A.C. Thomas’ ‘Restricted’ follows Ari, Dr Aristotle Campbell, who’s searching for his twin brother. Leaving his home world, Britannia, he searches for Theo through the galaxy with the assistance of the pilot, Orin in exchange for the ship.

I really liked the premise of this short novel – a short sci-fi with LGBTQIA elements and I was sold. But unfortunately, I felt a bit disappointed with the story. ‘Restricted’ throws us straight into the story, without any unnecessary info-dumping, which generally a good thing, but here I felt like a bit of worldbuilding could be useful, especially as ‘Restricted’ acts as book one of a larger series. The bits and pieces of the world we witness seem to be interesting, and I wanted to know more about it. Despite the potential for a lot of action, drama and stressful situations, ‘Restricted’ seemed to focus predominantly on the relationship between Ari and Orin, with numerous sexual encounters between both characters. While it normally wouldn’t be a bad thing in adult sci-fi, the main plot – finding Theo – almost felt dismissed and forgotten at moments.

Overall, ‘Restricted’ hasn’t ended up being my kind of sci-fi, and maybe better suited to those preferring stories focusing on romance rather than anything else.

I was given a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

As a lover of sci-fi and a lover of LGBTQ+ fiction, Restricted by A. C. Thomas sounded like it would be right up my street. The story follows Ari and Orin, a scientist and a pilot respectively, as they traverse space in search of Ari’s brother Theo, who has been abducted. They follow clues that Ari believes Theo left for him and grow closer as they travel, both of them doubting the other’s ability to love them whilst also dealing with fighting people enforcing the law and others happily working against it.

I enjoyed the romance of this book. I am a huge fan of mutual pining, especially with a dual perspective like Restricted has that shows you the depth of each person’s feelings and doubts. I was rooting for Ari and Orin to talk to each other about their feelings for the whole book, and there were so many stomach flip inducing moments. The story is fun, and the characters we meet along the way are interesting.

With that being said, I struggled with the book’s setting. It almost seems unnecessary that this book is set in space, with how few elements of sci-fi play into it. The book has a steampunk vibe, which works well, but it lacked the rich world that I love to see in books set in space. There were no aliens whatsoever, and the planets that they visited on their journey weren’t described in enough detail to establish them in detail. Ari’s home planet is called Britannia, which left me confused - is this a world based on our own, where Britain colonised space? Or is this a completely separate world that just takes inspiration in place names from ours? Also, why and how did humans colonise space? How long ago? Why this area of space? Why is this oh so important boundary there? There are “enforcers” everywhere, and a very entrenched class system, but how does any of the politics of the world work? It felt like the book was an attempt at a translation of the British empire, but one in which the only people were British. Ari and Theo didn’t encounter any other spoken languages on their journey, and there was no-one who seemed to have been colonised. I would have liked to have seen a lot more of this explored, but I realise that’s because what I love about sci-fi - rich world building.

I also took slight issue with the fact that people with body modifications - or “augments” - are only portrayed as people who are morally grey at best or scary to the main characters. This came off as a tad ableist to me, and I would love to see some positive representations of people with augments, rather than just seeing them as people who are something other than human due to their additional parts.

If you’re looking for a fun and sexy tale of two men falling in love whilst in very close quarters that just so happens to be set in space, then I think you’ll love Restricted. But for me it just lacked the answers to the questions I had about the world Ari and Orin existed in.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions stated in the review are my own.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rating: ★★★

Restricted is a science fiction novel about a scientist named Ari, who is on a mission to find his lost twin brother Theo. But in order to even get started on his mission he needs to use his spaceship and he's not much of a flyer. So he seeks out a pilot. Enter Orin, a pilot from the Verge and the complete opposite of the shy Ari. We follow them on their travels as they try to do the most dangerous thing one could do - jump the Verge.

