***

A boy who can see the world’s secrets and unravel spells with just a glance.

Braden’s witch eyes give him an enormous power. A mere look causes a kaleidoscopic explosion of emotions, memories, darkness, and magic. But this rare gift is also his biggest curse.

Compelled to learn about his shadowed past and the family he never knew, Braden is drawn to the city of Belle Dam, where he is soon caught between two feuding witch dynasties. Sworn rivals Catherine Lansing and Jason Thorpe will use anything—lies, manipulation, illusion, and even murder—to seize control of Braden’s powers. To stop an ancient evil from destroying the town, Braden must master his gift, even through the shocking discovery that Jason is his father. While his feelings for an enigmatic boy named Trey grow deeper, Braden realizes a terrible truth: Trey is Catherine Lansing’s son . . . and Braden may be destined to kill him.

***

Ladies & gentlemen, it’s a wrap. The gauntlet has been thrown, the bar has been raised, the standard has been set. THIS is how it’s done! I haven’t been this excited about a novel featuring a gay protagonist since Perry Moore’s Hero.

Braden proves to be a strong protagonist. He’s a three-dimensional character. He makes mistakes, he’s fallible, he’s human and sympathetic. And even when he gets himself into trouble, this is still a character you can root for. While there’s angst aplenty, he has more than enough legtimiate reasons for said angst (which keeps him sympathetic) and Tracey does an excellent job not allowing said angst to pummel and warp Braden’s characterization and development. Tracey also avoids making him stilted and obnoxious like a lot of writers do with their characters.

Tracey’s description and prose is quite impressive. It didn’t overburden you with filler and purple prose. Between the descriptions and the first person narrative, you could easily place yourself in Belle Dam and easily visualize the town and its inhabitants. The mythos and the plot immediately sucked me in and I was dying to find out what happened next. Many of the characters have secrets and agendas, and you’re eagerly awaiting them to show their hands. And more than once I got impatient with intel the audience finds out early on and was wanting to scream, REVEAL ALREADY. The anticipation was killing me.

Forgive the vagueness of this review but I’m trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible.

And can I stress how much I love the book cover?

Braden’s orientation was also handled as-a-matter-of-factly, with nuance, with insight and respect. Witch Eyes could’ve easily have worked with Braden being a heterosexual and it was a relief to read a story that wasn’t a formulaic coming out tale or a tragic gay angst tale or Braden being the formulaic gay guy whose sole raison d’être revolves around his orientation.

What was also a relief was that the romance didn’t overwhelm the story like you see too often in countless YA, gay novels, and urban fantasy books. The romance was one (albeit important) part of the complex and interwoven plot. The romance was well-executed, as was the mystery, the action and the drama. But it was all well-balanced which made the story that much stronger and that much more enjoyable.

And speaking of romance and love interests, Trey’s a dick. Braden is too good for him and can do so much better. I’m down for Team Somebody Else. And that objective analysis has nothing to do with the fact that Trey reminds me of my ex. Nope, not at all.

[shakes head solemnly]

When it comes to storytelling, Tracey proves that he knows his craft and I found myself having to pace myself with the story because I didn’t want the book to end too soon. There isn’t much resolution at the end which I initially found distressing. But said distress was quickly relieved when I found out that Witch Eyes is the first of a series and the next book is scheduled to be released next year. Thank God. From what little I’ve researched, it appears that Witch Eyes only answered a few questions only to unlock more mysteries. Shorthand, to quote Jim Ross, business is about to pick up.

And if Tracey is this impressive in his debut novel, I can’t wait to see what he accomplishes next.

It saddens me that it took three years for me to find another enjoyable book that features a queer male protagonist. The last one I read was Hero. When you stop and think about the number of books that get churned out each year which feature cis straight white protagonists, it’s all the more infuriating.

But hopefully Witch Eyes is a sign of things changing. We still have a long ways to go obviously but maybe novels like this will lead to more.

Witch Eyes is available now.

