“If you’re worried that you don’t please me, you can be easy, Soft-Skin. Your body was made to pleasure mine.”

The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith is not just a book. It is an experience, one that swallowed me whole and left me reeling in ways I have yet to recover from. At over 700 pages, it is vast in scope, unapologetically brutal, and achingly beautiful, with a depth that few romances even dare to attempt.

This is the book that ruined me for months, plunging me into a reading slump where nothing else came remotely close. Every book I picked up since seemed to lack luster. And I know that I would never be able to find the same high as I found between the pages of this devastating book. Even now, eight months later, I still catch myself thinking of the story at odd moments, still yearning for another novel that could make me feel the way this one did. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece of dark romantic fantasy.

The story begins with Amber Katherine Bierce who has only ever known hardship. When her mother dies, leaving Amber and her fragile sister Nicci on the verge of eviction, Amber seizes what little hope they have left: two tickets on a colony ship bound for another world. But what promises escape turns into nightmare when the ship crashes on an unknown, hostile planet. From the beginning, Amber is the one who shoulders responsibility, whose stubborn independence and instinct keep others alive, even when those same people repay her only with cruelty and suspicion. She is a heroine who is far from perfect; stubborn to the point of frustration. But that makes her all the more real, all the more human.

Enter Uyane Meoraq, Sword of Sheul, warrior, priest, and reluctant heir to his father’s House. A lizard man. A holy executioner. A creature so disciplined, devout, and steeped in violence that falling in love with him should be unthinkable. And yet, Meoraq is the standard by which I will measure every anti-hero hereafter. Or every monster hero as well.

He is ruthless, a lizard man torn between his faith and his desire, bound by his duty and yet undone by one stubborn, brash, and impossible human woman. His religiosity anchors him, tempers the violence that simmers constantly beneath the surface, but it is Amber who makes him falter, who unsettles him, who becomes the one thing he cannot give up. Watching him resist her, crave her, and ultimately yield to the inevitability of their bond is nothing short of epic.

Their relationship is forged in fire, on a journey through a dying world scarred by the sins of its past. They argue, they circle each other like adversaries, their attraction at once a source of fury and salvation. And when they do finally come together, it is not in the neat, tidy arc of conventional romance but through struggle, suffering, and an intimacy that is both tender and savage. Azrael from Land of the Beautiful Dead may have been unforgettable, but Meoraq is something else entirely. He is a character steeped in darkness and yet when he loves, he loves with a totality that wrecks you.

R. Lee Smith is an author who does not flinch from depraved darkness. This book contains cruelty, rape, fat-shaming, and horror so raw that it twists your gut. The depravity of the humans who survive the crash, the vile selfishness of Nicci and Scott, the unspeakable atrocities Amber endures at the hands of Zhuga and the raiders; these are not easy pages to read by any means. And yet, the ugliness is what makes the beauty shine brighter and the story so wholesome and worth it. When Meoraq refuses to cast Amber aside, even after everything she suffers at the hands of her captors, when he claims her without hesitation, it is one of the most powerful declarations of love I have ever encountered.

The world building is staggering. This is not just the backdrop to a romance; it is a planet with its own theology, history, and sins. The revelation of Gann’s downfall; bioweapons, nano-tech, and an entire civilization undone by its hubris is chilling, and the way faith and ritual evolved to contain violence was both fascinating and tragic.

Meoraq’s pilgrimage to Xi’Matezh elevate the story beyond romance into something almost mythic. And Amber, the atheist who mocks prayer and the existence of God, finds herself crying out to the very same when she has nothing left. The irony, the resonance, it all leaves you hollow and awed.

There were moments I wanted to shake Amber for clinging to her worthless sister, for fighting Meoraq even when he had proven himself a hundred times over. And yet, her flaws are what makes her believable, relatable, and her strength and fortitude, what makes her worthy of the Sword of Sheul. Amber gives as good as she gets, her fierceness and loyalty are traits that stands out. She is not some idealized heroine but a flawed, scarred woman who stands tall in a world determined to break her. Together, she and Meoraq are not easy, but they are inevitable. Theirs is a love fated across galaxies, and in Meoraq’s words, Amber was the woman he was born into this world to find.

