Book Tour & Review: Haven’s Creed by Parker Williams

Author Name: Parker Williams

Book Name: Haven’s Creed

Release Date: December 14, 2015

Pages or Words: 95,000 words

Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, Thriller, some romantic elements, some dark and violent imagery

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28017836-haven-s-creed

Publisher: Parker Williams

An act of violence destroys his family and ends the life he knows. To escape his haunted past, he joins the military, where, as a sniper, he is trained to kill with precision and detachment. When a covert organization offers him a new purpose, he becomes Haven, an operative devoted to protecting the innocent when he can and avenging them when he cannot.

After ten years of battling the evil in the world, the life no longer holds the attraction or meaning it once had, and he’s ready to walk away. Then he meets Samuel, a young man forced from the age of twelve to work as a sex slave. If ever a man had a need for Haven, it is this one.

Yet nothing about this growing relationship is one-sided. Sammy gives Haven a stability he’s never known, and Haven becomes the rock upon which Sammy knows he can depend.

When Sammy reveals something about the enemy Haven has been hunting for months, Sammy fears it will destroy what they’ve built and he’ll lose his home in Haven’s heart.

I have a lot to say about this book so bear with me. It’s not my usual genre—I tend to like literary slice-of-life stories, particularly focusing on family. So it was definitely a stretch, but I’m so glad I took the chance.

Fans of action/thriller/military will love this. It’s like a written form of the best of those types of movie, complete with lots of calculated violence and a form of chase scene at the end. The love story between Haven and Sammy is, in one sense, secondary to the take-out-the-big-bad plotline (though it’s also of significance and shouldn’t be discounted). At the same time, anyone who likes (as I do) a good hurt/comfort story should also be pleased—provided they’re not looking for something gentle and tender. Readers should definitely heed all warnings: there are graphically violent scenes throughout, and while there are no direct scenes of abuse of young children, the after-effects are mentioned unflinchingly.

There are no fluffy kittens to be found here. Haven and Sammy are both deeply damaged and conflicted individuals who need each other for different reasons. Haven is a phenomenal antihero. He is not really a nice person, and he has no regrets about taking out those he deems moral failures. There’s a thin line, alluded to multiple times, between revenge and justice, and Haven doesn’t hesitate to cross it. Sammy fills the typical role of “damsel in distress,” but interestingly, he doesn’t ever truly embody that trope. He’s far too strong for that, and we get to see his motivations. Typically, I would fall immediately for Sammy (I have a soft spot for the Wounded Little Boy stock character). But it was Haven who stole my heart and held it captive. I was utterly fascinated by both his real world and the one he creates for himself in order to be able to carry out his missions. He reduces the villains to flat people devoid of humanity, and he dragged me down with him until I was just as ready to take out the despicable people he’s after.

Haven and Sammy aren’t the only complex characters. Rook, Haven’s mysterious handler, comes to life more fully through his interactions with Sammy, which I thought was an interesting perspective. I developed a few theories about Rook, and there’s a part of me that hopes this isn’t the only book so we can find out more. Meanwhile, Kelly, who looks after Haven and takes care of his basic needs, is unwrapped slowly over the course of the book. I loved both of them for different reasons.

I’ll admit to being appropriately horrified by Valerie, the Head Evildoer. She is seriously the devil incarnate, and I have no remorse for wanting to see her dead for reasons I won’t spoil here. I did have to chuckle at her line when she says “guys are easy to twist around when sex is involved.” She’s pretty much the same way and seems really lacking in self-awareness on that point; pot, meet kettle. This tickles me no end and actually makes her a far better character. Too often, the femme fatale character is herself virtually sexless, only using the physical to manipulate the men in her path because they just can’t keep it zipped around her. Not so with Valerie—she obviously enjoys herself, a fact which gives her more depth. I would love to have seen Haven play with that (and the “fake bisexual” being a good guy instead of a villain would get my vote). Naturally, she falls into the usual round of “bad guy must explain life, the universe, and everything instead of just taking out the hero.” But her lengthy rant is worth the words spent on it and is highly entertaining.

I don’t wish to speak to the realism or lack thereof in the story. I don’t think it’s important; at least, it wasn’t for me. Because I’m reading with a literary eye, I chose to focus on the underlying themes and emotions. My guess is that it’s probably frowned on to rescue someone who’s been kept as a sex slave for a dozen years and then take him as a lover, but I think there’s something in the idea of rescuing and nurturing the wounded parts of ourselves and others while allowing ourselves to be changed by them. There’s beauty in that, and it makes the contrasting ugliness of the journey with Sammy and Haven worthwhile.

