Review- Parallel Process by Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain

Parallel Process
by Barbara Sheridan & Anne Cain
Sept. 2007
Contemporary/ Paranormal/ Gay/ Interracial
Novel
Ebook

Buy it Loose-ID, Fictionwise

Grad students Matt Gavin and Haku Nishikawa have a lot on their plate trying to get their paranormal activities research program taken seriously by university administrators. They're also trying to figure out where their relationship is headed -- the sex is great, but Haku's not sure if his best friend is serious about love or loving the lust.

When funding for their program is put on the chopping block, they're desperate to secure a grant and accept an offer from a famous documentary-maker and anthropologist. But Pearce Dannings is dealing with a few demons of his own -- literally. He's stolen a key to hell from a powerful devil god, Maaya, and the deity wants it back at any cost.

Haku finds himself marked as the man to help the god retrieve the missing key, and it's clear Maaya has some other plans in mind for him. The sexual attraction between them is hard to resist, but if Haku doesn't he's going to lose everything in the process, including Matt.

Parallel Process is one of those stories that’s just unconventional and strange enough to feel afterward, “wow that was fun, bizarre ride.” While reading this, all sorts of movies ran through my head: Ghost Busters, The Mummy, the Hardy Boys, Indiana Jones, and the TV show Supernatural, as this book had elements of all them. However, it was presented in the unique way that I’ve come to know I’ll get with a Barbara Sheridan/ Anne Cain story.

Haku and Matt are struggling grad students who have been in a relationship for a while. They are both TA’s for professor Adler, whose quirky, off beat, bumbling ways fit right in with the course he offers at the university, which studies the paranormal. Of course no one takes them seriously, especially dept. head professor Beaglehole, who thinks that the university is wasting money on this foolish crap and is trying to shut them down.

One day they are offered funding by a an outside film company known for producing shows on the paranormal, which is headed by Dannings, a former student colleague of Adler. Adler played a nasty prank on Dannings in college so he’s surprised that Dannings is doing this, but he needs the funds for his program so he goes a long with it.

When Haku and Matt go to do the show, it turns out to be a joke. To the shock of everyone though, a real demon shows up, scaring the bejeezus out of all of them. Haku manages to fight it off of Matt and kill it. When they try to investigate it the next day, another demon, Maaya, takes over Matt’s body and tries to seduce Haku, who’s pretty good at resisting him even though he gets a constant hard-on with Maaya.

Haku and Matt then go on an investigation, trying to find out about these demons and what they’re about. Of course, while all this is going on, Haku and Matt try to figure out what their relationship is and what the other really feels.

OK, this was such an off the wall, fun book. Like going into a dark tunnel and not knowing what’s going to come at you next but being pleasantly surprised at what pops out at you. The whole feel of it was almost tongue in cheek and I couldn’t figure out if it’s a quirky spoof or a story about seriously recognized phenomenon in current times considering the reference to current shows about paranormal phenomenon. At any rate, I really enjoyed it for what it was.

Matt and Haku are two easy going, cute characters. They’re both young and have the major hots for each other. I can’t really separate them as they both worked together throughout the book without a hitch in their relationship really. This story was less about two guys coming together and falling in love and more about two guys who have a solid, mutually enjoyable relationship but who have some niggling doubts about the other’s true feelings.

Since Maaya, the demon, tends to take over Matt’s body to try and have sex with Haku, and Haku finds himself irresistibly drawn to Maaya’s overwhelming and intense sexual advances, a kink does happen in Matt and Haku’s relationship as Haku worries about his attraction to Maaya. But it also brings them to get clear about what they want and what they feel for each other and their true love for each other keeps them safe in a way.

While overall I loved this book, there were some gaps in the plot that left me with a few questions. One was why Matt and Haku are even into all of this? It’s explained briefly that they feel they have to expose paranormal events that are unexplained. For me though, I would have believed that these two are really gung-ho on this if they’d had a personal experience that drove them to this, instead of it being a hobby that takes them away from studying something more useful as grad students.

The other plot issue was why Maaya is so attracted to Haku? He’s a demon that in the end has this love/ thing with a woman that he helped fight off Alexander the Great’s men and who has been in a limbo, semi dead state ever since. He keeps trying to seduce Haku through this whole thing, but there’s no back explanation as to why he’s got it bad for Haku, like that Maaya was even into men or that Haku is some reincarnation or had something to do with him in any way in a former life. I liked Maaya as a character and how he interacts with the boys gets kind of amusing. But his thing with Haku felt out of no where, unless I totally missed that part.

The revenge part of the plot was a bit predictable as well and I had to suspend disbelief to a degree that someone would hold such an intense grudge for years like that over a silly school prank, but it actually worked for me as the story itself is a bit on the campy, mischievous side of being entertaining.

Definitely with Parallel Process Barbara Sheridan and Anne Cain have done it again for me. I keep coming back to them and their books because they consistently write stories that are different and go off on interesting tangents. And their guys have hot sex and romances. It’s always a fun trip.

Sex rating: Crotchless panty: m/m, anal, and one really hawt hidden under the desk blow job while students are taking a test.

Grade: B+