Do I wish there had been an epilogue, a glimpse of Amber and Meoraq years later, forging a life together after everything? Absolutely. But even without it, the ending is fitting, devastating, and triumphant in equal measure.

Recommended for: readers who crave true dark romance, with a mix of philosophy, horror, theology, and love all intertwined, who can handle being gutted and remade by a book.

Final Verdict: Brutal, beautiful, and unforgettable, The Last Hour of Gann is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of book, one that ruins you for all others.

Favorite Quotes

There were no atheists in foxholes, it was said, and she guessed when it came to lugging crates uphill in the freezing wind on an alien planet, there were no feminists either. – Amber

“It was a dream,” Meoraq said, getting up. “Dreams don’t mean anything.” He came over to her side of the fire and pulled her blanket back. His body was cool and rough and heavy on top of her, and it felt good in ways that sort of thing never had back on Earth. He caught her chin in a pinch, made her look at him when he entered her. “Dreams are only dreams,” he told her seriously. “This is real.”
She came hard, kicking and thrashing, and suddenly found herself alone in the mess of her blanket with rain falling into her stupidly gaping face and Meoraq once more on his side of the fire, watching her.

“But we’re completely boxed in. If anyone bad comes, the only way out—”
Meoraq unclipped his kzung and showed her the shine of its blade in the stormlight. “—is through them,” he finished, and flared his mouth to bare all his teeth. “Is that man enough for you?”
The flicker of the storm made it difficult to tell, but he thought she smiled. And then she screamed as lightning struck the ground directly outside the window, sending shards of stone into the glass. The thunder that followed shattered what the stones had cracked; the window blew inward and smashed itself across the floor. Meoraq turned his head away from the wall of freezing wind that blasted in at them and was nearly knocked from his feet when Amber slammed up against him.
Like a little fork of lightning inside his mind, Meoraq’s thoughts washed out to white. He could not hear the storm, feel the wind. For a moment—the very briefest moment, the very longest—he was aware of nothing but the press of her body to the whole of his, her hands digging at his back, the warmth that was her breath blowing against his heart. He could not feel himself at all, except where he was defined by her touch.
Her embrace.

“I am not angry with you,” he announced, hoping to provoke her.
“Lies,” she muttered, but she looked at him. Glared at him. And that was better.
“A Sheulek is the master of his emotions,” he told her. “I have every right to be angry with you. I choose the higher path. I forgive you and we will say no more about it. Give me my mending kit.”
She reached it out from beneath her pack, but only held it for a while. “I should have thanked you for this last night,” she said finally. “I don’t know how it is with your people, lizardman, but when it comes to humans, you don’t interrupt a girl’s crying jag and then expect her to be grateful.”
He could not believe this.
“Are you criticizing my behavior?” he asked incredulously.
Her shoulders fell. “Sure sounds that way, doesn’t it? Damn it. Here.”
He did not move to take the kit and, after a few awkward moments, she let her offering arm drop again.
They looked at each other.
She said, without heat and without warning, “I’ve never needed anyone before. Never in my life. I hate that I need you.”

He opened his mouth to tell her she was acting like a child and heard himself say instead, softly, “Do you think I would not call you by your name if I could?”
She looked at him and away, trying to pretend she was not attached to the arm that ended in his grip. “I guess you think it doesn’t matter. I guess you figure as long as I still answer to ‘insufferable human,’ it’s fine.”
“It’s honest, at least.” He sighed, opened his hand and rubbed at his brow ridges instead. “There are three words I could call you that come close to the sound of your name. Taambret, a disease we have that causes festering sores of the mouth.”
She blinked, her brows puckering.
“Mb’z, a vulgar term for one weak of mind,” he continued. “Amyr, the name of a kind of swimming creature that lives and feeds in the mud. And I will not call you by these names.”
“You said…You said it didn’t matter what the word meant as long as—”
“Not for you.”

“Yes. And stop making that face,” he added. “You need the marrow more than meat in these days.”
“I’m not having any.”
He snorted. “Yes. You are.”
“I don’t want it, Meoraq.”
“I don’t want to feed S’kot. Life is full of things we do not want to do and must do anyway.” He turned the strips of tachuqi fat, which were browning up nicely already. “Meat may keep the life in your body a little longer, but no one stays healthy on meat alone. The season for green leaves and grain is done. My cuuvash is spent. Marrow is what I have to give you and you will eat it.”
“I don’t see you forcing it on anyone else.”
“I don’t care about anyone else.”

