Gabriel's City by Laylah Hunter Blog Tour, Guest Post, Review & Giveaway!

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Hi guys, we have Riptide Publishing’s Laylah Hunter stopping by with Gabriel’s City. Laylah chats about world-building, she brings along a fantastic giveaway and there’s my review for you to enjoy, so enjoy the post and then leave a comment (with email address) for a chance to win some ZOMG Smells perfume oil blends <3 ~Pixie~
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Gabriel’s City

(A Tale of Fables and Fortunes 01)
by

Laylah Hunter

For spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood, the port city of Casmile is a buffet of easy pleasures. But when he steps into a pub brawl to help a dangerously outnumbered young man, he is drawn into the seedy underbelly of the city the young man calls home.

Gabriel is a cutpurse and a knife for hire, practically an urban legend. His vision of Casmile is touched by a strange combination of faith and madness, driven by fairytale logic and a capacity for love that he often must suppress to survive. He’s always worked alone, but when a dashing dragon who calls himself Colin saves him in a bar fight, he pulls Colin into his world.

Gabriel’s city is nothing like the refined, socialite existence that bored Colin senseless. Colin finds adventure and excitement there—and maybe even love. But with his layers of finery stripped away, nothing remains to protect him from poverty or danger—except Gabriel. So he must choose: go back to the civilized young man he once was, or fly free as Gabriel’s dragon.

Laylah Hunter - Gabriel's City 1

Hi, everyone, thanks for having me on this tour for Gabriel’s City! Don’t forget to leave a comment at the end of this post to win a chance at the ZOMG Smells giveaway!

Spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood has always enjoyed flirting with danger, but he’s always been able to retreat to safety—until bad decisions and a chance encounter plunge him into a world far more savage than his own. Gabriel is an urban legend, famous in the underworld for his unpredictability and violence. He’s also a believer fairy tales, and quick to decide to the handsome stranger who came to his aid must be good luck. With few other options remaining, Colin will need to keep his wits about him to learn to survive in Gabriels City.

Laylah Hunter - Gabriel's City

Gunpowder, Monotheism, and Chocolate

By Laylah Hunter

As a writer of sci fi and fantasy for romance readers, I get asked a lot about my worldbuilding—where it comes from, how I do it, that sort of thing. Which is cool, because I love putting worlds together. (I spend all my time in real life, see. Writing about somewhere else is more exciting.)

The world for Gabriel’s City, or at least the city itself, existed well before the plot came together. It’s a collage, pieced together in little bits, growing as I had to start thinking about more things that went on there. Quite a lot of it was stolen from the real world! The swamp south of the walls is from Louisiana. The bridges over the river are from Paris. The mountains just visible off to the west are the Blue Ridge, a constant on the horizon when I was growing up in Virginia. The plantation Colin grew up on is probably South Carolina, since indigo is the local cash crop—but the slavery system in place in and around Casmile is more Roman than antebellum.

But just as important as what you include is what you leave out. The three big ones I settled on? Gunpowder, monotheism, and chocolate.

The gunpowder was the easiest one. Telling the story I wanted to tell—having the sort of fights I wanted to have—just wouldn’t have worked if someone could pull out a pistol in the middle of a tense moment. (I think this is a bias a lot of fantasy writers share, to one degree or another.) So. No gunpowder. Otherwise, I figured I’d go with a technology level that roughly matched up to eighteenth century western Europe. (Yes, alt history folks, I know leaving out the gunpowder would likely have had a wide-ranging fractal of effects on what else did or didn’t develop. I’m taking some authorial liberties.)

Then monotheism: I have a bit of a pet peeve about spec fic where the local religion is a caricature of an oppressive strain of Christianity, with some other god’s name tacked on. I really didn’t want to take that route. Casmile, as a melting-pot trade city, has its local beliefs about the three Fates. For a lot of people the Fates are more superstition than real faith by now, though Gabriel knows better. The people of the north have a different and more robust religious life, with more observances and mythology. But none of them have a single deity who hands out commandments.

…And that leaves us with chocolate. I can’t explain that one at all. Well. I can explain, it just isn’t logical. I was certain, at a gut level, that having chocolate in this setting would be weird. Despite the geography being mostly Western Hemisphere! Despite thriving trade coming into the port from all over! It didn’t sit right. So the sweets are all honey and cinnamon and fruit, and nobody gets to lean on those borrowed Parisian bridges with a pain au chocolat.

So there it is: two parts strategic problem-solving, one part impulsive certainty, a big pile of stolen bits of geography, stir together well, and bake for 80,000 words or so. Delicious.

About Laylah

Laylah Hunter is a third-gendered butch queer who writes true stories about imaginary people in worlds that never were. Most of hir work deals with queer characters, erotic themes, and the search for happy endings in unfavorable circumstances.

Hir mild-mannered alter ego lives in Seattle, at the mercy of the requisite cats and cultivating the requisite caffeine habit, and dreams of a day when telling stories will pay all the bills.

Connect with Laylah:
Twitter: @LaylahHunter
Laylah is Riptide’s Featured Author for November: http://riptidepublishing.com/authors/laylah-hunter
 Gabriel City Scents1

Giveaway!

I have the good fortune to be friends with the charming people who run http://www.zomgsmellsshop.com/ZOMG Smells, who make, as their tagline says, “Fine nerdy scents for fine nerdy people.” They have created a set of perfume oil blends inspired by the characters of Gabriel’s City, and I’d like to give some away at the end of this tour! You’ll get seven 5-ml bottles.

