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Out of Position

Recommended Read, Review 78
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Title: Out of Position
Author: Kyell Gold
Publisher: Sofawolf Press
Buy Link: Buy Link Out of Position
Genre: M/M Contemporary Anthropomorphic Romance, Sports
Length: Novel (324 pages)
Rating: 5 stars out of 5

A Guest Review by Cole

Review Summary: An incredibly touching, exciting, and emotionally epic story of a fox and tiger’s journey into love and the world of professional football.

BLURB

Dev is a football player at Forester University, a small liberal arts college where he and his teammates get to strut around and have their pick of the girls on Friday nights. That’s as good as it gets—until he meets Lee, a fox with a quick wit and an attractive body.

Problem is, Lee’s not a girl. He’s a gay fox, an activist who never dreamed he’d fall for a football player. As their attraction deepens into romance, it’s hard enough for them to handle each other, let alone their inquisitive friends, family, and co-workers. And if school is bad, the hyper- masculine world of professional sports that awaits Dev after graduation will be a hundred times worse.

Going it alone would make everything easier. If only they could stop fighting long enough to break up.

With cover and interior illustrations by Blotch.

REVIEW

I’d like to say first, that Out of Position is the first anthropomorphic novel that I have ever read. For those of you who are not familiar, the literal meaning of anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities and characteristics onto animals or any non-living object. In M/M romance, this translates to the animation of animals in a human way — animals that walk, talk, act and have a society like humans, depending on the variance of the story.  Many readers of M/M romance often read shapeshifter stories, but this is very different. In essence, these characters are always animals, yet they have human qualities. I think this is a largely unexplored area in M/M romance, and I was intrigued by Out of Position by Kyell Gold and the beautiful illustrations by Blotch within its pages (some of which you can see here, on the Sofawolf website) and I thought I should give this a try. I was elated to find a wonderful story with extremely real characters, and even more surprised to find that this story showed me a new way to understand American Football and its players — a sport, which I must admit, has often baffled me and only ever given me the pleasure of watching hunky men with tight butts ram each other in testosterone overload. In honor of tomorrow’s Superbowl, I have moved this review up a few days, so that those of you who are football fans can make a weekend out of this, and those of you who do not understand football, might just gain some insight about the game from reading this novel, just as I did.

Out of Position tells the story of two males: Dev the tiger, a football player and all-around jock at Forester University, and Lee the fox, a queer activist who has a score to settle with the football team. They are both juniors (though most of their time in college takes place as seniors) and while Dev is skating through school picking up a new vixen every week at the local bar after the game with his buddies and floating on the small amount of fame he gets at their small, liberal college, Lee is still reeling from the gay-bashing and beating of his best friend Brian the previous year. Brian and Lee were almost too much alike, feeding off of each others ideals of queer activism and leading their local chapter of FLAG, the queer activist group on campus. Then, one night, under circumstances that are still not completely known, Brian gets cornered after a verbal altercation with a few member of the football team, then beaten. Now Lee is all alone, Brian having moved away, and his anger at those football players has spread to all of the jocks, who he knows are one and the same. He comes up with a plan: he will dress in drag, as he makes a very convincing vixen, go out and bag a football player. Then, when they get back to his place, he will show one of them how they’d been attracted to another male — that they are at least a little bit queer themselves. What he doesn’t expect when he bags Dev and brings him home, is that after he convinces him to sleep with him that Dev will want to stay and get to know him. This is how their secret affair begins, already leading to an uneasy relationship between a tiger who has never felt this way for another male and cannot come out lest he ruin his reputation and playing career, and a fox who never expected this tryst to become a relationship, much less one that forces him back into the closet and completely turns his life in a new direction. However, those are not the only problems. These problems are compounded by Lee’s insitance that Dev has the talent to make the pros, and if that becomes a reality, if they will ever be able to have an open relationship. Even more, Brian has his own revenge to make, and his activist spirit has become maddeningly fueled by his renewed hatred of football players. No matter the collateral damage, even to his friend Lee, Brian will do anything to show the world that one out player will make it easier for gay sports players everywhere to come out. But can an out player even have a career in football, or will he become lost in the bureaucracy of pro football?


