mikerickson reviewed Wingmen by Ensan Case
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5 stars
While reading as a hobby is enjoyable for the most part, its inevitable that most books will fall in the middle of the bell curve in terms of quality. But sometimes you get lucky and accidentally find something at the extreme end. To me, this was a masterpiece, and I feel fortunate that I've lived long enough to come across this work, there's no other word I can think of.
Not everyone will get the same mileage out of this that I did though. What we have here is a historical military novel (a genre I enjoy) set on an aircraft carrier (a niche interest of mine) with detailed descriptions of ship-to-ship aerial combat (also right up my alley), all overlaying one of the most emotional and accurate gay romances I've ever read. It being set during the Pacific theater of WWII, there are some pretty notable character deaths …
While reading as a hobby is enjoyable for the most part, its inevitable that most books will fall in the middle of the bell curve in terms of quality. But sometimes you get lucky and accidentally find something at the extreme end. To me, this was a masterpiece, and I feel fortunate that I've lived long enough to come across this work, there's no other word I can think of.
Not everyone will get the same mileage out of this that I did though. What we have here is a historical military novel (a genre I enjoy) set on an aircraft carrier (a niche interest of mine) with detailed descriptions of ship-to-ship aerial combat (also right up my alley), all overlaying one of the most emotional and accurate gay romances I've ever read. It being set during the Pacific theater of WWII, there are some pretty notable character deaths that surprised me, and I found myself genuinely worrying about the two leads during the climax in a way few books have been able to make me feel.
Of course parts of this book will seem dated; the hyper-masculine setting results in a lot of displays of eye roll-inducing macho culture and there are anti-Japanese slurs out the wazoo. But I still appreciate that this book was written at all when it was, and about men in a time and place where they couldn't be open about themselves. You could feel the danger in each clandestine rendezvous and the ending - though bittersweet - still feels hard-fought and earned by the protagonists.
Further heightening how this book affected me was its history that I looked up after finishing it; the author published it in 1979 to a weak reception, and largely gave up on writing after that. By chance he discovered in 2011 that it had developed a cult following for being an early work of gay fiction, which inspired him to get it re-published and start working on a spin-off novel. Unfortunately he passed in 2024 before he could finish it, which I'm genuinely bummed out about.
It's been almost a week since I've finished this book, and I'm still thinking about specific individual scenes all this time later. Fred and Jack will probably be bouncing around the back of my head for some time yet, and I don't mind one bit.
