First Son by Brian Jackson

First Son Reviews

• 
  Damon Suede

  Oof. Oy.
  
  I finish books... That is to say, if I start reading a book I complete it come hell or high water. This book pushed me to my absolute limit.
  
  As Brian Jackson's first M/M offering, FIRST SON is a book that seems to have sprung from its hook and title: FIRST SON: "Queer scandal in the White House!" The trouble is, that hook is where the writing stopped. Jackson seems to have had this idea about flamboyant presidential offspring and stopped there without developing it or doing the investigation needed to flesh it out for a novel. Empty mechanical sex, tissue thin characterization, leaden dialogue, and unbelievably clumsy plotting made this book an excruciating read on every level.
  
  First things first: grammar problems, misspellings, typos, malaprops, and misdirected antecedents abound. If you are troubled by English used poorly, abandon all hope. This is the kind of book that uses the word "masseur" repeatedly in place of monsieur and scatters apostrophes like buckshot. Did anyone proof this? It is difficult to find a page in this book that doesn't suffer from simple problems of craft. Even for a rough draft it's embarrassing. Self-published authors bear thrice the responsibility to get it right, and Jackson does NOT in any sense of the word. The absence of a competent editor is painful and painfully apparent.
  
  And yet, and yet... the nonexistent proofing is the least of our worries.
  
  Is it really necessary to observe that in good fiction stakes must escalate, tension is essential, and characters' actions demand consequence? I feel crazy typing that in a review of a book for which actual humans have paid actual money.
  
  If a M/M blurb announces that the President has a gay son, you can imagine the potential: vicious right-wingers, deep closets, political machinations, assassination attempts, kidnappings, press leaks, blackmail, security risks, black-tie shenanigans. Only, all of that, even in abstract, is more interesting than what's on offer here. Shortly after meeting, the main characters arbitrarily announce that they are in love and committed and damn the consequences. What consequences? Entire problems are named only long enough to be wiped away on a whim because a reversal was needed. ("I’ve been fucking with daddy for years and he hasn’t done anything yet.") Hateful homophobic characters turn out to be loving and supportive folk merely "testing" the "disgusting faggots" in their lives. Violence is a kind of moronic punctuation without impact or import. Characters are completely GOOD or EVIL without any nuance or reality or effect. Even children don't depict the world with this level of sloppiness. Again, the impression is of contempt because my purchase had legitimized this string of sentences as a book, when anyone reading it would know otherwise.
  
  This book was typed but it was not written. Jackson reduces the executive branch and the entire enterprise of running a country to a kind of chatty, flimsy sidebar so that the protagonists can get down to the real business of well, nothing much actually. There is an ENORMOUS amount of activity, but very little action because nothing is at stake; how can it be? These characters do not behave like carbon-based lifeforms. Ian, the FLAME-ON, nelly-boy protagonist remains so disconnected from anything like human behavior, let alone gay male behavior that it was hard to muster interest let alone empathy in his tiffs and travails. Malcolm, the Secret Service love interest is "closeted" for about 15 pages before turning on a dime to hump his "client" on every surface available. And every single obstacle crumples under the slightest effort of these priapic twits. Result: zero stakes, zero tension.
  
  You could almost make the case for the lunatic overkill and manic posturing rendering this a farce, except that it isn't funny. ("“How’s it moseying there, cowboy?”) There is a cartoony flippancy to the lack of meaningful detail, and a grinding monotony to the stacked events, as if lots of noise will distract us from noticing that nothing much is happening. M/M as flimflam. Even when setups indicate the possibility of interesting conflict or character growth, Jackson quickly heads off the possibility with bizarre narrative darts that preclude sense, drama, or emotion. Sadly, it's not even nutty and inventive enough to be endearing because around every scene I seemed to hear the grunting strain of constipated imagination. However inept it is, this book is above all joyless.
  