One of the most incredible things about this novel is its portrayal of the sport. We know that Dev is a player, but Lee is a very big fan also. So we get to see the sport from two, often very different, perspectives. The story shows us the art of football, how graceful and intelligent of a sport it can be. It also does this in a way that someone completely ignorant of the sport can understand. I knew only a small bit about how the game is played and though a large portion of the book deals with the sport and the games in which Dev plays, I never felt left behind in the action. Here is how Lee describes the sport in his small chapter “Lee’s Guide to Football”:

Even though I was still at that age where I wanted to be like my dad, I didn’t have much interest in football. But with the championship coming up, he thought it was the perfect time to get me started. Whatever else he’s done in his life—and I’ve run through the list more than once—he got me into football. So if you’re one of those kids who likes chess and books, listen up, because reading this story you’re in the middle of is like growing up in Nicholas Dempsey Middle School. You don’t have to like football to get through it, as my dad told me, but it helps.

See, what I always hated about football was that I was bad at it. I’d only played one football game up to then, at camp. I didn’t understand the rules. To me, it was just a stupid excuse for big kids to beat up little kids. What my dad told me is that football is actually like a chess game.

What Lee said is exactly true about this story: “You don’t have to like football to get through it…but it helps.” Football fans will certainly love this story, but there is so much more here than the sport — especially the navigation through the bureaucracy of the league later in the novel and the evolution of Dev and Lee’s relationship throughout their difficult journey to an HFN — that this story is not only for sports fans.

I must say, though, that however much I loved this story for its portrayal of the sport, the real power of this story is in its characterizations. Dev and Lee are given so much room to grow, and they have such powerful voices in the way they alternately tell their story, that they became much more than fully-fledged characters to me, so much that I often found myself blurring the lines between their animalism and humanity. The other characters are especially filled out as well, and there are a whole slew of them. The secondary cast is quite large, as this story moves through almost three years of their relationship, in their journey from small college town to the big leagues. Sometimes, because of the POV, the characters were an enigma, and only later did I come to understand them by their actions. Lee, in fact, is often an enigma himself. I suppose this is due to his fox nature, which is sly and cunning and the fact that he often goes from stubborn to depressed to proud to angry. I liked that I had to work to understand him, just as I had to work to understand Brian through Lee’s memories and experiences with him (though Brian is a skunk). It wasn’t to easy to get to know the characters (although Dev is an exception, as he is often an open book, genuine and heartbreakingly honest at times). By the time the novel came to a close, I felt like I understood them better that I would have if I had been told, rather than shown through how they think, about who they really are. They were more real.

There is often such a huge difference in the way that Dev and Lee think that it creates problems in their relationship where no problem would have normally occured. They clash so often that this is not your typical romance story, though that is more of a critique of many middle-of-the-road romances in this genre than of this novel. Dev and Lee work very hard and go through some very difficult times in their relationship to progress to where they can finally be open and honest with each other. Lee, for being “out” and proud, is often the most closed off because of his fear and anger. Sometimes Dev is clueless that there is a problem at all, not used to being in a relationship, especially not with another male and/or species, that this creates problems in itself. Also, both Dev and Lee often keep things from the other in an effort to protect them, though, like this would in most relationships, doesn’t end up working too well for them.  This is a bit of a long book at 300+ pages, that with its sequel (at 400+ pages) could be called an epic journey, for all that they reside in a world mostly like our own, with the exception of animals as people.  There are almost always reminders that they are animals, which I loved, although I sometimes wondered just how sloppy their kisses were and how dangerous preparing someone for sex would be with claws.  Yeesh!  However, after getting into the groove of the story, I relaxed and allowed myself to go with it.  This isn’t always light tale, but neither is despairing.  In my opinion, it is quite uplifting and truly worth the effort.

The beautiful illustrations only add more the story, and I’ve included some here to give you an example of what is included in the story. The sequel to this novel, Isolation Play, picks up about 5 minutes after this one ends, with a very interesting cliffhanger. Luckily, you won’t have to wait for the sequel, as it came out last week and I will be reviewing it next week (though you should be warned that as it was just released, for now it is only available in paperback). I absolutely loved this story, especially getting to know Lee and Dev (as well as Fisher and Salim, who I really loved) and I think you will as well. I highly recommend this story, especially to football fans, though no love of the sport is needed.

