Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: John T Fuller 

Tags: Gay Romance, Urban Fantasy, PNR (ARC Review) 

Length: 126 PDF Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: Paperback Link Only Release Date October 16th 

Blurb:

The West Coast of America, 1995. Chant has just arrived in town from England, running from something he’s not sharing. When he lands an unusual job at a local tattoo parlour, The Blue Comet, it seems like perhaps he’s finally found a place to call home, people to call family, and maybe even love with the artist with the big dark eyes and black curls. But everyone has their secrets, and Chant is about to learn just what those secrets are, and how they are connected to what lurks in the catacombs beneath the sunny seaside city of Santa Ines.

Fresh Ink is an urban horror-fantasy m/m romance. Available in two editions – high spice (explicit) and mild spice (fade to black) – this is a gay love story that is guaranteed to sink its teeth into you!

Review:

Hmmm….This is a hard book to define or review. It’s different to the tropey romance PNR/UF romance I’m quite used to reading. I’d say the connection and romance develops later but you have to take a leap of faith. I went from one chapter to the next and thought, “What have I missed?” Chant keeps his emotions in the background, how much he cares for someone in the here and now, and given he’s the narrator, I thought that was really clever. It’s indicative of someone not allowing their feelings to come to top of mind because history has shown them it won’t do them any good. A lot of people understand outwardly masking genuine emotion while inwardly erecting emotional walls.   

Anyway, Chant is someone who turns up at The Blue Comet tattoo parlour and feels a pull to the place pretty quickly. That’s in part to the no nonsense yet embracing Ceci, the Comet’s owner, and her family of tattoo artists. Plus Chant loves getting ink, including the thrum of the gun. The needle. He strikes a deal for his flesh to be a canvas in return for some cash to help him make ends meet while he’s in town. He even suggests they tattoo their logo on him. He can wear it out to the local watering holes and venues later in the evening as a walking advertisement.

To review this book in any real depth is to spoil it. So here are some of my thoughts as I read-

If it wasn’t in the blurb I would have thought this book was set in current day, not the 1990s. Not that it matters. I mean, the Polaroid instant photo moment retro’ed it. I remember having one and shaking the photos. That was in the 90s. The world building is really good. It vividly paints a picture of an urban town just ripe for this urban fantasy.

He leaves the windows open, inviting in the city soup of car fumes and hot asphalt and street food, and somewhere beyond it, the salt kiss of the sea. Of course, that means the city sounds, too, which are less of an ambient background and more like the deafening racket of a one-man-band tripping down a faulty escalator full of marbles, but even that isn’t so bad. Chant doesn’t sleep much anyway, and noise always makes him feel less alone. Reminds him that he’s here, now.
And somewhere, too, whispering beneath the clash and clamour of sirens and vendors and every flavour of urban life, is something else – a deep and secret threnody that must, surely, also be the sea.

While the book is Santa Ines centric, you get to learn more about Chant’s world prior but only with time. At first Fuller drips extra information to the reader. Then, however, there this a catalyst for more.   

In this world Chant can go out during the day, can drink beer, doesn’t eat, he isn’t a billionaire vampire, doesn’t own a nightclub – often the case in PNR romance – and he can be a conduit for diseases so he has to be careful about bodily fluids, kissing included, and Chant misses that. He’s refrained but he wants so much to kiss now.

You basically know what Chant is but throughout the book, except for one slip of the tongue, Chant never uses the word vampire. No one else uses it either. I loved that because I just saw Chant. The people who count also just see Chant, although they are able to sense his otherness.  

 What are you? What are you? He can hear the unspoken question, can see the realisation dawning in her eyes, just waiting for him to say it. Say the word. Confirm the suspicion. And suddenly, he can’t. More than that, he doesn’t need to. Not this time.

I loved being in Chant’s head because it’s a definite mood. Seeing the world through his eyes. He’s always been on the move. Never setting down roots because that means questions he doesn’t want to answer. On the surface you might think Chant’s laidback but because we’re rolling with him, with his thought processes, we know different. Sure he takes life as it comes, he has to, I guess we all have to, but there is also this fatalistic sadness that permeates Chant. I thought him a beautiful character. Things have touched him quite deeply over time, and I felt that to my very marrow. Everybody needs some roots, some connection, and I really wanted him to find them, but I was never certain he would.

The catacombs under Santa Ines form an underworld where people who enter never come out, according to Ceci. Even with a zealous gatekeeper, people can find a way in. There’s an energy, a magic, within them, so when Manny, Ceci’s brother, unexpectedly goes into the catacombs, Chant promises her he’ll go and bring him home. But can he, given that no one comes out? This was when things became so interesting and certain elements made sense, they became holistic.

The author gives you the choice of a low or high spice edition of Fresh Ink. I chose the high spice option but there wasn’t a lot of sex in the spicy edition. For me it felt organic. 

Overall:   

One of the best books I’ve read is by this author, the wonderful When the Music Stops. He’s able to  say so much in novellas, a real talent. Anyway, I was happy when the author offered me an ARC of (the well named) Fresh Ink.

John T Fuller beautifully crafts a story of magic. Of regrets. Of no regrets. Of family. Of roots. Of drifting versus settling and how that affects us. The story is also about the significance of love, no matter what that looks like or for how long that might last. About social connection. About the power of hope. Chant’s world hasn’t been one of ennui, which is often the case in vampire stories, it’s more one I’d describe as an unbearable aloneness. Until The Blue Comet. Until magical Manny. Different and delightful, Fresh Ink is a clever, mesmerising UF gay romance novella. 5 Stars!