I found this book to be a really fun and engaging read overall. Some parts sat well with me, some not as much. In this review I'll break it down in detail.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

What I liked:
+ Ari is an amazing character
+ The world concept is interesting
+ The sex scenes were done well

What I didn't like:
+ Orin was too flat for me
+ The plot got a bit repetative
+ There could have been more world building

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

World building:
I think the idea of the world is a great concept with huge potential. However, I found myself wondering what this world even looks like half-way through the book. I understood the concept of the Core and the Verge, but I feel like a lot more could have been added to it. We can mostly see that there's a huge difference between the two through our two main characters, but other than that we don't learn that much.
I really liked how we got to see different settings on Ari and Orin's search for singers on their journey. However, we didn't get to learn much about these palces as everything was restricted to bars and the docks.

Because of all this, I really wished the author had added more information about the world they created.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Plot:
The drive of the plot was great. I felt like the mission really raised the stakes for Ari and made the story more dramatic.
My problem with the plot was its flow. It got really repetitive. It always felt like they would go to place A, then sex scene, then go to place B, then sex scene and so on. It made it quite predictable and a bit boring.
Another issue I had was that the beginning felt really rushed to me, especially when it came to the relationship between Ari and Orin. I really enjoyed the part of them visiting different people, but I feel like this book could do with an extra 100 pages or so, just to give the plot a more fluid feel.
I really loved the ending and it did make me interested enough to read the second book when it comes out.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Characters:
I adored Ari. I thought he was really well done and that his inner struggles were explored in a good way. Orin, on the other hand, fell a bit short for me. I thought he had a really interesting history, which could have been explored more. I felt like most of his thoughts revolved around him thinking how hot Ari is and he didn't strike me as deep of a character as Ari because of that.
I still believe he has a lot of potential and I hope we see more of this and his struggles in the second book.

!!! SPOILER !!

Even though he only showed up for the final chapter, I adore Theo already. He's an idiot and his relationship with Ari is quite something. I really can't wait to read more about him in the second book.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Romance:
I think the romance was mostly done well. Ari and Orin are really cute together and I like that they are so different from one another. I think the sex scenes between the two were done well.
The only thing I really didn't like is that I felt their infatuation with one another happened too fast. I personally prefer a good slow burn romance and this was the complete opposite of that in the beginning.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Summary:
I thought this book had a strong romance and great potential for world building. Sadly, I feel like an extra 100 pages would have done wonders for it to add in the information I was lacking and make the plot more fluid. I still thought it was a fun read and if you are looking for a steamy gay space opera, then you found yourself your book!

I have a strong feeling that this book began its life as Han/Luke fanfic and was then thinly disguised as something else to avoid lawsuits from Disney. We’ve all been there, so I’m not judging; just observing.

We have a naïve, inexperienced younger man, Ari, in search of his twin (brother), and an older, more experienced scruffy space pilot Orin. Ari hires Orin to fly his spaceship so that he can go after his abducted twin Theo. There’s instant lust between the two, which they then act on at every opportunity in the seclusion of the spaceship. I presume the title of the book comes from that seclusion; otherwise it makes no sense.

There’s very little plot. The pair lands on several planets to look for Theo and has adventures on them and then they leave. Some twists reflect the original material, like Orin having dumped a ship full of cargo when he was captured by the Enforcers, the inter-planetary bogeymen. The focus is on the two of them falling in love. And then it ends. It’s a fairly amusing ending and saves a lot, even though it sort of voids the entire story.

World and character building are minimal. The author has clearly been taught that they should start as close to the story’s beginning as possible, and it does just that without any background info about the place, time or people. We’re given titbits about the characters along the way, but almost nothing about the world they live in. There are rich core planets shaped like Victorian England—with parchments for some odd reason, considering there’s shortage of water and plenty of electric communication devices. Then there’s the Verge, which I presume is a ring of systems around the Core that resemble Wild West à la Firefly with saloons and brothels, but governed by the laws and enforcers of the Core. And then there are illegal and lawless systems outside, where our heroes are headed to. That’s pretty much it, but since the main focus is in the bedroom, it doesn’t really matter.

This is a nice romance with great sex scenes, so I gave it three stars. It’s even better if you imagine the pair as your favourite scruffy-looking nerf herder and the best bush pilot in the Outer Rim Territories. If you like M/M erotic romance, this is for you.

