Olley White

4 stars

Synopsis: Max has met the girl of his dream whilst gaming online and has set up a meet in real life. When he gets to the meet up place, he thinks that he has been stood up, but it turns out that Steffi is Stefan, who also thought that he was meeting a woman. Instead of running away in fright, they agree to spend time together, and when they have a great time together, a friendship is born.
Stefan is gay, and he lets Max know that fairly early on in their "getting to know each other as guys" phase. Max just enjoys spending time with Stefan, whether it is online or in person. As they do spend more time together, though, Max starts to realize that he might have feelings for Stefan, and once he acknowledges that, wants to act on it, although Stefan figures that they should go slowly, since Max has never even thought about a guy that way.

What I liked: that Max and Stefan each had their own voice. Even though they were similar in a lot of ways and had some similar interests, they had two distinct personalities. Max is quieter with basically one friend, and Stefan has his work friends and the friends he grew up with, who all dare each other to do more and more outrageous things for lost bets. None of the female characters were the shrill harpy type, which is always refreshing, as is the fact that *gasp* Stefan had straight friends, and didn't just hang out with other gay people or women exclusively. Told in alternating 3rd person POV, I didn't want this story to end.

What I didn't like: that there wasn't a lot of story after Max and Stefan got together, although the epilogue was adorable.… (lisätietoja)

The story is set in, for all the leads, in a alternate medieval England, one in which gayness at least isn't seen like alien or wrongful and in which, among other things that can be inferred, stands out the existence of a mechanism of social mobility for the serfs.

I have two objections basically: One is a quibble and it's that I consider very poor the excuse for Fitz to feel rid of guilt about not winning the tournament.

But the other one is a BIG objection, and it's the inconsistency between the prompt (that it must be strictly respected IMO) and the story itself . The letter says:

«I didn't even compete to win, but once he was my final opponente, I had to give all I have in me, to prove him I'm worthy»

Excuse me? Where is it reflected in the story? I'll tell you where: Nowhere. Both compete to win, for himself or for some other ones, but from the beginning that is their purpose. And nothing is in the tale about the winner's desire and decision of giving everything of himself to demonstrate his worthiness to the other As it has remained, there's no harmony between prompt and tale, the letter loses every sense

Besides there're inconsistencies between Ethan and his background: Yes, Ethan that as it seems belongs to a lower-class, maybe the lowest social class is able to read and write, he expresses himself perfectly, whereas Brendan's mother, being of the same class shows a characteristic turn of phrase. In other words, there was any efforts to display and not only mentioning, the class difference between Fitz and Ethan; It's a shame, because maybe it would have lent itself to a pygmalian parallelism.

It could be told that what one rates is strictly the stuff that the author has written, but I don't see it that way, the prompt is part of the story and it's under its premises and inspiration that the author should write the fiction, that's her/his challenge. And in this case, I'm sorry to say it, I don't think that the story had made the grade.

But beware that I don't believe that the author is a goner; on the contrary I believe that she have a lot to give because, even with all the slips that I tagged above (and I admit that I'm obsessive regarding consistency matters), the story is well-written and the purely romantic moments are tender and very sexy.… (lisätietoja)