Reviewed by Taylin
TITLE: Trickster
SERIES: Standalone
AUTHOR: Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes
PUBLISHER: Flicker Fox Books
LENGTH: 177 Pages
RELEASE DATE: February 8, 2024
BLURB:
Our greatest treasure is time.
Everything else is negotiable. Opportunities missed can be seized again—loves lost, recovered—but the tick of time is inexorable, inescapable, and merciless.
That’s where I come in. I, alone, can bargain with this ruthless beast and wrestle it into submission. I can provide more minutes, days, hours. I can give you one last chance to spill your heart’s secrets at the feet of those you love best.
For a price.
Tempus fugit, my friends. Let me help you make the most of yours.
Trickster is an MM romance with snark, sass, and more than a few Faustian bargains. It was originally published on Burns & Fawkes’s Patreon page as our 2023 Paranormal Romance.
REVIEW:
Passage was a town between countries, therefore a lore unto itself with its own set of laws for the paranormal who lived there. Time could be currency, but what do you do with life in the time you have? If ever a romance was to start in the wrong way, then it was the one between Cameron and Faust – but what would be their end?
Trickster is a paranormal story with a different twist to the norm – and one that I enjoyed. It’s a world where good and evil aren’t restricted to humans or the paranormal. Similarly, there’s plenty of grey area between the black and white. All contain good, bad, evil, power-hungry, those who seek justice for others, some who want revenge, and some who don’t have a choice to do what they do or for whom. Also, love for the paranormal can be just as complicated.
The story is told in the first person from the viewpoints of Faust and Cameron via alternate chapters. An overview of the town of Passage provides some good imagery of what it would be like to live there. Details lie in the characters’ backstories and the immediate surroundings of Cameron’s apartment. Movement around town isn’t a frequent occurrence. Occasionally, thoughts/explanations between dialogue derailed the flow, but not by much.
Cameron and Faust have histories that color their everyday lives. As such, Cameron Clover – aka Lucky, puts right demonic contracts that go wrong. He’s a brute of a half-demon who asks questions of the accused before seeking retribution for the person who hired him. He understands that some people hire him out of sour grapes.
Faust is a sorcerer who ended up in a desperate situation and was bailed out for the price of servitude. He knows that the devil is in the details of every contract. Therefore, he does the best with what he has.
The journey for Faust and Cameron begins in a clever cat vs clever cat way, then a sexually charged mode before they realize that something more has happened. Then, entities on the peripherals get involved.
Now then – some, maybe all of the above may sound like gibberish, but Trickster is one of those stories that is a sassy war of wits, and then you realize that you have fallen for the characters. I can’t say that some revelations were a surprise. Nevertheless, I picked up the story because I am a sucker for sass and found myself thoroughly enjoying the read.
RATING: 
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