Riding Double edited by Anne Regan

Title: Riding Double
Edited by: Anne Regan
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: Anthology (105k/298 pgs)
Buy the book: Publisher

Blurb:

The romantic allure of the cowboy is unparalleled. These sweaty, dusty icons of the West, past and present, still melt hearts and raise pulse rates, whether the man’s wearing a ten-gallon hat, chaps and spurs, or nothing at all. In these stories of romance with a Western flair, love softens the most hardened range rider and passion fires the most stoic ramrod’s blood. Fate may throw a few twists in their path, but at the end of the day, these men will be riding double into the sunset.

Review:

Cowboys are a romantic hero staple, regardless of sexual orientation. They can encompass historical settings, contemporary, private ranches or public events. This anthology attempts to embrace all of those, encouraging readers to fall in love with the rough and ready men populating its pages. As with any collection, quality can really vary from story to story, but for the most part, I found these to be serviceable but ultimately mostly forgettable.

The anthology starts with “Trial by Fire” by Lacey-Anne Frye. The first of several historical stories, it’s about Cord McCroskey, a small ranch owner, who gets a surprise visitor one night – the man (and lover) who left him high and dry four years earlier. Russell robbed Cord to have money to go on the run, in an attempt to hide from the gunslinger who’s been after him. He comes back because he needs a place to hide, throwing Cord’s life back into turmoil. As an opening story, it’s well paced, but the men felt like stock characters rather than true individuals, with the D/s relationship between the two hinted at and never really explored. The conflict was convenient and predictable, and when I finished it, I feared where the rest of the anthology was going to take me.

Those fears were allayed some by the second story, the much shorter and more tightly controlled “Rode Hard and Put Away Wet” by Kate Sherwood. Cooper is a thirty-eight year-old bull rider, whose primary goal is just to make enough money to stay on the circuit. He’s mildly obsessed with a much younger rider, the showboating Tyson, and this manifests in the casual sexual relationship the two have struck up. Cooper’s characterization just crackled from the start. Combined with the incredibly hot erotica, it would have been enough for me. But the author went a step further, turning the world of bull riding into an analogy about surviving relationships, and that added depth turns what could have been a throwaway erotic short into one of my two favorite stories of the bunch.

That high wasn’t maintained for long. Rowan McAllister’s “Courtin’ Trouble” starts out strong, with the unconventional half-Chinese Peter as its primary protagonist, who ends up inadvertently helping an old man survive an attack then gets offered a job on the old man’s son’s ranch. Peter is a lovely hero, but the blunt realism of racism and violence set in the first half of the story doesn’t mesh with the overly romantic and sappy latter half.

My reading ground to a half for the next three stories, easily the weakest of the lot for me. “Mr. August” by K.R. Foster tries to build surprises into the short space by withholding history at the top of the story, which made it impossible to care or get involved with either one of the two leads even after the truth about why they were meeting up at this point was revealed. “Surviving the Crossing” by Maria Albert tried telling the story of a cowboy trying to survive getting across a swollen river, but started out so bogged in detail that was mostly irrelevant to what was going on, it lacked any sense of suspense or pacing to give it urgency it felt like it needed. And truth be told, I almost gave up after “Cowboys and IT-ians” by Xara X. Xanakas. In this, a cantankerous giant of a ranch owner calls for an IT tech to come out and service his computer, and ends up having sex with the guy on his desk. The set-up is a straight up play on the old porn mainstay about the plumber/handyman/technician showing up to fix something and not even done very well. The humor failed to work for me, it lacked any kind of originality, and it wasn’t nearly hot enough to overcome all that.

There was only one way to go from here – up. It began the climb back into more solid storytelling with “Facing Up” by J.M. McLaughlin, the tale of a sheriff who travels back to the town where he got his start to bury the man who’d been his mentor and face the lover he’d left behind. The story itself is very sweet, but too short to pack the kind of emotional wallop it could have. I felt more about the loss of the old friend than I did the romance.

Then comes “The Real Thing” by B.G. Thomas. I really liked the start of this, with the young Bryan getting duded up in what he calls cowboy drag to go hit a bar in search of a real cowboy to fulfill his greatest desire. It was a different take on the theme, and had a certain air of authenticity to it that a lot of the others lacked. I especially liked that Bryan was interested in finding an older man, and the earnestness with which he attacks his desires was appealing to say the least. That being said, the pacing started to lag about halfway through, and that same earnestness I’d loved at the start grew thin after a while. Still, it was better than some of the stories that had come previously.

By this point, my expectations were very much middle of the road. I had come into the anthology only having read one of the authors before (and not liking that story I’d read), and while I was familiar with some of the other names, not one of them had ever caught my eye. So when I reached Jane Seville’s “In Temperance,” I didn’t expect much. It’s the story of saloon owner Seth and the trail boss who comes through town one day and spends the night. It’s not long – less than six thousand words – and there’s little that actually goes on, but this one story made up for all the less than satisfying stories that came before it. I loved it. The writing is subtle and sophisticated, the characters achingly well-drawn, and it has without a doubt the best last line of any in the collection. It proves that sometimes less is more. Thinking about it days after having read it still brings a smile to my face.

I would love to say the rest of the anthology is just as strong, but the final three stories fall back into a serviceable but safe mode that never really engaged me. “Deluge” by Zahra Owens is the story of a man who goes off in search of his partner when he fails to come home in time, and while there isn’t anything really wrong with it, it just felt very by the numbers. “Hitting the Trail” by Maggie Lee rises a little bit higher, telling the tale of two Civil War vets whose wartime friendship has moved into civilian life beyond, but the anthology ends on a very saccharine note with “Out on the Range” by Ariel Tachna, the story of two ranch hands who come together in a world that feels a little too-good-to-be-true.

A reader’s satisfaction with this anthology will like come down to why they’re reading it in the first place. For cowboy lovers, there’s definitely enough in here to satisfy that particular kink, whether they like historical or more modern settings. For readers who like to try new authors, there’s a wide variety to choose from, from those who provide a grittier atmosphere to the sweeter, more rose-colored end of the spectrum. For me, it was worth it to read Jane Seville and Kate Sherwood for the first time. I’m not going to read this anthology again, but you can be very sure I’ll keep an eye out on those two authors.