I will be reviewing Isolation Play next Wednesday, February 9. You can find the book and look at some of the illustrations from it here (although I warn you that there are spoilers in the blurb for those of you who have not read the first installment).

The illustrations included here were posted with the permission of Kyell Gold and the artist, Blotch. You can visit Kyell’s website here, and Blotch’s website here.  Note:  The ebook format of this book does not include illustrations.

Author

Cole

26, male, gay, baker, knitter, sometimes writer, and voracious reader of all things | contact me: cole.riann[at]gmail.com
http://www.gayromance.org/members/cole/

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78 comments

  • Is this book only available in paperback? I couldn’t find any information about the format from the title link or the publisher page :/ From your review it sounds like a wonderful book, and I’d really like to read it. But if there’s no ebook, it’ll be too expensive with shipping to Europe and so on.

    • Hi Madde! Some of Kyell’s titles, including this one, are available on Amazon. From what I have been able to tell, Sofawolf does not sell ebooks directly, but I could be wrong. I’m not sure if they are available from any other e-retailer. I’ll do some research and see if I can find anything for you 🙂

      • I have only been able to find the ebook on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles, both for $9.99 US. It wasn’t for sale on Fictionwise or ARe. I’m not sure where else to look…

    • Currently, the book is available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble as ebooks. There’s no PDF copy, nor any other ebook format.

      The sequel, “Isolation Play,” isn’t out in ebook format yet. The publishers like to keep about a year between print release and electronic release, to give the print books a chance to recoup their costs.

      • Thanks Masque, thats good to know 🙂 Though I haven’t finished Isolation Play yet, I can tell you all that to me, both books are worth the paperback price.

        Thanks again Masque!

  • Hi Cole,
    I shied away from the concept of anthropomorphic animals as characters in a m/m romance. After reading your review, although it was great and very insightful, I’m still put off. No, no furry kisses for me – it’s too Disney-ish and too far out of my comfort zone despite the fact that this seems to be a great story. That said, I’m glad to see that we still haven’t reached the limit in this genre, that there’s something new every day. And thanks for introducing me to this artist, Blotch, those pictures are fabulous. (Schizophrenic, isn’t it? The pictures I’m fine with….;-) )

    • Isn’t Blotch incredible? You should read their online graphic novel the Dogs Days of Summer. Its pretty hilarious. The first part is free online, as it was a weekly addition and then fans could vote on what would happen to Diego the Dingo in the next week. After that, they wrote the rest themselves, and you can buy that in a whole volume.

      I understand what you mean about anthropomorphic novels. That is why I was a bit cautious about reading this in the first place. I should have mentioned this in the review, but there is actually very little sex in the story. There are a couple of scenes near the beginning, but not much later. It is much more about navigating their lives and becoming closer in the wake of all of the problems they face as a couple. …If that is what might bother you. And during the intimate moments between Dev and Lee, most of the descriptions of sex between animals is left to the imagination. I would be surprised if there was really anything that would bother people about the sex scenes, other than the idea of it.

      But I certainly respect your decision, not everything is for everyone 🙂

  • Ooooo Cole i have had this one for a while< but have not read it, will definitely read it soon now. Thank you for the great review.

    • Hey Sirius! I really think you’re going to like this one 🙂 I’d love to know what you think when you read it!

      • I think I may like it for sure :), oh you said it ends in cliffhanger or have I misunderstood? Thanks. I can see sequel is out, but I want to know how bad cliffhanger is in terms of me waiting to get sequel and start reading in order not to be annoyed that I have to wait?

        Thanks Cole.

        • To me, it wasn’t a classic cliffhanger, because I didn’t feel teased like cliffhangers usually make me feel. In essence, this is one long story that has been cut into two books, even though (and I could be wrong here) I don’t think Kyell planned to even write Isolation Play until Out of Position was successful. The reason I say that it ended with a cliffhanger is because the end of the book ends just after a momentous occasion and we now know that the sequel starts immediately after the first book ends. I also felt like Out of Position ended on an appropriate note, or at least came full circle.

