Esperanza

There is just something about this author that resonates with me. I love her work so much!I promise I’ll do my best to restrain myself from going on too long, but there is just so much food for discussion here AND it’s not often I REALLY love a book so much. But I’ll behave kind of :) Esperanza begins with a deliberate unveiling of a post-apocalyptic / post- virus world through Tesla’s eyes as he drifts from one village to the next, never staying long for fear of being discovered for the [...]

A very good free online dystopian novel set far in the future, where technology is gone, the population has be decimated by a disease decades earlier, the U.S. is broken up into scatterings of isolated, paranoid, racially segregated villages, and being gay is a major sin that is punished by death.Tesla is a young drifter, coasting from town to town, trying not to let his “secret” out. His attempt to follow some travelers that he’s curious about gets him into more trouble as they take him t [...]

With the distance of a couple years, I can say that this has a few rough spots. However, of all my work, finished and in progress, it is closest to my heart, touching on themes, kinks, and a part of the world that is near and dear to me.

Slowly unfolding story set in dark, dystopian future. Harsh, and gritty, with sweet, unexpectedly romantic moments. *And I loved the mini follow up, August Rain, where Coyo and Tesla visit Kevin. *fans self*I really wish the author had expanded that. No matter, I'll make up my own ending :P

Plot:Tesla is a drifter. He moves from village to village, the constant fear of being discovered for who he is, who he secretly desires, always expecting--dreading, really--to wake up with a knife at his throat, in a world that is no longer as we know it. In a world in which a scourge drastically reduced humankind, in which people have gone back to the more conservatives beliefs of religion and fear/hate sins and sinners, blaming them for their misery.Tesla's only hope for a steady place to live [...]

Eve Ocotillo is a very capable writer. I like her characters and descriptions. This book has an interesting beginning and a good ending, but several fairly dull chapters in the middle. Still, for a free read, I mostly enjoyed it.Tesla, who I liked right away because of his name, basically moves around from town to town until people realize he's gay and he has to run for his life. A virus has wiped out most of the population, and the people left are backward religious fanatics and rascists who ha [...]

This is an unpublished futuristic, dystopia, western about a persecuted gay drifter trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where being a science loving proponent of man-on-man action is considered a sin unto death but breeding women in puppy mill fashion (not all, only some) is just hunky-dory. After years of close calls, our little hero encounters traders from a colony of “heathens” who still study science and medicine. Thinking he’s found heaven on earth, little dude follows the t [...]

This story is about one of our baser instincts: fear. It is shown through religion, prejudice and homophobia in the first part of the book. 100 years ago "god" sent a plague to earth as punishment for sin. Electricity & medicine are things of the past. Procreation is highly valued & that is not a good thing for young Tesla who is gay. He spends most of his life wandering from town to town. Leaving in a hurry when he is found out. Tesla finally makes it to one of the towns that he has hea [...]

DNF @ 50%Here I was, expecting a dark dystopian M/M story filled with an enriching world where the MC is held captive and abused. What I ended up getting was het-sex, masturbating in pouches, and an uninteresting main character that fantasizes about the times he had rough sex with a guy that was probably twice his age.The story might redeem itself later, but I think I'll rather spend my reading time elsewhere

This was a great fan/slash fic. Set approx 100 years after a virus was released known as The Scourge it almost wiped out humanity. So the survivors had turned into crazed religious fanatic. Leaving a few drifters who were usually gay looking for the so called towns that were run like "the before."It's an age old form of post apocalyptic settings but this one was done really well.

Reminiscent of The Stand, the grim landscape and gritty outlook are mirrored in the characters, part of their personality, of what makes them who they are. Facing extinction, humanity is distilled to its purest forms of good and evil. Far from the caricature it could have become as a background for a romance, this story touches on transcendental subjects, like human capacity to love and care, to hold on to hope and survive, to apply ingenuity in the face of almost impossible odds. To be good whe [...]

It was an interesting read. Far more than I expected. But in a good way.The world conjured around the main characters was harsh and unyielding and it was easy to imagine it as a possible future to a world-wide epidemic virus, wiping out not only billions of people but customs and beliefs as well. Ocotillo pretty much summed up with "The whole world had a brand that would never heal, not in any time frame that had relevance. The morals of the After were what they were, and it didn't matter if Tes [...]

I really enjoyed it. The darkness, violence and passion worked. I became involved with the plight of the MCs. I'd have liked a little more world building so I got a better sense of why this had happened and more of the overall picture but there were some great descriptive passages. I could really feel myself in the desert, struggling for survival. A lot of sentences I wish I'd written! In many ways it's not a love story at all, more a desperate fight for survival and an understanding of the way [...]

