a gay sci-fi romance about building worlds, budding trust, and lovers that literally cannot fit together.
Every future has dirty roots.
Marooned in the galactic backwaters of the HardCell company, colonist Runt struggles to eke out an existence on a newly-terraformed tropical planetoid. Since his clone-wife died on entry, he’s been doing the work of two on his failing protein farm. Overworked and undersized, Runt’s dwindling hope of earning corporate citizenship has turned to fear of violent “retirement.”
When an overdue crate of provisions crashes on his beach, Runt searches frantically for a replacement wife among the tools and food. Instead he gets Ox, a mute hulk who seems more like a corporate assassin than a simple offworld farmer. Shackwacky and near-starving, Runt has no choice but to work with his silent partner despite his mounting paranoia and the unsettling appeal of Ox’s genetically altered pheromones. Ox plays the part of the gentle giant well, but Runt’s still not convinced he hasn’t arrived with murder in mind.
Between brutal desire and the seeds of a relationship, Runt’s fears and Ox’s inhuman past collide on a fertile world where hope and love just might have room to grow.
Excerpt
(In this scene from Chapter One, terraformer Runt discovers that his bosses have sent a giant, deadly surprise with his provisions.)
Runt had almost turned toward the habitat when the huge bundle jerked and curled like a monstrous metallic worm.
“Fuck!”
Runt’s shout sent a few surviving moths fluttering from the bluish palm trees. He fell to the ground and scrabbled back on his ass toward the heavy-duty submachete still planted nearby. Noisy, but the only accessible weapon.
The resurfacing tarp moved again, a wriggle all along its length, something packed alongside the fabric.
Alive.
Something alive stuffed inside the sack.
What the hell could be that big?
Hogs, dogs, humans . . .
I’m dead.
His recruiter had warned him that, if he didn’t meet their terraform schedule, forcible termination was likely. Fuck. His numbers were shit and he was behind schedule.
I’m a dead man.
After a scant eighteen months, they’d finally sent his retirement plan in a corporate Trojan Horse, the cracked container packed with terraformer nibbles, and he’d fallen for it like a hungry idiot.
HardCell means business.
Runt realized HardCell had sent a new pair of terraformers stashed in foam to retire and replace him. Duh. Runt was undersized and had been trapped working solo.
All that’s their food.
Legs braced to pounce, Runt gripped the whirring submachete and circled the enormous squirming life-support duffel. He could see big angled bumps like limbs inside straining hard at the closure.
The reflective packaging moved again and one of its occupants gave a bass groan. Transport anesthesia wearing off. With a tearing sound, the flex-wrap split, and one gigantic hairy arm clawed at the sand a moment as Runt’s assassin struggled free from the life-support sack and the silvered fabric.
A man, large enough to be two people, but no mate.
Because he’s too oversized to share a stasis sleeve.
Huge. Naked. Drugged. Alone.
Runt goggled in confusion as the superhuman body squirmed out of the shiny canvas like a colossal larva to flop on the sand and gulp the briny air.
I sat on him. I ate a mealpak sitting on my executioner.
Runt circled nearer, submachete by his side with the safety off. He took a step. He took another one.
Still shivering from the drugs and the bruising impact, the strapping stranger didn’t react. He twitched and curled on the hot ground, heaving.
Fuck, he’s huge. Runt took another wary step. He’s a fucking mutant.
The stranger unfolded his limbs and rolled onto his side. His bulging arms were longer than Runt’s legs. His broad back was a shifting wall of muscle over a high, square ass. His flaccid penis hung like some kind of blunt trunk.
Runt knew he had about a thirty-second window as the transport tranquilizers wore off. If he was going to kill his replacement, this was the only moment. The submachete whirred softly in Runt’s calloused hand a few centimeters above the ground as he crept.
Closer . . . closer.
Runt’s mouth hardened into a scowl under his salt-stiff mustache. If he slaughtered this circus clone now, he could claim the goon had died on entry like his long-lost wife.
Do it.
The groggy giant gasped and spat, then rolled onto all fours, his head hanging. He shuddered, and drool ran from his mouth. He had close-cropped tawny hair, bronzed skin, and a stubbled face that looked like it had seen plenty of fights.
He’s a killer.
Brawny slabs of military-grade synthetic muscle covered his frame. Maybe not a full clone, but growth hormones out the wazoo, obviously. The broad paw spread on the ground had a palm bigger than Runt’s entire face.
Don’t look at him.
