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sophia_sol) wrote2023-07-25 10:55 am
sophia_sol) wrote2023-07-25 10:55 am
Honeytrap, by Aster Glenn Gray
Aster Glenn Gray did it again! Wrote a really good queer historical romance that is thoroughly grounded in its historical setting with characters I love!
Honeytrap is that classic set up of a Soviet agent and an American agent during the cold war have to work together because of reasons and then fall in love, and it's one which I am primed to love because of my time spent in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. tv show fandom back in my younger days. The Soviet agent in Honeytrap even has a patronymic of Ilyich, which I immediately took to be a homage to MUNCLE's Ilya Kuryakin, and then felt extremely vindicated when MUNCLE was the first thing mentioned in the author's note at the back of the book.
However! This book is doing much more nuanced things than MUNCLE did, or indeed that MUNCLE fanfic did as far as I can recall.
It starts out in 1959 with Gennady and Daniel going on a road trip through America together in search of leads on the case they've been assigned to work together, and it all feels very familiar and classic, but then....it keeps going. The book goes up to the 1990's! And over that time it really explores the political and social realities of the times and places in question.
The book is realistic about what it means to be queer in the changing eras as well. Both Gennady and Daniel are bisexual but have very different relationships with their bisexuality, and the other queer men who have come in and out of their lives have different journeys with their identities too.
I loved the moment where Daniel meets with a boy he'd kissed when he was young, who has grown up into a man who sponsors a group for gay students on campus in the 70's - and Daniel is horrified, because he's so worried about what he sees as the lifelong danger this man is encouraging these kids to subject themselves to, admitting to their gayness permanently on paper in the yearbook. But that man and his students are making their choices for very good reasons as well!
And over time both Gennady and Daniel have other relationships too, relationships that are deep and meaningful to them, and which fail for reasons entirely unconnected with each other. I love that we get enough of a sense of Alla that I truly care about her happiness too, even though we only get to know about her after her and Gennady's relationship is on the rocks; and I love seeing Elizabeth and Daniel's happy polyamorous lifestyle which eventually has to end because it turns out one of Daniel's relationship needs is to be someone's primary partner, though that's not exactly how he phrases it, and in the end Elizabeth can't quite give that to him.
The Daniel/Gennady relationship isn't the only possible love for either of them, isn't the only possible happy ending, and yet they do love each other and do end up getting a chance at a happy ending, and I just adore that.
Goddd so much of the book is about like, moment after moment of glorious stolen happiness between them with the sure knowledge that it will have to end. I finished the book with this sense of like. idk. Wistful yearning, and total satisfaction at the same time. It wasn't what i expected, at all! And it's so good.
Honeytrap is that classic set up of a Soviet agent and an American agent during the cold war have to work together because of reasons and then fall in love, and it's one which I am primed to love because of my time spent in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. tv show fandom back in my younger days. The Soviet agent in Honeytrap even has a patronymic of Ilyich, which I immediately took to be a homage to MUNCLE's Ilya Kuryakin, and then felt extremely vindicated when MUNCLE was the first thing mentioned in the author's note at the back of the book.
However! This book is doing much more nuanced things than MUNCLE did, or indeed that MUNCLE fanfic did as far as I can recall.
It starts out in 1959 with Gennady and Daniel going on a road trip through America together in search of leads on the case they've been assigned to work together, and it all feels very familiar and classic, but then....it keeps going. The book goes up to the 1990's! And over that time it really explores the political and social realities of the times and places in question.
Click to expand for spoilers for the rest of the book
It's not actually a story about the Soviet agent making a home in the US like this kind of story often is, at least in English-language stories; both characters have understandable attachments to their homelands, understandable concerns and frustrations with the evils large and small that their countries perpetrate, ways in which they have been hurt by their country, etc. The reason why the road trip becomes such an idyllic part of their past isn't because it's about Experiencing The USA, but because they get to learn to know each other; and though the road trip must eventually end, their relationship isn't over.The book is realistic about what it means to be queer in the changing eras as well. Both Gennady and Daniel are bisexual but have very different relationships with their bisexuality, and the other queer men who have come in and out of their lives have different journeys with their identities too.
I loved the moment where Daniel meets with a boy he'd kissed when he was young, who has grown up into a man who sponsors a group for gay students on campus in the 70's - and Daniel is horrified, because he's so worried about what he sees as the lifelong danger this man is encouraging these kids to subject themselves to, admitting to their gayness permanently on paper in the yearbook. But that man and his students are making their choices for very good reasons as well!
And over time both Gennady and Daniel have other relationships too, relationships that are deep and meaningful to them, and which fail for reasons entirely unconnected with each other. I love that we get enough of a sense of Alla that I truly care about her happiness too, even though we only get to know about her after her and Gennady's relationship is on the rocks; and I love seeing Elizabeth and Daniel's happy polyamorous lifestyle which eventually has to end because it turns out one of Daniel's relationship needs is to be someone's primary partner, though that's not exactly how he phrases it, and in the end Elizabeth can't quite give that to him.
The Daniel/Gennady relationship isn't the only possible love for either of them, isn't the only possible happy ending, and yet they do love each other and do end up getting a chance at a happy ending, and I just adore that.
Goddd so much of the book is about like, moment after moment of glorious stolen happiness between them with the sure knowledge that it will have to end. I finished the book with this sense of like. idk. Wistful yearning, and total satisfaction at the same time. It wasn't what i expected, at all! And it's so good.