“Are you with me, Soft-Skin?” he murmured, stroking at her cold, damp brow. “Open your eyes. See me.”
They did open, and Meoraq let out an unmanning shout of relief, but they only rolled back and shut again. She had not seen him, did not know him.
But she had opened her eyes.
“Uyane Meoraq is with you,” he told her, and put his hand over her heart. “Hear me where you are and follow. Sheul, our Father, has set you in my path. So did you come to me and so you belong to me. Do you hear me, woman? You are mine! I found you, I own you, and I forbid you to die!”
His voice, risen to a shout, was a thunder in the tent, a whisper in the world. She did not answer. The heart that beat beneath his hand beat no stronger.
“I won’t leave you,” he said softly. “Please don’t leave me.”
Nothing. She did nothing.
Meoraq curled around her as close as his separate clay could press and closed his eyes. “O my Father, I cry out to You. You gave her to me and if I have not been as grateful as a son should be, I am sorry. But You gave her to me. Now…please…give her back.”

The wind blew over them, stirring the grass and pushing smoke in a hot curtain between them. Meoraq’s eyes on her were unblinking, hot as live coals. She couldn’t look at them, had to look at his dark blood on the sleeve of her last clean shirt instead.
“I’m so sorry.”
He did not reply.
“I should have seen it.”
Still no answer.
“Please…” don’t leave me. Amber bit down on that until her lips stopped shaking, but as soon as she unlocked her jaws, it found another way out as a trembling, “Please don’t be mad at me.”
He broke his gaze at last, turning his terrible eyes and whatever furious emotion was in them on the sky. “I’m not.”

Without speaking, he unbuckled his sword-belt. It and the hooked sword he carried landed on the discarded heap of his tunic.
“What are you doing?” Amber asked, and hated the little whisper in which she asked it.
“I, nothing,” he said brusquely, sitting down in the grass to unfasten his boots. “You are tending my wounds. And you can bathe me while you’re about it.”

Amber picked the cloth out of the grass and washed her face. It was cold. She dunked it in the stewing pouch, now the bathing pouch, and tried again, but the wind took away the heat before her skin had time to really feel it. She dabbed at Meoraq’s bloody scales some more; he couldn’t feel her or the wind or the cold.
She finished cleaning him up, then made one last pass for quills, not so much because she expected to find them, but just so she could keep touching him. The tough old Amber who didn’t need anybody was dead and buried; the weepy, useless Amber who was left needed to be touched tonight, even if all he did was wake up and grab her wrist and tell her to keep her hands to herself.

Amber dabbed unnecessarily at the wound, which had already sealed itself. His blood was hot on her fingers, but cooled fast, darkening to black in the open air. The scent of cloves wafted up. Meoraq slept.
She watched him. After a while, she put her hands on him again, stained now with his blood and hers, and ran them gently back and forth as she stared into his face. She wondered if she would be able to tell him from other lizardmen, if she ever met one. She wondered if he were handsome, for a lizard.

He wanted to give her back her people, as much as he hated the thought of having them back. He wanted to prove they were all dead so her grief would finally end, but he couldn’t do it without killing her blood-kin, her damned Nicci. He wanted Amber, the whole Amber, and he wanted her to want him the way she thought she wanted the cowardly, treacherous cattle who had left her in the grass to die. He wanted all these things, all at the same time, and the conflict left him in such a constant state of resentment and self-disgust and sympathy that he could hardly speak to her at all.

“Open to me.”
She stiffened, staring intently and in tight-lipped silence into his eyes, but then she obeyed without allowing him even a token show of force, submitting as one already in his possession.
He resisted the urge that swept him then, instead touching the soft skin below her brilliant eyes. “You are mine,” he said. It was early for these words. They were meant to come after, when conquest was done, but conquest, it seemed, already was.

