Reviewed by Colette
TITLE: Miles & the Magic Flute
AUTHOR: Heidi Cullinan
PUBLISHER: Wilde City Press
LENGTH: 65,700 words
BLURB:
When unemployed Miles Larson retreats to his friend’s Minnesota pawnshop to lick his wounds, he discovers that a few notes on a magical instrument reveal an erotic fairyland where the sorrows weighing on his heart don’t exist at all.
Yet fantasy comes with a price, and soon Miles must choose a path. He can surrender his soul to the dream lord to sustain his pleasure… or he can defeat the faerie and save the mysterious beast-man who promises love. Miles would choose love over pleasure in a heartbeat—if only to seize it he didn’t first have to acknowledge the pain inside.
Is Miles strong enough to learn that sometimes to find happiness, we must face down our sorrows?
REVIEW:
Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth – Jean-Paul Sartre
Miles is a bitter, unhappy man – he has lost his high paying job in Atlanta, and with it, all his so called friends and boyfriend; he’s had to move back to the small Minnesota town he grew up in. He feels he doesn’t deserve what has happened to him, that life is unfair, and that he is better than this – everything that has happened to him. He is working for, and living with his friend Patty and her girlfriend Julie fixing things in Patty’s Pawn Shop. He hates this job and hates his life. One day, after a particularly violent bout of self-pity, he is drawn into the forest behind the pawn shop – if I keep walking, if I go into the forest things will be better. He can’t get that idea out of his head.
Soon Miles is pulled to the forest again and again; he can’t stop thinking about it. Strange things happen to him there, he feels summer sun in the middle of winter, flowers growing where there should be none, and a voice calling to him – Come to me and realize all of your dreams. He starts dreaming of the forest, always running, searching for someone he can’t find. Miles has caught the attention of the Lord of Dreams, to look upon him is to see all your dreams realized and to die of the pleasure of the site; and two very different creatures: Terris, a beautiful Fae and the beast-man he names Harry. When an old nemesis brings a flute into the pawn shop to sell events take a dangerous turn for Miles.
This book is beautifully written and so much more than just a fairy tale. Without giving away too much, Miles – and Terris and Harry – go through so much pain and heartache. They must each make sacrifices and listen to their hearts, to see what is real and true; to leave the illusion of dreams, to learn to feel pain and live; to find space for love. It isn’t about what you deserve; it’s about what you dare to take. To come through the pain and find love.
RATING: 
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