Bromantasy - Softcover

Roche, Máire

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798217180707

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Two heroes. One brain cell.

BROMANTASY is a cozy, queer fantasy about the mortifying ordeal of being known by your totally platonic best friend and the epic quest that might force you to confront the truth.

This deluxe limited first run edition will feature beautifully designed colored edges—while supplies last!

Fellas, is it gay to kiss your bff while on a quest through the forest you’re unqualified for?

Juniper O'Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else—taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor—falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.

But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants—he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.

But monsters come in all shapes and sizes. When Juniper and Mo realize that the terrifying beast they’ve sworn to kill is just a scared little girl torn from her family, they’re off to find not only the true villain of the story, but maybe even a happy ending.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Máire Roche is a former teacher who now dreams up new worlds and characters for a living. When she is not writing stories that are both magical and at least a little silly, Máire enjoys running, teaching martial arts, and curating a growing collection of memes for any occasion. Máire lives in St. Paul with her wife and their very disagreeable cat, Lulu. She also writes thrillers and mysteries under the name Mary E. Roach.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

OneIt was all Juniper O'Reilly's fault, really, no matter who you asked. The good citizens of every village within a dozen leagues thought so. The king certainly agreed. All of it was Juniper's fault: the fire ale cocktail explosion, the trousers mishap, and, worst of all, the great loss of specialty hand-crafted cheeses.Oh, and the decimated village and the incident with the prince's missing toe.But we are getting ahead of ourselves.The end of the harvest season, just as it was about to tilt into the cooler autumn months, was so gloriously perfect: The reaping was very nearly done, the shelves were brimming with newly preserved delights and dried plums to last the winter, and the nights came with just an apple-sweet bite of cold that made Juniper's blankets feel so deliciously warm in the morning. Sunflower heads were hung upside down, still vibrantly yellow, garlic was braided into ropes across the kitchen ceiling with an array of drying herbs, and the potato barrels were full to the brim.Soups and mashes all winter, Juniper predicted.And, most important, this year Juniper hadn't accidentally called his roommate, Mo, Daddy in front of the farmer who supplied their cheese.It was a reasonably common mishap that occurred between two cordial roommates who shared a deep bond of friendship and brotherhood, they had both agreed, and Juniper was just ruminating on whether Farmer Abernathy remembered the incident when Mo poked his head into their small kitchen from outside. It was nearing the end of the afternoon, the early-autumn sun leaning lazily through the windows and filling their cottage with a particularly soft golden glow.Mumford, the sleek orange cat who had been hanging around since early spring-and had recently moved into Juniper's bedroom-bounded toward Mo, rubbing against the leg of Mo's trousers."Juniper," Mo said with a little grin that was almost hidden in his beard (he always had just the smallest smile on his face when he was talking to Juniper). "The bruggane family down the road brought up a basket of apples to share with us."The bruggane, of course, rarely ate anything but meat as a rule, so apples were of little use to them, but it was a thoughtful gesture regardless."We've got extra duck we could share with them," Juniper suggested.Not his ducks, of course; they'd traded pears for duck meat from another farmer who'd had an abundance. If anybody touched Juniper's ducks, Matilda, H. Harumpus, or Big Jack, Juniper would have lost his mind."Maybe their family would like that?"Juniper could make Mo a pie with the apples, maybe a few. He made Mo his favorite pie every autumn, sometime in the weeks leading up to Samhain-a spiced apple with cardamom and sage and a flaky golden crust made with copious amounts of the rich yellow butter from the fuzzy brown cow they kept."We can bring them some herbs, too." Mo ducked under the doorframe, carrying the basket of apples. He was strikingly handsome-all the local villagers agreed with Juniper on this-and the calm to Juniper's storm.Juniper was a head shorter than Mo-not that this ever stopped him from picking fights with people quite a bit bigger than Mo-and his fair, freckled skin always seemed to be a little splotchy from the sun, no matter how much tallow he applied. Mo's warm