Yes, I am thoroughly smitten with this author! This book is quite a bit different from The Violet and the Tom and not as kinky, so don’t go into this story expecting a similar tale. This is a dark and desolate, dystopian-western. A future where racism, homophobia and forced breeding rule. It’s a story of one man forced to become a drifter going from town to town, hiding his sexuality and trying to stay aliveuntil he meets others like him.

I think this one deserved 4.5 stars, but I rounded down because I just didn't feel it was as evenly awesome as The Violet and the Tom. The first chapter I found difficult to get into. It took me about a chapter to get used to the voice, which is distinctly different in style from Violet (as well it should be, since this is near-future while the other is historical). It took about a full chapter to suck me in, but then, I just couldn't put the thing down--foregoing sleep in order to read more, et [...]

OK. HERE's the deal wants to be abused and the other wants to abuse. I know it's fictional future but it's a shitty future lolI much prefer to be obliterated than live in that shit hole where people force to breed other people like livestock. This future sucks, and I was feeling like shit while reading about it. Nice story, but it made me feel like shit after reading it. I wouldn't recommend this bookWhy I didn't give this book a 4 or 5 star? Because it's a rape fuck fest.a coerced fuck fest. Th [...]

This is also a difficult one between 3 and 4 stars. I really enjoyed the story, and up until 50% or so, it was definitely worthy of 4 stars. Then it got a bit too soft. I liked the perfect timing in the beginning of the book, nothing rushed, stuff developing naturally, but then things happened too quickly. The story could have gained a lot by being longer and including more Esperanza politics (you never really understand why the council acts the way it does), more Esperanza culture, etc. The wor [...]

stumbled on this at fictionpress & got suckered in. i kind of hate myself for being shocked that it was good simply b/c it's free on the web.

This should be a published book! Very well written and I loved both the MCs.

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I think I had read this before, but it is definitely a story worth revisiting. It's very well written and has some intense scenes. It's set in an interesting future when mankind is recovering after a virus that wiped out most of the population and the remaining people have reverted to a more tribal like existence, segregated by race and deeply, violently religious. In all communities there is a fundamental rule of doing everything to ensure a very high natality (because 8 out of 10 children coul [...]

I didn't find much about this book, that I enjoyed. The setting in a post-apocalyptic world where anti-scientific and anti-gay feelings are rampant was kind of promising but by no means used to advantage. The plot was fairly slow moving and without interesting twists or developments. The romance between the two MCs fairly uninspired. But what annoyed me most was that miscommunication was used as the prime plot device: nobody tells Tesla anything valuable (although they could easily) and Coyo is [...]

Wow. This is the first dystopia in ages that actually drew me in by its realism and believable consequences of near apocalypse. I'm not generally a fan of the genre - too strange and depressing - but this one was amazing.Horrible, yes, depressing with the all too realistic cruelty towards the main character, and also with the hypocrisy of quite a lot of the people out there, but never strange. It has got its roots firmly in today's narrowmindedness, petty cruelty, power hunger, lack of knowledge [...]

I really loved this one. The whole idea of the world 'Before' and 'After', the 'scourge'. Everything I loved it. A definite must read for M/M lovers out there as well as anyone who loves a little 'what might be'.

Read this on-line, wish it was available as a mobi

4.5 starsThank you so much Emma for recommending this to me :D

The biggest problem I had with this story was that I’d just read another story by this author; one that I liked better. So I guess I’m just…disappointed, which is sad because this story too is good – just not as good as the other story. Kind of a harsh reality for a writer but one they cannot escape, they have to suffer comparison between their own works as well as with other writers’. In a post-apocalyptic universe the world has gone back several hundred years in time and tolerance. T [...]

First off I really liked the setting: a post-apocalyptic, primitive, heavily-segregated world where a traumatized and bereft society has regressed to a dogmatically anti-scientific, religious and superstitious mindset. Only a few lucid minds dare to stand up to the suffocating and violent dogmatism, and in order to survive they have to hide in highly guarded villages. Esperanza is one of them.Tesla is gay and therefore in great danger in this religious and procreation-obsessed world, so he drift [...]

this reminded me a lot of a book with a similar setting - Dystopian, fucked up, fractured society, with a "must have sex to survive" mindset. But unlike that other book, Esperanza is, in fact, not (as) trashy.The focus is not on the sex - and there is a lot of sex, but it is, as advertised, a means of survivale whole culture around it is, frankly, quite horrifying and sickening, though not broached as big an issue as it could have been. Especially the way women are treated could have been intere [...]

Well written and enjoyable with a great development of the relationship between Coyo and Tesla. The other characters were interesting and I was particularly fond of Kevin. :-) It was good to see a pragmatic acceptance of homosexuality within Esperanza alongside an expectation that everyone would assist in growing the community. The tit bits of information in regards to life outside, especially for women like Tesla's mother were horrifying. While I accept that this was primarily a story about the [...]