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 The Huntsmen: Bareback by Amber Green
Our story opens in Florida on a sweltering, cockroach-infested July night. Brian Gardner, a 20 year-old paramedic, has just moved his meager belongings into a hideous one-room apartment in a bad section of town. It's his first step away from the safety net of family and friends back in Brooklyn that has nurtured him from childhood.
This could be a contemporary fiction coming-of-age-story. But, wait! Some unusual information surfaces as Brian remembers his dad's reaction to his move: Pop thinks it's a bad idea for a "huntsman" to go to new territory bareback – that is, alone with no brother to watch his back. A huntsman needs a support network and a "feeder."
Here at ObsidianBookshelf.com, I start imagining vampires, and that's not too far off the mark. Huntsmen are not human. They're psychic vampires who need to feed on sexual energy. Ideally, when a huntsman moves out of the home territory, he's going be accompanied by both a brother to watch his back and keep him balanced, and a willing human to have sex with him so he can feed off the energy.
Later we learn that huntsmen are always male, though their communities are ruled by a matriarch. They're always born in sets of identical twin boys. Brian had a twin who died and so that makes him the "bareback" of the title: a figure of great mistrust among other huntsmen.
This is because a huntsman can go completely nuts without the steadying influence of his twin brother, and degenerate into a mindless predator known as a "hyde." The best preventative measure against that? Getting neutered by the matriarch! To stave off this possible threat in the future, poor Brian works hard to maintain his self-control.
But all that is in the back of his mind right now. Brian knows that he needs to present himself to the local matriarch soon. Tonight, however, he decides to settle his nerves with a night-time run through his new neighborhood. It turns into a Fellini-esque tour of the bad side of town, and ends with Brian witnessing a gang-related murder.
So he has to go to the police and give his eye-witness testimony. But too much time has passed since Brian's last sexual-energy feeding, and he's getting dangerously close to losing control. Plus he's lost his I.D. and the cops later find his apartment broken into, so they know that the gang is trying to find him and eliminate him as a witness. Brian needs to go to a safe-house. What could be a safer place than staying with the lieutenant Joe?
Joe turns out to be an even better character than Brian. Brian has a calm nature, touched with an undercurrent of youthful innocence. Joe, however, has an amusingly realistic tough-guy attitude. He has a name for his penis (you'll have to read the story to get that detail), and regards it with the disapproving fondness one might reserve for one's wayward son. He has a blunt, colorful way of expressing himself. He thinks he's not attracted to guys. However, their first night together, Brian convinces him otherwise. Brian, in dire need of a "feeder", isn't going to take no for an answer.
So now we have our hot gay couple ready to face off against gang-warfare, hydes, conspiracies, and dangerous politics involving the local huntsmen. We also have a lot of detailed, well-written sex scenes.
The Huntsmen: Bareback is a fast-paced and entertaining paranormal romance. My only real gripe centers on the scarcity of information about the huntsmen. Where did they come from? What is their purpose? How have they managed to live undetected among humans for so long? What is their attitude towards humans: protective, neutral, superior?
However, none of these questions gets in the way of the story. Also, the questions themselves may get answered over the course of the Huntsmen series. The Huntsmen: Bareback is only one story within that series and it does work as a stand-alone. Try it -- I think you'll like it.
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