Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: The Uncanny Aviator
AUTHOR: Jenya Keefe
PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing
LENGTH: 242 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2024
BLURB:
The only way out is up.
Lord Cay is desperate. Adrio, his husband, has grown cold and distant, and Cay can’t fathom why. Unless Adrio somehow found out about Cay’s appalling past, but Cay has taken care to hide it from him. Lying to the man he loves is painful, but it’s better than the alternative: losing Adrio forever.
Meanwhile, rumors swirl of a mysterious hero who rescues captives from the labor camps of Muntegri and magically flies them over the mountains to safety. When a cruel enemy agent blackmails Cay for information about this aviator, Cay makes a rash decision. He knows nothing and can’t turn to his husband for help without revealing the truth about his past. The only thing he can do is lie even more.
Each new falsehood succeeds in misleading the enemy, but it also drives another wedge between Cay and Adrio. Forced to choose between love and honor, Cay must decide where his loyalties truly lie. And the Uncanny Aviator may be the key to everything, including saving their marriage.
REVIEW:
I have to start out by saying I mainly read contemporary and this genre, fantasy? Historical? A little steampunk? In any case, this was big departure for me. Cay, a commoner, and Adrio, a nobleman with vast wealth, are married, and they have been blissfully happy. Cay comes from a city that has been enmeshed in a violent revolution. His parents both died violently, and he only has a little sister, Kell, who was “…so sick with fear and grief she could or would not speak…” But the marriage has made Cay and Adrio very happy, and, in turn, Adrio pays for Kell to go to university, and things are so much better.
There is a trigger warning of emotional abuse that I did not see until after I read it, but one that fits because I knew from the blurb that Adrio “…has grown cold and distant…” but seriously, it is more than that. There is a prologue that tells of Cay having nightmares, but then the book starts, with Cay desperately in love with a husband who is not only cold and distant but emotionally cruel with insults and gifts with hidden negative meanings, and Cay has no idea why. Adrio is constantly impatient, cold, sneering, or bored. Cay is so delighted when Adrio gifts him a pair of earrings representing roseapple blossoms, thinking maybe his husband does love him after all. It’s been a terrible time in their not happy marriage but “But now his husband had given him a lovely gift and a compliment.” It is difficult for Cay because the society people Adrio associates with believes Cay has somehow trapped Adrio into marriage but Cay does his best to keep a smile and be pleasant.
There is a strange convention here, called Starlight Conversation, where they say things that are hard to figure out if you aren’t used to them. “You are a cypress among willows”, for example, means you look handsome. So when Adrio gives him the earrings and tells Cay, “You are as beautiful as a roseapple tree on a hill.” Cay is so happy. But the Starlight Conversation means something entirely different, and I kept thinking, why in the world are these two married? It was a choice, and Adrio had to put up with so much societal resistance to marry Cay, why the change?
Cay has secrets, but Adrio also does, so neither trusts the other enough to share. Cay hides his past because he believes his husband would be destroyed if he knew and Adrio because he believes the stories other people say about his husband. Had I judged this just on Adrio, it would have been a 2.5. But I adored Cay and his sister, Kell, even more, who is so loyal and fierce. There is a scene when she is defending Cay that made me want to shout in solidarity with her. She and Cay are survivors.
There are warring factions, clans that demand blood debts be paid, and clans that demand payment for any type of passage or service. The Grup, an evil group that slaughtered the royal family of Cay’s home, is not to be trusted and yet an envoy is present in Cay’s new home. There is intrigue and political machinations. I need not say too much because there are portions where you can see what is coming, yet not in the entirety. There are twists and turns that I sometimes saw and sometimes didn’t.
There is the story of the uncanny aviator, a mythical hero who rescues the Chende people, a clan much abused by the Grup, and the blackmailer who wants information about not only the Aviator but all things. All Cay wants is to keep his husband from being hurt by the blackmailer, and the way he handled things was, honestly, genius originally and then desperate.
The flashbacks kept this from being a five-star read for me. They were randomly inserted with the little segue, and a few times, I got confused because I couldn’t reconcile the loving Adrio being discussed with the nasty piece of work he is now. He was a caring, adoring husband until he took a business trip. When he returned, he moved Cay to a separate bedroom, and he has been offensive and cold since. “At one time, he’d have said Adrio was incapable of deliberate cruelty, but he no longer knew.” But Cay believes Adrio is still a good man who no longer loves his husband, so he is trying to make him leave. There is so much more to the story.
I liked this whole thing. I didn’t quite buy Adrio’s reasoning for being so insulting, but the story itself was unique. The secret of Cay’s past contains more than one secret; they are big ones that I can’t blame him for hiding. When he does his own heroic act, he cemented himself in my heart.
RATING: 
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