Teddy Pig, who does a great line in - well, great lines, described this book as ‘Regency Gayness in Space’. And I couldn’t put it better myself. And before I go any further - I can’t hold it back - I liked this book.

Ok …. rewind.

The Cover

I don’t generally like mantitty covers, but…. this is a mantitty cover with hair. And I’m already officially on record as liking moustaches [Bam: Grody!]. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m partial to a hairy chest. Yes, I likes me the hirsute fellows.

The Setting

The action takes place on the Planet Regelence in the year 4829. Regelence is a planet which has based its society on early nineteenth century English society (srsly!) with one very significant deviation: most people have got Two Dads. Yes, it’s a planet of Gay Love. Langley describes Regelence society as ‘patriarchal’ and boy is it patriarchal. In fact with two dads per family it’s presumably twice as patriarchal as a normal patriarchal society.

In this society, upper class young men are treated like upper class young women in Regency England. Their virtue is of prime importance. They must remain sexually pure until marriage, are chaperoned wherever they go, attend balls and are courted by gentlemen admirers.

I’ll admit that I was nervous about the whole idea of an author combining Regency society with sci-fi. I doubted it could work. I’m a historical buff. I often find when I’m reading a historical and I come across an anachronism that it pulls me out of my reading experience. So I worried that this set-up of Langley’s wouldn’t really work for me.

Not so. Regelence might base its society on Regency England, but Langley doesn’t attempt to recreate Regency England. The manners and dress of Regency society co-exist with spaceships, fragger guns, computers and angst-free gay love.

It’s nicely done and Langley has a lot of fun with her setting: young men have electronic dance cards for the balls they attend; the house computer is a constant chaperone who is not above warning off overly amorous suitors; bedrooms for couples have built in ‘lube taps’ with vanilla-flavoured lube. And Langley makes a point of reminding the reader that there are other planets out there with very different societies. For instance, the hero’s adopted son, Trouble, is used to a freer way of life and thinks the rules protecting young men’s virtue are ridiculous.

I’ve read comments by Langley on other blogs where she’s mentioned that she came up with this setting because she wanted to write a historical M/M but couldn’t find a way to give it the HEA she really wanted to give it. And I can understand that. You can’t really set a M/M romance in Regency England and then have the protagonists be fully accepted by the rest of society and able to express their love openly and proudly. Langley’s solution to this is genius. She gave me so many of the things I love about my beloved historicals but she also gave me a sweet, romantic love story between two men that is refreshingly devoid of any angst about the characters’ homosexuality. And it doesn’t feel anachronistic.

I loved Langley’s setting and generally thought her world-building was excellent, with one small peeve. There was one aspect of Regelence society that she didn’t expand upon at all and that was the position of women. Langley makes vague reference to the fact that there are women on Regelence (though not how many - I took it that there was a smallish minority). She also intriguingly mentions that not all men on the planet are homosexual (though most are). But it wasn’t at all clear to me how women fitted in or what their status was. I’d have liked to have been told more about that. To be fair, Langley fitted a lot into this book and this might be something she intends to expand upon in future books (I hope so; I think it could throw up some interesting characters and plotlines). But all in all, this is a minor quibble. After all, this is a M/M romance and the action was quite rightly focussed on the two main characters.

The Plot

Nathaniel Hawkins was heir to a Dukedom on the planet Englor but left after a scandal and was disowned. Almost twenty years later, he is Commander of the Lady Anna and adopted father to Trouble (aka Jeremy). Englor, like Regelence, is a Regency-based society, but unlike Regelence is intolerant of homosexuality.

Nate is sent to Regelence to investigate the theft of a cache of weapons. He is sent to live with the King (Steven) and his Consort (Cony). Steven and Cony - who are in their early forties - have a number of grown sons and one adopted female child. One of their sons is Aiden. Aiden’s parents are anxious to see him settled in life but he is not keen to marry. (He wants to be an artist, dammit!)

I liked Nate and Aiden’s first meeting. Aiden is trapped in a tree and has to drop down into Nate’s arms. It was typical of a traditional regency and showed that Langley knows the genre well. I liked that she used standard Regency plot elements: the first meeting; the first waltz, the first kiss, being ‘compromised’. In fact, scenes that would be a wee bit tired in a M/F traditional regency were given new life in this sparky book.

Just as in a trad regency, it takes quite some time (about 100 pages) to get to the first kiss, but once that was out of the way, things heated up quickly. All in all I’d sum the book up as reading like a good trad Regency considerably spiced up by M/M love, sci-fi elements and very hawt sex. What’s not to like?

The Heroes

It was easy to like Nate and Aiden. Nate (he of the hairy chest) was masculine, commanding, kind and caring. And had a Prince Albert. Aiden was younger and more sensitive but no pushover. He was a good match for Nate and I believed in their immediate attraction and eventual love.

The Verdict

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more in the series. I’m particularly keen to read Trouble and Rexley’s story (one small quibble is that I’d like to have seen conflict as well as attraction between those two to pique my interest (even) more).

Langley’s creation of the planets Regelence and Englor is a winning formula (and arguably a whole new sub-sub-genre). I suspect we will see other authors following her lead.

An indulgently enjoyable B.

You may find out more about this book and purchase it here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 6:16 am and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Sci-fi/Fan, Tumperkin's Reviews, Romance: LGBT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.