Running Close to the Wind

This was a hilarious joyous read. It was ridiculously over the top, it made me cackle with laughter, and it was a grateful escape from the real world for a bit.

I’m already familiar with Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron, so I was very excited when this book was announced. The characters are all so distinct and outrageously funny. It was a breath of fresh air to read something that was hysterically over the top.

I loved the worldbuilding and the setting, something that Rowland excels at. The descriptions of the ship and the sea were lovely. I loved all the additional character we met, and the ending was just *chefs kiss*. A brilliantly written ending that made me giggle.

I highly recommend it - it left me cackling with laughter and I cannot wait to purchase this later in the year.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for the ARC!

Pirates but make it gay and absolutely unhinged. Then take that, and make it horny and polyamorous. Congratulations, you now have Running Close to the Wind.

Avra, lucky poet and partially retired spy for Arast, accidentally stole the one trade secret most of Arast’s fortune is based on. He also accidentally reunited with Captain Tevari, a pirate with a ruthless reputation and his on-again off-again ex of the past fifteen years, who may or may not want him dead, or at the very least as far away from them as possible. To keep himself from being thrown overboard, Avra reveals to Teveri and their crew the secret he’s stolen, and together they devise a plan to sell it and make as much money off it as possible. Enters Julian, an extremely attractive monk bound by an unfortunate vow of celibacy, scholar extraordinaire and last essential piece to help them achieve their plan. Avra now has three problems on his hands: finding a way to sell the secret without being found out and killed by Arast, make up with Teveri, and convince Julian to abandon his vow of celibacy.

Forget everything you’ve just imagined about this book, forget the comparisons to Our Flag Means Death and Six of Crows, however accurate they may be, because whatever your expectations are about this book, it will blow them away. I went in with high expectations, both because of the promise of a heist like in Six of Crows, one of my favourite books ever, and because I loved A Taste of Iron and Gold, the first and only Alexandra Rowland book I’d read. Despite this, nothing had prepared me for the wild, unhinged ride that Running Close to the Wind proved to be.

Alexandra Rowland introduces us to fiery, vivid characters, whose personalities both clash and compliment one another’s. Avra could be an obnoxious and annoying character, what with his exuberant personality and endless supply of dirty jokes, but instead I found him most endearing, and it was incredibly easy to empathise with him and long for his happy ending. Similarly, Teveri’s personality could have driven me away. Instead, and partly thanks to Avra’s adoration of them, they were so easily lovable and relatable. And Julian’s wit and daunting complimented this pair so well, bringing nuance while playing into their games. This made for delicious relationships, and dynamics that had me cackling and squealing, and made me yearn for more development of their relationship, yearn to know what would happen and how it would end. From a writer’s point of view, I am admirative of Alexandra Rowland’s well-proven ability to play with a variety of characters and personalities, and render them all equally vivid and compelling, and to make readers fall for all kinds of relationships, from the calm one in A Taste of Gold and Iron to the fiery one in Running Close to the Wind.

Another thing I loved and admired was the balance between plot and character arc. This story is cleary character-led and the point of it is not so much what happens to the secret, although it is an important part of the story, as what growth the characters undergo. And grow they do. These arcs were mastered from start to end, and Alexandra Rowland found just how much of character arc and how much plot they could give us so that the story would neither feel plot-heavy nor character-heavy. This is no easy feat, but Alexandra Rowland mastered it seamlessly, and it merits some applause.

Overall, Running Close to the Wind is like no other book I’ve ever had to pleasure to read. It is wild and hilarious, and I don’t remember the last time a book made me laugh so much, but I’ll definitely remember that time. This story reads well and quickly, the worldbuilding blending it perfectly with the rest, even for those who haven’t read or don’t remember much about the worldbuilding of A Taste of Gold and Iron, set in the same world. Running Close to the Wind is a masterpiece of a story, lighthearted and yet treating serious topics without weighing down the atmosphere of the book. It is endlessly fun, surprisingly crude and dirty in its jokes, and vivid from beginning to end. Those who have loved Freya Marske’s books will most likely love this book as well, as will Alexandra Rowland’s fans and anyone interested in queer pirates. If you dislike sex-related jokes or crude language, refrain from reading this book, as it is riddled with such jokes and language—and it is what makes part of its charm.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for provinding me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are mine and unbiased.