          So the cliffhanger didn’t bother me — although I did already have a copy of Isolation Play to immediately start reading 🙂 I can guarantee you though, that you will want to immediately pick up the sequel to see what happens. So, its up to you. If I already knew that I would probably buy the paperback of the sequel, I would go ahead and read Out of Position. But, I certainly wouldn’t want to wait a year 😐

          As for the sequel, all I will say right now is that I’ve been gobbling it up 😉

          • Thanks Cole I think I will have to make sure i have sequel waiting for me before I start this one then 🙂

            Thanks again.

          • Cole Before Isolation play will come to me I decided to read Waterways and I am now in love with this writer. Thank you so much for reminding me of Out of position and I now went ahead and bought Volle series too.

          • I’m so glad to hear that Sirius. I’ve heard such good things about Waterways and the Volle series as well. I can’t wait to read them myself 🙂

  • Amazing review, Cole. I’ve had this in my TBR pile for awhile and need to make time to read it. I love the illustrations! What a novel idea for a… well… a novel.

    • Hey Eden! This story, is more than anything, a wonderful love story. Sometimes difficult, but they really work hard at it, which I admired — especially in Dev, who could have claimed at any difficult time that his relationship wasn’t as real as one he could have had with a woman. But he knows what he feels and very soon after meeting Lee admits that to himself, then moves on. I loved them both.

      The illustrations are incredible! You should definitely check out Blotch’s website, they have their own independent projects as well, which was wonderful 🙂

      If you read this one, I’d love to know what you think about it.

    • Hey saga,

      As far as I’ve been able to find, the ebook format is only available from Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. The publisher, Sofawolf, only seems to sell the paperback. And while it would be wonderful to own in paperback, I realize that the price is too much for many when they can buy it in ebook.

  • Hi Cole , I’ve been umming and aahing about this for a while. Its sold now damnit.This is a really great review.

    Who are these lucky people who have books they haven’t read? With me its- buy it read it, desperately read the last but one again, read Jessewave grrr want to buy another one………

    • Haha. I can only speak for myself Raine, but I tend to have a happy finger when looking at ebooks. I end up buying way more than I can read, and then they slowly gather. Before I know it, I have tons of books backlogged that I need to read. But no, I always want more. Its a terrible addiction. I think you’re doing pretty good!

  • Wonderful review Cole. I have never read any anthropomorphic books so this would be a first for me. I love football and I love animals and I guess I would like to see how they work in a romance. lol.

    • I really think you’ll like this one Wave. Not only is it a great love story, but it really explores the sport.

      The POV was also really interesting, because though it is told in alternating viewpoints, sometimes months will go by told by one of them. Therefore, we don’t become hyper-aware of their feelings in relation to each other. It set up their often verbal sparring and the relationship between the two of them to show how they are often unaware of the others feelings. I like that, and that I had to work for it.

      Its a great book, I can’t wait to read Isolation Play.

  • I love this book. I actually just finished Waterways recently and it’s another delightful tale. I think the clever writing with animals makes this a total win. At the core this is just like any other m/m romance with one closeted guy and one not.. yet the twist with animals makes it new and fresh.

    • I read your review of this on Goodreads yesterday and I was happy to see that we felt pretty much the same way about this book 🙂 I really thought that this might take me a while to read, but I ended up reading it in one day. I just couldn’t put it down.

      You make a good point about it just being a love story like any other. Sure, the anthropomorphism makes this different, but I think it also puts some people off. I had wondered before I read this if this would be like reading a shifter novel with shifted sex, but it wasn’t like that at all. Whether shifted sex bothers some people because it is animals, or because of the degree of animalism they go about it I have no idea. I have never had a problem with shifted sex. But I was really surprised to see that the sex within Out of Position to be much more human and emotional that I sometimes see in stories about humans.

      I can’t wait to read Waterways, it sounds like such a good story 🙂

  • Interesting. I wasn´t aware of anthropomorphic in novel, I have only seen it before in manga.
    Thank you for your review and for the links 🙂

    • Hi Helena! I haven’t read any manga, but I was happy to find this new genre (new to me, anyway). Let me know what you think if you check it out. If this one is not to your taste, I have also heard great things about his other stories, especially Waterways, which is a coming of age novel.

