Edward James walker
Too much : a Patchwork Benediction
Lysander Pavo has always possessed an appetite too large for the world around him. He loves extravagantly, hungers unapologetically and dreams of transforming ordinary things into magnificent, excessive wonders. But when a forbidden Enormification spell turns a university sculpture into a towering scandal, Lysander and his beloved childhood companion, Steven, are punished for daring to take up too much space. Exiled, heartbroken and determined never to shrink again, Lysander sets out to prove that hunger can be holy. His magic carries him from lonely midnight bakeries to an astonishing act of cake-based rebellion beneath Christ the Redeemer, and eventually to the riotous School of Applied Queer Kink, where consent is compulsory, moderation is discouraged and experimental pastry is rarely covered by insurance. Yet even among glitter, magic and glorious chaos, Lysander cannot escape the ache of the life and love he left behind. When his grandest experiment erupts into catastrophe, he must discover whether being “too much” means dazzling the world or allowing himself to be held by it. His search leads to the Deviant Drapery, a mysterious sanctuary stitched together from velvet, memory and the stories of queer lives. There, guided by the charismatic Duck and surrounded by a congregation of beautiful outsiders, Lysander is offered something greater than fame, forgiveness or magic: a place where no one must earn the right to belong. Tender, outrageous and bursting with enchanted confectionery, Too Much: A Patchwork Benediction is a queer fable about appetite, shame, chosen family and the radical joy of refusing to make yourself smaller.
Edward James walker
The overduck chronicles:goose
Gustavus Thistlewick IV—Goose to the few people permitted to love him—is a nervous young sparrow with an immaculate satchel, an overworked conscience and a desperate need to be told that he is doing something right. When he arrives at the University of Applied Queer Kink, he expects rules, lessons and perhaps the occasional carefully supervised humiliation. Instead, he finds a vast Gothic institution built from velvet, brass, living rope and accumulated desire, where corridors rearrange themselves, portraits remember old secrets and consent forms contain clauses no frightened first-year should sign without reading. Watching over it all is the Overduck: an immense mechanical oracle whose crystal eyes can see through every performance and whose strange voice appears to remember Goose from a life he has never lived. Goose’s arrival sends an unexplained resonance through the university. Chandeliers tremble when he enters a room. Ancient chalk circles awaken beneath his bed. A portrait of two long-dead stags seems to be waiting for him. While the magnificent Madame Pigeon teaches him that desire need not be disguised as shame, Detective Duck watches from the margins, and the dangerously charming Lance offers a vision of freedom without rules or consequences. Then there is Rigby Clench: severe, controlled and relentlessly observant, the handler assigned to bring order to Goose’s chaos. Rigby sees every nervous apology, every badly concealed longing and every elaborate plan Goose creates to avoid admitting what he truly needs. What begins as discipline slowly becomes something far more dangerous—trust. Yet Goose must learn that surrender only has meaning when refusal remains possible, and that being held is not the same as being owned. Behind the university’s extravagant rituals, someone has forgotten that distinction. The celebrated Professor Aloysius de Luv-Tuft has spent years identifying rare students whose desires make them vulnerable. Now he has turned his attention to Goose. Armed with Goose’s private admissions dossier and a contract buried beneath the language of consent, de Luv-Tuft offers him the thing he has always believed he wanted: perfect structure, permanent certainty and an authority so complete that he will never have to choose again. To escape becoming the latest treasure in another man’s collection, Goose must uncover the truth behind the university’s founders, the broken antler that haunts its history and the mechanical guardian who insists that no genuine act of love is ever forgotten. More importantly, he must discover whether a trembling, approval-hungry sparrow can stop performing obedience, find the courage to say no—and learn to hold another person with the same care he has always yearned to receive. Darkly comic, tender, erotic and gloriously strange, The Overduck Chronicle is a queer Gothic fantasy about shame, power and the radical intimacy of being seen. Beneath its masks, ropes and magnificent absurdities lies a story about the difference between control and care—and the beautiful, terrifying freedom of choosing exactly where, and with whom, you belong.