I absolutely loved Running Close to the Wind!
This book was described as Six of Crows meets Our Flag Means Death and while I still haven't read Six of Crows... Our Flag Means Death is one of my favourite TV shows!
This made me super excited as well as made this book one of my most anticipated releases of this year!

I couldn't put this book down!
It was really well written and I really liked the writing style. Alexandra Rowland is definitely becoming a new favourite author.
The strongest part of the book and my favourite was definitely the characters.
I just really loved them all so much!

I highly recommend reading this book as it was amazing and everyone should definitely read it!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and honestly review an advanced reader’s copy of this book.
I would like to now spend some time screaming about this book. Because this book is everything to me.

I don’t know where to start. I thought A Taste of Gold and Iron was perfect but this?? This is even more perfect. This book had me smiling the whole way through, and laughing out loud far too often. It was written in such a slutty way without including actual smut, and that is my favourite.
I need more. I need more books written in this world, I need more of the fantastic character work this author delivers every single time. I humbly request more pathetic little raccoon men. I love Avra so much, what a sad pathetic-kitten of a man.
I also loved Julian, I loved Tev, I loved Cat, this book is just full of hilarious and endearing characters, and fun pirate hijinks, and Avra being an attention slut.

It ended far too soon. I’m actually reading this ARC while I’m sick, and honestly it’s cheered me up so much. Alexandra Rowland is an auto-buy author for me now, and I highly recommend their work.

I can only give this 5 starts, but please know that in my heart, I have given it 100/5⭐️, because that is the dramatic score dear Avra deserves

i don't know what i'm more happy about — that i got to read this ahead of its release or that i got to read this at all because the book is just. uhhhh. it's. i have EMOTIONS OKAY

this author has been on my radar for quite a while now, i have read three other books by them aside from this one and i suspect that RCW sort of nailed it down for me that i will read ANYTHING they write. i will eat it up and then word-vomit everywhere about how good it was. watch me.

my favourite thing about this particular book is how absolutely unserious and completely unhinged it is. i expected the world-building to be exquisite (alex's trademark, in my opinion), but the way it's intertwined with this absolute delight of the story, where the mc's inner monologue had me constantly look up at the ceiling and sigh with the knowledge that nothing will ever be as funny and good as this, is literal magic. it's horny and unapologetic about it. it knows how to get down and have some real fun!

avra's definitely the star of it all, as well as my life. such a marvellous creature, feral, with no fucking filter and zero inhibitions. i wish i could walk through life the way he can. the horniness of the book is largely (but not fully) his contribution. i love this man to bits.

the author also managed to sneak in some healthy relationship communication and a plot to undermine a whole fucking government. this one sentence should be enough to get you in, if you weren't interested already. this reads like cozy fantasy despite the stakes being actually somewhat high, there's no actual smut involved (not that i would mind tbh), but a very clear-cut throuple is in development which made me want to sob in jealousy for the next ten years.

i also want to say that this is something that my indie-loving friends will appreciate, i think. it has the type of queerness and authenticity i came to enjoy in that particular part of the book community, and i cannot wait for some of you to read this

This was the most perfect and absurd book I've read in a long time. Rowland writing was delightful.! I loved it so much, cannot recommend enough

When I read A Taste of Gold and Iron, about a year and a half ago now, I thought that such an amazing book - the kind that I will desperately and shamelessly thrust into the hands of anyone I know and a great many people I don't purely for the opportunity to have more people to talk about it with - was the kind of thing that a single author could only produce once in their career. Let me tell you, I have never been more glad to be wrong than I was reading Running Close to the Wind. In fact, I might go so far as to say that this book was even better. I am writing this review at two o'clock in the morning because I am dead certain that I cannot possibly sleep until I have shared how fantastic this book is with the world.

