LILIA BLANC – KING’S LAMENT – 2016
Though during the first fifth of the novel we do not really
know what the stake and objective of it is, it finally after some 120 pages becomes
clear and then the fantasy changes from some feudal old plot to an erotic, and
in some chapters absolutely graphic and explicit gay threesome adventure.
Welcome to the planet where kings are all gay and like threesomes, at times –
for the sake of having some heir – bisexual.
If you are not in that kind of gay – and marginally lesbian –
fantasy or erotica, you better forget about it. If you are able to understand
love is not a question of sexual orientation, you may have a chance to go through
the story and enjoy it. This complicated love story is punctuated with feudal
fights or battles, and that’s the aspect I am most critical about.
There is little unity in the feudal struggle of this ousted
and clandestine young heir to the throne that was taken over by a monster queen
from the south, a queen that has no name and governs – or rather controls – her
(or should I say “its”) kingdom with a band of assassins that – certainly not “who”
– can only kill, that’s their function and that’s their nature: they have been
reduced to killing. “SAD” as a certain president would tweet. The author tries
to save one by making him fall in love with the young underground clandestine
ousted king and vice versa by making the young ousted clandestine king fall in
love with the spy and assassin that has been appointed by the queen to follow
and eventually assassinate him or at least enable him to be assassinated by
some of the queen’s soldiers.
You must admit it is not simple. This young king, Inea by
name, was helped escape from prison by a minstrel of some kind who actually was
the male lover of the young king’s father wo killed himself after his wife was
poisoned by the queen’s agents in the court itself, these queen’s agents who
were the king’s ministers selling the son to the queen for her to turn him into
her play thing. But the author shifts the plan and thus we shift from a
threesome-liking king with a wife and a lover identified as a totally owned and
possessed minstrel, to his son who falls in love with the minstrel who actually
helped him escape the dungeon in which he was supposed to wait for the queen’s
decision on his fate, and later on with an assassin who was supposed to
infiltrate the fugitive young king’s band by seducing the minstrel, which was
easy since the minstrel is absolutely obsessed with and by his hormones.
And there is the gay threesome who is going to take over the
feudal scene by securing an alliance with another king, the king of the desert
tribes, who is also gay but married to only one man who used to be his own
soldier, and faithful to this man who is said to be black, though he is the
only who is specified in such a detail.
This being said the novel then turns pathetic as for the
love relations between Inea, the young king, Ansyn, the minstrel, and Kaedon, the
assassin. Pathetic because they constantly fall part and then more or less
manage to come back together. Such a threesome marriage as announced at the end
is unique in many ways since it only officially exists for one triple – instead
of couple – in one country in the world, Colombia: “Three men who are married
to each other, have gained legal recognition for their 'polyamorous' marriage
in the conservative Catholic country of Colombia.” (The Sidney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-world-news/three-men-one-marriage-20170615-4v55x.html)
And that’s what this author tells us: stories of “Slaves to fantasy and romance,”
as the author’s page proclaims on the publisher’s site.
And that’s just the problem. It is not a real fantasy story
with only one dynamic, or at least a very dominant dynamic. Too often we forget
everything about the queen and the assassins that are chasing this young king
and that will come back into the story when an attack will be staged every so
often and periodically. At the same time the at least erotic romance that is
exclusively gay in its explicit realization and descriptions is constantly
broken by elements from the fantasy side of this moon but the love jealousy, rivalry,
ambition, possession (and all meaning are needed here from plainly owning the
other to haunting him or being haunted by him), is nicely described but does
not really reach the absolute level we could expect: it definitely is nothing
but desire, hormonal activation, lust, physical contact and penetration and I
did not really find the haunting fear and bliss that this penetration is at
least parallel to: the use of a sword or a dagger or an arrow, and the use of
such warlike weapons is also balancing fear and bliss, bashfulness and lust,
and it is thus nothing but the expansion or initiation of some brutal and
lustful climax.
That reduces the final battle with the queen to a pantomime
of very nasty kids who are destroying the toy or the dolly they had been
playing with. There is no veracity, authenticity and reliability in her and
since we only meet her in the final battle (in the last five percent of the book)
she appears as nothing but a killing robot and fantasy is a genre in which the
characters, on both sides of the divide and the pale, are human. Harry Potter’s
Voldemort (and he has a name) is a monster but the genius of the author is to
develop and uncover the human dimension of him who was made a monster by the
mistreatment he suffered in the hands of fellow wizards and witches. There is
nothing of the sort here. She is not even a chatbot because she hardly speaks some
coherent and human discourse.
But this is a rather general remark I could make on the story.
Every character has no freedom of choice or whatever. They are all “SLAVES” of
their desires, lust, power, will to dominate, to own, to use. Even the desert
king Jalin is shown as being a spoiled brat who plays with a stray kitten
picked in the street and who is in love with a black warrior Kiir who literally
controls him with his dancing. We have to think of Salome and her seven veils
dance. But that is just the point: the dance for Salome is her way to take
control of her stepfather and uncle (which makes her a female Hamlet). But the
tragic dimension of this Biblical and historical event is lost because there is
no stake in the dance. No John the Baptist and no head to get delivered on a
silver platter. The death of the unnamed queen is certainly not delivered on a
silver platter. And Oscar Wilde’s delirious Salome making love with John the Baptist
in words and then with his head is far from this story. Difficult to imitate
with Inea since Inea is gay and would not be thrilled by the unnamed queen’s
head, except if his gayness were explored as some kind of escape from a deeply morbid
and mortiferous personality.
Even if the gay erotica is correct altogether, I just wonder
if the author is what his/her name seems to reveal. Is the author a man or a
woman? The gay characters are charming but they have no depth and their love making
is purely mechanical while their love declarations are purely enslaving
possession. Love is a lot more complicated and it cannot be reduced to the instinctual
robotic thermodynamics of a few legs, arms and other members encountering the various
openings of a few bodies. Even the music of the minstrel and his poetry is not
exemplified in any way. It is true and difficult to consider what kind of a creative
mental dimension Kaedon would have? Think of Jalin and his fixation on a kitten
playing with silver coins. Think of Kiir reduced to a dance, which in a way is
creative and mental but we do not penetrate at any time this dimension of this
dance: it is only a seductive tool to capture the attention of a grown up though
childish kid. Gay romance deserves better than just being a vacillation between
erotic scenes and escaping sprees that always end well, plus some fantasy
battles to cut up the humdrum bed scenes.
Just enjoy the story as some entertainment. I am sure it is
not intended to go beyond this titillating level.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 4:28 AM