  • This book was sooo fab. I loved it and I agree with Kassa Waterways was just as good. Can’t wait for the Isolation Play review.

    • Hey luci! I’m glad to hear that you loved this novel as much as I did. I can’t wait to read Waterways as well 🙂 At least you don’t have to wait for Isolation Play for too long. My review will be up next Wednesday 🙂

  • Hi Cole, thanks for another great review! 🙂
    I’ve been wanting to read this one for ages but forgot about it. Now reading your review and the comments I remember that the availability was and apparently still is a problem for European folks. At least when you want to buy the paperback. And because of the illustrations I’d love to have this as paperback. *sighs*

    Just to make sure I got it correctly: this is a novel with some illustrations, not a completely illustrated graphic novel, so to speak?

    • I’m sorry Lilli, that is such a shame. It is a novel with some illustrations. The illustrations are pretty few, actually, and highlight the most pivotal scenes. There are about 6-7 illustrations, if I can remember correctly, and most of them are published on the publisher’s website that I linked above.

      I hope you can find some way to work it out 🙂

  • Wow, you all are sure broadening my reading horizons! I LOVE sports books, but I never would have gone further than the cover of this book. Thanks so much for reviewing this. What an awesome site!

    • You know, this is one of those cases where I can actually very glad that I didn’t see the cover until I had agreed to review the book. It is not that I dislike the cover, not at all, but I tend to shop by the cover and I know that I would have passed this one by without reading the blurb. I’m so happy that I didn’t do that 🙂

  • I’ve known about this novel for a good long time now. Come last June I finally procured a copy of it. Read the entire thing on a flight from Boston, MA to Edinburgh, SCO. I’ve since read it another 3 times, scribbled all over my copy with notes about thematic connections, key moments of characterisation, imagery that runs through the novel, and… well you get the idea.

    The point you’ve made in the above is the same as I have been scrawling over pages, and exhaustingly attempting to convey to anyone who will listen: This book – regardless of anthropomorphisation – is a love story. A love story so well written that I dare anybody that feels averse towards anthro-novels (if you’ll excuse the expression) to read Dev and Lee’s story without becoming totally enraptured in their tale.

    • I agree with you Eos. I think that a lot of people who might be turned off by the idea of anthropomorphism would be surprised to find how much they like this book. I certainly loved it, and even I was a bit unsure at first.

      I’m glad that you loved this story as much as I did and I hope that Isolation Play turns out the same way!

      Thanks for your comment Eos!

  • Great… now I am going to have a Tony the Tiger fetish. 😛 I hate sports but this story sounds clever; so I’m off to buy some cereal and this book.

    • Hah! I kept thinking of Tony the Tiger too! I kept waiting for Dev to look at Lee and say Yooouuuu’re Greeeaaat! Now I want some cereal too 🙂

      This is a wonderful book, a really great romance and love story. I never really liked football because I didn’t understand it. And I live in Oklahoma, where football and God are the reigning kings 🙂 But this explained football to me in a way that I actually might watch a game soon and see how I like it.

      I can’t wait to know what you think 🙂

    • I’m glad that you liked it Marshall, I certainly did. Now, I can’t wait to read Isolation Play 🙂

      Thank you for commenting!

  • This book was fantastic. I loved reading it. I cant wait to reed the second one in the series.

    Another book of his that I would recommend is call Waterways. It doesn’t have to deal with sports directly but what many people go through the “coming to terms” with one self stage. (for lak of a better word)

    • Hi Sperkle! I have heard incredible things about Waterways and I can’t wait to read it as well 🙂 I’d also like to read Volle and Pendant of Fortune.

      Thanks for commenting!

  • Cole, Great Review
    Kyell Gold tells amazing stories. Ive also bought the sequel. Which is an awesome followup. All of his books are well worth reading.
    I was undecided for a longtime before I made the jump to read this book. My regret is that I took so long picking it up.

    • Hey Hannah 🙂 I’m really glad to hear of another fan, and I’m also happy to hear that you loved the sequel, Isolation Play. I’ve just started read it and I’m loving it as well. If all of Kyell Gold’s work is of this quality, I’m definitely going to become a fan for life.

