This was an interesting read for me as I am not generally a 'fantasy' fan. And damn, but Miles was a whiny little SOB at the beginning. Nope, didn't much care for him at all. But Heidi Cullinan has a way with words, a way with creating a world beyond my reality, and I was pulled in and held captive. And then Miles gets all selfless & humble & heroic... :)

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Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth – Jean-Paul Sartre

Miles is a bitter, unhappy man – he has lost his high paying job in Atlanta, and with it, all his so called friends and boyfriend; he’s had to move back to the small Minnesota town he grew up in. He feels he doesn’t deserve what has happened to him, that life is unfair, and that he is better than this – everything that has happened to him. He is working for, and living with his friend Patty and her girlfriend Julie fixing things in Patty’s Pawn Shop. He hates this job and hates his life. One day, after a particularly violent bout of self-pity, he is drawn into the forest behind the pawn shop – if I keep walking, if I go into the forest things will be better. He can’t get that idea out of his head.

Read the rest of the review:
Love Bytes ( )

BOOK BLURB: When the forest behind a Minnesota pawn shop turns out to be the doorway into a faerie paradise, Miles Larson doesn't see any reason to complain. He's bankrupt, single, and living in a trailer in his backwoods hometown after being laid off from his big city job: he could use a little downtime in a homoerotic dreamland.

But Miles soon learns that in the faerie world, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. The beautiful faerie man who has captured Miles's heart might also be after Miles's soul. The frightening beast who chases him through the forest is actually a noble-hearted human under a terrible curse. And at the center of it all is the deathly beautiful Lord of Dreams, a faerie so powerful that if Miles so much as looks at his face, he will be lost in dreamland forever.

The only hope for Miles's escape is a magic flute, an enchanted instrument that holds the answer to the faerie lord's defeat. But even if Miles is smart and strong enough to wield it, will he dare? When the cold light of truth dawns, if there is no reality beneath the love he's found in the faerie realm, Miles will have to return to his own world—alone.
My REVIEW: This reminded me of a Gay "Narnia".
It was good, not great. The author has done better work. I just couldn't find anything likable about Miles. He was kind of whiny and very self absorbed. At times I wanted to slap him.
The character of the BEAST saved this for me. He was terrific. The setting and fantastic world that Miles Enters was expertly created and held my fascination. It was the story and the main character that was the let down here. ( )

4.5 stars.

What I usually don’t like of the Fantasy genre is the heavy setting; sincerely I’m more for a “light” reading experience. So it’s always with a little of caution that I approach such novels, even if, like in this case, what I heard of them is only positive things. It was then with surprise, good surprise, that up from the first pages, the story flowed easily, light and also a bit sexy.

Miles is not exactly a total positive character, he is whiny, depressed and also a bit arrogant; due to the economic downfall, he lost his white collar job in the big city and he is not back home, living in a trailer and continuously saying how much better his life was before, that he doesn’t deserve such fate, and maybe even thinking that he is better than the people around him. He is only lucky that he has really good friends near him, and not like those in the city, who promptly forgot him as soon as he is no more “one of them”.

I don’t know if the fate wanted to award or punish him, but Miles finds himself involved in an adventure with fairies, beasts and dark lords. In and out of a sleep that sometime is dream something is nightmare, Miles falls in love with Harry, that I think is a similitude with Miles’s actual situation: Harry, the beast, is Miles’s today life, simple, good and sincere, even if maybe not so nice and shiny, while Terris, the fairy, is what Miles left behind. And indeed, when he is first faced with the choice between Harry and Terris, Miles chooses Terris, since he is more beautiful, more alluring, even if Harry was offering love, and Terris instead was offering lust.

Miles’s adventure will be totally involving, a bit naughty, and plenty moving, but to me has never reached the point I feared for him; I have always felt like the happily ever after was possible, and that in a way of the other, Miles would be able to understand what is really important in life. Maybe since, after all, all this fantastical adventure happened in the back door yard.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1615814353/?tag=elimyrevandra-20