Alex is a bright kid, gifted and cursed with a quick mind and lots of energy. This is his quest to defeat boredom and find suitable entertainment.
Size: 201 KB (35,688 words)
Genre: Romantic
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: mt/ft, mt/Fa, Fa/ft, Consensual, Romantic, Heterosexual, Polygamy/Polyamory, Slow, Violent, School
Review by Quasirandom [other reviews by Quasirandom]
Reviewed:
After a benign brain tumor is removed, former narcolept Alex becomes a prodigy: he needs little sleep, has perfect recall, and has to be constantly active. All these drive him into learning everything he can and pull him away from his peers. The solution is to bump him up to high school, and when that’s still too confining then into university, where he finally gets the chance to truly thrive.
It’s a great story, but honestly, the writing is not the best, with lots of events given in summary and many conflicts resolved too easily. There’s not a lot of drama overall, for that matter. But when the telling slows down and shows us the details of the interactions and growth of the characters, it’s superb stuff. All the main characters are well-drawn, and Alex and love-interests are all engaging characters I like spending time with.
And as a story of smart youngsters in a low-conflict polyamorous relationship, I love it. It’s a feel-good reread for me—I just let the story spin along until it reaches (all too soon) a semi-stable conclusion. I really like the final relationship configuration, too.
Review by The Black Knight [other reviews by The Black Knight]
Reviewed:
I'm really quite conflicted on this story; the risk of discouraging a new author whose work was at least interesting is combined with the risk of imparting a false sense of confidence that hasn't yet been earned.
Frankly, the technical aspects of this story were horrible, particularly with the consistent tense issues and a number of typos which an editor should have caught. It's a discouragingly common mistake new writers make, to not first have an editor look over something before posting.
The relative lack of conflict - or at least the extreme ease with which most of the conflicts were resolved - along with the use of several worn-out cliche elements similarly detracted from the story. Again, this is something an editor should have been able to help with.
The other key to a good story is in the characters, and it is in this one area that the author excelled. It would have been nice to see some more of several of the antagonists, and for some of the supporting cast developed more, because this was largely a character-driven story and some characters had real potential for driving the plot but played minor roles.
So, even with all the flaws, the story was enjoyable. Those with low tolerance for spotty quality of writing or overdone cliches, those looking for stroke, and those looking for truly original plots will be likely disappointed. Those interested in reading an early effort, which is a good standard 'prodigy' coming-of-age piece, by a new author will probably like it. I'd recommend it, although it might be best to wait to see if a revision is in the works.
