A Widder-ing Look

When I tried a sample of supernatural LGBT fiction, I found that Wolfsong wasn't quite what I was looking for. But I decided to try the genre again with Widdershins, by Jordan L. Hawk.

Set in Massachusetts in the late 1890s (in the titular town), Widdershins is the story of bookish language expert Percival Endicott Whyborne, employee at a museum who is recruited against his wishes to aid the investigation of detective Griffin Flaherty. What starts out as a dive into dead languages turns into clash with the actual dead, as reanimated animal monstrosities begin attacking around the town. And what starts out as a chilly relationship between the two men develops into something more meaningful.

This is, in many ways, a take on Sherlock Holmes with the subtext some fans have conjured up made text. The story is set in the same time frame (albeit in the U.S.), and the characters initially have a passingly similar dynamic. But where Holmes and Watson often investigated "impossible" mysteries eventually revealed to have quite common explanations, here the common gives way to the supernatural. And where a romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson has always been just the purview of fan fiction, this story is crafted specifically to bring its two male protagonists together as a couple.

Widdershins is not masterfully written, but it's still a brisk read. Jordan L. Hawk has taken a lot of the techniques of the most popular current fiction and deployed them here: ending nearing every chapter on a cliffhanger, keeping those chapters to a short and punchy length, and not letting slavish adherence to period accuracy get in the way of keeping things fun. Rarely did a sentence ever catch my attention as well-polished; indeed, certain words popped out over time as overused. And yet, there was a "can't put it down" quality to the thing that led me to finish the book faster than many things I've read of late.

Still, I do wish the book had more effectively integrated its two distinct elements of the supernatural and the romance. The experience of reading the book is not unlike twisting apart an Oreo to eat it. The first third is a fast-paced set-up of a slightly macabre genre tale. The last third is the even faster-paced conclusion to that tale. The center is a series of sexual exploits in which the plot hardly ever intrudes. Depending on why you're here to read the book, that might well be the "tasty center" you're looking forward to. Or, perhaps, had to wait too long for? Both elements of the book do work, more or less, on their own. I just would have liked a bit more interpolation of the two.

Widdershins turns out to be the first of a staggering 11 books in a series, with additional short stories inserted along the way. I can't say I was so taken with book one that I would try another. It's sort of fun like cotton candy, but evaporating-on-contact in the same way. I give Widdershins a C+.