The Green Man

Title: The Green Man
Author: M King
Publisher: loveyoudivine
Genre: M/M, Fantasy, Romance.
Length:  26 pages
Rating: 5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Erastes

I bought this book – and the next (The Golden Horse, to be reviewed next)–because I didn’t read the blurbs correctly. I assumed they were historical and found out when I downloaded, that they were fantasy. However, I read them and boy, am I glad I did.  I enjoyed them so much that Jessewave offered me the chance to review them here, as Speak Its Name doesn’t review fantasy.

THE BLURB

Gwyn might be a careless gambler, but when he learns the stakes are even higher than he could have imagined, he’s prepared to do anything to win back his mate. In the strange world of The Green Man’s castle, a series of challenges await Gwyn, and failure will carry the ultimate penalty.

THE REVIEW

Gwyn is a young, rather discontented,  Romany. He’s recently lost his best friend–and someone he thought was his lover–due to a stupid quarrel over a girl and he can’t find him. He’s just about given up, and so spends his nights drinking and gambling in the town.

The Green Man is a shadowy figure, who Gwyn–with his decided talent for gambling, and rooking the locals with his skill–encounters one night and offers to have a game of cards with the young man.  Of course, we, being experienced readers would immediately say “don’t do it Gwyn!” but of course he does, and of course it doesn’t go well, and he finds his fate tied in with the fate of the man he loved and lost.

The images, characters and symbolism are all very familiar, and I had the beguiling sense of these being stories I knew from my childhood, although with an m/m element they certainly were, although I wish they had been. They are certainly good enough to enter into the public perception of fairy tales.  That’s not to say they are “kid’s stories” – they work on any level–anyone who thinks that Grimms’ stories are for children, for example, obviously hasn’t read the originals.

I won’t go into the plot more than I have, because of the length of the piece, but if you like fairy tales at all, then I encourage you to run and buy this (and The Golden Horse) because it has the same lyrical sense of the fairy tales that we were raised with.

M King says that she’s fascinated by the Romani, and it really shows.  There’s a real sense of realism in the characters–in a way that lovers of Neil Gaiman’s work will very much appreciate.  The best fairy stories for me are where suddenly the ordinary becomes the extraordinary and this book does this so well.

The writing entranced me right from the first.  Even the phonetic speech of the Romani–phonetic writing being something that usually has the ability to make me bite my thumb in irritation–didn’t jar me.

Gwyn remembered, right here on this bed, how he’d first faced the great, dark wall of panic, the fear that Jack wouldn’t respond if he told him  or—worse—that he?d laugh. Not so. It had been the most natural of things, like walking down to a stream and letting the water wash up, inch by inch over his toes, until it bathed away all doubt and insecurity and left behind only the glittering reflection of light on its surface. That’s what Jack was: pure joy and constant movement. Gwyn felt sure, if he closed his eyes now, he would be able to conjure him here again. The touch of his strong, hard fingers, the smell of his skin… his kisses, like rain on rose leaves. Jack’s disappearance had left a void in Gwyn’s world, the edges of which stayed ragged and refused to heal, however hard he tried.

King creates such an immediate atmosphere that even if you’ve never seen a 19th century Romani caravan, or if you don’t know of the customs and the life, there are enough deft expert touches to give you much of the flavour without info dumping you to death.  And that’s all that’s needed for the story, that an introducing our hero.

For hero he certainly is.  Although making a terrible mistake and being duped by the seductive and mysterious Green Man, he takes that mistake on head first, as do all good fairy story heroes, and under pressure of time sets off into the unknown to solve his dilemma or die in the attempt.

As I said–there is much that is familiar for the reader of fairy tales–mysterious old ladies, enchanted horses and birds, a dark lake with a secret, a spell to be broken, blood and sacrifice, but the author spins the story in such a way to make the story new and fresh with a protagonist who won’t be easily forgotten, and if I could do all that in 11k words, I’d be justly proud of myself.

The two books are the first in a series of “Traveller’s Tales” by the author, and the next in the series will be The Gypsy and the Witch.  The author tells me that she’s doing a Regency next and I can’t wait to read that.