Little Japan by Reno MacLeod & Jaye Valentine
Have you in mind those stories where the heroine, not matter what happens, manages always to come out “unarmed” from trouble? The hero always arrives at the right time to save her. Well, in Little Japan, the heroes are not so lucky, in the end the cavalry arrives also for them, only a little later.
First of all I’d like to spend some words on what also the publisher considered an element to warn the reader, the age playing. One of the main characters, Gabriel, not only is a gay in the closet, but he is also a man who likes him lover really young. Now don’t get me wrong, the younger man in this novel I believe is 21 years old, so, Gabriel likes men who “look” young, and after all, this is not a big crime. I believe that Gabriel was traumatized when he was still a teenager, he first fell in love for a boy his same age, but that love abruptly ended, leaving Gabriel with an unfulfilled dream; later one Gabriel tried to kill that dream with anonymous sex, with older men that were at the exact opposite of his dream lover, and instead of kill the dream, I believe that Gabriel helped his mind to forever imprint the image of his lost unrequited love. Now Gabriel is forever searching for that young boy, but it’s an impossible search.
Kuri is a half American half Japanese young man working as host boys in an Osaka private club. His partner Daichi and him are also high paid male escorts, and they are the sort who like their job. As Kuri tells to Gabriel, maybe he started this job out of necessity, but now he is like a nymphomaniac, he needs sex like he needs food. Kuri is really in love with Daichi, and Daichi back to him, and they enjoy sex between them; what they do out of their relationship is work, and they are able to split the two things. The important thing is that they are willing partner in the sex trade; the only time one of them feels like he is betraying his lover, Daichi, is when he is forced to have sex. And so we arrive probably to the second point that needs warning for the reader: there is quite a lot of non consensual sex, meaning that one of the partner is not willing, and even if there is no actual violence, it’s the same a some sort of violence.
If you are wondering how Gabriel fit between Kuri and Daichi, well, he doesn’t; this is not a ménages a trois, when Kuri realizes that what he is feeling for Gabriel is something more of what he usually feels for his other customers, he decides to break with Gabriel, since that would be, indeed, a betrayal to Daichi. Kuri, Daichi, Gabriel, and all the other boys in this novel, know how to split sex from love, and as always, sex with love is better, sweeter and long lasting.
Where Gabriel is a complex character, who is also aware of his own trouble and for this reason, he is also self-accusing himself of the worst sins, Kuri and Daichi, albeit cute and almost sweet in their mutual love, come out a bit like naïve, and in this case naïveté has nothing to do with “innocence”; they are like little pet, easy to please, and, more or less happy if letting alone to play together; alone they need the presence of an adult to watch over them, but together they can provide for each other.
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Reading List:
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Cover Art by Shuangwen