Ferociously

Challenger snorted ferociously as he looked at it, and his thick black hair seemed to bristle up in his wrath.

a ferociously fast pace

To get a Times review, a gay book generally must be by a well-known writer preferably not performing at his best, or be so ferociously learned, like John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, that the Times would lose intellectual credibility by not noticing it.