A gay English youth comes of age in the 1960s in Nochtree’s novel.

England, 1961: Mark Martin is a teenager who lives with his mother. Mark’s current situation is summed up thusly: “He hated his life, he hated the flat, he hated this city, he hated his school, he hated his mother. He hated himself.” Mark is attracted to other boys; considering the laws and social norms of the time, he does not exactly go around announcing this. One day, while in town, he learns of a local pub where gay men hang out called The Vault. When Mark is offered a fiver there for sex, he accepts. (Five pounds is a lot of money in his world and he enjoys the sex, so why not?) Mark winds up doing this regularly and becomes attached to one of the patrons, who goes by the name Pip. He also gets a part-time job at the nearby Frank’s Fish’n’Chips. (Frank’s does not pay as much as sex work, but it gives Mark a cover for his newfound income.) Through Frank’s, he meets a boy named Tommy, and Tommy and Mark become secret boyfriends. Eventually, Pip gets Mark a job at the car dealership that he runs. Pip and Mark form their own lasting relationship. As Mark manages to balance school, Tommy, Pip, and the occasional inquiries of his mother, things seem to be going well. But disaster soon strikes: After an incident with another rent boy, Mark sees no other option but to flee the country with Pip.

Mark is hardly the typical hero for a narrative that, in the second half of the book, morphs into something of an adventure story as he ventures far from home with a man who may or may not be trustworthy (though it is established early on that Pip is involved with business somewhere around Indonesia, the nature of this business is kept a secret). The first half of the story is chock-full of inviting tension—most of this comes from Mark’s chosen profession. How long can he keep up the life of a secret sex worker? But as sticky as Mark’s problems are, the story does have its share of dull moments. Mark puts out a fire at Frank’s before it can spread and destroy the whole building; this action is covered extensively and then spoken about again and again by different characters. When one of his schoolmates picks up the local paper, “There on the front page was a large photograph of Mark, smiling uneasily with Mam’s arm round him and a big grin on her face.” While Mark’s actions and the ensuing excitement have their place in the overall narrative, it is not a particularly engaging incident for the reader. Nor are many of the events that follow, such as when Mark receives an award at school for his bravery. (Mark is told of the badge he receives, as if it were not obvious, “It’s awarded for special achievements.”) Still, as Mark’s world constantly changes, readers will be curious to see where he will ultimately wind up.

This unique hero takes the story to dangerous places, both in England and abroad.

Notchtree offers a military adventure novel about the making of a modern Russian soldier.

When readers first meet Maxym “Max” Ivanov, it’s the year 2000, he’s just 6 years old. He’s with his parents and sister when Chechen separatists brutally attack; Max hides, but the rest of his family is killed. Russian contract soldiers known as “kontraktnik” swiftly catch the perpetrators, and one of the soldiers offers young Max a gun so that he can seek immediate justice. Max does so, shooting all the captives and vowing to one day kill all the mujahedeen. One of the Russian soldiers, Leonid Nikolayevich, adopts the youngster and vows to take care of him. After Leonid is wounded in battle, he and Max move to the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. Aside from the fact that Max has killed several people and seems driven to kill more, he and Leonid live a fairly ordinary life. When the young man reaches puberty, he realizes that he’s gay; he later carries on a secret relationship with a boy named Andrei. When the two are caught having sex, it creates a scandal, and they are forced to sever all ties with each other. At the age of 17, Max joins a fighting force called Valhalla, and he proves to be highly skilled with firearms. In Valhalla, recruits live by such maxims as “your whole body is a killing machine.” Max goes on to participate in missions throughout the world; eventually, in 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurs, and he reflects on how he really doesn’t want “to join this Donbas mess and end up shooting at Ukrainians.”

The entire saga of Maxym Ivanov weighs in at more than 700 pages, and it’s a tale that progresses at an unhurried pace with a great deal of dialogue. For instance, when Max is young, he has an awful lot of questions; when he and Leonid are taking a trip to England, for instance, the youngster asks, “Can we meet the Queen?” Many of his queries, though, don’t add much to his character or to the overall progress of the story. Even in Max’s later years, he still has obvious queries, as when he says, in response to a comment about bank interest rates going up: “That means I get more in interest, doesn’t it?” Still, for readers, the heart of the matter is where this ferocious combatant will ultimately end up. The narrative builds excitement as he arrives in such locales as Northern Ireland and the Central African Republic. There’s plenty of action, as well: “A hail of bullets came his way, smashing into the masonry around.” One never knows what the next hot zone will have in store—or if his sexual orientation will attract dangerous attention. For example, he worries about what the Russian army, who threaten to conscript Max if he doesn’t volunteer for combat, will do if they find out that he’s gay. Such moments of tension give the story added suspense and momentum.

A lengthy but eventful character study that keeps its protagonist in jeopardy both on and off the battlefield.