Reviewed by Jenna
TITLE: Heartsong
SERIES: Fae #2
AUTHOR: S.W. Vaughn
PUBLISHER: Loose ID LLC
LENGTH: 262 Pages
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2010
BLURB:
Trystan Raines loves cock. That’s a bonus in his line of work–he’s a prostitute, and damned good at his job. But pickings have been slim lately, and he’s homeless and flat broke. So when a stranger offers him a million dollars to play escort for a month, he jumps without looking–right into a world most humans don’t know exists. The world of the Fae. And his new master-for-a-month is their gorgeous prince, Braelan, who wants to “experience” New York with a human.
Uriskel also serves Braelan, as a bodyguard, but his term is a lot longer than Trytan’s: life, without possibility of parole. He’s also Braelan’s half-brother–but he can’t let the prince know that, or the King will have him killed. Uriskel is less than pleased when Braelan introduces his new human toy, and informs him that he’s to play bodyguard to the prince in the human realm.
Trystan thinks Uri’s an asshole. Uri thinks Trystan’s a fool. But when the prince forces them to perform sexual favors with each other for his amusement, they discover mutual lust that deepens to love. Unfortunately, there’s no way the prince will let them be together–unless it’s over Uri’s dead body.
Publisher’s Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: Male/male sexual practices, violence.
REVIEW:
Heartsong begins with a glimpse into Trystan’s life as a male prostitute. When he is offered an extremely large sum of money to be the servant of a prince, he accepts. Trystan soon learns that his new master, Pince Braelan, is quite cruel, but instead of being cruel to Trystan, the prince takes everything out on his bodyguard, Uriskel. Trystan spends some time trying to figure out the relationship between Braelan and Uri, but Trystan is mostly captivated by Uri. Trystan and Uriskel have a somewhat rocky start, which turns into extreme lust, and then into love. Though they love each other, they cannot profess their love because there are too many obstacles in the way of them ever being together. First and foremost is the secret that Uri holds about his parentage. If the prince knew they were brothers, Uri’s life would be forfeit.
Though I enjoyed this book, I had some difficulty following the characters and got a bit lost in their back stories. I’m not sure if it was due to the names or if they were just introduced too quickly, but after going back and rereading the beginning, the story came to life. I liked Trystan and Uri’s characters the most and I was rooting for them to get together. However, the dangers they faced always seemed to come out of nowhere. I think I had the same issue with the fantasy aspects becoming confusing when I read the first book, but the first book had me hooked a lot more than this one. I think the big difference was that the love affair in book one was definitely much stronger. Despite my confusion with the characters and world building, I enjoyed following these three on their visit to the human’s realm. Overall, this book was pleasant, but I don’t know that I’m excited enough about it to read the next book in this series.
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