Title: Del Fantasma: Duck Fart
Author: Jade Buchanan
Publisher: Aspen Mountain Press
Genre: Human/Supernatural; GLBT; Menage
Length: 117 pages
Other: M/M/M
Pagan & Pagan Elements: No/Yes
Reviewed by: Russ Allen
About The Book: Keith Malone is incredibly content. He loves coming around Del Fantasma…great food, great company, and a decent place to rest his soul when he needs to. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Cody lets him dust off his carpenter skills with the odd job here and there.
Bailey Mitchell is incredibly nervous. He's come all this way to San Diego, following up on a chance encounter that happened months earlier, and now he doesn't know what to do. One glance and it's obvious Adam's already taken. What's a lonely Siamese shifter to do?
Drake McKale is incredibly grouchy. He's sick and tired of every shifter he's run across making fun of him. Hey, duck's have feelings too! So what if he's smaller than everyone else? Spoiling for a fight he can actually win, he decides to pick on the shy, little kitty in the corner. Only, Drake never reckoned the diminutive cat would proposition him. Or that the big human in the corner would want in on the action.
One part burly human, one part shy Siamese shifter and one part twinky (and kinky) duck shifter… layer together and enjoy
The Review: I would strongly recommend this book for several reasons, and weakly discourage folks from reading it for a few others.
The story is multi-layered. The first layer involves a world in which supernatural beings like vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters who appear as cats and a duck, live amongst humans, though most of the latter are unaware of the actual existence of the former. The three possible exceptions are: Keith, initially mistaken by Baily, a shape-shifting cat, for a shape-shifting bear, but he's actually a bear-sized human fully aware of the supernatural beings around him; his father, whose second wife is a vampire yet often seems unaware of the supernatural world in which he lives; and Sally, a female friend of Bailey, who appears only as words that are reported by him during their telephone conversations.
The second layer is permeated with homosexual drive and activity. Keith and Drake, a shape-shifting Mallard duck, are both driven by a desire to get laid by a male, fulfilled in time by each other and Bailey, who, initially seeking to become the lover of his childhood friend Adam, who gradually becomes a full partner in a menage with Keith and Drake.
A third layer has to do with human issues of personal self-regard, emotional maturity and vulnerability, self-fulfillment, purpose and life goals, conflicts with parents, and the development and pitfalls of relationships, most being modified to fit the realities of supernatural persons. This latter becomes strongest in the non-human, but natural for animals, urge to mate that in time brings the three together. There is also a minor sub-theme related to the homosexual habits of animals in nature.
The story weaves between these various strains, with each moving ahead in its unique segment.
The story is well developed and well told, but there are some weaknesses. A minor one is the author’s tendency to mimic a person who belongs to a “Word Of The Day” program, using the same word almost excessively and without definition or explanation.
A second issue has to do with the interaction of the two worlds, human and supernatural, which sometimes get confused, possibly stemming from the identity of some of the characters as shape-shifters, beings that can emerge as human, animal, or however they want. From time to time attributes of their animal existence appear when the shape-shifters are human, especially in Drake’s colored feather-like hair. This negative element becomes most apparent in the homosexual activities of Keith, Baily, and Drake.
The weakness is in the obviously human portrayal of their sex. One might expect supernatural persons, esp. ones that appear as animals, to be more animal-like in their sex. But, apart from an occasional reference to the smell of sex, most of their homosexual activity, while well-portrayed, is human, not animalistic. Perhaps it needs to be. Keith may not be a bear shape-shifter, but he is built like a bear, and neither the anus of a cat nor a duck would survive intercourse with his penis.
It maybe too strong to call this a weakness, but I would have like the emotional and sexual aspects of the story to be less human and more supernatural.
Nevertheless, this is a good book, well-written, that tells an interesting story, though perhaps the inclusion of a supernatural dimension did not work as well as the author thought it did.
Oh, by the way: A “Duck Fart” is a drink that combines three separate alcoholic beverages that are not usually served together, representing the mating of Keith, Drake, and Bailey. Both the mating and the drink are fostered by Cody, the vampire owner of the bar whose name appears in the book’s title.
Pagan Elements: Central to the book are supernatural beings: vampires, a werewolf, and shape-shifting cats and a duck, as well as a human whose step-mother is a vampire. Much of the story takes place in a world where supernatural persons interact with each other and humans, though the latter may be unaware of their presence.
Cover (Rated 1-10): 2 – the cover has virtually no connection to the story. It is a generic beach scene with a shot-glass resting on a shelf. Nothing in the story fits that scene. I would not be drawn to investigate the book by its cover, though I might by
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