Hero

It's a fun story to read

Great chapter, it gets better and better. Loved the fantasy element of air machines and tanks. Reminded me of Michael Moorcock. Love the historical base and the twist and turns.

So many questions, some are out of curiosity, some are about how things work, some are about preferences and a lot are about how to live... completely different, which is not at all a bad thing, more a challenge as for our hero, because she (he) is a hero!

It's all a dream, I don't know if I remember it or not, if it really happened or it's my imagination, but other things convince me. Great opening full of stuff I don't understand but want to know...

I just want you to know @James Carnarvon this was my second choice story, but you get only one vote. It was a great story, for me beaten into second place by Learned to Lie.

It was original when Pete got his first girlfriend and his first sexual experience whilst at the same time having another sexual encounter with a band member and potential boyfriend. Then in steps the girlfriend's brother and Pete gives him a blowjob or two with his girlfriend's permission, of course. When she pops into her brother's bedroom because Pete is taking too long and sees her brother fucking her boyfriend in the ass, well that's a step too far and she throws him out naked. Pete can only confide his woes to Ant, the band member and potential boyfriend. They resolve it all by having mutual blowjobs, no hard feeling, no blame. Well, I like fiction, but I kinda like it to have some semblance to reality. Not saying this couldn't happen as you imagined it, but it rather needs a bit more depth and interaction between all the characters to be believed. I mean our hero Pete has gone from a shy boy singing in the choral to a quasi rock singing front man super star, adored by the crowds, and who has sex at every opportunity. We've got sex and music, where are the drugs? And, my god, it's all so polite!

It took a little adaptation to get into the present tense writing style, it is modern, millennial, I suppose, but in any event the story carried me through. The plot so far is interesting, a bisexual guy with a girlfriend and boyfriend. The background of an upcoming band is nothing original, but the story is well done. On the story, it took me to a world I found, I won't call it conservative, maybe dated. I mean, do guys get that kind of meet the parents, dad talk, at 17. At that age myself I had nothing much to do with parents as far as my personal life was concerned and neither did my friends. The music references added detail and the background was nicely filled in. Pretty good so far.

A simplistic tale of betrayal and retribution which lacks development and description. The writing is rather below average as if written by someone for whom English is not their first language. The idea was good but the execution left something to be desired.

I feel a need to redress the balance here. I could draw a parallel with Pasolini's film Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom which attracted both positive and very negative reviews. Donald McLean (Bay Area Reporter) in reviewing the film wrote: the film becomes an endurance contest to see if you can make it to the bitter end without vomiting. Ed Potton (UK Times) wrote: There was a point to all this foulness... Was there a point to this depraved fantasy? I ask the question, because other reviewers raised the point, once you get past those (first few paragraphs) you'll find a story that deals with corruption, friendship and love. Luckily the gruesome start does not continue through the story. That gruesome start one needs to get through is a depiction not of punishment as one reviewer states, but grotesque executions. The executions of sixteen year old boys, the mechanism (described in detail) is more horrendous than the beheadings by Daesh in Syria. Add to that the perversity of a younger boy watching the scene and masturbating, it is indeed something to get through. Whilst the story carries a warning, I wonder if that is enough, perhaps if you read this review you will know what to expect. I cannot say I enjoyed the story nor agree that it was a well written story. In my opinion the opening graphic detail was an excessive indulgence into the author's personal fantasy and not justified as setting a scene for some eventual redemption. Read it at your own risk!

It had development, but not much detail and little description. Felt rushed, but the plot idea was good.

Excellent story, good plot and great narrative descriptions. I'd like the rest of the book, if possible?

Intriguing, suspense. Reading between the lines our new arrival has been thrown out of home because he turned out to be gay! Will the academy make a man of him?

Molly and Sam - Chris and Tom - very beautiful...

Synchronicity: I had both the fortune and mis-fortune to attend a Catholic school where I was educated in all the usual subjects and into an understanding of life, hypocrisy, and perversion. My own Father Dwyer took us for religious education and had a particular penchant for allowing the class free rein with his questions time. An exercise which allowed him to enjoy his sadistic pleasure dishing out physical punishments to boys who posed those stupid questions he knew teenagers would ask. The school was a very odd place whose idiosyncrasies were not confined to clergy, but included many other odd ball secular staff. I could write a book about it, hahaha! An education indeed!

“Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.” - East of Eden, John Steinbeck.

A great chapter, I can totally see how that could happen, it is realistic and that is one of the best aspects of this story, the realism and of course, the drama!

Virginia Woolf wrote: "They (moths) are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species." I think she was using gay in the well used vernacular of the period as bright, colourful, and queer likewise as meaning odd. But, nevertheless, given that in Moments of Being a collection of posthumously-published autobiographical essays there are lots of connotations relating to female homosexuality, the allusions to moths may be interpreted either way. It is difficult to know where to draw the line and what is reading too much into something when in the time it was written everything was rather secret and hidden.

Friday afternoons were when I yielded myself to dogma, ate fish for lunch and thought, because I did these things, I would spin my doubt into a cocoon of faith and, in chrysalis, glimpse the infinite in verses and lines that were copies of copies of copies of things written in tongues no longer spoken. I guess that sums up the bible and Catholicism! Great opening para.

A little confrontation, CAL exerted himself, and the story wandered on, but nothing much happened, the action waned. I'm not sure how much you can put into the boy meets boy relationship, friends and family, before it becomes mundane.

‘My mom actually said that God wasn’t so much good or evil but a writer with deadlines, and that all this shit happens because he’s got to keep the story interesting.’ There's something in that observation, the author's view on life as part of the story is, if not profound, at least an interesting aside!

Good chapter, I think I've (you've) changed my mind about the pov switch, it was interesting to read the diary.

🤔

Okay, some comments say they found Chris' diary interesting and adding perspective, I didn't. I'm being honest, reading his diary added little to the story other than confirming he's had sex with girls which we knew already. Changing narrative point of view distracted from the intimacy developing in the story. I felt the same, but didn't comment, about chapter 11, the newspaper article. I don't get the place for either of these chapters. Sure, here, we get a bit more on Chris' background, but it's not a revelation. My personal thoughts, for what they are worth, are simple, if you choose first person narrative, you choose a certain intimacy with the protagonist, if you choose third person you have the freedom to explore the other characters in more detail. You can swap out of first person narrative if you want, there are no hard and fast rules, but what does this chapter give us? Not much in my opinion, and it breaks out of sitting on Carl's shoulder feeling their growing relationship. I've probably written too much, but I feel you deserve praise and honest criticism in equal measure and I hope this comes across as the latter without saying I dislike the whole story because of one or two odd chapters.

The world was still changing, but it had not ended. You always find some of the best lines!