I cannot begin to express how much I loved every single character. Most of all Avra, who is possibly the whiniest, neediest and most annoying chaos gremlin that anyone's imagination could possibly produce (and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible). I oscillated between wanting to kiss the man and strangle him, often in the same sentence, and most of the other characters felt much the same way. He's horny as hell (everyone is), he has somehow managed for fifteen years not to get fired from a job that he possesses no discernible aptitude towards, he's so suspiciously lucky no one will ever play a game of chance against him but he's still luck-agnostic, and a professional hired by his own government to investigate him once told his superiors that there was not a single thought in his head. He is 5'4" and even if this had not been explicitly mentioned in the text, you could tell purely by the energy that radiates from him at all times. Imagine the ultimate sad wet cat of a character, but give him a sense of self-importance and absolutely no impulse control, and you will come close to conceptualising Avra Helvaçi.

And what can I say about Teveri? Wonderful character. Perpetually in a state of very understandable mild irritation towards Avra, even when they are considering having sex with him. Frequently much more than mildly irritated by Avra's existence, especially when he is making annoying noises for attention (also very understandable). They're the captain of a pirate ship that they claimed after everyone on it died from the plague. They are definitely insane and I love them for it. I would say that Avra is their number one enabler, because whatever crazy ideas they have on their mind, he probably has a worse one, so theirs seem quite reasonable given the options. They have neither the time nor the patience for anyone's bullshit, and their crew would probably follow them to the end of the earth, but every single crew member would be bitching about it the whole way there.

Oh and Julian, the monk. Everyone is attracted to him. It's a whole thing. It was a great running theme, and honestly got funnier the more people who met him and immediately agreed that he was hot. He utilises this, largely with gleeful abandon, though mostly manages to come across as very monkly about it whenever anyone other than Avra is paying attention. He swore a vow of celibacy to join a monastic order which requires its disciples to give up the thing that most occupies one's thoughts. He does sciency things despite seemingly not knowing all that much about sciency things, except relative to the rest of Teveri's crew. He once had a conversation about maybe killing some important people, and nearly got executed over it. After finding out that the holy site he originally left his monastery to seek is now an establishment that serves curry, he seemingly just decided to stick around, and you know what? Good for him.

Underlying all three of these characters, though, is something that I absolutely delight in seeing: the core beliefs that they live by, the things that they will not compromise. It was just so evident that so much thought had been put into these characters, who they are, their past, their principles, what led them to where they are now. Don't let the comedy deceive you. This book was crafted, masterfully, and I don't doubt that for every little detail that makes it onto the page, there are another ten behind it that exist for no purpose other than to shape who these people are.

I haven't even talked about the setting! The plot! The other characters! The cake competition! Honestly, I could wax lyrical about this book until the cows come home, and I still wouldn't be anywhere near running out of good things to say about it. To avoid spoiling too much, I will simply say this: if you watched Our Flag Means Death and thought "if only these pirates were even more disastrous as human beings," then you should be running to buy this book right now. If you want a book with a cast so queer that you will forget there could've been people that weren't, this is absolutely for you. If you want something that can make you forget about the world for a little while and potentially start snorting with laughter with great frequency, Running Close to the Wind is a book after your own heart, I promise you.

This is a book of shenanigans. The most wonderful kind of shenanigans, in that almost every single one of them will leave you doubled over with laughter, and yet they still manage to all tie back to the main plot, often in the most surprising ways. The story is definitely a comedy, but it's more than that, too. It's also about found family, being horny for monks who have taken vows of celibacy, and stealing from the government. (I am sort of kidding, but not really.) It balances hilarity with sincerity brilliantly, and rightfully takes its place among my all-time favourite books.