Spy Thrillers are a massive part of the book market. With the end of the Cold War, modern fictional spies have been a series of unlikely candidates from school teachers to museum curators. At first glance IsaKFT's The Freelancers doesn't seem to be any different.
Quirky it is, and while there is plenty of humor laced throughout the story what makes The Freelancers really stand out is what is missing. Women. With no female characters in The Freelancers all the trysts and tension is purely man on man. The Freelancers is introducing spy thrillers to the idea of a gay action hero.
A queer action hero is something that could only happen in a book world. The overwhelming masculine, and some would say predominantly homophobic, movie market has in the past bristled at the idea of heroes without well defined heterosexual impulses. The sexual curiosity of action heroes stops at lesbians and goes no further.
But the female-friendly book market offers an opportunity to develop characters that buck trends and cliches. Women are already taking their favorite characters from other mediums and writing them into homoerotic alternative universes. The same way male moviegoers don't mind a little lesbianism injected into a story, female book buyers aren't scared off by a heroes with alternative sexualities.
Of course the 23 year-old main character of The Freelancers is hardly a role model either. Tyler Dewar is promiscuous, patronizingly protective of his partners, and likely to up and leave without a goodbye when duty calls. Just like another popular figure from spy fiction: James Bond. Except James Bond never did it with men, one wonders why Dewar's conquests put up with it.
That's not to say that The Freelancers is without plot. IsaKFT connects disturbingly "harmless" crimes like DVD bootlegging to larger trends in global troubles. The Freelancers pits the consequences of idealism against the reality of modern crime and leaves the readers uncomfortably aware of their role in some of the world's great injustices.
But the question remains: will anyone come away from The Freelancers with that? Or will readers be so distracted by the hot sex scenes and Tyler Dewar's unusual sexual preferences that it's all they remember about it?
Quirky it is, and while there is plenty of humor laced throughout the story what makes The Freelancers really stand out is what is missing. Women. With no female characters in The Freelancers all the trysts and tension is purely man on man. The Freelancers is introducing spy thrillers to the idea of a gay action hero.
A queer action hero is something that could only happen in a book world. The overwhelming masculine, and some would say predominantly homophobic, movie market has in the past bristled at the idea of heroes without well defined heterosexual impulses. The sexual curiosity of action heroes stops at lesbians and goes no further.
But the female-friendly book market offers an opportunity to develop characters that buck trends and cliches. Women are already taking their favorite characters from other mediums and writing them into homoerotic alternative universes. The same way male moviegoers don't mind a little lesbianism injected into a story, female book buyers aren't scared off by a heroes with alternative sexualities.
Of course the 23 year-old main character of The Freelancers is hardly a role model either. Tyler Dewar is promiscuous, patronizingly protective of his partners, and likely to up and leave without a goodbye when duty calls. Just like another popular figure from spy fiction: James Bond. Except James Bond never did it with men, one wonders why Dewar's conquests put up with it.
That's not to say that The Freelancers is without plot. IsaKFT connects disturbingly "harmless" crimes like DVD bootlegging to larger trends in global troubles. The Freelancers pits the consequences of idealism against the reality of modern crime and leaves the readers uncomfortably aware of their role in some of the world's great injustices.
But the question remains: will anyone come away from The Freelancers with that? Or will readers be so distracted by the hot sex scenes and Tyler Dewar's unusual sexual preferences that it's all they remember about it?
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