Foolish me, I didn’t read the synopsis of this book and requested it from Entangled based solely because I liked the cover. It’s a very nice cover, I think you will admit that the pretty is a high quality pretty. As you could imagine, or perhaps, not at all, I was surprised as hell to find out it was a m/m romance. I seem to have missed the dude on the horse while looking at the hot muscle-y-ish dude in the moonlight–blow me over with a feather! Yeah, I had to go with the pun. So it took me a couple days to come off my previous conceptions to get into this book… and there was also this thing where I don’t find swans, ducks, gooses or chickens sexy. I almost had to call foul on this lovestory. I totally laughed aloud at that one! It was good. It was a really good one! I know you chuckled. Damn you! Admit it!Oliver, I call him Ollie, is the Swan Prince and he gets shot down over hostile territory while flying his comrades South for the winter. His flock is flucked without him because they need him to be able to shift and with him winged by a stray bullet and stranded at a farm with a sexy cowboy they are frozen in their current state without their catalyst to take them from feathers to skin. Meanwhile Ollie is all skin with Bastion who finds him in his barn in the snow and cold, bloody and wounded. Like any cowboy would do Bastion takes Ollie in and asks him to give him a hand… around… THE FARM, girls. I know what you were all thinking but the jobs Bastion asks for Ollie to do are are jobs around the farm. But it isn’t too long before both men are panting in their sheets giving their own hand’s jobs thinking of putting their seeds in the safekeeping of each other’s back… pockets. These men are more than ready to take the dive into something meaningful and deep; something called full disclosure, and it doesn’t go over as well as you might believe it would. Feathers fly as one of them is proved a goose, the other a swan, they both are chickens and act like asses.

EE-I-EE-I-Oh

Once I got into this book I liked it a lot. What I failed to mention above and was tedious is that for the entire book Ollie is mute and mute, human Ollie is frustrating. Mute, swan Ollie is like eating Jello with chopsticks. I think what keeps the story going is that Ollie manages to have dialogue with a horse name Kiba which keeps you from wanting to eat glass. NO, perverts! There is no weird horse love. Kiba is a girl and Ollie likes a different team and a Swan Prince can love a man and that makes sense. But, really? Have you ever heard of a swan and a horse having a successful mating? Get out! Where would they live? Their children would be tormented something awful. That is why all the pegasi died. It is pegasi, right? Or is it pegasuses? That doesn’t sound correct AT ALL! Pegasi kicked the can because the swans and horses were made fun of for flucking on the farm.

I’ve never read any other Erin Lark books but according to Goodreads she has about a quarter million of them (twenty-five). They are all flavors of genres and shapes of sizes so there must be a few for you and I’m hoping there are a handful for me. I would like to read a few other of her stories. Maybe look at the descriptions before selecting one this time. That might be a nice way to select something I’m prepared for, I don’t like men who are farm birds, but Ollie’s a great guy and I’m not sleeping with him, so what does it matter if birds don’t get me off in this instance?

If you like m/m fairytales this is a great book for you!

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Swan Prince Excerpt:

OLIVER

Red-hot knives bit under my skin and straight into the bone, threatening to toss me the three hundred or so feet to the ground. I cried out, painfully righting myself on a passing wind current, but with the temperatures still dropping, gliding wasn’t as easy as normal flight—something I obviously couldn’t do with a mangled wing.

I ground my beak and waited for my eyes to refocus. Fire snaked its way beneath my plumage to my ribs. My spine. Fuck, this is going to hurt in the morning. Especially with the promise of snow on the wind.

I pulled in my wings enough to dip under a harsh current, wincing at the agony every move of that damned wing caused. Breathe. It’ll do you no good to hold your breath. I exhaled and studied my left wing, inspected the red on top of white feathers, and I knew. Bastard shot me. Or rather, he tried and, lucky for me, it wasn’t fatal. Not for a human it’s not. But for a swan? This high off the ground? I had to find a place to land. Preferably someplace soft and far away from the trigger-happy dick who had shot me.

Look for water. Water meant an easier landing, which translated to not straining my wing more than was necessary. I searched below the lifeless tree limbs, around one hill and another, but all my eyes found were grass, wood, and stone, none of which made for a pleasant landing.

Something pricked at the back of my mind. The glimpse of an image. Of another form. Oh hell no. I closed my eyes. Opened them and swerved around a large tree. If you’d been a good little prince and stayed with your escort, none of this would’ve happened. Without a pond or lake in sight, it seemed a hard finish was in my very near future, even more so if I couldn’t pull myself together.

Don’t shift now.

Invisible fangs bit into my shoulder—no, my wing— and I struggled to remain in flight as my primaries receded.

Swan. You’re a swan. Humans can’t fly.

Drawing my wings close to my sides, I dove as quickly as the wind would allow. The ground beneath me was a blur, getting closer as I dove-fell toward the nearest embankment.

Almost there.

My heart beat fast and then stopped altogether as time slowed to a crawl.

I opened my wings with a snap and let loose a soundless cry as tears stung at my eyes. One talon touched the cold earth. I stumbled forward and scrambled to find my footing as I changed shape. White feathers speckled with blood littered the ground, and I caught myself on my good arm before I fell completely.

Bit by bit, the feathers dropped, and as they did, more of my skin was exposed to the elements. In most cases, I would’ve been thankful for the privacy. Nothing quite like a normal human seeing another shift out of his feral form. Of course some clothes would’ve been nice, but because the injury pushed me out of my shift before I reached my destination—a place where I had clothes to spare—there wasn’t much I could do about my nudity.

Something cold dropped onto my back, and I glanced up at the darkening sky. The storm that had been on my tail for the last hundred miles had caught up with me, and by the look of it, it was about to dump a foot or more right where I’d landed.

Fuck this life.

I grimaced and clawed at the ground as my body threatened to shake me apart. Every tremble, every jolt, forced the muscles along my arm to spasm.

A chill wind brushed against my bare skin, and I shivered for the warmth that continued to elude me. I wasn’t quite sure how far I’d fallen, or how long ago I’d been shot, but it didn’t matter now. I’d survived, and somehow, I’d managed to hold back my shift long enough to get to the ground with my feet beneath me. Everything else could wait, but if I didn’t find a warm place to rest soon, my miraculous landing wouldn’t matter come morning.

Without the strength to shift back, not to mention the pain it would’ve caused, I picked myself off the ground. I hugged my arms around myself, cradling my left so I could inspect the wound. It was deeper now, and while I couldn’t see the bullet, it had clearly cut through the muscle. Lightheaded, I strained to remember what I saw when I was searching for a place to land.

There’s a house…somewhere.

I frowned. Turned a circle, but leave it to me to shift in the middle of a damn valley. I picked a direction and started walking. I just hope the house doesn’t belong to whoever decided tonight was a great night to hunt for swans.

Copyright © 2014 by Erin Lark. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

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