      Thanks for commenting 🙂

  • If you want something different from the adult anthropomorphic Genre I highly recommend:

    Justin Lamar’s Basecraft Cirrostratus ( http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=470 )

    Bridges by Kyell Gold ( http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=433 ) which I think is the most oddly touching of his books.

    and of course if the short story collections FANG each of which have a Kyell Gold story

    in the general audiences section

    Graveyard Greg’s Deathless ( http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=478 )

    and Ryan Campbell’s Smiley and the Hero ( http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=494 )

    • Wow Zia! Thank you so much for all of the info, I’m definitely going to have to check these out. Bridges looks like a really great book — I’m definitely going to have to read that one 🙂

      Thanks again for the info!

      • Bridges is an excellent and highly erotic read. You should find out how it began 🙂

        Also if you’re reading the Volle series remember to get The Prisoner’s Release. I know a fair bit about the available comics and books in this genre 😀

        If you feel like a comic book I.S.O. and Circles are also excellent reads and well crafted. They both have collected trade paperbacks.

        • I really want to read the Volle series, but I was a big unsure where The Prisoner’s Release fit in there — but I think I’ve got it figured out now 🙂

          Thanks so much for the info!

          • Volle to Prisoners Release to Pendant of Fortune to Shadows of the Father.

            Also there are some random, and good bits, in the anthology series Heat which Kyell Gold, and his cohorts K.M. Hirosaki and Rikoshi, have done some good work in

            and Dog Days of Summer is just so pretty to look at. I mean REALLY pretty.

            I do go on a bit too much.

      • FWIW, Smiley and the Hero is more of an adventure/coming of age story. It’s not really adult.

        Or male/male.

  • It’s not just about the price when it comes to paperback and ebooks. I live in Europe and shipping is just a pain.

    The sequel is not out in ebook format yet? Anyone knows when/if it will be?

    • That really is a pain… I wish there was a better system in place.

      Basque said above that the publisher usually waits a year to release the books in ebook format. That’s probably because Sofawolf is not an epublisher, so when they publish a book they run a print release just like most traditional publishers (I assume that is because the majority of their publications are art-based). That allows them to make sure they make back any money they put out to publish the book before making it available online.

      I’m sorry to say that that means you probably will have to wait 🙁

    • Saga, I totally know what you meen :/ And with me being a student the cost is just too much. Did you see my comment earlier? When I asked almost the same Q? It looks like Out of Position is available in Nook-eBook from Barnes and Noble for ca.10 dollars, and it looks like it’s possible to download a Nook-app to the computer so the Nook-ebook can be read on it. But I’ll have to look at it more closely before I try it.

      Sometimes books from small publishers like this I’ve been able to find at adlibris.se but not this one 🙁 I wouldn’t mind buying it in print if it was from a Swedish company.

      • Madde, I bought out of position from Amazon (ebook) and used my a kindle app for my laptop. I’m less happy about not being able to buy the sequel but I guess it’s more their loss.

        • Come on now Madde and saga, I’m Swedish and I bought it along with Waterways from sofawolf, and I’m a poor student myself 😀 Cost me around 650 SEK, money well spent for the amazing work from Kyell Gold.

          Perhaps I can loan it to you!

    • Hey Bogusia! Its been over a week since I finished this book and I’m still thinking about it. I absolutely loved it 🙂

      Thank you, and if you can remember, I’d love to hear what you think when you’ve read it!

      • I love Out of Position!!I have read it and I think the people should read it. I like a lot how Lee and Dev’s relationship evolves even if they have to face a lot of obstacle(Brian is a poor, lonely and unfortunate skunk who is looking for attention), they are always together, and I don’t mean in the physical way. Lee and Dev have to live apart from time to time, but they are always sure of their love and it is beautiful:)This story is not just “furry literature” for me it’s simply very good literature. It is well written,entertaining and authentic. Thanks Cole for presenting this book:)

        • This story is not just “furry literature” for me it’s simply very good literature.