Runt’s eyes scanned for the sweet spots: throat, kidney, groin. He raised the humming submachete, his hand sweaty on the gel grip. He glanced up at the habitat, his crop terraces, the little kingdom he’d built by himself for eighteen months a millimeter at a time.
Retire him now.
Suddenly, the troll turned his head and looked right into Runt’s eyes and simply smiled in relief . . . as if greeting an old friend. A small smile . . . no triumph, no cruelty, a faint hopeful curve of childlike pleasure which dampened Runt’s murderous thoughts. As if the big dumb freak was happy to be naked and puking on the sand at the ass-end of the universe.
Shit.
A human smile after so long.
Excerpted from Grown Men by Damon Suede
published by Riptide Publishing
Copyright 2011. Damon Suede. All Rights Reserved
Professional Reviews
own Men (HardCell #1) by Damon Suede
Grown Men is the sort of book that makes me feel entirely inadequate in the creativity department. There’s imagination, then there’s, whoa, Imagination, and Damon Suede seems to be possessed of the second type, the kind where you’re reading along and thinking, now why can’t I do this? Okay, maybe you don’t, but I do.
Mr. Suede’s mind is a fertile ground where the roots of this series are just gaining hold. HardCell is the conglomerate that’s building new colonies on alien planets, buying contracts on humans, then sending them out into the galaxy to develop places like planetoid HD10307-E into viable and profitable habitats to be populated once established.
Runt has been there for eighteen long, lonely months—alone since his clone-wife was vaporized upon entry into the planet’s atmosphere—and working valiantly to carve a niche for himself while he waits for her replacement so he can get about the business of populating his little corner of the universe. Trouble is, Runt’s a bit of a, well, let’s just say, if the name fits, wear it. Working his plot of land would be hard work with four hands, working it with only his two hasn’t exactly produced the results HardCell is looking for, and “HardCell Means Business!” Hard sell, indeed. When a crate arrives, carrying supplies, as well as what Runt hopes to be his new mate, he learns a quick lesson in the contradictory whims of fate.
In a world populated by genetically engineered hybrid species of eels and insects, Ox, in his gigantic body and afflicted silence, seems to fit in perfectly, though he’s not exactly whom Runt anticipated as a partner and cofarmer. Sometimes, however, survival, happiness, and the promise of love are all engineered around one’s ability to adapt, and around how much one is able to accept in order to thrive.
With a generous attention to world building, a briskly paced plot, descriptive language that paints the ideal mental picture of the setting, as well as an introduction to a couple of unlikely yet likeable heroes who will, as this series moves forward, have more to reveal to readers, Grown Men is a weird and wondrous beginning in the HardCell conglomeration.
Reviewed By: Lisa
5 out of 5 Seashells!
I became an instant Damon Suede fan with his first m/m novel, Hot Head. He has followed that spectacular debut with something completely different, a Sci-fi novella Grown Men with elements of Robinson Crusoe, GLBT romance, and Survivor all rolled into one. I happen to be a fan of Sci-fi so that is what initially attracted me to this book, but there is so much more to it than an outer space adventure or a futuristic escapade.
Mr. Suede has done an outstanding job of world-building, yet there are components of the story that are familiar and make it a comfortable, if very exciting, read. Runt is stranded on a deserted island on some other planet. He is supposed to be terraforming the land but the poverty of the natural features and lack of help have left him starving and exhausted. Supplies are dropped by the company that owns the planet. The company is named HardCell, a clever play on words and a not-so-subtle social comment. I noticed and appreciated in his previous book, Hot Head that Mr. Suede enjoys words and uses them creatively. He is at his wordsmithing best when he’s able to create a whole new lexicon thanks to this being Sci-fi.
One day a new shipment has landed and the appropriately nicknamed Runt is hopeful it contains a new lab-created wife as his first one died when they first landed, leaving him without the help needed to do the work as well as without a companion or sexual partner. The shipment contains a cargo of extravagantly expensive food, supplies and resources, but the surprise is instead of a new wife it contains a huge, mute, muscular man called Ox. The running mystery of the story is why is has been dropped here. Is he here to terminate (in every sense of the word) Runt for being unsuccessful in his job or is he running from something. The surface of the truth is scratched before the end of this book but more will have to be revealed in future HardCell books to know Ox’s backstory. This is just the first book in a series.
I wouldn’t call this an m/m romance, although by the end of the book there is some creative and scorching hot sex between two men who are fond of each other but very mismatched in size. Grown Men is definitely more of an adventure story that includes m/m sex.
I enjoyed Grown Men very much and recommend it to readers who enjoy Sci-fi, m/m, a stranded on a desert island trope, and a serialized adventure series.
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