In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. – Jose Narosky
City of Soldiers starts out with a homeless veteran being murdered. From there we switch gears and we meet the first of our MCs, Sean. Sean is a disabled vet, living with his sister and her family. He can’t figure out what he wants to do with his life yet. What he is doing is getting drunk, very drunk. While stumbling from the bar one night he meets Roman, another disabled vet, in a very unique way.
Roman is the second MC we meet in this book. He is a member of a small group of disabled vets that operate a kind of vigilante-type group that helps out other homeless vets with food, clothing and other items they might need. He and his buddies Doc, Hoss and Kristian volunteer at food banks, help with V.A. Benefits and try their best to keep their fellow vets safe. They do most of this work underground, using the sewers and some old subway tunnels to get around Philadelphia in secret.
Along the way we meet Brackett, a tough Philly cop that has a history with Kristian and is interested in getting to know Sean. However, Sean is interested in Roman. Sean gets confused when he comes on to Roman, only to find out Roman is asexual. Sean doesn’t understand this at all, how could a man not want sex? He doesn’t believe he can give up sex, even for someone as perfect as Roman. After a conversation with Roman that just goes all different kinds of wrong, Roman sends Sean after Brackett, who it turns out shares a bondage kink with Sean. Roman cares deeply for Sean, but he doesn’t want to hold Sean back if he needs a physical relationship.
Brackett and Sean explore a relationship based only on their shared kink for bondage. This relationship only serves to confuse Sean. He has real feelings for Roman and growing feelings for Brackett; he doesn’t know if he can make a choice between the two men. Roman asks Sean the one question he can’t answer, “If you had to choose, who would it be?” Sean has no idea how to answer.
Roman and his buddies decide they aren’t going to sit around and wait for the police to find out who is killing homeless vets. Against Kristian’s wishes, Roman goes to Brackett to see what the police have on the case and something he sees sets off all the warning bells in Romans’ head. Due to a war injury Roman has what he calls a “swiss cheese brain”. When he finally starts putting the pieces together his mind rebels and he can’t tell what is really happening or what is a real memory.
Once Roman figures it all out, he is betrayed like never before. Not only by who is doing the killings, but when he finds out he is an intended target, along with Brackett. Now I don’t want to give away any spoilers here, but Sean and Kristian become the heroes in the story. Who will end up with whom? Will Sean be able to choose, will he have to? What about Kristian and Brackett? Will they try again or will Sean and Roman be able work out a ménage with him? Well, I don’t know!!! Yep, you got it right, this is a HFN ending, so hopefully we aren’t going to have to wait too long for the next installment. I enjoyed this book, the only exception was the slight jumping around in the writing style, but the story was truly wonderful. If you like large and in charge vets, some great mystery and a little supernatural water thrown in, this is the book for you.
Reviewed by: Jackie
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