Where it loses just a little for me is in two ways. First, it definitely goes in the category of There Are No Decent Women. (Okay, fine, there’s one—the doctor is a woman, but she’s not in it much.) Now, I get it—it’s a gay action story, so women are not necessary. But I have a slight preference for no women at all vs. all of them being awful, dead, or both. Second, I didn’t really feel like I needed the epilogue (though I recognize lots of people will love it). I think the requisite Definitive Happily Ever After in gay stories is a holdover from the days where everyone either dies or goes back in the closet. So I’m totally okay with spelling it out because it’s obviously better than the alternative. I just thought the story was complete without it; it felt done after the last chapter, and I could have guessed at the rest. It’s personal preference, nothing more.

Other than that, this is a terrific read that held me hostage from the first page to the last. I’m giving this 8.5/10 fountain pens for tight writing that put me right in the moment, excellent characters, and well done twisting of common tropes.

Amazon eBook: http://www.amazon.com/Havens-Creed-Parker-Williams-ebook/dp/B0190XCAX2/ref=sr_1_1

AllRomance eBook: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-haven039screed-1940506-153.html

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/598547

Paperback: https://www.createspace.com/5921323

When I was fifteen, I killed my first man. Every time Arnie, the guy my mother was shacking up with at the time, drank, he got it into his head she was cheating on him. He’d start slapping her, and that turned into full-fledged beating within a few months. When he was done, he’d start on my sister.

There were nights she’d crawl into bed with me, sobbing. For the longest of times, she wouldn’t tell me what happened, but when I found blood on her pajamas, I knew. I’d tried to stand up to him, but he beat me badly enough that I couldn’t go to school for two weeks until the bruises faded. But I got off lucky. The things he did to Chrissy gave me nightmares. I’d hear her cry out and knew there was nothing I could do but hide in my bed, my pillow covering my head. He was bigger, meaner, and stronger than me, and he reminded me of that fact constantly.

The old lady never said boo about it. She always forgave him and tried to justify what he did by telling me how much stress he was under. How he was a good man and didn’t mean it. It was just the drinking, she swore. It was more like he was a bastard and she was his meal ticket.

I came home one night and found him whaling on her, my sister’s body crumpled in a heap, her head smashed in. The son of a bitch had a gun in his hand, slick with blood, and he threatened to kill them both, screaming he wouldn’t let her leave. She slapped him. It wasn’t hard, but it shocked him enough that he dropped the gun. I picked it up. He sneered at me and called me a weak-willed fag.

I looked at the gun I held in my hand. The instrument of my revenge. The means to saving my sister.

“Give me the gun, you fuck. It’s not a dick, you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

The bullet I put in his forehead showed him how wrong he was. He lay on the floor, blood bubbling from the wound, and his eyes locked on mine as he took his last breath. I wanted that fucker to know it was the weak-willed fag who had done this to him.

Parker Williams believes that true love exists, but it always comes with a price. No happily ever after can ever be had without work, sweat, and tears that come with melding lives together.

Living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Parker held his job for nearly 28 years before he decided to retire and try new things. He enjoys his new life as a stay-at-home author and also working on Pride-Promotions, an LGBT author promotion service.

Connect with Parker on: Twitter: @ParkerWAuthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parker.williams.7564

Or you can visit his website: www.ParkerWilliamsAuthor.com

Today I’m very grateful to be visiting A.M. Leibowitz’s blog. My name is Parker Williams, author of Haven’s Creed.

Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my husband, our four dogs, and three cats. For nearly twenty-eight years I was a server at a hotel in Milwaukee where I got to meet a lot of famous people.

How do you develop your plots and characters?

I would love to say I have all these grand ways to make my characters dance, but to tell the truth, the characters tell me what they expect from me. I try to give direction and they just shake their heads and laugh at me.

Who doesn’t love a good hero? Tell us about your protagonist. Was there a real life inspiration behind them?

Haven isn’t really a ‘hero’, more like an anti-hero. He does some really, really bad things, but with the best of intentions. He’s not a sweet loving person like in the other books I’ve done, he’s violent and takes the phrase eye for an eye to a new level.

What real-life inspirations do you use when world building?

The nice thing is that you can see a story anywhere you look. A couple standing on the street corner, hand in hand, who leans over and gives each other a peck. Are they going their own separate ways? Did they spend the night wrapped in each other’s arms? What’s their story and will it have a happily ever after?

Did you learn anything from this book and what was it?

I’m a sick and twisted individual. J This is further proof that writing what you know isn’t always a necessary thing. I can swear to you, I’ve never actually killed a person…at least not that can be proven.