Let's start with the basics: Radclyffe's stories are well-written. Her language is exemplary, her story-building good.

And I don't normally read romance. So there's bias here - 'cause I'm having a damned hard time with her characters. They are, in a word, perfect. Not in the sense that they never do anything wrong, but in the sense that they are strong, ambitious, focused, driven, well-educated, and utterly, utterly inhuman.

There are, in this book, not a single first- or second-tier character who are not bigger than life. It grates.

And then there's the sex. Way too much for my taste, but it's something I can - and will - flip past. It's still well-written, yet also too much.