Orin is full of innuendo, endearments, cursing, and very earnest when it comes to Ari. Ari is uptight, tense, and unsure but incredibly sweet in Orin’s arms. The rascally ships captain seducing his passenger, while being seduced himself was cute and sweet.

An entertaining tale of Victorian manners, pirate-ish manners, space travel, violent settings with violent people, a ship named Delilah, a missing twin, and above all two totally opposite men stumbling their way into love while traveling among the stars.

Great writing and world building made this a totally enjoyable book to read. Ends with a HFN. Second book to be out in 2021.

I came across this book mostly because of the cover. Foolishly I assumed it would give me a nice Steampunk story. I was wrong. There is mention of some Victorian-steampunk in the Glossary, but I didn't notice anything of that during the book. Matter of fact, I noticed nothing Si-Fi or Steampunk related in that book. There was - sex. A lot of it. Too much of it in my opinion. I caught myself skipping after the first time and it seemed to me like there was a sex scene every two chapters.
I couldn't stand Orion. From the very first mention of his name, he was annoying me and it got worse and worse during the book. Ari, however, was a character I liked at first and then I completely lost interest in him. I didn't care for the main characters. At all. I didn't sense even the slightest bit of chemistry between them, they were boring and the writing style was... Well, it wasn't exactly for me. Something felt off about it.
I liked Theo, though, and I was so happy when he finally showed up. If the next book is about him, I think I might read it. But if it's about Ari and Orion again, I going to quit.
Since Netgalley provided me with a free copy, I feel bad leaving such a critical review, but they're expecting honesty and I am being honest. I am sure someone will enjoy this book, but that person is not me.

This book got my attention by, not gonna lie, its cover. It's amazing! Simple yet catchy. And when I read the blurb it was clear I must read it: a romance across stars while trying to rescue a kidnapped twin! Sounded amazing. And it was.

Not being a native speaker, it was a little bit hard understanding every word Ari uses LOL Mostly at first, since as the book went I kind of got used to his speaking style and vocabulary. But it was not something I minded, because it meant that he actually speaks differently than Orin and the other Verge people he meets during his adventure; it means the author achieved making both Ari and Orin actually different and not just because it's said so in the book but because they really are.

Ari and Orin meet when the first is looking for a pilot that can take him beyond the Verge to look for his twin brother Theo who him believes was abducted. As Orin has nothing to do, since he doesn't own his own vessel at the moemnt and Ari offers his as payment, he accepts without thinking twice. I liked their relationship, it's easygoing and they somewhat fit perfectly even if they are total opposites. Or maybe because of that. Ari is the classical naive, innocent and inexperienced guy and he doesn't value himself that much. Same happens with Orin, but in a different sense: his upbringing makes him devalue himself and he thinks he's stupid and undeserving of someone as purehearted as Ari.

During this adventure they will not only discover they are perfect for each other, but they will also get to understand they are more than they believe.

What dissapointed me a little bit was that I was expecting a little more action. There are things happening, but when you look back... there are not that many intense scenes. Mostly of them investigating and finding clues on what could have happened to Theo and also of them getting to know each other, if you know what I mean... But it's only towards the end when we get to see a little bit of action, and that's pretty short-lived.

With all, I can't wait to read the second book and discover more about Theo and his adventures. I hope to rediscover this character because he left a little bit sour taste in my mouth... But I guess it's because we don't get to know much about him. I hope, also, to see more of Ari and Orin in that second book.

I received this ebook in exchange for an honest review.
I loved this book. It was such a fun (relatively) short read. Haven't read a fantasy romance in forever and this hit all the spots. Opposites attract, an interesting fantasy world, and the prospect of another romance.
There is nothing much to critique and if you love a bit of fantasy fun with a virgin hero (honestly a favorite), this is definitely for you.
I only wish we could have learned a bit more about Orin's history/origin. And I would have loved a fluff epilogue. The ending was a bit abrupt, though that is probably on account of a second book with a new couple coming soon. Can't wait for Theo and Park's Lovestory!