Review: Jake's Alchemy by G.G. Royale
Take two idealistic young hotties, knock
them together on a beach in Thailand, and sparks are going to fly.
Jake is a young idealist on leave from
the Peace Corps, drifting through a life of patient agricultural
activism. Desi is a charismatic Kiwi surfing pro with an entourage
and a nose for the right thing. Vacation romance ahoy! Royale wisely
sidesteps the danger of blank, bland Aberzombies-in-lurv in favor of
two distinctive charming young men perfect for each other both in
terms of timing and temperament. In as story this brief an author
must compress backstories to glimpses and G.G. Royale does this so
deftly that after I’d finished I believed I knew much more about
these two young men than I possibly could have. This is part of
Dreamspinner’s “Day Dreams” line and it is exactly that: a short,
sharp reverie that smolders throughout.
Short fiction is a hard sell for me.
Packing in enough incident to feel satisfying without overbalancing
the wordcount or derailing with digression is a tall order. Royale
is more than up to the task, offering a saucy slice of a pivotal
intersection in the paths of two hopeful young men. She wisely opts
to portray the singular moment and only hints at the lives prior and
the future ahead. She tempts the reader’s imagination with spare
details that hint at the larger yearning in both their lives and
make their union inevitable. Likewise, the plot offered here is a
pretty clean arc from meeting to union. In a sense, what I enjoyed
about this tale is that the author kept things simple and essential
and only flavored it with splinters of the bigger picture.
And that said, the economy and precision
were easily the most powerful components of this look at the
relationship between Jake and Desi. Royale’s specificity created
moments of stinging beauty: a drip of saltwater from blond dreads,
the charged squeeze of a knee, swimming under gunpowder clouds in
the night ocean, the taste of coconut sweat. With a slow sifting of
details, the story builds a kind of romantic mosaic that felt
exactly as tender and tenacious as young romance ought to be.
I should mention that the only large
conflict is the parting that looms, inevitable in any vacation
romance. A certain amount of elision dominates short fiction and
Royale knows what she’s about here, picking the dominant threads and
weaving the connection between Jake and Desi tighter with each
shared moment. In 33 pages there just isn’t a lot of room for Royale
to feint and dodge emotionally with these guys, so she (wisely) does
not. This felt like a calculated choice, and it worked well for me
though I imagine some people might want more grist for the grind. In
a book four or five times as long, Royale could have elaborated the
separation and made their reunion part of the plot, and the
additional space would have afforded the kinds of actions that make
characters emotionally heroic. But this little sexy bite is at core
a teasing hint of a much richer picture.
Now, I did have one problem in this
otherwise marvelous story: the sex. The spiraling physical intimacy leading up to the big event
is charged and specific, but the actual
intercourse stumbles more than once, and at times seemed neutered
and generic for some reason. I wanted the erotic congress between
Jake and Desi to be as idiosyncratic and unexpected as they are;
instead the story seemed to march them through standard operating
fornication with little intrusion by their personalities permitted.
That was a disappointment, especially when Royale had done so much
to amplify all the interactions leading to it. Even more
distressingly, their climactic penetration was a bit of a muddle.
Lubeless anal intercourse always drags me out of a story and here it
made literally no sense whatsoever. Why-why-why? In a beach
romance (which by definition offers all kinds of water
soluble slickness like lotion and aloe vera and other jams and
jellies in situ) it seems both an
adamant and
clumsy choice by Royale.
For some reason, she simply denied lube to her two charmers and left
some ho-hum in the homo boning. Nothing dire, but a slight bummer.
But other than that minor quibble, this
is a seductive, little M/M stunner. As with the best short fiction I
found myself wishing it would simply so on. I could have easily read
300 pages about these two crunchy hotties navigating a love as sexy
and untraditional as Desi’s dreds. Oh! I did have one question about
the title: Why alchemy? Alchemy offers a beautiful
complicated set of symbols and mythology which aren’t evident in
this narrative at any point. Jake doesn’t transmute anything. Desi
is described as golden at
a few points, but that’s all. I finished the story and realized that
the title, though appealing enough, didn’t seem to fit this
particular story at all. Not a problem, but strange.
Bottom line: this is a sweet story from
stem to stern. The heat cooks off the page, both in terms of the
tropical location and sizzle between the delightful protagonists. As
I say, I wanted MORE of them, and that can only be a good thing. I
enjoyed this story by G.G. Royale enormously and I imagine others
will as well.