“Don’t tell me what I mean.” But his spines lowered and he brushed his knuckles across her brow, then along the shorn half of her head. “How can you say you’re not mine when you gave everything you had to me? Everything you are…” His fingers scraped lightly down her cheek, along her throat and under the neck of her shirt, peeling it back from her skin so that he exposed her bitten shoulder.
And did she roll her eyes? Shrug off his hand? Take even one step back out of his reach? No. She just stood there with her mouth slightly open and her girly heart fluttering and a hot glow way down deep in her belly and let him do it.
“God gave you to me,” he murmured, nuzzling under her jaw. “Even when I did not know how to ask. He found you anyway and put you in my path. You are the woman I was born into this world to find.”

He smiled. “It pleases me that you want to be my well-mannered woman,” he said, peeling back the neck of her shirt. Ignoring her playful slaps, he licked at the mark he’d left in her soft skin. “But I would rather have the insufferable she-warrior I was given. So if you want me, put your hands on me and tell me so.”
“What if I don’t want you?”
“Ah, my wife, is that what’s bothering you?” He licked her again, slowly this time, tasting the strange, rich bitters of her blood, and felt it when she shivered. “We have only been married two days. Surely that is too early for you to start worrying that I might set you aside, especially since you have burned for me so readily thus far.”

“They are people.”
“They may well be, but with no face, no scales, fur in thatches all over and Gann alone knows what else, they are monstrous people.” Uyane looked at him, head canted but spines all the way forward. “And you married one. Why?”
“I had to,” Meoraq said.
Lord Uyane snorted. “There had to be other ways to prove these things were children of Sheul. You’re a young man. You have the fame of your bloodline, the favor of God and the face of your father. Why bind yourself to a…a creature?”
“I had to,” Meoraq said again. “We were married before I even met her. We were married before I was ever born.”

He fetched what tea was left in his stewing pouch after the humans had been at it and poured it into his new metal flask, then brought it back for her to drink. She managed only a few sips, grimacing at the taste, which was a perfectly good winterleaf blend. “For now, know that you are in His sight.”
“Like I was when He let me get on the ship?”
“The ship that brought you to me, yes.” He grazed the backs of his knuckles gently across her brow. “He set you on this path, Soft-Skin. Have faith that He will see you reach this journey’s end.”

“Say something,” she said at last.
“God is in His heaven,” said Meoraq in a distant voice. “And loves me.”
Zhuqa had said something like that once. This time, it was beautiful.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked quietly. “Something I really have known all along. Something that is one hundred percent true. Something…Something I could have built my own shrine on.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no.
“You’re an alien,” she told him. “Or I am. One of us is, at any rate.”
He sighed and rubbed at his brow-ridges.
“Our worlds are billions of miles apart. We come from two entirely different evolutionary trees. You have scales, I have hair. We have different skeletons, different organs, different everything, right down to the number of fingers and toes. We are one hundred percent incompatible. The only thing we have in common is a carbon base.”
“So?” he said wearily.
“So I’m pregnant,” said Amber, and was amazed at how matter-of-fact she sounded, saying it for the first time. “What the hell do you call that if it isn’t God?”

“You told me once that I was good at seeing evidence and, boy, did it piss me off because this is something that I really did not want to see. But men can only push themselves so far, Meoraq, and men with faith can only push so much further. All the evidence is telling me…there’s something else out there, pulling from the other side. I don’t like it,” said Amber bluntly. “I’m not at peace with it. I sure as hell don’t take comfort in it…but I’m glad you do.”
He frowned, tried to look away, but Amber caught his snout and turned him back.
“Because all the things God isn’t for me,” she said, “you are. Because of you, I see Him every day. So start talking, lizardman, but I warn you, you’ve got a hard talk ahead of you if you’re going to convince me there’s no God after He gave you to me.”
She waited, but he didn’t say anything. He took a few deep breaths, then reached up and brushed the back of his hand along her cheek. His eyes closed. He bent and let her guide his head to rest on her shoulder. He put his arms around her. He did not rage.
He wept.

“What are you afraid of the most?”
He was quiet. Neck bent, he opened and closed his mouth several times before finally whispering, “Being alone.”
She put her arm around him again.
“I know I should be more worried about my soul,” he said in a quick, almost embarrassed way. “But I think I have one and I don’t think I’ll care if I’m wrong when I’m dead. What frightens me is knowing I’m alone now. When it matters.”

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