Customer Reviews

Journey of a Thousand Miles

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Finally got the book from Amazon and read it "straight-through!" I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. Finding good SF/F novels, whose main characters are gay, is very difficult. Refreshing! Looking forward to a sequel!

An excellent first time adventure story. The intriguing plot and very well crafted characters really kept me going. I usually like to savor my novels, reading just a little bit at a time in my leisure. But by the time I got 3/4 of the way through, I was so excited that I couldn't stop reading! Peter Kasting amazed me with his ability to weave such a lavishly descriptive action packed story considering the context, background and setting for this novel. I really began to identify with Rafael, the Army Medical officer who is forced to come to terms with his gay feelings and the rapidly changing violent world around him. I was truly flabbergasted.

Buying small publisher books is always a gamble, as is relying on the on-line reviews of "normal" folk. I thought long and hard about this book before I took the plunge, mostly because of the price. The first few paragraphs were enough to make me think I'd made the right choice. The writing was intelligent, the main character extremely likable (if you're into cute, buff, modest guys, that is.*rowr*) The setup is interesting, if a bit unbelievable -- from what little I know of radiation, the sort of attack precipitating this book would have made any sort of normal life unattainable -- but, hey, it's called 'fiction' for a reason. Rafael's and Leo's growing relationship is sweet and loving, in an inevitable way. No complaints whatsoever on these counts. And yet... Bad things keep happening. Very bad things, from which there is no recovery. This book takes the adage of 'anything bad that can happen, will happen' one step too far. The last half of the book is one bad thing after another, with enemies who must be either precogs or psychic, judging by the way they anticipate every single movement of the good guys. The ending drops off quite suddenly and very ineffectually. The focus on Rafael's and Leo's love all but ceases as soon as they get into bed together (something which is handled quite tastefully -- if you're looking for smut, this isn't your book). It all devolves from people with pasts and histories reacting to situations into which they've been thrown, to things happening to 2-D representations of previously 3-D characters. All in all, it was worth reading, but I would have much rather borrowed it from a library (as if... >_<).

This was an increadible read/find for me. I am not new to the SF genre but SF with gay main charaters yes. I have read gay charater driven stories before but it was too smutty or over sexed, it seemed that sex was the main part of the story and everthing else was just filler, like a plot. The scenerio is over the top but echoes very much the present, scary when this happens "Science Fiction becomes Science Fact".
The characters are wonderful. A quick satisfying read, great for a rainy day or lazy afternoon, I definitely recommend this book.

Kasting has given us some characters we can care about. And his world is really interesting, too. Society has fallen apart, but not completly. There's still government and culture. He focuses a lot on a commune of artists in the Pacific Northwest and the descriptions are beautiful. You really care what happens to these people.

Wow, this book was so awesome! Rafael's story is inspiring and real. In a near-future America, Rafael goes AWOL in the hopes of finding a place where he can be himself. He finds a closed community that's willing to accept him--as long as he has something to offer. But he's not sure what that is. Meanwhile, he finds himself falling in love with a musician who's sure to be invited to stay.

Rafael's story is a lot about self-acceptance and gaining a feeling of self-worth in a world that seems to have gone completely crazy. He makes friends, learns to accept his gayness and undergoes some remarkable transformations. It's really a great story--don't miss it!

This is a very interesting book. It is set in the future. in a world that has survived a nuclear blast. But the world that remains is a very scary one, with enclaves of people living wary lives. Rafael lives in this world and he has to cope with it and also with his blossoming gay feeling for Leo. A very intesting book with a lot of relevance for our world today.

Kasting's writing is highly engaging and his vision of the distopian near-future, though published years ago, seems very apt again. The fact that internalized and externalized homophobia should remain unchanged and foremost through a nuclear disaster is made easily believable.
His story held me in thrall throughout and his settings stayed with me after the reading. It's nice to have a musician and a karate expert as the central characters, emphasizing the energetic and spiritual forces as embodied by Leo and Rafael.
Finally, though, the book reads a bit like a chess game -- sacrifice so many pawns, exchange the rook for the bishop, the queen ... it plays painfully on the fact that fiction is "not real" -- and the characters never quite emerge from being game pieces which is too bad. Because they almost became people one could care about.

If the purpose of this book was to entertain, it has failed miserably.

Set in a grim, oppressive post nuclear future of military and religious dictatorships it leaves its reader no real hope, despite some futile attempts. Mankind is just as mindless, cruel and obtuse as it has always been all through the millennia and it is believably so: anyone looking for evidence may just take a look at any chapter in any book on world's history.

In this desolate, not too hypothetical future of ours moves Rafael, a 24 year-old deserter looking for some happiness and love: he finds them (sort of) rather early in the story in the arms of another young man and in Wellspring, a -not so- utopian community that is willing to accept him, his troubled past and his homosexual tendencies. Everything comes at a price though: Wellspring and Rafael are not out of harm's way and do not get out unscathed.

Mr Kasting is a competent writer. His writing is neat, very fast paced; his plot believable and interesting.

His fault lies in characterization, which is rather sketchy both for the main and the side characters. This, together with the sad, hopeless atmosphere probably make this book of interest only for those willing to read gay-themed fiction.

Sex is often mentioned but never graphically. The book might (or not) disturb very conservative/religious readers: Mr Kasting's opinions on religious fanaticism (which I happen to share entirely) are crude enough and clearly inspired by some very conservative religious communities which are to be found in the States.

When Peter Kasting first brought this novel to Windstorm, I read it in one sitting. What intrigued me about the novel, and why I decided to offer Mr. Kasting a contract for publication, had less to do with the utopia he creates and more with Rafael's personal journey. Rafael's road is never easy. He has to come to terms with his own self-hatred. Until he does this, he knows he will never have anything to offer the community he'd like to join. Rafael's inner journey also mirrors some of the physical journeys in the book and creates the bulk of the multi-layered tale.

Any book you pick up should at least be a good story. The writing should be solid, the characters believable. If those basic elements aren't present, you might as well throw the book out. Journey of a Thousand Miles is all of these things. It's not an easy read at times--Mr. Kasting makes you think--but he's a very strong writer with terrific ideas. Journey of a Thousand Miles isn't just about gay characters; it's not simply a "gay" novel. It's a novel about real people who are struggling to carve out some kind of existence in a violent, post-Apocalypic world (more like post-Pulse ala Dark Angel rather than post-nuclear winter). Mr Kasting takes us on a journey that's worth taking and I encourage you to take a risk on a book from a publisher who takes risks everyday with unknown, first time writers who are producing something other than mind-numbing sludge.