Leave a comment with your email address to enter

(Check out the scents here: http://www.zomgsmellsshop.com/gabriels-city-dramatis-personae/)

Review

Laylah Hunter - Gabriel's City 300x450Title: Gabriel’s City

Series: A Tale of Fables and Fortunes 01

Author: Laylah Hunter

Genre: Historical, Fantasy

Length: Novel (296pgs)

ISBN: 978-1-62649-163-2

Publisher: Riptide Publishing (17th November 2014)

Heat Level: Low

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥ 4 Hearts

Reviewer: Pixie

Blurb: For spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood, the port city of Casmile is a buffet of easy pleasures. But when he steps into a pub brawl to help a dangerously outnumbered young man, he is drawn into the seedy underbelly of the city the young man calls home.

Gabriel is a cutpurse and a knife for hire, practically an urban legend. His vision of Casmile is touched by a strange combination of faith and madness, driven by fairytale logic and a capacity for love that he often must suppress to survive.

He’s always worked alone, but when a dashing dragon who calls himself Colin saves him in a bar fight, he pulls Colin into his world.

Gabriel’s city is nothing like the refined, socialite existence that bored Colin senseless. Colin finds adventure and excitement there—and maybe even love. But with his layers of finery stripped away, nothing remains to protect him from poverty or danger—except Gabriel. So he must choose: go back to the civilized young man he once was, or fly free as Gabriel’s dragon.

Purchase Link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/gabriels-city

Review: Spoiled aristocrat Colin lands himself in trouble when his gambling losses begin to catch up with him but that’s the least of his problems when he gets involved in a pub brawl and he gets drawn into the seedy underbelly of Casmile by the young man he helped. Gabriel is a mystery, a young man whose name puts fear into even the most hardened of men, an urban legend whispered with fear in the city and with titillation in the drawing rooms of the aristocrat. Gabriel takes the young Colin under his wing, showing him his city and how to keep himself safe. Colin discovers the real city of Casmile as he dodges the city guard, shaking off his aristocrat skin and striving to survive while falling under Gabriel’s spell. Colin must make a choice: the tight boring confines of his old aristocratic life or the freedom and adventure of being Gabriel’s dragon.

This is a wonderful story of two young men from two very different walks of life, one man knowing the realities of life while the other learns the truth of the world he lived in. Colin is a young man who is used to things going easy for him, his families standing opens doors for him but when those he owes money to start nipping at his heels his father’s reaction has him storming off in a childish huff and leads him straight into a life he knew nothing about. Gabriel has grown up on the streets of underbelly Casmile, abandoned at a young age there isn’t much he won’t do. Gabriel has a fanciful, slightly mad outlook at life and he has no qualms of dealing harshly with those that cross him but when he meets Colin for the first time there is a fierceness about him that draws Gabriel in.

Colin is heading for a dramatic change in his life when he meets Gabriel, we watch as he shakes off the restrictions of his old life and begins to embrace his new life as Drake, Gabriel’s dragon. Colin experiences things that has him fearful, scared, invigorated and brash, he has to put aside his sensibilities to survive and he learns quickly how to protect himself. Colin’s friendship with Gabriel is a slow developing one, for all the experience of life that Gabriel possesses he is still very naïve in some aspects. Gabriel doesn’t have friends except for maybe Deirdre who is a very loose mother figure, his fascination with Colin/Drake is something new for him and he doesn’t want to lose it.

I loved this story, the world we find ourselves in reminds me of regency times with a twist of medieval thrown in, it’s harsh for those who don’t have money and justice is swift. You warm up to Colin as he loses his entitled air and begins to understand what true living is, Gabriel wormed his way into my heart straight away with his mix of childlike fancy and sociopathic attitude, he is a contradiction with his love of fairytale stories and his quick use of violence. We see Colin/Drake begin to understand Gabriel’s view of the world the longer he is in the underbelly of society, we see Drake come out as his own person who will do pretty much anything for money and will eat anything to survive.

This is a wonderfully written story that has some interesting and complex characters, Colin learns that just because someone is high in society it doesn’t make them a good person, he learns that it really is survival of the fittest and most daring, we learn that Gabriel is vicious and swift in his retribution and Drake can also be when needed. These men are killers when it’s needed, it’s usually for survival and revenge and yes it is bloody. Gabriel’s and Drake’s/Colin’s relationship is one that is built over time and their experiences together bind them together, their sexual relationship is one that starts out awkward. Gabriel has never known a soft touch, never known a gentle hand, he has seen the worst of mankind and he has had no urges to share himself with another until Drake, Drake shows him how it can be between two people and how much more they can have together.

This story isn’t a fairytale, it isn’t a feel good story where just around the corner there is a discovery that makes everything alright. This is a pretty brutal story where a nice young man turns into a dangerous thug, it has a fantasy feel to it because of the setting and Gabriel’s fanciful leanings but make no mistake this is a story of a cossetted young man who devolves into a ruthless killer for survival… I loved it!! It’s different, instead of the many stories of a street thug/poor urchin being elevated into society this story has it in reverse taking a man and having him become someone that he would have feared.

I recommend this to those who love a story with some grit to it, great characters who aren’t polite and nice, action and adventure, danger and survival, violence, and a kinda sweet love story that slowly develops.

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3 thoughts on “Gabriel's City by Laylah Hunter Blog Tour, Guest Post, Review & Giveaway!

  1. LOL, the name of your post certainly caught my attention. I love fantasy books primarily because of the worldbuilding. I love seeing how authors create their worlds, thanks for sharing!

    tiger-chick-1(at)hotmail(dot)com

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