, but the rock solid foundation just wasn't there. The whole thing feels flimsy and like any aspect in the story could have changed entirely without effecting the book at all. Again, a good read with some great original concepts, but nothing especially memorable. I like Hale's style, though, and she has some really strong writing when it comes to character interactions. Worth a summer read.

Careless, silly and barely up to snuff.
Silly is good

3.5 stars

I really enjoyed the premise of this book but the whole time I just felt like I was listening to an abridged version.

I didn't just want more romance, I wanted more everything: fabulously dark and atmospheric world building, bad people doing bad shit, morally grey people doing morally grey shit, okay, okay, so I really wanted more romance. More!

I wasn't the biggest fan of the narration, but I'm not sure how much of that was down to the performance and how much was just due to the spare, almost staccato, writing style.

I wasn't too bothered by the shift in perspective from Belimai to Harper but the shift from first person (which I struggle with) to third person was a bit odd!

The same search for a fantasy mystery book that led me toThe 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle led me to Ginn Hale’s Wicked Gentlemen. Unlike The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, this can be considered high fantasy, despite the presence of cities, automobiles, and guns, making it similar to the Fetch Phillips ArchivesFetch Phillips Archives that started me on this genre-combining journey. The similarities don’t end there, with grisly murders, systematic inequality, substance-corrupt cops, and jaded protagonists, like Fetch Phillips, Wicked Gentleman is solidly a noir. And a particularly gritty one, at that; Wicked Gentlemen delves into the angst that characterizes the genre while never becoming so entrenched in it that the story becomestoo bleak to be engaged in. In fact, the story can be downright cute at times.

Wicked Gentlemen is comprised of two novellas featuring the characters of Belimai Sykes and Captain William Harper. Sykes is a Prodigal, a magical descendant of ancient demons; his status as a Prodigal makes him a marginalized and mistrusted member of the story’s society — certainly not helping matters is the addiction he must grapple with. Captain William Harper is an Inquisitor (essentially a cop in everything but name), with a troubled psyche. Due to the Inquisition’s persecution of Prodigals, Harper and Sykes make for an unlikely couple, but the Sykes is the only person Harper can turn to following a grisly murder and the disappearance of his sister.

The first novella, “Mr. Sykes and the Firefly” details the aforementioned mystery and makes for a pretty damn exciting read. Nothing groundbreaking, sure, but it was hard to stop the pages from turning as Sykes tries to piece together the mystery. The second book, Captain Harper and the Sixty-Second Circle, curiously enough, isn’t much of a mystery at all — as the readers we know all the details of the crime shortly after it happens. Instead, the focus is on seeing if and/or how our protagonists will make it out of his predicament alive, thus it’s more of a thriller. We’re also treated to a more of a deep dive into our protagonists and their burgeoning relationship. Additionally, It’s a testament to how much I fell in love with these characters that I was on board with this shift in focus despite not being what I signed up for.

I don’t have too many gripes with Wicked Gentlemen but they’re just notable enough to point out. There are three things that jumped out at me, from the most glaring to the most minor flaw.

A hallmark of speculative fiction is using fantastical elements to comment on our reality, usually in the form of metaphor. Sometimes certain metaphors are used so often that they’re codified in the genre and a given author won’t have to do much, if anything, to lead readers to connecting said fantasy characteristic to a real-world analog. They’re tropes, essentially. One such trope is the use offantasy races and the conflicts between them as stand-ins for real-world racial relations. This trope can lead to negative reactions from readers through no apparent fault of the author. This is evidenced by Wizards of the Coast’s changing of how race works in Dungeons and Dragons — players saw fantasy races as analogous to real-life races and as such, found the fact that alignment and intelligence were tied to one’s race carried unfortunate implications. In an effort to foster a more inclusive environment, Wizards of the Coast changed the mechanics of race. All this is to say that any missteps Hale took with her handling of race in Wicked Gentlemen could simply be due to the automatic, ingrained reading of fantasy races as being equivalent to real races. That said, with Prodigals being seen as evil, being marginalized, being disproportionately targeted by the police, and having the revelation that they’re internally no different from humans being considered “heretical,” I’m pretty confident in saying the racial metaphor was more than intentional. As such, my biggest gripe comes from the way a certain character’s feelings towards Prodigals. They reflect on their burning desire to “be with Prodigals,” to “caress their bodies,” to “kiss their hot mouths.” The entire thing comes off as fetish-y. Not only that, but they reveal that they became an Inquisitor due to this very desire, as Inquisitors deal with Prodigals more than other members of society. Stripping away the fantasy shroud, the entire thing comes across as said character having a racial fetish and joining an institution that profiles said race in order to gain access to their bodies.

That’s going to be a yikes from me, dawg.

It would be one thing if the character was called out on this, either by his own reflection of the vents or by the story itself. Yet the only thing that’s framed in a negative light is the fact that the character lied about why they joined the Inquitiors, stating that they hated Prodigals instead of loving them. Idk, you can make the argument that the author is just displaying said attitude without endorsing it, but I’m not sure of the function of bringing it up without saying anything about it. Alright, creeps exist. I knew that but cool for reminding me, I guess? The situation doesn’t play much of a role in the story but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Beyond that, there’s the fact that the story doesn’t do much regarding it’s implied premise on the blurb. Sykes doesn’t really bring Harper into the muck — I’m not really sure what’s the dire price Harper had to pay for Sykes’ company.

The book isn’t terribly noteworthy — you got your crooked cops, systematic injustice, mysterious and complicated pasts, etc. You’ve likely seen many of these tropes used before and perhaps better. Yet they don’t prevent this from being an enjoyable book. At about 200 pages, it’s an engaging, breezy read fit for an airport or perhaps your window sill during the rain. Plus, it features a gay romance and we always enjoy those.

The ending wraps up nicely. Nearly everything I was curious about was addressed — not with as much detail as they could have had, no, but I’m no stranger to quick, open-ended conclusions. Solo fantasy books are rare, good ones even rarer, so Wicked Gentlemen left me pleasantly surprised.