Welcome to the return of one of the most celebrated Internet novels of erotica. Sean Porter, soccer kid, is on a journey of discovery. Set in 1980, follow along as Sean tries to find his path through the minefield of adolescent relationships, while discovering his growing skills playing the most popular game in the world.
Size: 515 KB (98,799 words)
Genre: Erotica
Sex Contents: Much Sex
Tags: mt/ft, Consensual, First
Review by mtnfyre [other reviews by mtnfyre]
Reviewed:
Great story. Read this series multiple times. Very good flow, good structure, make a good product. Well worth a read.
Review by orangeade [other reviews by orangeade]
Reviewed:
I admit it, I'm a sucker for the coming-of-age erotic/romantic epics . . . the event-by-event progression through puberty and high school, the emotional highs and lows and all the attendant teenage angst . . . the journey to that first sexual experience, and the fight to hold on to true love. Sappy, maybe . . . but it makes for great story telling.
So, where did it all start? I don't have enough knowledge of the usenet and Internet erotica communities to give a definitive answer, but there likely were few, if any, that predate the Rev. Cotton Mather's "Playing the Game" trilogy, first published in 2002 and reposted not long ago at storiesonline. If this was indeed the first -- or one of the first -- of the long-form coming-of-age tales, then it sets a pretty high bar for what has followed.
"Playing the Game," the first book of the trilogy, introduces us to the world of Sean Porter, a Midwestern teenager developing his skills as a soccer player in the early 1980s. He actually finds the beautiful game easier to understand than the relationships he develops with the girls in his life . . . a clandestine romance with Kayla, his best friend's younger sister; dating and physical encounters with Molly, the prettiest girl in his class who can't contain her "itch" for sex; and a slow-building and ultimately frustrating relationship with Kristina, a pretty but chaste Latina.
Sean, as a first-person narrator from a perspective some 20 years in the future, is a protagonist that most people will like, self-deprecating to a fault but a good guy at heart. Not surprisingly, things don't go smoothly in love or in life, but he somehow soldiers through. Soccer plays a huge part in the book, with a great deal of attention given to the run-ups to championships, all the way to the "big game," but Mather strikes a reasonable balance between that and the romance.
The first book in the trilogy is far from a perfect effort. Mather's writing gets significantly better by the second book, and the plot at times strains credibility in this first installment. But that won't keep you from enjoying Sean's journey. And of the three books, this is the least self-contained, ending on a note that will have you scrambling to put "Playing to Win: Playing the Game II" in your reading queue.
