David Bremner commented on Darkspell (Deverry Series, Book Two) by Katharine Kerr
On the long roads of Deverry ride two mercenaries whose fates like hidden deep in …
Content warning sexual violence mention
Overall I am enjoying this more than the first book in the series. However a couple things bug me so far.
1) I was just thinking to my self that it felt less like Tolkien fan-fiction (to put it unkindly) than the previous one, when the ancient and wise wizard gets the dwarves to let him take a short cut under a mountain instead of over it.
2) the treatment of homosexuality seems clumsy at best. The only openly gay character is a villain, and the only explicit gay sex is rape. So hmm. Also the homophobic reaction of our hero to meeting said gay villain is a bit of a puzzle. Is the hero flawed? Are we meant to see that as a reflection of the pseudo-historical setting? Or is it a reflection of the author and her historical setting (about 35 years ago).
Neither of these is central to the book, but feel like rough edges that could have been edited away.