  About 50 pages in, baffled by the robotic "Queers-from-a-can" quality, a nagging suspicion drove me to the author's bio where I discovered that yes, as I had suspected, he was a self-published straight man who thought (since it's popular) he'd give M/M a go. Now, I don't see why a heterosexual man shouldn't be able to write passionate M/M as well as anyone. Plenty of gay porn legends are straight Republicans; it's the motion of the ocean after all. But Jackson's gender seems to have helped not at all. The whinging, hysterical "heroes" resemble the "chicks with dicks" that female authors are often accused of favoring. They seemed (in fact) like homophobic stereotypes in a M/M fiction! These protagonists don't act like MEN all that much, certainly not grown men, let alone grown men in love.
  
  The eroticism is nil and sexual congress occurs in a pointless frenzy that advances neither character nor plot. Ian and Malcolm fuck constantly because it's, ya know, an EROTIC romance. ("“Hey, Malcolm. Have you ever fucked on a horse?”) The adolescent flailing and slobbering and prodding are neither erotic or romantic, more like a dirty joke with no punchline. There are a strange number of "masturbation marathons" as if Jackson can't figure out what two "gays" do with all that time naked together. And since these characters do almost nothing that isn't naked together, the repetitive sex is numbing and puerile. Again that contempt rumbling underneath. I would call it porn, except it isn't arousing. Reading the book, there seemed to be a hollowness (for want of a better descriptor) to all the intimacy: a deadened, by-the-numbers quality like someone in a hospital ordering from a catalog.
  
  That's the best way to describe it: this book feels FAKE from stem to stern.
  
  Most damningly, having finished this book I must assume Jackson did no research whatsoever: on gay men, on the secret service, on general law enforcement, on security, on the White House, on the Presidency, on male anatomy, on etiquette or protocol, even on baseline narrative structure. Even the (theoretically) charged situations of coming out, redemption, secrecy, politics, and parenting are doodled without care or thought or imagination. Again, I had the feeling that this entire book was trying to "hit the marks" without understanding why or what those marks were. When coupled with the sloppy craft problems, the general impression is of a book written to capitalize on a popular trend with FIERCE CONTEMPT for its audience.
  
  M/M is pretty sophisticated these days. FIRST SON is an object lesson in the importance of knowing your genre. Nothing will convince me that Brian Jackson had read widely in gay romance before attempting this because there is nothing gay or romantic about it. This is not an M/M novel, but neither is it gay erotica. Over and over the purposelessness of the sex and the flimsy stereotyping and clumsy plotting and clunky dialogue made me feel like the book expressed a kind of casual disdain for the genre to which it lays claim. And if this is what straight men still think about gay romance, we homos are all in deep sh!t. That smoldering contempt for the reader built and built as I forced myself to the limp finish. I knew I had been conned, and suspected Brian Jackson knew it too. By the last page my RAGE compelled me to come write these 1500 words to warn others away. If you've read the book I suspect you'll understand what I mean, but I'd urge you to spend your time elsewhere.
  
  I recognize that the above comments are harsh but they are warranted. Please know, I have only reviewed the book; I don't know Brian Jackson or his motives so any extrapolations derived from reading this book closely are my own. His talents may be prodigious but they are not evidenced here in any way at any time. I cannot for the life of me figure out the impulse behind this book. I won't speak to Mr. Jackson's anomalous desire to randomly "give M/M a whirl" but I hope that he will take greater care with any M/M writing he does in the future... in every facet of his process.
  
  I would pay money not to have read it. This is a book to be avoided at all costs.
  
• 
  Honey

  If I could give this book 0 stars I would. If I could give it a negative rating, I'd jump at the chance.
  