brown skin, on the other hand, was always perfectly smooth, except for that little freckle he had just to the left of his nose.Not that Juniper paid particular, extended attention to Mo's face, of course. He cleared his throat rapidly, reaching for Mumford, who wound between Mo's legs when Juniper tried to pick him up."Shall I make you a pie tonight?" Juniper asked, putting aside thoughts of freckles and shoving some stray curls out of his face.Juniper's hair was a wheat field speckled with strawberries, if you asked Mo, or "wildfire disaster," if you asked Juniper's deceased father, gods curse his departed soul."Ah, Mumfy." Mo shook his head down at their cat-he was their cat now, even if they hadn't meant to let him stay. "He insists on standing exactly where I'm trying to walk."Juniper returned to his work (sorting through a basket of herbs that had yet to be hung with the ropes of garlic and cut sunflowers, while thinking in detail about apple pies and sitting on the front porch to eat them with his best friend). "I had to be very firm with him this morning," Juniper said, "when he tried to steal that lovely Burren cheese I made, right off the table.""Were you firm?" Mo set the apples down at their kitchen table, a roughly hewn square slab of wood they'd cut themselves from the fallen oak at the edge of their property. He looked up at Juniper with a grin on his face. "Or did you look into his soft little face and just sigh a bit?""I sighed firmly," Juniper told Mo with a shake of his head.Of course he hadn't scolded Mumford. But he had called him Dumbford when the cat had jumped into a water pail willingly and then hissed at Juniper about it.Mo ran a hand through his dark brown hair, ruffling it up, and then sat down with a deep sigh that cut Juniper a bit too sharply.The sound made Juniper's hands still.Mo's eyes were distant, their deep brown far from Juniper and the cottage they had called home since they were barely out of school.Nearly ten winters of living with his best friend, and Juniper could read this mood: The Winter Wandering Woes were about to capture Mo. Juniper, for his part, was going to grow old in this little cottage, with their two bedrooms and two hooks for their cloaks, and a kitchen they'd built just for them. He was going to cozy up by the fire every winter, sleep in on cold, dark winter mornings, and just generally be warm and well-fed and content with nothing ever changing. But each year, once the harvest was up, Mo . . . well, he grew restless.As soon as the last pepper was pickled and the last parsnip stowed in a bin and the pumpkins lined up cheerfully along the windowsill like tiny orange and gray-green guardians, Mo settled into a chair, heaved that sigh, and began dreaming of other worlds and adventures to be had."Mo?" Juniper asked carefully."Mmm," Mo said.Mmm could mean almost anything, depending on the tone: It could mean Tell me more when Juniper was telling a fantastical story, or it could mean I hear your frustration when Juniper was complaining about Farmer Abernathy's grain stand outcompeting theirs at the local fair, or even It'll be all right, Junebug, when the fire had died down low and Juniper had drank all his mead and was talking about things like fathers or how cold sleeping on floorboards was or even about places that couldn't really be called home.But this time, this mmm meant that Mo was tired and restless and, Juniper thought, considering leaving the way he talked about every winter. The way Mo had left that very first year, when Juniper had been young enough and stupid enough to think that Mo would be the one person who would never leave."Let's go into town," Juniper said hopefully. "We can walk down to the brugganes' home together-what did they say their name was again? The-" He tried, hopelessly, to imitate the unique grunting noise that constituted family names for bruggane families.Mo grunted in response, though whether that was just a Mo noise or he was repeating the name of the bruggane neighbors, Juniper could not tell."Anyway, we'll bring them the duck and tell them thank you and then stop by the pub and see the newest quest list for the fall."Mo's gaze snapped to Juniper's, sharper than Juniper had expected, the distance in his look evaporating into a careful, focused expression. "You want to see the quest list?"Juniper always wanted to see the quest lists.Whether any of them were worth leaving his very cozy bed behind? Another story altogether."Of course I want to see the quest list," Juniper said breezily, plucking a bright little sprig of basil from the basket. "Do the bruggane like thyme? Is it offensive to ask if they season the meat they eat?"Not all...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798217180707
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 353
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales; sales@vanditmar.nl; ; Hondiuslaan 44; Utrecht; 3528 AB; Niederlande