***

Dennis R. Upkins was born and raised in Nashville, TN. A voracious reader, a lifelong geek and a hopeless comic book addict, he knew at an early age that storytelling was his calling. His debut novel, Hollowstone, was released in June 2011 by Parker Publishing. More information on Upkins and his other projects can be found at http://dennisupkins.com/

.

This month our guests are Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond of The Writer and the Critic.

This episode has an explicit tag! You are warned! Unlike the last time we used an explicit tag, when Amal El-Mohtar said one swear word, and Mike Allen read one bit of story which referenced male anatomy, this explicit tag means serious business. We all use salty language and touch on mature content (by which I mean the sorts of things that are sure to titillate all of our inner twelve-year-olds). So. Keep that in mind before turning this on at work, or around your young kids or sensitive friends.

I’ve cut an hour’s worth of stuff from our original conversation, but this podcast episode still runs just shy of two hours. Because it’s a long one, and in case you don’t want to be spoiled for any of the stories we discuss, here are some time cues for you:

We have general interview chat until the 43 minute mark. At around 43 minutes in we begin to discuss Peter M. Ball’s Horn and Bleed (as recommended by Ian). At about 1:09, we begin to discuss Hal Duncan’s “The Behold of the Eye” (as recommended by me), and at about 1:26, we begin to discuss Kim Westwood’s “Nighship” (as recommended by Kirstyn).

You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.

Notes:

Kirstyn and Ian’s Projects Mentioned in this Episode
*Madigan Mine is Kirstyn’s novel (which has won all the Aurealis and Chronos awards, and which is available on Kindle in the US). We didn’t get the chance to discuss the book, but if you’d like to hear Kirstyn speak more about it, you can listen to her interview on Galactichat.
*Last Short Story is the short story review project Ian’s taking part in.
*Ian wrote several stories for Big Finish Audio’s Doctor Who Short Trips series.
*Ian’s other podcast is Shooting the Poo.
*Kirstyn and Ian co-edited the first issue of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association.
*Bloodsongs was another magazine with which they both had some affiliation back in the day.

Writers/Projects/Pieces We Mentioned
*Peter M. Ball (Author of Horn and Bleed–e-books at Smashwords).
*Hal Duncan (author of “The Behold of the Eye”).
*Kim Westwood (author of “Nightship”).
*Felicity Dowker (guest on Writer and Critic Episode #4, Australian Horror Writer, and undeserving victim of Ian’s rumor-spreading impulse).
*Trent Jamieson (nice guy of Australian specfic).
*John Richards (part of the Boxcutters podcast team, and TV writer who created Outland, the series about a group of queer fans–he’ll be a guest on The Writer and the Critic in November).
*Tansy Rayner Roberts (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and writer of a trilogy, the first two books of which Kirstyn is hoarding unread until  such time as the third one comes out).
*Alisa Krasnostein (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and the World Fantasy Award nominated person behind Twelfth Planet Press).
*Catherynne M. Valente (Writer, past Writer and Critic guest, and person who is not responsible for Ian’s guilt).
*Caitlín R. Kiernan (Author of The Red Tree, a book with queer content, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Kathe Koja (author of Under the Poppy, another queer content heavy story, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Rose Fox’s Genreville Post calling for honest reviews.
*Jennifer Pelland (author of some Nebula nominated stories, and person whose reading provided me with a safe place to hide during my first traumatic con experience).
*Nicole Kornher-Stace (whose stories, like Kim Westwood’s, are beautiful and hard to categorize).
*Wilde Stories ( 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011–the best gay stories collected each year by Steve Berman).
*Icarus (the magazine of gay speculative fiction)
*Poppy Z. Brite (author of many horror books with gay content, which Kirstyn’s ex used to imagine didn’t exist).
*Charles Tan and Cheryl Morgan (who Ian rightly called out as awesome specfic news resources).
*Mary Robinette Kowal (who put out her Hugo winning short story as an e-book with the first draft and commentary on the story’s evolution).
*Fran Drescher on Wikipedia.
*Coode Street Podcast (whose beginning we took for our ending).

If you have feedback, please leave a comment, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me directly at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you!