  Reason number 1:The Sorry Excuse For A Secret Agent: I’m led to believe that Malcolm is a closeted, professional, Secret Service agent intent on protecting the President's son who finds himself instantly attracted to Ian. This makes him a sympathetic character. At least it did at the beginning. But that was before I discovered he was the most irresponsible, unprofessional, unbelievable, secret agent in the history of the secret service. Firstly, on his first night of protecting Ian at a club – the last time Ian had been at a club he got shot – he goes from denying Ian to allowing some random guy to give him a BJ under the table. This is Mr.Closeted we're talking about here! When he’s supposed to be protecting the Presidents son. On his first assignment. Did Iain care? Nope. They proceed to jump into bed together and Ian tells the guy who wouldn’t come to him but got a BJ from another guy that they’re falling in love. I’m sorry, what?! Then The Sorry Excuse For A Secret Agent allows Ian to be beaten and later kidnapped while on his watch. Does he get sacked for all of this? Nope, he’s given an honest to god award, for get this, a job well done. This man made Austin Powers look good for Christ’s sake. Later on, Mr.Professional actually has sex with Ian in the oval office - the President's reaction to this is Reason Number 3 for my dislike of this book - if there was any respect left for either of the MC I lost it at this point. I found it ludicrous that this man had even made it as far as army ranger and hadn't been killed on his tours. And by the end of the book, the secret agent (I use this term loosely) was permanently assigned to the protection of Ian, the man he has absolutely no objectivity towards and hadn't protected any of the times he was meant to.
  
  Reason number 2:The Cheater: I guess I should have listened to my instincts and put the book down the first time I was introduced to Ian, the president's son. We meet him one night when he's out partying with his lover. When his boyfriend doesn’t feel like dancing, Ian decides that hey, why not dance with a bunch of other guys and make out with them while he’s at it? In front of his lover. But I ignored it and attributed it to the fact that at the end of the day he was a spoilt, little rich daddy’s boy. After he gets shot at said night club and is assigned a bodyguard I actually liked him. He seemed understanding of the predicament Malcolm found himself in and even said to Malcolm “never be afraid again, not of love”. And thus, they begin their affair. At this point he seemed like a pretty decent guy. Ian says they’re falling for each other… and then bam! The man who tells Malcolm not to be afraid of love opens up his bedroom door to Malcolm after having sex with his ex. Just because. No reason. He just enjoys fucking around. He acts like its nothing. Actually, that isn’t true; he actually had the gal to call Malcolm childish for being upset at finding his boyfriend cheating on him.
  
  
  Reason number 3:The President of the USA aka The Most Powerful Absurd Man In The World : In only the first couple of pages Ian’s father wishes that he could cure his son of his gayness. He’s been showed up by his son many a time and is desperate to get him to mature. Makes sense. So am I really to believe that this same man doesn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that the man he has assigned to keep his son in place and to protect him was getting his rocks of in public instead, after being asked for the utmost discretion? And am I also to believe that the man who has made it to the most powerful position in the world finds it amusing that he walks in on his son and the secret agent assigned to protect him having sex in the oval office when he walks in with foreign dignitaries? This man made it to President of the United States of America?
  
  This book was so ludicrous, absurd and just plain ridiculous that by the end of it I didn’t even care enough to be angry at this awful book. My recommendation: Stay Away!
  
• 
  Aves Raggiana

  A commendable first effort in the realm of male-male romance, with its high points being the simple but entertaining storyline, and the basic likability of the two main characters. What this book really, really needs is a thorough editorial cleanup for spelling, grammar and syntax. The gaffes in the writing are prominent enough and occur frequently enough to be distracting. Please submit this book for editing by a professional editor whose technical skills, taste and good judgement can be trusted. Cleaning up this book will surely, only add to what is already a pretty enjoyable read.
• 
  Curtis

  I really wanted to like this story. The concept was one that showed promise and the setup really had me thinking this could be great. But ultimately, it just doesn't come together. I liked some of the characters and some of the moments in the relationship between the main characters are really sweet, but there are a number of moments that just left me going "huh?". And the lack of editing (which included incorrect words - "queue" instead of "cue") detracted further from the story...
• 
  Cole Riann

  DNF Reason -- I just thought this story was terrible. I'm sorry I can't offer you examples, but I read it a while ago and all I remember was that one character was an annoying, whiny brat and the other a pushover.
• 
  Lenoire

  That is not one of my favorite book. That's all I gotta say.
• 
  Alex Hahn

  I would have rated this better if it would have been more plausible and more realistic.