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Rating: 
Summary: Very Interesting book of Coming of Age in Texas.....
Review: D. Travers Scott's fictitious town of Execution, Texas, is a suburban wasteland in the penumbral realms about an hour outside of Dallas, where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores sprout like weeds out of the hot concrete. Scott's novel focuses on high school senior Seeger King, who lives with his ex- hippie dad and gives phone psychic readings to his wandering-soul mother. At turns funny, creepy, and frustrated, this book seethes with complex erotic tensions (will Seeger move to New York with his bipolar girlfriend, Cordelia, or bed the wisecracking jock Kent?) and highlights the strangeness of its middle-America setting. Now, while his friends escape into drugs, fantasy and the ovewrought music of Marc Almond, Seeger must decide who to love, what to believe, and what action to take. Under Texas's looming state of mind, Seeger must tear through a shattered collage of myth and memory, searching for a reliable reality upon which to anchor his adulthood. Despite the beefcake cover, the book didn't read like ... gay romance. The characters are complex and funny, male and female, and coming out doesn't solve everyone's problems and make the world a perfect place. Without getting too heavy, I thought this was much more realistic than other gay books I've read. If you are looking for a very interesting read, you will enjoy this book. I was unsure at first, but am glad I stuck with it.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting book of Coming of Age in Texas.....
Review: D. Travers Scott's fictitious town of Execution, Texas, is a suburban wasteland in the penumbral realms about an hour outside of Dallas, where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores sprout like weeds out of the hot concrete. Scott's novel focuses on high school senior Seeger King, who lives with his ex- hippie dad and gives phone psychic readings to his wandering-soul mother. At turns funny, creepy, and frustrated, this book seethes with complex erotic tensions (will Seeger move to New York with his bipolar girlfriend, Cordelia, or bed the wisecracking jock Kent?) and highlights the strangeness of its middle-America setting. Now, while his friends escape into drugs, fantasy and the ovewrought music of Marc Almond, Seeger must decide who to love, what to believe, and what action to take. Under Texas's looming state of mind, Seeger must tear through a shattered collage of myth and memory, searching for a reliable reality upon which to anchor his adulthood. Despite the beefcake cover, the book didn't read like ... gay romance. The characters are complex and funny, male and female, and coming out doesn't solve everyone's problems and make the world a perfect place. Without getting too heavy, I thought this was much more realistic than other gay books I've read. If you are looking for a very interesting read, you will enjoy this book. I was unsure at first, but am glad I stuck with it.
Rating:
Summary: A Promising Debut
Review: EXECUTION TEXAS: 1987 is a compelling blend of literary and gay youth fiction. It's about 17 year-old "bisexual" Seeger and his growth from boy to man over the span of one tumultuous summer (prior to leaving for college) in a small Texas town of strip malls and restlessness. It's about his girlfriend and his boyfriend and about dealing with parents while trying to assert independence. It's about the sheer vastness of the future and the countless possibilities it presents. It's about being 17 and therefore includes much angst and drug use and racing hormones. This is a story of self-discovery and self-acceptance. It's personal and at the same time universal in the questions it raises about life and decisions. D. Travers Scott has penned a solid debut novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Sloppy writing, sloppy plot
Review: I don't understand the praise for 'Execution, Texas: 1987'. I was bored by the characters, bored by the plot, and bothered by the lack of execution. The author keeps teasing us with tidbits of personality and introspection but leaves us hanging without any true insight. None of the characters were well drawn. This book reminded me lot of 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' and 'Getting Off Clean' -only those books were good.
Rating:
Summary: Execution Reads Well But Could Reload
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Its strengths are in its fascinating look at the lives of high school students struggling with figuring themselves out, both personally and sexually, and in a sometimes real main character. The drawbacks for Execution, Texas 1987 are in the often confusing use of flashbacks, as I often had to read closely or read again to determine whether or not I was reading a flashback, and in what I read from a prior review: the characters are a little TOO open about their sexuality. Other than that, as I said, I enjoyed reading it, especially since Seeger does with Marc what I do with Stevie Nicks.
Rating:
Summary: Read This Book
Review: Our coming of age stories are changing. From the darkness of The City and the Pillar, to the confused and somewhat sordid initial sexual experiences of A Boy's Own Story, the stories of boys having sex with boys have been utterly different from the stories of boys having sex with girls. What was sweet or stumbling or even high tragedy in the latter was inevitably sinister or surreptitious or just pathetically tragic in the former. But in the hands of Seattle writer D. Scott Travers and other artists of his generation (like Gregg Araki), the story changes, more of a coming-of-age-story with a twist than a twisted coming of age story. Seeger King, Travers' protagonist, is seventeen, in his final year of high school in a town an hour outside Dallas called Execution. The year's 1987. He's had a boyfriend (Jésus), and now has a girlfriend (Cordelia), and is eyeing another boy, a wrestling puppy one year his junior (Kent). Cordelia, and the rest of Seeger's circle, knows about Jésus and Kent, and Seeger is not merely fooling himself with Cordelia. There are problems, sure, but he is genuinely sexually and emotionally interested in her. That's new. Neither his mystic and increasingly insane mother, nor his father and his stepmother, know much about his sex life, but the degree to which sexuality is normalized in this novel, and how closely associated that normalization is with pop culture (in this case, mostly Marc Almond and his various musical incarnations, including Soft Cell), is an excellent portrait of how sexual development and sexual identity are slowly coming to be seen. Marc Almond and Prince and Morrissey and Madonna have all been telling kids for about a decade now just how fine sex of all sorts is, and kids are tuning in, becoming less straight - and less prescriptively gay - in the process. Execution, Texas: 1987 is a sexy and powerful portrait of the foundations of the next generation in our continuing sexual evolution.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story
Review: Scott's novel is an engagingly disconcerting joyride through Seeger King's last months in Execution, Texas. Somehow our hero's apocalyptic visions are completely believable and heighten the sense of terrified wonder that so often accompanies late adolescence. Seeger's family relationships are wrenching and compelling, especially concerning his "real mom", Joan. A marvelous read.
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Summary: Total Disappointment!
Review: This book was written in a style that detracted from the story the author was attempting to tell. I was tempted by the subject (reliving my own high school years) and turned-off by the syntax. I would definitely NOT recommend this book to anyone.
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Summary: Back to High School
Review: This could almost have been my story. I felt that it was a good book & very easy to read. Some of the things that the main character delt with is what so many gay teens deal with, questions, questions, questions. This book doesn't answer any of the questions, but at least it makes some of them more interesting. I finished this book in an afternoon and felt it was worth reading. Go at it from a semi-light hearted point of view and you'll enjoy it & don't try to make it more than it is or you'll put it down fast.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and poignant in a different way
Review: What really blew me away about this book was that it wasn't just another coming out novel, or teen angst story. The characters are funny and unusual, yet I could still identify with them. The flashbacks weren't confusing to me at all, and I like that the author questions faith and spirituality and issues beyond sexuality. A great surprise!
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