Rating: 
Title: Northern Love
Author: Nica Berry
Genre: Shapeshifter/fantasy
URL: Loose ID
Price: US $5.99
Other Information/warnings: violence, torture, rape, explicit m/m/m
Summary [from the publisher]:
Jerek had long dreamed of finding the mythical citadel of ice with his strong, handsome lover, Emmanuel. Their search led them to years of enslavement aboard a steamship with only each other for comfort until Emmanuel committed a terrible betrayal and left Jerek to follow his dream alone.
Now, three years after escaping the ship, Jerek has found the citadel and a northern lover: mute, shape-shifting Piaktok, who teaches Jerek a new language of love and lust. They’re content until desperate, snow-blind Emmanuel finds his way to the citadel and reignites Jerek’s desire.
Despite their mutual attraction, Jerek cannot forgive or forget the past and unleashes his anger on Emmanuel. Piaktok, in turn, treats Emmanuel with tenderness, sparking love between them. Emmanuel tries to tell Jerek the truth about his “betrayal,” but Jerek refuses to listen. One last fit of rage sends Emmanuel and a gravely injured Piaktok fleeing from the man they love.
My review:
Ms Berry is one of the more original writers in this genre, and though this offering wasn’t as enjoyable to me as Hart and Soul, it’s still miles above just about everything I’ve seen released this year.
This author doesn’t shy from the dark ideas, so beware – there’s partner betrayal and rape, some really nasty non-con erotic scenes, and buckets and buckets of angst, as well as hurt/comfort by the ton. So this is a story that will either make you go ‘gimme more!’ or squick the hell out of you – and that’s before you throw in the shapeshifter aspect (no animal sex per se, but there’s animal sexxing.) Actually, the shapeshifter stuff in this, whether it’s to do with Piaktok or the Bear men, is some of the most charming and unusual material in the novel, so even if your first reaction to the idea is ‘ick’, you should give it a go. Berry really makes that work.
Piaktok, and to a lesser extent, Emmanuel, are good characters – kind, loyal, torn between competing pressures at different times, and essentially brave, though both damaged in their own ways. The interactions between them are quite lovely.
The same can’t be said for Jerek, who’s an arsehole, to be frank, and despite the authorial attempt to redeem him, remains a dick to me. He’s oblivious to Emmanuel’s very obvious torment and rape on the ship run by the insanely cruel Captain Harper (and a twist in relation to that character at the end of the story was, to me, quite unnecessary and distracting.) Jerek is unable to see how broken his lover is when they meet again, or empathise with him at all, and then he mistreats the kind and entirely blameless Piaktok in a manner which I wouldn’t forgive in any character, let alone a romantic hero. Though Berry pulled this off in Hart and Soul, it doesn’t work for me here.
Because of the strength of the interaction between the other characters, and the generally interesting and original world building, the excessive hurt/comfort is less of a flaw than it might be, but it’s unrelenting. If you don’t like that kind of thing, then this isn’t the novel for you. I also had problems with the sexism inherent in Atka being the one to choose an Ice King, but apparently being unable to act as ruler herself – or another woman. She’s a great character, but she’s reduced to little more than wise woman/yenta. She deserved more.
Berry’s writing is solid, and she made the people and steampunk ice world come alive nicely. It’s a shame that the erotic sensuality she bestows on some of the dark scenes, doesn’t carry through to the final, somewhat disappointing threesome, which is strangely pedestrian for this very talented writer. It’s as if she needs that touch of darkness for the scene to work for her. But the scene itself is far from the worst I’ve read of its kind. Threesomes are tricky from the choreography point of view, and seeing how it was inevitable that it should be included, I don’t think many readers will complain. I hold the author to very high standards because she blew me away with the first book of hers I read.
Northern Love is an unusual and enjoyable novel, certainly a cut above most releases, and provided you take care with the content warnings, recommended.
