a gay paranormal romance about inhuman trafficking and a sex demon who won't take yes for an answer.
HORN GATE: Open at your own risk.
Librarian Isaac Stein spends his lumpy, lonely days restoring forgotten books, until the night he steals an invitation to a scandalous club steeped in sin. Descending into its bowels, he accidentally discovers Scratch, a wounded demon who feeds on lust.
Consorting with a mortal is a bad idea, but Scratch can't resist the man who knows how to open the portal that will free him and his kind. After centuries of possessing mortals, he finds himself longing to surrender.
To be together, Isaac and Scratch must flirt with damnation and escape an inhuman trafficking ring—and they have to open their hearts or they will never unlock the Horn Gate.
Professional Reviews
Top pick! Five Stars!
HORN GATE by Damon Suede opens with nerdy librarian Isaac Stein in New York City. Isaac suffers from low self-esteem due to his chubbiness and bad complexion, and he is very lonely. To make matters worse, he has a phobia about being touched, but he longs to have a special man in his life. One night he goes to an exclusive sex club with an invitation that he stole from the desk of a coworker.
The place has the unsettling name of Gehenna (a region of the afterlife in Jewish folklore where the souls of evildoers are punished and purified), and turns out to be a stodgy and snobbish place. However, when Isaac accidentally wanders into the basement, he finds a gorgeous supernatural creature imprisoned in a cell. It is Scratch, an incubus who needs Isaac’s help to free himself and his people from a sex trafficking ring run by a puritanical Judge.
Horn Gate is a breath of fresh air on the gay romance landscape – original, strange, and probably unlike anything else you will read this year. It is not exactly a gay romance because it is too short to develop a complex relationship between Isaac and the otherworldly Scratch (who doesn’t get a viewpoint). But you could call it a gay-themed work of urban fantasy replete with erotic imagery. The occasionally over-the-top writing style is lush and gorgeous and frequently includes clever asides and wordplay.
Some readers might find the language and the story’s rich foundation in Orthodox Jewish folklore to be a bit overwhelming – especially as Isaac researches obscure Kabbalistic and Talmudic sources to uncover Scratch’s identity. But I urge you not to be intimidated. As a reader, I try to avoid experimental writing, but I wouldn’t call Horn Gate abstract at the expense of story. The author did a terrific job balancing the esoteric concepts with the vivid sensory details of New York City and the fascinating realism of Isaac’s workplace tasks. Isaac is a three-dimensional guy with relatable problems. The story’s ending is slightly abrupt, but this is only the first installment in what looks to be an extraordinary new series, and I am very interested to see what comes next. Highly recommended.
Horn Gate at Guilty Indulgence
"Five chocolate-dipped strawberries! This clever novella ensnares the reader with its well-crafted web of sex demons and fantastic Jewish occult lore. The writing belongs in the superb category…it took a great story and vaulted it into excellence. Full of wry wit and erudition, Horn Gate is the thinking person's sexy story. Personally, this reviewer is looking forward to the next installment in this erotic fantastical series. Damon Suede earned his spot on my auto-buy list!" ~ Guilty Indulgence
Horn Gate - Under the Covers
HORN GATE is the first book in an urban fantasy series that is well thought out and beautifully written, and it is a great and intriguing start to a series that I cannot wait to read about some more!
Isaac is just your average Joe…a young gay man who’s a little overweight, with a few skin issues to boot. He decides that for his birthday, however, he is going to step outside of the box and do something a bit daring…he is going to go to a off-the-map sex club and become a voyeur for a few hours. What he finds instead is something that will seemingly change his life forever.
After entering Gehenna, Isaac goes to explore the sex lounge, and is lured by a calling to a small room where he finds a preternaturally beautiful being which he believes to be an angel. This angel of his is Scratch.
The day after Isaac’s visit to Gehenna, Isaac is set to do research on an old tome that brings forth memories from the night before, causing him to go seek out Scratch once again. When he finds him, Isaac discovers that Scratch is not an angel at all, but rather a demon or a spirit of sorts – an Incubus. Unlike the mythology usually associated with Incubi, in which they generally feed off of lust and sex, Scratch feeds on other things – pain, fear, and woe. And so their story begins.
I really enjoyed this series opener. Suede has created a complex world that is very intriguing, and he has written two characters who I really enjoyed reading about – an average guy and a demon. The idea of Scratch as an Incubus who feeds on things other than lust and sex is a creative and new concept, and I look forward to this being explored further. I am a complete sucker for demons, too, so that drew me in immediately as well.
Even with the veritable shortness of this novella, I got pulled into Isaac and Scratch’s story and who they are as characters both individually and together. Isaac is drawn to Scratch as equally as Scratch is protective of Isaac, and there is a compelling lure between them. There is a strong sexual attraction between the two of them, too, and although the pages are charged with that, there is no sex in this book. I, for one, think that it was perfect without it. The story wouldn’t be what it was if there was. This was a story of setting up an urban fantasy world, meeting the main characters, and laying a foundation on which to build. Sex would have done the book a disservice, and that is something that we can just look forward to in the future. To tide us romance readers over, though, there are some very sexy kisses and tenderness shared between Scratch and Isaac.The primary thing that I just loved about HORN GATE was the prose and writing. Suede writes so beautifully. He weaves an intricate tale with imagery and detail that allows me to see exactly what is being described on the page so perfectly in my mind. And the way in which those details are written is just so lovely. The metaphors and analogies Suede uses describe the scene so well, so vividly. I believe that HORN GATE is a testament to Suede’s diversity as an author – he can create a multi-dimensional fantasy world on which to build and explore as well as he can write an amazing contemporary romance.
One of the other things that I loved about HORN GATE was also the one downside I had with it: the world building. The mythos that Suede created for his HORN GATE world was so intricate, detailed, and intriguing. There is a lot Hebrew culture and learning involved, as well theology and demonology. The amount of knowledge and research that Suede put forth in the book was just incredible. At the same time, that amount of information provided to explain a very in-depth and potentially complicated mythos for the world building was extremely large, and I would have liked to have seen it flushed out further in a longer story. Of course, the consolation to this is knowing that this is a series that will continue to follow Isaac and Scratch, and from that, I am sure we will learn more in the books to come.
Another element in this book that intrigued me was how Scratch’s feeding also caused a transformation in Isaac. Whether that transformation is a result of the feeding or caused by it, I am not sure, but I found it so interesting. Scratch got drunk on Isaac’s misery – a trait which Scratch states makes Isaac mortal – but at the same time, Isaac then transformed into a beautiful being. He lost the fallibility in his physical traits and became as preternaturally attractive to others as Scratch is to him. This is an element that I hope will be flushed out and explained further as the series continues.
All in all, HORN GATE was an excellent series opening, and I look very forward to learning more about Isaac and Scratch and their journey into the Horn Gate.
Just a simple gathering of the Gay & Lesbian Activist Association of New Birch and Sipsboror (GLAABS) and we plunge down a hilarious ride to perdition.
