The Blood-Drenched Honeycomb by Leo X. Robertson (Close to the Bone) | reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Liam Munhoz is an insanely attractive young man, twenty years old, from Maywood, the third smallest city in LA County. Reserved in some ways, only showing his real self to people he considers authentic, he is expansive in others, having participated in bisexual college orgies to the very best of his ability. He was brought from LA to Palo Alto in a bullet train, an entire business class carriage hired out for him.

The man waiting for him is Ryan Hobbes, an extremely rich and extremely weird older guy, obsessed with his health, who sleeps all day and stays up all night, to avoid the sun’s harmful rays. He’s also extremely famous, to the point that you can buy Halloween costumes spoofing him, labelled “non-binary vampire tech billionaire with an eating disorder”. He’s a riff on Bryan Johnson, Elon Musk, and chaps like that.

Liam was a college friend of Ryan’s jock son, Exodus, and that connection led to this job opportunity. He has to sign an NDA before Julia, the house AI, lets him inside Ryan’s Honeydose Manse. The name alone would send most people running for the hills, and that Liam presses on despite all the red flags is our first hint that he has his own reasons for being here.

Turns out the job involves IV bags, tubing and large white consoles. Liam is to be Ryan’s latest “blood boy”, providing transfusions to keep the billionaire young. (That might sound like a huge spoiler, but it’s in the book’s description on Amazon.) After Liam admits he wouldn’t usually be allowed to donate blood because of his sexual history, Ryan is provoked – and aroused.

This novella held my interest well, as chapter by chapter it revealed and explored the motivations of the two men. The most effective element for me was how it charted Liam’s shifting and complicated feelings about the situation, the curious intermingling of hatred and attraction, and his recognition of their commonalities: both are manipulators, both are competitive, both can be cruel and selfish.

There were a few bits that shouldn’t have got past the editor, e.g. "Despite how vulnerable and new to him that Liam is, why doesn't it occur to Ryan to leave?", and the mood in some erotic moments is rather broken by mistakes like “lay” for “lie” and “whole” for “hole”. But errors aside, the writing tends to be very good: clear, direct, concrete. The final sequence was especially compelling.

The science fiction elements – like an atheist AI president on its fifth term, mentioned in passing – intrigued me more than the mean-spirited sexual exploits of the two men, though those may find an audience too. It’s essentially an erotic thriller with science fiction trappings; it’s not really interested in exploring them. The author’s next book, Barhopping for Astronauts, may be more to my taste. ***