Review- The Valde: Water by Astrid Amara

The Valde: Water
by Astrid Amara
April 2009
Fantasy/ Sci-fi/ Gay
Novella
Ebook

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On Joel’s birthday, he watched his lover Charlie drown while saving Joel’s life. Since then, no other man has been able to match the erotic chemistry the two of them once shared.

But a year later Joel is shocked to discover Charlie alive and well, looking as mysterious and attractive as ever. However, Charlie is different. He has new, arcane superpowers. He doesn’t seem to remember Joel at all.

And he murders people with his bare hands.

Suddenly Joel finds himself on the run from both his lover, and a frightening group of dangerous individuals who can wield the elements at will, and who are determined to kill him to keep their secret safe. But the smoldering looks Charlie gives Joel reminds him of their former, heated passion, and even with Charlie’s new homicidal tendencies, they discover their bodies remember what their minds may have forgotten…

In my review of Astrid Amara’s book Intimate Traitors I said that it’s “one of those books that comes along and shows you what you’ve been wanting to read but didn’t know you did.” Once again, I have to say the same thing about The Valde: Water. This is such a fascinating and creative story, with intricately detailed world building, some thriller elements, and a completely unique take on the eternal love theme.

Joel and Charlie have been dating for about a year. While they are very different in their personalities, Joel being more reserved and pragmatic, and Charlie being the more open and romantic one, they find themselves deeply in love and enjoy their time together.

After Charlie drowns on Joel’s birthday during a boat outing, Joel spends the next year feeling depressed and guilty about what happened and blaming himself for it. On his next birthday, he goes out alone to get drunk and sees Charlie come in the bar with a group of people. Of course, he goes up to Charlie but Charlie acts as if he doesn’t know Joel and blows him off. While Joel can see that Charlie is not like the old Charlie in how he acts and dresses, he knows deep down that it is Charlie and follows to the group to a warehouse bar in the middle of nowhere.

There Charlie finds out things that blow his mind and flees after the leader of the group Charlie was with tries to kill him. Charlie goes after him and this sets the course for Joel’s finding out about a whole world of people and beings that he and the rest of the world know nothing about. But he’s not safe and he needs to decide whether or not to run and hide or stick around and fight.

I’m going to say it; Astrid Amara just blows my mind. I was so impressed with her writing in Intimate Traitors. I liked the cool, streamlined, stark feeling her writing style and prose evoked; it was very clean and crisp and added a lot to the depth of that book. Once again though, I’m totally enthralled.

The Valde: Water has a whole different feel to it, which tells me that Astrid Amara has this incredible ability to morph her writing style to facilitate creating a certain atmosphere to a story. Her world building skills are awesome as well. Not once was I confused and left wondering what is going on. It’s a step by step layout, but so nicely integrated with the relationship and general story itself, so it was easy to grasp the concepts.

The world/plot: There are four elements of beings called Valde roaming the planet outside of humans: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Before man arrived, the Valde were only in their elemental form, but warred with each other constantly. Earth and Air teamed up and defeated Water and Fire and those Valde were forced to be imprisoned in human form. Earth and Air can choose to stay in element or take human form.

The Water/ Fire Valde spend lifetimes being reincarnated over and over, often never knowing that they are elemental beings until and unless they die at the hands of their specific element. Once they die by fire or water they wake up remembering who they are really and also have the ability to remember their lifetimes as mortals. These beings can also, when actualized as Valde, manipulate their element to their favor if they are near their elemental source.

Fire and Water Valde have been enslaved for so long they don’t remember what it was like to be part of the whole--the source, and so a rebel group called the retributers with members of both Water and Fire Valde are trying to fight for their freedom again against Air and Earth. First they have to find Dev, the general and leader of their group. Only Mar, a seer and Capitan who can see Valde who are unaware of themselves, can find him.

Charlie plays a big role in that he’s a lieutenant in that group and the lover of Dev who has not been found yet and who might be stuck in human form not knowing who he is really.

I loved the whole premise of this world and am sure this is the set up for a series of books that I’m jonsen to read at this point. I’m very curious as to where Astrid Amara will take this. This book did read as a stand alone though, so there wasn’t a feeling of being left hanging even with the obvious set up.

The love story: I would say that while the relationship between Joel and Charlie was fairly prominent, I think the world set-up was more the substance of this book. That said, since in this world the beings are reincarnated, there is that element of eternal love, which I quite liked.

Mainly we see Charlie as Valde, while Joel is mortal in this story. Even though Charlie is Valde at the moment, he still has an intense attraction to Joel that he cannot ignore. While Charlie is and has been for lifetimes the lover of Dev, Charlie can get it on with whom ever he wishes until Dev is found and he gets it on with Joel. He still carries his memories of his life as Charlie the human and knows exactly what happened between them.

Joel has decided that he wants Charlie any which way he can have him even though he knows it might be all over once Dev is found. But he can’t help himself either, he really loves Charlie even though Charlie is different. Although the emotional chemistry between Joel and Charlie wasn’t as intense as I know Ms. Amara can write it, and maybe that’s because the focus was more on the world building in this book, I still felt the sexual relationship was very hot between these two.

The only thing that I had to suspend disbelief for here is that Joel decides to stay and fight even though he knows nothing about these beings really except for the fact that they want him dead because he’s found out about them. I really couldn’t see a “normal” person choosing to stick around like that with an unknown enemy that has super powers seemingly everywhere. It did sit a bit on the TSTL fence. But as this is a fantasy, meh, I could get over it fairly easily.

One special treat for me was the fact that this story takes place in Seattle and I had a great visual of where things take place. That obviously is not a factor for those readers who have never been to Seattle, but I have to be honest in saying it did add quite a bit to this story for me.

All in all, this was good read for me. I’m definitely going to be on the look out for the rest of the story. It has a lot of promise. And as ever, I will read Astrid Amara for her writing alone.

Sex rating: Commando- hawt m/m, anal.

Grade: Between B+ and A-