Snowflake Challenge 9

[got_quiet]

Challenge 9: Rec Us Your Newest Thing.

My most recent fandom thing is Baldur's Gate because I'm in the middle of it. However, it's not like that game is struggling to find its audience, and I am much more eager to get a few people into the book series I finished reading just before I started playing BG3.

If you are into M/M stories, and like the romance to support a fantasy adventure with danger, battles, interesting worldbuilding, and a variety of pairings, check out Lord of the White Hell.


The Lord of the White Hell series is a set of 3 duologies. Each Duology focuses on a different M/M pairing, with a larger overarching plot through the whole series. Here is a brief synopsis of each story:



Series one is sort of a fantasy school (but not a magic school) story that is mostly about young men coming into their own, standing up for their values, and breaking free of social expectations... while also defeating a terrible evil and flirting in an extremely homophobic environment. The pairing in this series is best summed up as: a brilliant nerd with a good head on his shoulders gets horny for the popular goth/jock and the goth/jock just happens to be carrying around the embodiment of "hell," which gives him great power but also makes him a pariah. There's a mystery around a mad cousin but it's mostly about Javier deciding fuck it I'm a gay religious convert now and Kiram being like fuck yeah, adventure!




Series two is oops I adopted a dog and the dog is the most powerful witch in the land, also he's hot and leading me to sin. Skellan the street witch accidentally triggers the appearance of a big bad and then manages to run headfirst into a big devoted mountain of a man named Elezar. Elezar comes from an extremely homophobic culture, but he's away from home, and Skellan has 0 qualms about climbing that tree. There is lots of mistaken identity tropes, witchy battles, mutual loyalty kink, and much court intrigue. If you like stories of idealistic outsiders learning to govern this duology has a lot of that in the back half.



The last series is the "Cadaleon is a mess" series. Set in the capital of a homophobic empire that keeps its king in a vat, it's mostly about nobility assassinating everyone they can get their hands on and spy shit like trap doors and hidden passageways. One massive assshole navigates his way to the top of the power structure and everyone else is faffing about trying to stop him. Featuring: My dark past makes me reject my power but my iron woobie swordmaster finds respite in it, and a bonus pairing of friendly genius doctor and his boyhood crush, a spymaster who agonizes about manipulating the assets around him but does it anyway for the greater good. There is mind control, there is poisoning and backstabbing. Unfortunately I haven't read the 6th and final book so I don't know how everything pans out but I've got a Libby alert for when it finally shows up.

I read a lot of original M/M fiction last year and found many books to be too soft, low stakes, or neglectful of a greater plot for my personal preferences. I liked Lord of the White Hell a lot because while the romances are central to the stories, there is a lot going on otherwise, a strong cast of supporting characters that end up the mains in subsequent books sometimes, clear and interesting conflicts that can lead to actually interesting choices rather than the sort of "misunderstanding/miscommunication" issues that sometimes overwhelm romance plots, and the worldbuilding in this series is very interesting and keeps building upon itself book after book. Many of the characters come from very different backgrounds, with different cultural expectations, or different social classes, and these things play a real role in how they behave.

The romances themselves are also all very sweet and varied, and I'm an absolute sucker for internalized homophobia as a trope so this series kept me fed there.

So if you're looking for a fun fantasy series to read I strongly recommend this one. You can find links to the books on the author's website.