A desperate man will drink muddy water if he has to, and if he's forced to imbibe it often enough he'll eventually learn to distinguish the reasonably tasty from the totally nauseating. Here are my uncensored reactions to some not -very - distinguished tales of gay fantasy.

Swordspoint, by Ellen Kushner

Synopsis: In the highly stratified world of Kushner's nameless old city, the aristocrats living in fine mansions on the Hill settle their differences by sending to the thieves' den of Riverside for swordsmen who will fight to the death for a point of someone else's honor. The best of these, Richard St. Vier, keeps coolly apart from the aristocratic feuds and serpentine political maneuvers that lie behind these slayings; for him it's just a job that he does with grace and deadly perfection. But when Lord Horn kidnaps his lover, Alec, a mysterious, threadbare student, he is pulled into the web and finds himself on trial for his life.

Critique: Ellen Kushner herself calls this a "Melodrama of Manners," and it's best to read it this way, which is to say for the occasionally witty and always highly descriptive writing and the enjoyably amoral characters, who never make a promise they mean to keep. This said, it must also be noted that the book swarms with flaws that the reader has to keep swatting away like gnats. St. Vier is as interesting and complex as a man can be who spends his life fighting other people's duels and killing his opponents (from the same class as himself) for money, without a hint of moral conflict. And one of the chief amusements of Alec, his mysterious and notably repugnant lover, is to pick random quarrels in order to get St. Vier to fight to the death for him. This is sexually exciting to Alec (or at least I hope it is), but since none of these duels provide St. Vier the slightest challenge, it starts to leave a bad taste in the mouth, especially since one suspects that Alec would probably find equally as exciting if St. Vier would just cut him up a bit instead.

Also, this is one of those books in which the author gets as many apples into the air as she can and then selects the prettiest to keep juggling, letting the rest fall where they may. She spends a good deal of time building up our interest in the stunningly handsome Lord Michael Godwin, only to let him simply drop; and the machinery that drives the plot (who, really, is Alec; what, exactly, will happen to Richard St. Vier) is just allowed to run down, so when we find out we don't care. Very odd, very unsatisfying. Kushner would have done better to tell her tale as a series of short stories. She appends three that feature Alec and Richard St. Vier to the end of Swordspoint, and one of these, "The Death of the Duke," is the best thing in the book.

Finally, and worst of all, Kushner seems much more interested in male-to-male snuggling than she is in male-to-male sex, leaving that almost entirely to our imagination. What good is purple prose if you can't flaunt it in the bedroom? I read this book against my better judgment and I'm going to read the second one, The Fall of the Kings, which takes place in the same city, but much later on in time, feeling the same way. Dirty water, yes, but I thirst. I thirst.

Rating: B-. Cover Rating: D.

The Fire's Stone, by Tanya Huff

The Last Herald Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey

Synopsis: This story is embedded in a larger, twenty-five volume series about the magical kingdom of Valdemar that I haven't read (and have no plans to ever do so), so there are lots of threads in the story I didn't pick up. I tracked down this part of the story—Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, and Magic's Price—because the protagonist in them is gay. His name is Vanyel, and we follow him from an abused childhood right to his death, or at least his transformation into an otherwordly manifestation. As a youth, Vanyel is hopelessly fey, with "FAG" written in big letters on his forehead. He hopes to become a bard, but it turns out that he doesn't have the full talent. Luckily, it turns out that he has incredible magic powers; unluckily, these are switched on by the trauma of watching his first and greatest true love, Tylendel, driven to madness and suicide. He then freezes up entirely inside, becomes a great herald mage (the heralds are a kind of cosmic FBI, their lives devoted wholly to the king, commanded to use their magic to make the world a better place. They also die; all of them). Then, in the third volume, a new love interest arrives, a supremely talented bard named Stefen, who—guess what?—turns out to somehow be the reincarnation of Tylendel, who slowly defrosts Vanyel, so he can suffer even more.

Critique: I HATED these books. They represent a school of writing about gay characters that believes if you just torture them enough, they'll be sympathetic to even a raving homophobe (in this instance, Vanyel's father, who becomes reconciled to his son's gayness only after Vanyel becomes a Hero and a Legend and doesn't rape any of the attractive boys who somehow keep ending up in his bedroom when he visits home). By the time I finished the series, I wasn't so sure that Mercedes Lackey isn't a closet homophobe herself. Her gay characters tend to be narcissistic, effeminate, and generally loathed, except when they're being condescended to.

But that's not my real complain. There's a difference between creating tension and sympathy and engaging in reader abuse, and Mercedes Lackey doesn't know it or (more likely) doesn't care. So, you wisely ask, why did I read all three volumes? Because I made a big mistake. I unthinkingly took the side of Vanyel against his creator, and kept thinking, it can't go one like this. But it did—and I ended up getting punished right along with him, through a thousand and more pages. It was a totally WRETCHED experience, not least because Lackey does have talent—again and again she pulls you back into the story, all the better to rip your guts out one more time. My advice: don't you get caught in her nasty little trap.

Rating: D. Cover Rating: F. Just look at the expression on that horse's face (I know, it isn't really a horse, it's a magical companion, but it still makes me want to vomit.)