TITLE: Blind Tiger (The Pride, Book 1)
AUTHOR: Jordan L. Hawk
206 pages, JLH Books, ISBN 9798711192763 (print, also available in e-book; audiobook forthcoming)
DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): 1924, Chicago. Prohibition is in full swing and gang bosses rule the city with might—and magic. When Sam Cunningham flees his small-town life to try his luck in the big city of Chicago, he quickly finds himself in over his head in a world of gangs, glitz, and glamour. Fortunately, he has his cousin Eldon to teach him the trade of hex-making. Everything changes the night Sam visits The Pride speakeasy and meets grumpy cheetah-shifter Alistair Gatti. After losing his first witch to the horrors of the World War, Alistair isn’t interested in any new entanglements, romantic or magical. Especially when said entanglement comes in the form of kind, innocent Sam. When Eldon is brutally murdered, Sam becomes drawn into the dark underworld of the Chicago gangs. Sam must find the missing hex Eldon created for one of the crime bosses—before whoever killed Eldon comes back for him. Together, Alistair and Sam begin the search for the mysterious hex, diving deep into the seedy side of Chicago’s underworld while dodging rival gangs. And as they come to rely on one another, Alistair realizes he’s falling for the one man he can’t afford to love.
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: Fans of Jordan L. Hawk’s previous alternate history/fantasy/gay romance books will not be disappointed with Blind Tiger, the start of a new trilogy in the same alternate history timeline as his Hexworld books. Blind Tiger is full of the action, mystery, humor, romance, and steamy sex that are Hawk’s hallmarks.
For those not familiar with the world-building of the Hexworld series, a recap: it’s a world just like our own, with most of the same history intact, except that magic is a known quantity. Witches (a gender-neutral term in this world) are able to imbue written hexes with magic drawn from their shape-shifting familiars (also a gender-neutral term). Normal people can then use those hexes to do everything from keeping iceboxes cold when there’s no electricity to healing sickness – and occasionally, if the right hex is used, much larger scale magic. Any witch can bond with any familiar (but not more than one in either direction), but the magic works best when the familiar bonds to “their” witch (a nebulous-defined term that basically means that they are “meant to be together”). The books in Hawk’s Hexworld series all take place in 1890’s New York City, focused on the witches and familiars of that city’s Witch Police. Over the course of four books and a couple of short stories, Hawk has been developing a larger conspiracy involving the public’s perception and acceptance of familiars fanned to unhealthy levels by both government and religious leaders. Hawk has said he’ll eventually return to that storyline but had this idea that just wouldn’t wait. And thus, we have the start of the Pride trilogy, which moves the action to a different city (Chicago) and a different decade (the 1920s).
Whatever finally happens in 1890s NYC, it’s implied that in 1920s Chicago people are a bit more accepting of familiars in general but not necessarily of the more “dangerous” ones. Familiars are specific shapeshifters: they can transform into one animal and only one animal. When that animal is a cute dog or cat or bird, no one seems to care. But when that animal is something large and predatory, say “big cats” like lions, tigers, and cheetahs, people are still afraid. The members of the Gatti family all turn into big cats, and they’ve used that fear to carve out a place for themselves as “independent operators” within the territory of a gang overlord named Sullivan. Their position is ordinarily precarious but becomes even more so after the murder of Eldon Cunningham. Hawk does a wonderful job of setting the stakes for this “found family” from the very start of the book and then ramping those stakes up as the action progresses.
As the book synopsis indicates, the characters at the heart of the story are Alistair Gatti and Sam Cunningham. There’s an awkward meet-cute in the speakeasy the Gattis own, Sam introducing himself as “Sammy … Sam … Sam,” which Alistair riffs on immediately (but only until it’s clear Sam doesn’t like it; then Alistair backs off). These are two quite different men: Sam is shy, insecure, skittish where Alistair is grumpy, too sure of himself, bold. But they have something in common (other than the witch-familiar bond that Alistair recognizes right away and Sam has no reason to think even exists): both are suffering from forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and abandonment issues. The formative experiences that lead to the PTSD, and the ways in which each man deals with it (or doesn’t) are revealed slowly throughout the book and I don’t want to spoil anything. But I can say that Hawk writes these characters with a sensitivity and keen understanding of both PTSD and abandonment disorders that infuses both men with deep layers the reader will appreciate. This is true of pretty much every Hawk character I have encountered; just because there’s sex in these books doesn’t mean the characters are flat or undeveloped. But in this particular book, it really stands out. I look forward to how Alistair and Sam’s relationship will progress through the second and third books of this trilogy, and how they will help each other deal with the PTSD triggers they inevitably will encounter.
I also look forward to the development of the rest of the Gatti family over the next two books. The Gatti siblings are all orphans who adopted each other and do everything they can to protect each other. In addition to the five siblings, the family extends to include witches, lovers, and spouses (not always the same person; even when a familiar finds “their” witch, there’s not always a romantic connection nor does there need to be for the magic to work). We get glimpses of these relationships and tidbits about how they came to be, and we get a good sense of each family member’s personalities – but it would be nice to get to know them even better, to see the depths in them that we get to see in Alistair and Sam. Heck, I’d even like to see more of the crime-lord Sullivan.
The mystery of Eldon’s murder is very “fair play.” The clues are all there for the reader to pick up on, but not so obviously presented that you’ll guess whodunnit and why within the first half of the book.
And the steamy sex is steamy. As one would expect from a Jordan L. Hawk book.
Romance, erotica, mystery, and fantasy all under one cover and all equally well-written: Blind Tiger has something for everyone.