Review: Acquainted with the Night by Tymber Dalton

Acquainted with the Night by Tymber Dalton

Publisher: Siren-Bookstrand Publishing
Genre: Alternative Romance

Heat Rating: 4

Blurb

Dale despised the Terran military. He was drafted, not a volunteer. He never expected to get captured by the Algonquans and sold as a breeder pet, either. He only prays his new owner is kind and doesn’t eat him. Then he meets fellow pet, Mark, who informs him getting captured was the luckiest day of their lives. Mark also hated the military and now spends his days in a life of sexual leisure, enjoying poetry and totally at peace with his fate.

Dale settles in and finds not only does he enjoy this life, he loves Mark, too. Despite tragedy striking too close to home in their protected world, they find room to love their Master’s newest pets, Cooper and Nate.
When the war ends and the Terran pets are granted their freedom, the men are faced with a choice: return, or stay with the owner they’ve grown to love?



Kylie’s Review

Tymber Dalton's Acquainted with the Night is a heart wrenching novel of life, love, and loss. In which, Mrs. Dalton explores the depth and bonds of love, friendship, and family. Acquainted with the Night is a unique and compelling story that takes you beyond the, “and they lived happily ever after”, to show you that they did.

Like all other able bodied men, Dale is a soldier, like most other soldiers he was drafted. Living in a world that has been at war for the past 20 years, and most of his life, Dale is tired. Tired of the propaganda his government spews constantly, the monotony of his daily routine, the non-life that he has been forced to live. After being captured by the Algonquan’s, the enemy, Dale awakes to find himself and many other Terran soldiers on a ship, bound and gagged, not as a means of torture but simply the most expeditious method of restrain during travel to their final destination. Despite Terran treatment of captured Algonquan soldiers, and the propaganda spouted by their government of how Algonquan soldiers treat Terran prisoners, Dale and the rest of the prisoners are not harmed. In fact, after living in a place where humans have long since forgotten how to be humane, Dale finds his current conditions a respite from the daily life of a soldier. When the prisoners arrive and are taken to a market to be sold, Dale is concerned that some of the propaganda was true and that they are going to be eaten. His fears however are soon allayed, when he meets Mark. With the help of Mark and an ingenious machine called the milker, Dale settles into his new life as a breeder for Master.

While Dale and Mark’s new life with their Master is far preferable to their old one, things are not perfect. Like goodness, evil is not simply a human concept. As Dale and Mark deal with the hardships that have invaded their new life, they come to love and depend on each other, forming a bond that is often tested but never broken. This bond allows them to each find strength that they never knew they had and opened their hearts to allow for possibilities they never expected. This eventually leads them to not just accept but also loving the two new additions to their family Coop and Nate.

As breeders for their Algonquan Master, sex is an integral part of the daily lives of Dale, Mark, Coop and Nate. Far from being simply incubators for the Master, these men find themselves loved and cared for, not just by their Master, but by each other as well. Between the four of them there is never a shortage of a ready and eager partner, if one is wished, and of course there is always the ever present milker. The milker is an ingenious feat of imagination and technology that would have any man begging to be captured. While the milker is used well and often, it is simply a means of release, whereas the sex between the men is an expression of love and the unique bonds that have formed between them.

Acquainted with the Night is more than a simple war story, it is a story of survival, love, and life. Truly redefining what it means to be human, be free, and be a family. In a world that has been fighting a war for twenty years, where marriage is something only to be obtained by wealth, and women are used simply to breed more soldiers, the best place to be is captured by the enemy.

5 Tea Cups!