A great fantasy book about young gay romance: Spoilers for Timekeeper by Tara Sim. (In other words, don't read this one, Mom.)
I'm only about a quarter into the book. It takes place in an alternative Victorian England, where time itself is controlled by the clock towers, and if they break, everything stops and the city is lost forever on a loop. Very interesting.
Danny, a clock tower mechanic, falls in love with a boy he later learns is a clock spirit. He is falling in love with the clock tower itself! It is neat, how the author has the spirit's, Colton's, hand shriveled up when the minute hand is bent, etc. Then he is whole again when Danny fixes him.
But I wish that the story hadn't said before this, that Danny knew he liked other boys, and had told the people in his life. I would have loved to see the mystery of, "Am I in love with Colton because he's a boy, or because he's a clock?" In other words, is Danny chronosexual? (How do you like the word I invented?)
He has a friend who's a girl, so that's perfect. He would plan to marry the girl someday, because he already loves her in a way, though he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about romance. Then he's in denial for a bit, wondering why the spirit of the clock would manifest to him as a boy! And finally, he accepts himself, and his clock boyfriend.
I really like how bits of clock mythology, with Chronos the Time-God and his four children, are strewn in between chapters. It really sets up the world and the mindset of the clock mechanics and the people, even though this world seems, for the most part, the same as our modern notions of Victorian England. Two exceptions are that it is more technologically advanced in this world, and that women and girls are also clock mechanics--and auto mechanics!
I thought the addition of steam-powered autos to that world was rather cool. It reminded me of reading about Nazi-occupied France (years ago, source unavailable), where some cars were powered with steam and burned wood instead of fuel, because fuel was unavailable. (I've often wondered if that were not a better option than burning fossil fuels, though I'm not sure our current forests could take it. Perhaps a combination would be ideal, whether in the same auto or in autos as a whole?)
I kind of know where this story is going, as it is. At some point, someone is going to remove Colton's central cog--his heart--and Danny will have to bring him back to life, but there will be complications standing in his way, and he will be devastated, thinking that he's going to lose Colton. Maybe there won't be another cog available, or Danny will be kidnapped or something. That is what I predict will happen.
Also, you know that Danny is going to have a showdown with a villain in the tower, and just when all hope is lost, the tower itself will fight for him, striking the bad guy with numerals and stuff. That is also what I predict will happen.
This is the first in a trilogy, and unfortunately this book "came out" in 2016, so I'll probably have to wait two years at least for the next installment. So my predictions are long-term rather than short-term; if these things don't happen in this book, I think they will happen in the next two.
I find myself skipping parts of it, to get to what I really want to know about Colton and Danny, but I really like this series. Gay Steampunk stories seem to be really "in" right now, and I love it! These stories, well...they mean a lot to me right now, because I am currently writing my own story with LGBT characters and elements of fantasy in the "real" world. Someday I may even do Steampunk. And now I have inspiration.
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