Title: His Wolf Heart
Author: Lila Dubois
Publisher: Amber Allure
Genre: Paranormal M/M/Dark Fantasy
Length: Extended Amber Kiss (16K words)
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
THE BLURB
James Farrant left his werewolf pack ten years ago, but not before he made an impression on Micah. Micah, who once fostered with the Farrant pack, is now the pack Guardian—a wolf who will never have a pack of his own because he will never be part of a breeding pair.
When James left, Micah was still coming to terms with his sexuality. The single kiss they shared continues to haunt Micah after all these years. When James returns to the pack, after having spent the intervening years as a playboy, with his photo splashed across the tabloids of Europe, Micah is taken aback by his attraction to the man. James is also stunned to see Micah, who has turned into one very hot man.
A chance encounter at a club leads to a night of wild sex, and in the morning, the connection and the attraction is still there. James’s reasons for leaving the pack were more complicated than anyone ever knew, but with Micah’s help, will he be able to heal himself, both man and wolf?
THE REVIEW
Micah was a Guardian, the highest position he could hope for in the wolf pack because he was gay. Although their culture had a place for gay men, he had no hope of ever being Alpha in his own pack since he would never be part of a breeding pair. He had left his own blood pack headed by his parents, at eighteen, and became a member of the pack headed by Craig and Anita Farrant, after completing his education. James was a blood-child of the pack and according to their rules he moved out at 18 at which time he should have sought the protection of another pack, but he never did. While he was away James had pursued a career as a high profile nude model and an affair with a painter, Jaap Vadergraff, whose muse he became. As suddenly as he left, the prodigal son returned home at 27 without any explanation for his long absence or why he didn’t follow their rules of seeking the protection of another pack while he was away. His father was not very happy with him but Micah was overjoyed, even though he played it cool with James who he felt had abandoned his race to live a useless life as a social butterfly. Micah was also anxious to see if James remembered him and the kiss they shared almost 10 years ago, when he left to attend university.
That evening they met again unexpectedly in a club and the attraction between Micah and James was even stronger than before. After the initial skirmishes for bragging rights as to who was really top dog they took their fight to Micah’s apartment where the sex was wild as they continued trying to “top” each other. The next morning they realized that they had something going for them and Micah found out that James’ relationship with Jaap was not what it seemed – although they had been lovers for 6 months initially, they were now just friends and had been for years; this left the door wide open for a much closer relationship with Micah. James also revealed that he had put off returning home because he was unsure of his welcome as a gay man and his place with his family. He disagreed with their council’s policy that denied gays the right to lead their own packs, something that was reminiscent of the way humans treated minorities – as people who were not quite equal to those in power. As they got to know each other better there were other revelations about James, and Micah realized how talented he was and that he hadn’t frittered away the years he was away.
In the beginning I found this story to be very confusing because it contained a lot of what I consider to be irrelevant and redundant information about “blood children” and pack culture. Parts of the book were almost info dumps and I thought that the writing was stilted. However, I enjoyed the latter half much more as it moved into the relationship between James and Micah, rather than focusing on the protocols of the wolf pack, the many different conventions and philosophies about pack life and descriptions of Micah’s role that, quite frankly, I found boring. Most of the characters did not appeal to me outside of James and Micah, although James’ sisters were amusing and at the end his father showed he was capable of changing and being supportive to his son. This is also the first time I can recall encountering the use of condoms in a werewolf story. In all the books I have read so far where the protagonists were werewolves, vampires or other paranormals it was my understanding that since they were not human they could not and did not carry any sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), therefore condoms were unnecessary. I’m certainly not an expert on paranormals and I can only go by what I have read so far, and other readers’ experiences might be different from mine. Maybe this is a new breed of were! I have no idea if there are any written protocols that authors follow when writing paranormal stories, including the customs or culture, and most of them probably make up what to include in their stories in terms of the culture or sexual norms of this genre.
His Wolf Heart is the first book I have read by Lila Dubois, and aside from the first part of the book, I enjoyed her writing. There was a bit of humour mixed in with the sex and emotions and I will definitely try another book by this writer.
If you like paranormal stories that are a little different you may wish to check out His Wolf Heart.
I haven’t read a lot of stuff (M/M or not) with werewolves, but generally I think of vampires as being immune to disease (in some universes), but not necessarily werewolves or other paranormal types. But every author has their own slightly different take on it.
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Unless it comes up for some other reason, disease immunity seems to me like a convenience to avoid condoms in sex scenes. 😉
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tvtropes.org has a series of pages like Our Werewolves Are Different (which doesn’t mention disease immunity) that goes over some of the typical variations. Then they link to it from pages about various TV and book series where they list the tropes the series uses. I mention it because part of my mini-Googling just now (you got me curious!) found this author’s werewolves, which are “different” by being immune to poison, disease, and aging. (Immortal werewolves? Okay, that IS new to me.)
Hi Kendall
Thanks for the research which was interesting reading.
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The reason for my comment is, as I said in the review, I have read countless werewolf M/M stories and this is the first time I remember encountering a wolf using a condom. The rationale was that since they were basically not human there was no need for them. I suppose one author must have started this trend and the rest followed.
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I like paranormal stories so I read them when I can, and the tropes are pretty similar in all of them, which is why this one struck me as being different. Some series have characters that are half were/half vamp, incubi, and everything else under the sun. Let’s just make them up as we go along, the more esoteric the better. 🙂
Hmm, I used the edit link to try to add ‘-‘ lines to break things up, since I forgot when I wrote the above–added them–clicked Save–got a “your comment’s being held for moderation” warning. So I dunno if that went in but if not, sorry for forgetting to put in extra ‘-‘ or ‘*’ lines to break things up….