Rating: 4.5 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novella

Cleon’s family is on the verge of starvation. The crops aren’t growing, the livestock is skinny, and the beasts of the forest are little better, scrawny and wary and hard to catch. Something has to be done to appease their forest god, which means someone has to be sent as a sacrifice. As a god of fertility, Dryas takes delight in the flesh of his worshipers, whether they are willing or not. He seems to delight in pain and humiliation as much as he does in the rut, and Cleon — and his people — fear his wrath more than they wish his love.

What Cleon finds at the forest alter isn’t Dryas. Instead, it’s Anthos, Dryas’ brother. Small and slender, he looks like a youth not yet twenty years of age with a shy demeanor and and a sweet smile, and he’s everything Cleon could ever want. What Anthos wants, though, is sex. As a son of Pan and a fertility god himself, he needs the worship of the body in order to gain power — something Dryas never allowed. Cleon is honored to be the first to take the god, to give him power, and to gain pleasure he’s never known before.

But where has Dryas gone? And what will happen when he comes back?

This erotic romance is the first in the Of Gods and Men series, which appears to involve a new, steamy look at mythology. Anthos is a satyr, a spirit of the forest who has been alone and lonely for hundreds of years. But after that first kiss, and that first fuck, he only wants more. And more, and more. How else can he be a god if he has no worshipers? If he has no power? Fortunately, Cleon’s family and neighboring villages, and the hunters of the forest, are more than willing to welcome a kinder, gentler god, one who takes delight in pleasure rather than pain.

Cleon wanted to help his people; he never expected that he would become the first priest of Anthos. As a priest, his duty is to see to his god’s needs, be the carnal or chaste. To keep him company, burn the offerings, hold him while he sleeps … and to watch over him as Anthos takes other loves and other lovers of various pairings. There is no jealousy in Cleon, only concern as he wants Anthos to know nothing but pleasure and joy. And pleasure there is.

The story is well written, the pacing is good, and the sex is plentiful … as is fitting for a story about a fertility god. I can’t wait for the next book in the series!