Discordant Cultivation by Gale Ian Tate📖Book Info
Romance that rhymes with ruin;
Obsession's a song they're both fluent in.
Vale tastes potential like other men taste wine—notes of desperation, hints of untapped brilliance, the full-bodied flavor of someone ripe for unmaking. Kieran plays for spare change in subway filth, that stuttering voice transforming into something holy only when he sings. Sick. Abandoned. Already intimate with the architecture of suffering.
Exquisite.
In Vale's remote studio, lessons in music become lessons in metamorphosis. The basement grows familiar with the symphony of Kieran's breaking—canvas bags and careful suffocation, fingers that teach through calculated trauma, the wet percussion of tears against concrete.
Each session strips another layer. Each perfectly placed touch rewrites the boundaries between salvation and damnation.
In the space between breaths, between the hand that holds the throat and the mouth that gasps for air, something hungry awakens. Kieran writes "Poison Saviors" with blood under his fingernails, not knowing he's penning their wedding vows. Not understanding that when he finally kisses back, he's teaching Vale a new kind of suffocation.
And Vale, collector of broken beautiful things, discovers too late that some possessions hollow you out from the inside—leaving you desperate for the very poison you've been feeding.
{So sleep now in my burning bed;
dream of chains that feel like silk;
I'll feed you poison honey;
and bitter, burning milk.
And when you wake,
you'll understand what I have always known
Love isn't meant to set you free—
love claims you as its own. }
18+ ONLY. captivity, psychological manipulation, medical control, violence, dubious consent, and explicit sexual content within an abusive power dynamic. This is a dark romance that may disturb. Please read responsibly.
💭Our Thoughts
This is an MM Horror story. It is NOT a romance read.
I suggest (which I normally don't) that, before reading, you check the triggers the author has listed. I can guarantee that if you have any, this book contains them.
Vale, who is the villain in this tale, is a psychopath and a bit of a narcissist. He believes that the only way to achieve true art is through experiencing varied emotions. Negative and positive.
How he is such a high-profile tutor/mentor, I have no idea! Anyway, neither he nor there.
He comes across Kieran is who is playing for change in the subway.
Vale sees what he wants to see, and that is untapped potential in Kieran that he believes he can bring forth.
What began as an observation has become an obsession
I am not going to recap the story. I will again warn you, this is a dark tale.
In a psychological horror such as the author has given us here, personal perspective is going to make a large impact on how we judge the events, and if we can even be observers to Kieran’s metamorphosis.
The characters themselves were well written. The story needed a bit more overall to allow me the connection I seek when reading. I found areas that I would have liked a bit more depth and/or details regarding scenes/events
I enjoyed that we got both perspectives.
How Vale truly believed what he was doing was in Kieran’s best interest. A look into his very warped perceptions of reality
And Kieran’s mental responses to the manipulation and how they changed as his captivity and torture progressed
Author Website: https://galeiantate.com/
My Reviews on:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/Joyffree
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/1839574094
#BookRecommendation #DiscordantCultivation #Dark #MMRomance #CaptiveRomance #kindleunlimited #GaleIanTate
Comments
Post a Comment