Title: The Revolutionary
Author: Rebecca Leigh
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 70
Characters: Damian Junter, Kell Laughlin
POV: 3rd Person
Sub-Genre: Steampunk/Alt U
Kisses: 4
Blurb:
After months of hiding out in the badlands, ex-Bringer Damian Junter has returned to Terra Noir to plot war with the East. The tide of public opinion is shifting against the corrupt Statesman Paulin, the man who accused Damian’s lover, Kell, of a murder he did not commit. With Kell as their leader, the Outlanders make the only move they can: revolution.
But the West isn’t the only side gearing up for war. In the East, Statesman Paulin has been preparing a mechanical army of his own. When Kell sends Damian back home to spy, Damian has to fight against his own insecurities: Kell’s ex-lover, Paul, is his right-hand man in this war. Damian trusts Kell with his life—but can he truly trust Kell with his heart?
Review:
The Outlaw introduced readers to Bringer Damian Junter, who had been sent to Terra Noir, to the Outlander stronghold, to administer his special brand of justice to outlaw Kell Laughlin, who’d been maliciously accused of murdering the wife and children of a corrupt Eastern Statesman. The thing about justice, though, is that it’s malleable and can be manipulated by the whims of the unscrupulous. Damian leaned that truth the hard way, when he became little more than a pawn in a game of deceit that wrenched the very fabric of his belief system from under him.
In the follow up, The Revolutionary, Rebecca Leigh pulls the reader back into her dystopian world where infernal devices and the Old West meet, and where Damian and Kell are now both outlaws, lovers, and more determined than ever to deliver their own brand of justice to the unjust.
Damian struggles in this book, with jealousy and with the fact that going back to the place he once called home, to the reminders of the job that had once defined him only serves to underscore the betrayal and his struggle to believe that all he’d lost could be regained. It’s his love and need for Kell, however, that keeps him focused on the one and only truth: Damian’s future is now in the harsh and rugged landscapes of the West, with Kell.
This is steampunk with a very heavy emphasis on the “steam”. Damian and Kell mark their territory early on and often throughout these seventy pages, in an urgent and primal way. Sex is the way they communicate their feelings and secure their connection to each other; they are carnal beings in an untamed world, after all, alpha men with a mine attitude and they’re not afraid to show it. But while this is a good portion of the story, there is also a bit of angst, danger, and some exciting action to balance things out nicely.
Reviewed By: Lisa
