Customer Reviews

Off World

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Off World was the book I dreamed of as gay teenager in the 1980's. I was, and still am, a voracious reader. I discovered straight romance novels and used to dream that one day there would be romance novels where the protagonists were two men. Stephanie Vaughn fulfilled that dream for me. When I first discovered gay romances I was severely disappointed. While they were full of hot sex, they were lacking in the emotional part of the equation. It seemed that those authors bought into the stereotype that the only thing gay men wanted was sex. From the minute I first read one of Stephanie Vaughn's books, I discovered an author who understood that gay men are complex human beings who not only want hot sex, but love and romance as well.



In Off World, the romance between Sarhaan and Caleb reminded me of the great swashbuckling romantic movies of the 1940's, like the ones starring Errol Flynn and Maureen O'Hara. Only in this book, the main characters are more like Errol Flynn and Tyrone Powers. Hooray!!!



Stephanie Vaughn's masterful writing sweeps the reader into a romantic drama with true to life characters who live in an imaginative and well constructed science fiction universe. She not only provides her readers with plenty of hot sex, but tugs at their heartstrings as well. I can't wait to read more from this author.

One of the strengths of Stephanie Vaughan's writing that brings me back again and again is the solidly crafted characterizations. I know these won't be cookie cutter heroes with paper-thin motivations. Complex and character-driven, I love the real world feel of Vaughan's characters and I always come away with the feeling that I would recognize her characters if I met them on the street.

"Off World" is no exception. What starts out feeling like a traditional male-female romance between the burly ex-soldier and the computer-geek turned diplomat, quickly takes a turn. Vaughan stands the genre on its head, obviously having fun playing with Sarhaan's expectations as well as the reader's. Both heroes are more than the stereotypes they initially mistake each other for and half the fun is watching these two spar.

And then there's the sex. Smokin' hot and frequent, this book didn't lack for heat! From start to finish it was spicy and complicated and I can't wait for more. Well done, Stephanie Vaughan.

I feel the other reviewers misled me on this book. Actually, if I want to read pornography, I would not go to Amazon to get it. To be generous I will call it an erotic fiction story and not porn, but it is not a very good one. You'll find better on a porno site. I did like the 'physical' description of the main characters, but that was about all. There is so much sex in the book that it is difficult to find the story. Where the characters came from, what type of ships there were in and what they were doing there is not explained. Evidently because that might get in the way of more sex. I worked my way through over half of the book and then gave up.

I loved this book! What could easily have become another disappointing Star Trek rip-off turned out to be one of my favorite reads this year. The development of the relationship between the more experienced Sarhaan and the naïve but intelligent Caleb was handled wonderfully, reflected beautifully in the book's many love scenes. What the author did so well was use the sex scenes to demonstrate the growth of the relationship - something that's not easy to do.

Where a lot of m/m romances fall down for me is in giving us too much sex and too little emotion, but that's definitely not the case here. Each love scene showed me not only what the characters were feeling, but something new that they discovered about each other.

I thought this was a fabulous book and any quibbles I might have had about plot inconsistencies were more than made up for by the superior characterizations and the author's world-building. If you like a little plot to go along with your hot m/m romance, you can't miss with this book.

Cal is a very young man, with a gentle soul and a fragile body who wants to discover who has brutally murdered his friend Daphne.

The prime suspects of the crime is a crew of rogue soldiers who has stolen a starship and now is wondering on the universe. Cal steals a little navette and succeeded on find the crew: but they are very big and very hungry men who think he is a spy. And decide to captive him.

Fortunately the man in command is Sarhaan, an afro-american hunk of man who happen to be very interested in Cal, and not because he could possibly be a spy: Sarhaan is very fascinating from this blond and innocent guy, who never has had sex cause sex between male is illegal on the earth. But now they are off world and Sarhaan, even if he thinks he is too unpolish and brutal for a guy like Cal, will not throw out the chance to have him.

In this novel the sci-fiction elements are not the principal aspect of the story. And also the crime is an element not so delved. It is more a story of self-discovery: for Cal, who learns that sex with a man is not a crime and that his feelings are not perverse, and for Sarhaan, who learns how to love someone. Even if you can think that Sarhaan, with his body and his role of power, is the strong element of the pair, it is not total true: I can read in him feelings inedequacy and fears to lose who he loves, that decipt him like a big man with a tender soul.

An under-developed story with many undeveloped characters. This story started out promising. It read like a bit of D/s might be happending based on the description of Sarhaan & Caleb and the position in which they made him wait. But as more threads and characters got introduced, more threads & characters fell by the wayside. [...], Alex (a past love of Sarhaan)no background info., Caleb stole a shuttle from his uncle (no follow up), genetic enhancement (no follow up),etc,etc. Also, to speed things along, this author had the characters moving from one place to another in a couple of sentences. Don't let the fact that it is over 200 pages fool you. It is double spaced with only about 5 words per line. In the end I felt like read only half a story.

Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.

Rating: 7/10

PROS:
- The mystery plot is revealed slowly, a piece at a time, and almost every chapter ends with a little cliffhanger. I had a hard time putting the book down.
- At first I was a little skeptical of the characters' emotional attachment to each other, since they don't have very many interactions where they seem to be connecting in any way other than physical. However, the physical attraction morphs into something deeper, so overall I thought the characters were a good fit by the end of the book.
- I liked all the details about the fantasy setting that related to the real world. There are plenty of completely foreign concepts in the story, but there are also mentions about water being a luxury and "real wood" being almost unheard of that made the futuristic setting easier for me to relate to.
- I'm always impressed when an author undertakes the creation of a foreign language. Vaughan doesn't use Kush too often, and she keeps the sentences short, so that the impression of foreignness is achieved without becoming too overbearing for the reader.

CONS:
- The ending is rather cursory and thrown-together when compared to the process the characters go through to discover who the villain is. I was expecting much more of a showdown than I got at the end.
- The descriptions, especially sexual, were a little over-the-top for me at times: some of them actually made me cringe (Sarhaan thinking of Caleb's "rosebud mouth," for example).
- There are some repetitive phrases and a lot of typos that suggest pretty sloppy editing. Examples: "Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this"; "What he'd expected, he didn't know, but it surely wasn't this." "Sarhaan's face grew slowly larger. Until all he could see was darkness"; "Sarhaan's face grew closer until it was all Cal could see." In some instances, the grammatical mistakes are so bad that they render entire sentences almost incomprehensible: "Xuwicha's had been report sounding generally positive until his voice trailed off."

Overall comments: This book reminds me of another sci-fi I read recently, Details of the Hunt: it has a well-formed fantasy world, a fairly sheltered human character who is thrust into a situation foreign to him, and very loving descriptions of the characters' physical interactions. Sex is certainly a main focus of the story. There are several detailed scenes, and even when the characters are focused on resolving issues of the plot, they're still thinking almost constantly about getting the other guy into bed.

Caleb is found by two soldiers aboard a stolen ship. He is there to help the soldiers on the Vigilant but first must convince them he is not a spy... Convincing the handsome Sarhaan might not be too much of a hardship though! Merow!

Caleb's best friend Daphne, who worked a coroner's office, has died but Caleb does not believe her death was a mugging as reported. He believes that she was murdered to cover up whatever she has found out about a series of killings in Havana and Cuba. The men of the Vigilant are under suspicion for the murders and Caleb takes it upon himself to help the team escape framing by corrupt politicians on their home planet, Earth.

Initially I found Caleb to be a bit of an ingenue, but as I read on his spine began to show through and he was quite engaging in the 2nd half of the book. He becomes more than a match for the more physically imposing Sarhaan. Our big, tough, nasty "send in the marines" hero Sarhann was plenty smexy and has been living off world for some time. His sexual preferences are not an issue on the ship whereas on Earth they are illegal. He has had far more time to become comfortable with his sexuality than Cal and this was quite a sweet plot point. The intimate moments were hot for the most part but somewhat lacking variety... or maybe I am just jaded?? heh.

I guess the problem I had with this book was that you needed to read the synopsis very closely to help decipher what was happening in the book. Even then, I still spent the 1st 50 pages floundering a bit. It's convoluted in parts and as its first novel of a series it suffers from trying build a complex world in 150 something pages. There were so many threads, often really great ideas, that were not fully fleshed out and just left hanging. It lacks the tightness of a Stephanie Vaughan's stand alone novels and this did spoil my read just a bit. While not my favorite of her books she is an author to check out.

I can't say there was anything I didn't like about this book, except it wasn't long enough. It was plenty long, but I wanted more. The second book in the series is also exceptional, and I highly recommend it as well, but it focuses on two other characters, characters that beg to be explored in this first book, Alex and D'Abu. I also enjoy the references to a new ultra-conservative Earth and the destruction that brings.

I'd love to see another book about Cal and Saarhan. If you check out Torquere press the author does have a short story available about them that takes place a year later.

If you enjoy good sci-fi and romance, then you'll like this book.

This story was HOT with a capital H. I've only read a few M/M romances in the past. This one caught me from the first chapter. Ms Vaughn made me really care for these two lovers. I enjoyed the storyline. Sarhann and Caleb became real people to me and by the end of the book, I was rooting for their HEA! I'd love to see more of these characters in the future. Hope this turns into a series.

Nancy C Fecca