Winning a race to find a long-lost collection of legendary relics would earn the crew of Tempest both fame and fortune, and possibly make them legends themselves.
But will they find the price too high to pay?
Read this book if you…
- Like seafaring adventures
- Enjoy treasure hunting
- Think the problem with most ship crews is they aren’t queer enough
- Enjoy positive disability-rep
- Like seeing examples of healthy polyamory
- Wish to support independent LGBTQ+ fiction
Life, Love, and Adventure on the High Seas
Eli is a treasure hunter (Not a pirate! Stop calling them that!) and they rock a killer beard while looking fantastic in a miniskirt. Their longtime partner Max has magic that lets him make maps for his beloved to use in finding their treasures. For as long as Eli has captained Tempest, they’ve been leaving Max safely at home, but that changes when they find themselves racing to collect a group of legendary relics.
Max joins the crew so he can draw maps as they go rather than making the ship return to homeport between finds. The crew accepts him with a lot of enthusiasm, more than happy to quickly refit the ship to accommodate Max’s wheelchair. Especially thrilled to have Max aboard is Eli’s orcish boyfriend, Tevin, who’s been increasing his flirtatiousness with Max on recent visits and who is very much not alone in his interest in taking that further.
At first, the collecting goes great. But soon an obnoxious rival treasure hunter realizes Max is the key to Eli’s success, putting not only Max but Max and Eli’s relationship in peril.
Surprise! They’re polyamorous!
While what I wrote above probably clued you in that this book contains healthy polyamory, nothing in the actual cover copy so much as implies it. The author posted on BlueSky using #PolyamoryDoneRight or this novel might never have made it on my radar despite my obsessive searching for examples of polyamorous romantasy that isn’t actually mislabeled (at least in my opinion) harem paranormal romance.
#PolyamoryDoneRight is an accurate hashtag. While Max and Eli don’t have a perfect relationship, their approach to polyamory is well done. They both have other lovers, but never question their mutual devotion, and if they treat their other lovers poorly, there’s no evidence of it. Between them they only have one other serious relationship, but Max’s narration mentions he does date and have an active sex life apart from Eli.
Although Max and Eli are soulmate-level connected, they both clearly care for Tevin, who seems to find their relationship a thing to love about both of them. And it’s very clear he isn’t a unicorn. Tevin has a multiyear history in a loving relationship with Eli before he and Max cross from metamors to lovers, and he’s consistently treated with the respect he deserves. Also worth noting, although Eli is ecstatic to see Max and Tevin escalating their relationship and greatly enjoys being with both of them at once, they’ve never pushed the metamors to hook up.
Overall
The characters are what make this book shine, but the plot works as well. It starts a tad slow, which is odd to say as it leads with Eli stealing something from a griffin. But I didn’t know who Eli was yet, so it was a bit “Standard Indiana Jones Opening” for me and that lacked urgency. But the next sequence of scenes introduced the POV characters and I soon had a strong motive to read more. Namely, the narrators were both Very Interesting People. By the midway point, I felt invested enough when the plot pace picked up to be sucked into marathon reading mode.
If there’s an area to cite for improvement, it would be the worldbuilding. The world was a little too generic D&D for my tastes. At one point, I remember reading something like ‘the city Max lived in’ and wasn’t sure if it had ever actually been named. Its sole character trait appeared to be that Eli thought it was safer than the unnamed hinkier ports we also see. The setting felt irrelevant, and not much like a real place. And that’s disappointing when the characters are as vibrant as they are, because I suspect Knight has the skill to write a location I would have felt like I’d visited. Also, it’s a little bit odd that a book staring a cartographer had so little regard for the actual world it was in.
Content Summaries
Cozy/Intense Scale: 3-4/5
A medium paced read with some high anxiety sections later in the narrative.
Spice Level: 4/5?
Four chapters of thirty-six are comprised mostly of explicit sex. I’m not allosexual enough to tell you if the descriptions therein are ‘good’ or not. Sorry… Since once the chapter became clearly sex that lasted until the end of the chapter, those who would prefer to avoid or merely skim these scenes easily can.
Representation:
This book features a nonbinary narrator with ADHD and an anxiety disorder, a trans-masc narrator who is physically disabled and in a wheelchair in most scenes, several polyamorous characters, and several characters who experience same-sex attraction. There are enough explicitly queer characters here for it to feel like a safe assumption the characters we don’t know for sure are LGBTQ+ probably are.
Advisories:
Explicit consensual sex, moderate violence, panic attacks, ableism, kidnapping, involuntary confinement, abuse of a disabled character, child neglect in a backstory, transphobia, dysphoria, alcohol use
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