Poor Sam, he works so hard and just can't win because school and hunting both want to take all his time.

Hey :) I just found this story, and I really like it! You're so amazing at writing the two boys! Great job :D

~ ArmedWithMyComputer xxx

Oh, the wit! Oh, the drama! Oh, the fire-breathing-cheater-eating-Sam-beating-bull! I love.

I really enjoyed this - it was very well-written and very well-researched. I loved the way you has Sam's geometry penetrating into his mind and getting muddled with the stars etc - it showed his exhaustion perfectly and was very amusing. I also enjoyed learning about the aatxe and the process whereby they figured out how to kill it. My only complaint is that this story left me wanting MORE! I want to know how Sam's history test turned out and what John said and whether or not he did have to repeat Chemistry and Geometry - it ended on such a depressing note for Sam that I want to see some resolution for him!:-( I don't suppose you would ever consider writing another chapter for this story just to tie up those loose ends?:-D *big bambie eyes*

eh :D I'm your fan now!

Great story :D I love that you do so much research (both with the supernatural and the ordinary stuff) and manage to capture Sam so well in both situations! It's wonderful!

All awesome stuff _ I'll be on the lookout for more!

(

I caught a typo btw (I think): It was a bizarre and disturbing site,

(s'posed ta be "sight", isn'' it?)

)

"Dude, it's Friday. No one goes to school on Friday.” Haha great line, that IS Dean! Really enjoyed the story. Sam's horrible schedule is shudderingly familiar. Love the aaxte, too. Basque lore is really interesting. :)

I very much enjoyed the realism of this fic. Balancing school and hunting must have been a huge chore for Sam especially since we know he must have worked hard and excelled in order to get his scholarship and I liked how you understood and expanded on that here.

I appreciated all the research you did, adding geometry, history and English lessons into the fic reminding us all how Sam's head was always in more than one place at a time, something that I’m sure not many people can do!

You did a great job with Sam’s voice too. It sounded so like him, torn in so many directions and yet it was easy to read, the words you chose were always lively and interesting and the pace for fast and exciting.

Great work and thanks so much for sharing, I very much enjoyed the read. Take care, Madebyme

Very cool story.

You had some really great lines. My favorite was - The sky was so close he could touch it, but so black he was scared to.

Interesting, funny and scary all rolled into one. Great job.

Is it enough to just say I really, really liked it? Not very satisfying for an author, I know, so let me try a little harder.

I liked the dry wit of it. I liked Sam's perseverence. I liked Dean being in the periphery (although I adore Dean, this was Sam's story). I liked the research, and the...hm..."academic" feel of it. I liked that I'm not really certain it was the test that sent the aatxe after Sam (surely credit card fraud would have made for other targets). I liked the ease and pace of the writing.

Yep. I liked it! Bunches.

What a great slice of what it must have been like for Sam to grow up in that hunting family and still be a serious student!

Reading this just made me so tired for Sam I was almost pleased he got hurt at the end (despite the fact I'm a confirmed Sam h/c junkie) just so he would get some rest. I mean: "Sam groaned along with his classmates and added that to his mental to-do list, along with the introduction and first 35 pages of Jane Eyre, 10 more geometry proofs, 15 Spanish verbs to conjugate, two miles to run and an hour of target practice with knives." And that was a light evening!

You have a great feel for the genre and your characters were finely drawn. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

You have such a nice flow and you set a scene so well, that a paragraph into your story and I feel like I’ve lived their lives up to now.

I really liked how Sam processed seeing a death happen for the first time his thoughts switching back and forth between orderliness and fact bases of the chemistry against the messiness of Josh’s death.

We really get to see how driven Sam can be in this story. How when he sets a goal for himself he focuses on it and gives it everything he can.

Wonderful story.

There is a reason why I have you on alerts! I haven't checked LJ yet (too busy - rushing to get ready to leave town tomorrow and 30 things to do), but I checked my email and Pow!

I wish I had time for a better review, but too much to do, too little time. So suffice it to say that I am bookmarking this to savor again at leisure. Multiple times.

Things I love:

An awesome narrator voice, that is honest and believable and conveys human emotions by showing - not telling - the reader how the character feels.

Prose that is clean and lively, that creates a mood and sustains it and never trips me up and takes me out of the moment with awkward word choices or phrasing. (I would quote some favorite passages if I had more time. They were brilliant!)

Research that isn't flaunted but thrums through the whole story, adding to the You-Are-There quality and driving the plot and allowing more insights into the characters. (I love research!)

However - That was one major depressing ending, dude! But consistent with canon - Sam's teen years were full of disappointment. (You even offer an explanation, without specifically pointing it out, why Sam was older than we might expect in the pilot.)

In short, your teen Sam was one of the most believable I've ever read. So glad you wrote it!

Okay, you had me twitching with the chem and geometry...my only honors classes were English and history. :) BUT. The formulas and test questions made the fic so very tangible. Sam the high school student-and we were living and breathing the homework and test pressue and no sleep and teachers' demands right along with him.

Him having to watch Josh killed and then reliving it were horrible...and felt all-too believable. And then the end...I think the comics or John's journal have Sam repeating a grade, and this was a very believable reason, considering his marks were still good enough for a full-ride to an Ivy League.

And then, of course, there is this: "He was Sam, but the hunting was changing him. It might not be visible now, but he wasn’t sure how much more it would take until he wasn’t Sam anymore." which is even more true now than ever, and makes my heart break for him all over again. :(

In conclusion: this is why I love your writing SO much. Just love. Glad you got this posted. :)