It’s lonely running a small transport ship across the galaxy when you’re as old and as single as Connell Smyth. So when the dreams start up, Connell assumes they’re his mind’s way of working through what his life has become—until he discovers the man in his dreams might be much more than a figment of his neglected imagination. Connell can’t quite believe it could be real, but he can’t help becoming obsessed with this new lover on an unknown luscious planet.Seventeen years ago, Wystan Kreeger’s survey mission crash-landed on a hard-to-reach planet. Sole survivor Wystan turns desperate after his computer, the only companion he’s had since, gives out. Even in the improbable event that the man in his dreams is real, he’ll face the same risk from the planet’s storm-charged atmosphere if he tries to track Wystan down, and he could end up just like Wystan’s former crew. But finding each other across so many light-years can’t be a mere coincidence. Now they must find a way to realize the happiness they’ve found in sleep during the light of the day.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon US | Amazon UK
Cat gives this one 3 Meows with a 3 Purr heat index...
I am going to skip the recap as the blurb captures it all and any more could be spoilers.
I’ll be honest and say I don’t read a lot of Sci-fiber this blurb and cover caught my eye. I liked the settings and world building appreciating that the name were simple enough to read.
The plot was good too, two lonely men lost in space needing something. I couldn’t help but wonder how these dreams were happening, had Weston tried this before, how they left physical evidence in a dream and a few others.
If you like short stories, sci-fi, second chance at love, dream sequences and hot man sex this is a good time filler.
Excerpt...
COOL SHADE, hot air. Everything around Connell glowed green, so deeply verdant that it was at once comforting and tense. He could smell the heat of day warming flowers and filling the breeze with their heady, sweet scent. Birds trilled songs that mingled and wove together perfectly.
Connell was barefoot, the dirt under his feet so fine, it was thin and soft like sand. A path stretched before him and a path behind him, and his heart beat with some expectation he couldn’t quite grasp. He moved forward, following the path, the light breeze pulling back the hair he should have cut months ago. Old men shouldn’t look so scruffy, but as he passed a hand across his stubbly, graying chin, he smiled to himself. Jason didn’t care.
Connell increased his pace, flashes of brightly hued flowers passing by him as he kicked up fine dust into the air and ran. At the end of this path, Jason was waiting for him. In this world, Jason was patient, lounging with a cool drink and a loaded smile. Shirt off. Tan skin bronzed even deeper by the sun. Looking as young as he was when Connell had first met him.
The path was long—too long. Connell ran and ran, but the light was fading.
“Jay,” he whispered, and opened his eyes back in the lumpy bed.
The whir of the little ship buzzed around him, familiar but no longer comforting. He was alone. He swallowed, staring up at the yellowing ceiling panels.
Utterly alone.
He couldn’t bring himself to roll over and get up. He touched the computer panel with a toe, and the time blinked on, showing he’d only slept for about three hours. Connell breathed out, ran a pale hand through too-long thinning hair. He hadn’t cut it in months. Not since….
He rolled over. He wanted that forest around him again. Alone in his ship between solar systems, bundled in bed, he could allow himself to long for that, like a child.
The warmth.
The safety.
Jason.
“Pick a planet,” he remembered Jason saying as he pulled away from Connell after sex.
“We’ll go when we retire.”
Connell had laughed. “When’ll we ever retire, Jay? We’ll be ferrying things across the galaxy until the day we die.”
“Oh, we can probably save up enough by the time you’re midseventies.”
Connell wished he could have held Jason to that. Three months ago, Jason had had a heart attack while out making a deal, and the man he’d met shoved his body in a storage crate. Connell had searched frantically when Jason hadn’t come back, but by the time he was discovered, it had been much too late. Connell was alone. Alone at age fifty-three, with a clunky old courier ship and a bundle of memories. Alone with the dreams.
He wasn’t going to sleep now. He rolled over and pulled on socks to guard against the ever-cold ship floor. All those years, only to end up here, with all his possessions in the universe aboard this shitty old transport and the only man he’d ever loved dead. Connell shuffled along the two-foot strip of exposed flooring in the room, the only space left after he’d insisted on putting a decent-sized bed in here. The number of times he and Jason had indulged themselves, pleased each other, on the old mattress….
He shook his head and went to the mess to make himself an instant coffee. The pantry was huge, but the mess itself was barely big enough for a couple of chairs. Connell had proposed to Jason here, over a terrible pile of cake he’d attempted to make for the occasion. Jason had laughed at him and kissed him before replying, “Someday.”
The word echoed in Connell’s head whenever he stepped into the mess. Mocked him. Felt like emptiness trying to swallow him. He made his coffee and shuffled down the thin corridor to the control room.
“Course update,” he said. The rest of the ship might be shit, but Jason had always devoted the bulk of their profits to maintaining an updated computer system. They could screw in bed all day and it would take care of everything.
“Maintaining original heading. Anomaly nine thousand meters off stern still present. Lubricant change advised in ten parsecs.”
“Anomaly?” asked Connell, trying to muster a bit of interest.
“Large spatial fluctuation. Running systems diagnostic.”
“Yeah, you do that,” muttered Connell. He took a sip of coffee and winced as it burned his tongue. Sometimes the system glitched, gave false or strange readings. Sometimes there was a weird substance in space. When he was in his early twenties and Jason had first taken him aboard, incidents like that had been exciting. It was almost never anything interesting.
Three decades later, and here he was. Connell tried to distract his mind by connecting to the nearest array and searching the news sites, but he found reading difficult. More of the same, across the galaxy. Misery, politics, fame, the odd feel-good piece. Maybe he could numb his brain into getting more sleep.
Jessica Payseur has been cursed with the ability to see a story in anything at all. This is especially useful in the long Wisconsin winter months, when the only inspiration the world gives is endless snow and the lingering promise of frostbite for the unwise.
"I write scifi and fantasy romance while spilling hot beverages on myself. My talents are unending."
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Thanks for the review & excerpt!
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