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This book made me feel like such a hypocrite and this review is just gonna mirror that sentiment.

Without getting into the whole can of worms I'm dancing around, I try to prioritize gay fiction that's written by out gay men. 1) to support my community but also 2) for a feeling of authenticity and believable characters based upon actual lived experiences that I could relate to. I'm also in favor of realistic depictions of gay sex that doesn't just treat us like sterile Ken dolls and isn't afraid to say the quiet parts out loud.

On paper, this book checks those boxes; there are no "fade to black" scenes and even if I couldn't draw direct real-world parallels to each of the characters to gay men I know personally, none of their actions felt illogical to me. But maybe this was a case where I wasn't careful with what I wished for because the descriptions were a little much for me. I'm specifically thinking about how rather unappealing descriptions of scents and smells and odors of body parts (and fluids) appear on damn near every other page. At times it felt like a focus on the worst aspects of gay life rather than a celebration of it.

Structurally I was also caught off-guard. The book is broken into only 5 massive chapters with huge time skips in between each one on the order of several months. It facilitates observing the central relationship develop quicker, yet the final chapter isn't told from the perspective of either of the two leads which felt like an odd change of gears. Still, I enjoyed seeing two men move beyond past transgressions from former lovers they both experienced and develop a bond that was unabashedly masculine. Also, there are very strong underlying themes throughout about being an immigrant in a foreign land that probably would've resonated with me much more if I were an immigrant myself, but I'd be remiss not to mention what at times felt like the actual central focus of the book.

While this may not have been the type of book I was expecting it to be or was in the mood to read, I cannot deny that it was well-written. Many parts made me uncomfortable (there's a very long politically-charged dinner party scene that jumps to mind), but always at the same points where the characters themselves were uneasy. And really it's a compliment that this book evoked emotions from me when it so easily could've failed to do so. I don't regret my time with this book, but I don't feel the need to revisit it anytime soon.

Sometimes you just don't connect with a book and it's neither the reader's fault nor the author's fault. Reading this kind of felt like hanging out with a group of your friends who start referencing an inside joke you're not a part of and you just have to patiently wait for that part of the conversation to end.

I'm not big on movies or television (I read books, that's why I'm here), but I'm aware of the titular trope even if I can't point to any specific examples. I likely would've gotten a lot more out of this if I was a big horror movie buff and/or had a good understanding of Los Angeles, but I'm not and I don't. The writing is fine and some passages of prose were actually impressive, but it's the pacing that got to me. For a story that's meant to stress the importance and value of the people you care about, we don't spend a lot of time with the protagonist's inner circle before they're threatened with danger. For once I'm wondering if the inciting incident happened too early rather than too late.

Despite the protagonist's flashbacks to a younger, closeted gay version of himself that were absolutely relatable, I don't feel I ever connected with Misha on a meaningful level. A disappointing climax rounded out an otherwise initially promising premise. Also there's a bit of a bait-and-switch going on genre-wise that I was ultimately okay with, but would've preferred if it hadn't happened. Not a bad read viewed in a vacuum, but a bit of a let down for me personally considering how much I loved Camp Damascus.

Indian history has long been a blindspot for me and previous attempts to learn about it have basically said, "nothing important happened before the British arrived and nothing worth mentioning occurred after Partition." That's obviously not the case, and this high-level summary definitely shed light on the bigger picture that usually gets overlooked by more eurocentric recaps.

Besides the delve into the deep past, I particularly appreciated how recent this book was and how it discussed topics that I remember as news stories happening in just the past few years (the 2016 banknote demonetisation, the 2019 citizenship fast-track for non-muslim immigrants, the 2020 skirmishes with China over the Line of Actual Control, etc.). It even looked forward to the (now completed) 2024 Indian general election.

Yes, parts of this book read like a constant stream of names I've never heard of before all stabbing each other in the backs over centuries of court intrigue, but at least it's something I'd never been exposed to before. For a country that's projected to have more English speakers than the USA by the mid 2030's, this is a country that cannot be ignored, and learning about how it got back to the global stage is going to become important in the future.

As I mentioned in my review of The Clockwork Boys, these two books were so closely tied together (and comparatively short for the genre) that I wondered why this story was split into two books at all. But it was, so here we are.

So the first half of our party's suicide mission - navigating through an active warzone between two dangerous armies - was completely sidestepped at the end of the first book through magic shenanigans. Okay, so we get to the rival city they're meant to infiltrate and we begin phase two of the suicide mission, but the stakes still feel oddly low? And I'm only just realizing now in my attempt to explain this book that the only obvious character that can act as an antagonist... doesn't have anything to do with the central ~suicide mission~ and mostly just has a personal vendetta solely against one of the two POV protagonists.

The romance feels forced, plotlines are abandoned, and the dialogue isn't great. This is a very paint-by-the-numbers trope fest that does nothing I haven't seen done before. However, I have seen it done worse and this book (these books?) met my admittedly low expectations, so I can't really claim to be disappointed in this case.