I won this book in a giveaway and finally got around to review it.

A young boy named Artemis drags his brother along into a cave. Their guardian is killed, his brother abducted. At eleven he leaves his identity behind, flees, is taken in by a nice men and becomes Maestri.
He lives among Munfolk that means normal people. But his best friend Jace is not one of the Munfolk. When Jace nears adulthood he has to flee as the humans would surely kill the now able to transform werewolf, despite having taken him in when he was a kid. Artemis does not want to leave his best friend alone out there so they go together. But they seem to attract trouble wherever they go. At first they just want to go somewhere, but soon their quest truly begins and on their long and dangerous journey they make friends, enemies and many memories. And then there’s also Maestri dad, the Time Keeper who left his kids alone when he was six years old.

While the storyline and the characters were good, often scenes seemed to drag on for too long thanks to the immense wordiness of some sentences. Plus I didn’t feel as if there was enough word building to truly satisfy me. Plus the fact that especially in the beginning everything seems a bit thrown together (first we get his background story, then he is with the Dragon King and then he lives in Newacre) which makes it kind of hard to read and so I took a very long time to finish the book. Plus the world building did not always make sense, it would have been interesting to get to know more about what world they live in and why all those mystic creatures even existed.

Still it definitely had some very good sides. I especially enjoyed the diversity which was simply there and not made a big deal out of. Maestri is an ace aro boy who had never had any interest in a relationship. A main character who does not fall in love or have any romantic subplots is always a nice thing and I enjoyed it. There was also a bigender character and much racial diversity.
I also liked the characters and I think even the side-characters where nicely written.

All in all a satisfying read, but not an outstanding one. But the fact that it’s one of the first fantasy novels that I’ve read that includes an ace aro character makes the book very special and I will definitely read the second book when it comes out.

I won this book in a giveaway and I loved it.

In the first scene we are introduced to Jenn, Josh' mother, a devout christian women, who upon returning home form church found her son unresponsive in her room. As it turns out he tried to commit suicide after Jenn and the rest of her church visited San Francisco to protests against same-sex marriage, where Jenn gave an interview explaining why she thought being gay was a sin.
When Josh' wakes up he says he has felt depressed for a while, but does not give his mother a reason. She finds it out by searching his browser history. Her son is a homosexual! It is a terrible shock for her and at first she can't believe it.
She confides in her husband and together they confront Josh. He wants to be cured and with counselling from his pastor they decide a gay camp is the only way to do it. The camp does not cure Josh and he refuses to visit another one. This leads to lot of conflict between Josh and Jenn, who just can't accept that her son is like this and would willingly throw away salvation. But in the end

Spoiler

she accepts her son and even goes to pride with him

What I found really creepy where the various reasons they found for being gay. Josh washed the dishes. His name starts with the same letter as his mothers. He had too much contact with his mother and too less with his father, even though the seperation of mother and son only lead to more suffering. I was glad about pointing out the damange gay conversion therapy causes their victims, even though Josh could thankfully escape that.

The characters: I love Josh. While I can't 100% identify with him, his struggle feels real and I know friends who will probably identify with his struggle even more. He is unsure about his sexuality and know that his parents would disapprove of his "lifestyle" (as it is called often in the book) causes him to attempt suicide. Josh has know he is gay since he was a little kid, but it conflict with his faith in christ which he does not want to give up. Finding an affirming church helps him.
Steve the father is amazing as well. Long before his wife he realizes that he still loves his son even if he is gay and while it's not always easy he always stands behind him.
It is all a bit harder for Jenn. At first she can't accept her son and thinks she has done something wrong to cause him to be this way. She was incredible guillibe, everything the priest told her about the cause of homosexuality she took as facevalue and cut herself off from her son unable to accept him as he is, even though she still loves him. Only the talk with another evangelical mother of a gay son helped her. Her son had commited suicide, his mother not being able to accept him in life but finally managing to do so later on, helping other mother's in similar situations as her.

As a lesbian christian myself who had to struggle to reconcile my faith with my sexuality this book made me cry. I got lucky. My parents are not particular religious and they accepted me, my grandparents are more religious but they accepted me too. I've never went to a homophobic church and at least in my close environment I never faced judgement or hatred. But friends of mine did and it breaks my heart.
Anyway this book was amazing, it pulled me in on the first page and I could not put it down (or rather look away from my screen as it was an e-book) until I had finished. The characters all felt very real and I cried, suffered, laughed and cheered with them.
While this book probably won't change the mindset of somebody whose homophobic, i hope some lgbt christians like me find it and can find hope in their life.