          I agree with you, and I think that that is why all different types of readers seem to love this book, they connect to the characters as characters, not animals 🙂

          I’m so happy that you liked this book, Bogusia 🙂

  • While I loved your review and your enthusiasm about this book, I don’t think I’m quite that adventurous. The concept is just wayyyyyyy too weird 😉

  • Great review! And you should definitely read Bridges as it is also very well written. Still, of all the books by Kyell, Out of Position is my favorite. I ordered it the moment it was released online and read it in one day. Since then I’ve read it 4 more time and had bought the Kindle version as well. While the kindle version is cheaper, the paperback has all the beautiful illustrations drawn by Blotch and they are totally worth the extra money. Also, Sofawolf should have hardcover print of Out of Position out for ordering sometime this summer. I will try to buy it again so that it matches my hardcover Isolation Play, which I think is a great sequel to OOP 🙂

    For the people that turn away from the book because of the anthropomorphism, the sex scenes really read more human and emotional than you would expect. For me, it helps me relate to the characters better since it removes the racial and ethnic aspects of the characters that sometimes feel distracting for me when reading romance novels. Also the swish of the tail and a twitch of the ear actually serve to let readers see what the character feels and thinks. The enhanced sensory for sounds or smells also added to the descriptions in many scenes.

    Kyell has the first two chapters posted on his page for furrag, sofurry and furaffinity, though except for furrag, they all requires people to make an account before reading his stories. People can try reading them first before buying the book to see if they are ok with anthropomorphic characters or not since a lot of the sex scenes in the book take place in those chapters. Personally, the two chapters were the first anthropomorphic stories I had read and I was hooked ever since.

    • TomLeo — Wow, thank you for all of the information and thank you for the compliment. Though, I must say that I was so excited about this book after I finished it that the review pretty much wrote itself. I finished Isolation Play yesterday, and I might even like it more than this story, but I know that will vary between readers because each book has a different tone and deals with different subject matter.

      It is a testament to how much I loved both of these books that I am going to buy both of them in print (which I NEVER do), especially since I didn’t have to splurge on a copy anyway, they were for review. $20 a book is a lot of other ebooks that I won’t be able to buy, but I know that I will read these many times and I want to be able to enjoy the beautiful artwork to its fullest.

      I agree with you about the sex in anthropomorphism (at least here, as these are the only ones I’ve read so far). I didn’t start out with distaste at the idea, but I admit that I was a bit wary. I was so surprised to find that the sex scenes within were so much more intimate than many of the scenes I read between humans, who end up having very animalistic sex themselves. I also think that it helps that we get to know the characters so well and that the ratio of sex to their daily lives is very skewed — there is very little sex in both books. This way, we see how flawed the characters are and after the first few pages, I never thought of the characters as sweet and cartoony animals. They just seemed like people.

      Thanks for your comments and for the info 🙂

  • Having spent much of childhood watching classic Disney movies, I would think that I’d have jumped at the opportunity of reading this book.

    And yet, there’s just something about it (be it the sex, however little there is of it, or just the fact that while I do read shifter romance, I don’t like shifted romances) that makes me think that it’ll be better if I pass on “Out of Position.”

    But hey, different strokes for different folks, right?

    Anyhoo, I just wanted to point out that your review, Cole, has got to be one of the most enthusiastic ones I’ve come across for this book. 🙂

    • Yeah, I can see that. It was certainly a concern of mine, and though, in the end, it didn’t bother me at all, I understand how it might others. I certainly can’t begrudge you that!

      Thank you for the compliment, this book and its sequel have been two of my favorites so far this year 🙂

  • Hey, I got OOP about halfway through last year and it immediately became my favourite book. Originally meant to buy Dog’s Days of Summer, which you mentioned earlier, so glad I bought this as well (Recommend DDOS, loved the characters and the ending). Recently received Isolation Play as well, so excited at reading it, more so since your review.

    Anyway, I was rooting around more recently and found an extra bonus piece to the story. I haven’t yet read it but it takes place near the end of OOP and “sheds a bit more light on a controversial event, and a controversial character”. Skimming through the comments I didn’t notice anyone mention it, so thought I’d let you know.

    http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4039481/

    • Hi Jay-lel! If you loved OoP so much then you’ll definitely love IP. I had no idea there was an extra floating around out there! Thanks for bringing it to my attention 🙂 I can’t wait to read it now.

      Thanks again1

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