#ThrowbackThursday - Shaman

 

"You bent the ear of the mother chapter president of the world's most notorious motorcycle club about your insipid romantic drama?"

"No. I called the man you look to as a father figure to see if he had any idea what's been bothering you so that I could help you through it."

Going back through the older books for Throwback Thursday each week has been such an interesting exercise in watching the ebb and flow of everyone's state of mind. Ian is Going Through It™ in Shaman, while Ghost, by contrast, currently hooked up to a heart monitor in Lord Have Mercy, is feeling pretty peaceful and on top of things. My how times change. 

Writing this novella was necessary for me, because it felt wrong to leave Ian hanging, his future - his happiness - up in the air, after the events of Loverboy. There's certainly an argument to be made, and a version of the story in which Ian and Tango end up together. But for all that Ian was Tango's one point of brightness and pleasure amidst the terror and pain of the Nest, he was also someone who manipulated Kev. Them ending up together would have been even more angsty, and I'm not sure I could say at the end of it that they would have been better off with each other than with their respective partners. In the novella, we get a chance to see Alec as Ian's rock, his love nothing but supportive and uncomplicated, and it feels like a big sigh of relief. He's a soft place for Ian to land, and he needs that. There's always going to be that tension between him and Tango; there'll always be the specter of what if and if only and might have. But I'm satisfied with how it all shook out, and I love him with Alec. 

Shaman isn't listed as an official book in the series, but it's an important read for context, and essential for anyone who loves Ian. It falls immediately after American Hellhound in the reading order.