Another great reading from K.Johnson.
I get the feeling that, after the author finished writing this, he said "wow, the whole 'duel over stolen girlfriend' thing is played out. How else can I incorporate 'cheating'?"
The concept of the entire fraternity being behind a duel, though, isn't believable to me. I was in a fraternity and the worst thing that would happen would be some sort of disciplinary hearing and possibly a brother being drummed out. These guys are obviously some sort of sub-group within the fraternity, which I can believe, but still... fraternities as a whole are on such thin ground these days with everyone on the lookout for misconduct that they'd never, EVER pull this for fear of being thrown off campus.
The author did a pretty good job keeping the action going; a Thunder-in-Paradise-style (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunder_in_paradise) action sequence isn't easy to write in prose form. I've tried to write boxing scenes for a story I've been reworking for some time and it's really difficult to get it right.
The whole thing with Terri seemed a bit tacked-on, as if we need to see that Trey is a good guy with the same fundamental problems as most college students, so we can root for him even more as John prepares to kill him.
It was also hard to keep track of all those white-bread old-money names because they all seemed to run together. It was like the first time I saw Gosford Park, where I was never quite sure what each person was named. Took me three or four viewings to get them all straight.
All that is not to say I didn't like the story. I just was poking holes in some of it is all. I liked it well enough.