Clay Thomas is a pissed off deputy sheriff heading home to his family ranch in South Dakota. As he is almost there, his truck is hit by lightning, and runs off the road into a gorge. After waking up, he hikes the rest of the way to the family ranch. Reaching it, he finds that the year is 1876.
Size: 549 KB (106,880 words)
Incomplete and Inactive
Genre: Time Travel
Sex Contents: Minimal Sex
Tags: Ma/Fa, Mult, Consensual, Historical, Western, Time Travel, Polygamy/Polyamory, Interracial, Oriental Female, Indian Female, Slow
Review by Dark_Blade [other reviews by Dark_Blade]
Reviewed:
An excellent well rounded story, superbly edited and well written and a story that I’ve been following since its conception.
My only gripe, its updating is too slow, if it were speeded up somehow it would be better for those of us that follow it, but that’s up to the writer, not me.
Keep up the good work.
Review by Markw [other reviews by Markw]
Reviewed:
Doc is another of those stories I enjoy reading - time travel. As the synopsis states Clay Thomas - for whatever reason and however - finds himself back in wild-west America in 1876. So far, at least in the first 23 chapters which have been published at the time of writing this review - we have no idea how or why Clay was turfed back in time - like any good story, it happened and we have to accept it.
What makes this story somewhat different to many other time travel stories is that our hero doesn't have masses of books, computer disks or a gargantuan knowledge that he uses to bend his new time to that of where he came from. Yes, he does appear to have an inordinate amount of medical equipment in his 'truck' and also plenty of ammunition (although this last one appears to be so common place amongst stories of American time travellers that it makes readers wonder just what is being carried in some cars on the highways!)
Credibility does need to be stretched a bit though. Clay meets his great grandfather and, instead of Gt GF being frightened, scared or something similar - he appears to simply accept Clays appearance without question - albeit mistaking him for 'Great Uncle Clay' who, originally, was killed at....well you really need to read the story before I give too much away! There are some aspects of the story that require you to put all sense of reality in your back pocket. Clay seems to be accepted, without question, wherever he goes and with whatever he does. The people in the era he has landed are either very very trusting and easy going or we are eventually going to see Clay have abilities he never knew which make people trust him!
Clay uses his 20th century knowledge as a medico and lawman to find work in the 19th century. For my liking he appears to be accepted a bit too easily to be deputised as a US Marshal and everyone accepts him as a doctor without question. Yes - it is a story, but this was a bit of a stretch.
Not content to have the hero of the story hitched to 2 wives, before too long, he ends up with 4 of them although author Kingkey does make a reasonable job of working them all into the story. (An aside in that Kingkey describes himself as a former Marine and this story, Doc, is his first attempt at writing publically - although he now has 6 stories on SOL and this one has now been in progress for just over 12 months).
The story is reasonably well written - at least the hero doesn't have masses and masses of guns and ammunition (which some authors seem to take delight in describing in exquisite detail!) and even goes so far as to have Clay butcher the 'Power wagon' or truck that he was driving when he was transported back in time.
So - from a story point of view - it holds my interest (enough to write a review before it has finished) without being too far 'out there' - but, there are some downsides to it unfortunately.
I have noticed, over the last year or so, that many authors are falling into one of two camps - they either believe themselves to be 'perfect writers' without the need for an editor (and some will not accept advice from anyone), or they will accept editors to help them craft their stories. Kingkey fortunately falls into the second category and does use editors - in fact he has had a few of them including probably one of the most prolific editors on SOL.
And it is this that is concerning to me as I have noticed, particularly in the last 3-4 months, that a number of stories edited by the 'prolific editor' are simply - well to put it bluntly - atrocious in their editing.
Minor mistakes can be accepted, but when words are totally incorrect - as an example - Chapter 23 includes the following phrase:
He does not want to land to be over-hunted, nor would he want to have all the trees stripped from an area, and be used as mine supports
Now - apart from the possible bad phrasing, the first 'to' is a 'read-stopper' (a phrase I use whenever a spelling mistake or bad grammer actually stops you reading and asking WTF?)
This is only one example and, particularly from chapter 20 onwards, appear to be getting worse and worse. Which makes me ask the question - are these chapters really being edited at all?
Unfortunately bad editing like this starts making the reader give up on the story - you get to the point where you say 'this is becoming terrible, I can't read it any more'. I just hope that Kingkey can turn this around because Doc *IS* a damn good story and deserves to be read - but incorrect choices of words, bad spelling, bad phrasing and bad grammar all start to add up.
Overall? Yes - give it a read - but, be warned, that there are writing errors that will make you stop reading, particularly towards chapters 20 onwards.
