Looking for Group

I'm a big Alexis Hall fan, so I was thrilled to get an ARC of his new book, Looking for Group. However, after the first chapter I felt like I had wandered into A Clockwork Orange, with words and phrases that were a complete mystery to me. Even with the helpful glossary at the end, I had a hard time with paragraphs like these: “They pressed on through the maze and a few packs of trash mobs to Thornheart. He was kind of an evil, corrupted Ent rip-off and basically just a gear check. There was lots of nasty spike damage on the tank and a hard enrage timer, but nothing a halfway decent guild couldn't handle this late in the expansion. It was Drew's least favourite fight because he had literally nothing to do except stand in one place and mash his rotation.”

Basically, if you're into both MMOs (massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft) and m/m romance (not sure how big the intersection is there), you'll love this book. If you're as ignorant as I am regarding gaming, YMMV. I'm torn between saying that Alexis Hall can write whatever he damn well pleases for whatever audience he hopes to find, and complaining that his output is too infrequent to spend it on a book that isn't squarely aimed at ME. And frankly, if you skim through the gaming parts and pick up the general idea through context, there is a charming romance between college student Drew and his fellow guild member, a beautiful female elf he only knows as Solace. In a Crying Game-type twist (no spoilers, it's stated clearly in the book's preface) when Solace turns out to be a guy named Kit, Drew has to examine his feelings and determine if gender really matters. And even when Drew is more comfortable with being in a m/m relationship and has gotten only good-natured teasing from his hysterically funny friends, he has to learn to accept Kit as he is, not as Drew wants him to be.

Alexis Hall showed in For Real that he can certainly do kinky, but the romance between Drew and Kit is sweet and mostly behind closed doors, with the exception of a few kisses and some heavy petting. I've seen some criticism of the book that the two don't really interact in person as much as they play MMOs together, but if you read between the lines you can easily see how they fall in love and take care of each other through their gaming.

As I said in my pre-release review, I didn't understand about 75% of this book, but the 25% I did get was lovely.