The Kingswood Amelioration - Chapter 32
Added 2026-02-20 17:00:02 +0000 UTCComments
Great point about Charlie, I agree that he's the Danny of King Edwards. And he has a harder challenge than Danny, it's more difficult to be the support for change in a place where people were so antagonistic towards each other.
Davide
2026-02-27 21:05:51 +0000 UTCI know I'm behind in commenting (health, again), but I always love seeing a chapter with Charlie. For some reason, I think of him as the Danny of King Edwards. Not in the sexual way, but in the influence he has on others. Charlie is a big part of the reason King Edwards is slowly changing. It has seemed odd seeing chapters without Chris. I do miss him when he isn't there, but I understand with such a large number of characters it's not possible to have someone in every chapter, even one-half of the main couple. I think a new storyline with him will be exciting to read. I'm proud of Mikey. He's come so far - as the ear-flicking reminded us. Nice to see the reference back to the early days at Kingswood. It's clear that Mikey had more on his mind than just friendship when Nicky was telling him about Rob and Jazz. I'm still holding out hope for a Rob/Mikey relationship. I'm glad we had a Danny/Avery moment. I remember Levi saying long ago that he remembered someone saying Daniel's mother was pregnant at Daniel's funeral. I think Danny may have shifted Avery's views with their chat. I hope to see them get back to the way they were - they are so good together as mentor and mentee. Speaking of Avery, I hope there is another chapter of the "Life with the Lads" in our future. Those boys are adorable.
Rich
2026-02-27 20:05:24 +0000 UTCYep, I've definitely been planning ahead here. As the end of the series loomed, it occurred to me that I likely needed to plan a bit more than I had for earlier books due to the limited 'screentime' remanining. As for the title, Ascension seemed appropriate for many reasons, including the oens you've said. Nice to see it already makes some kind of sense 😊 Danny really does seem like a good fit for Head Boy. That said, a lot can change in 18 months... Yeah, the upper floors being empty at times is something I never really mention but is just one of those little Kingswood foibles that happens. I think eventually most of the boys just learn to roll with it. As for KFC, you're right about both its success and the reason for it. Mikey is a very shrewd businessman/boy and it speaks well for his future prospects! Interesting thoughts on Charlie. It's always harder to explore or understand feelings like that when you're in an environment where it is so opposed and oppressed. Being around the Kingswood boys, and Danny in particular, almost certainly helped him understand himself better. As for coming out at King Edwards, yeah, definitely brave... One of the biggest hurdles for Danny in the Avery issue was his own confidence in his own decision making. Sometimes he takes action and it helps, sometimes he takes action and things get worse. He struggles to trust his own judgment, which is understandable really. Hopefully he learns to trust himself more soon.
Matthew Smith
2026-02-22 16:37:27 +0000 UTCA book 7 tease in book, wow! Given that we're more than 2/3 into book 5 and they aren't yet ready to announce their plans to for a team to work on improving Kingswood, I'd guess they'll do that and select the people late into the current book and do the work during book 6. This also aligns with the plan to have a head boy for the first time when Danny is in year 13, meaning in book 7. Which means The Kingswood Ascension refers to the ascension of the school itself. Danny is perfect for both the team that will be working on these changes to Kingswood and the role of head boy. He's always trying to help other people with their issues and the goal of the team is doing that on a school wide scale. As for head boy, I had to google what that is, but the same thing applies, Danny can use that role to help other students on a wider scale. But it probably means a lot to Danny to hear this because he always thinks he doesn't help much. KFC is a huge success, the size of the crowd is crazy to the point where the year 7 and 8 students are probably confused at how empty the building is. Part of that is probably because of Mikey's reputation of running one new successful business literally every year he's been at Kingswood. But other reasons are that fighting and sex is a unique combination that wasn't present at Kingswood and the idea of people using it to resolve their grudges. Although we've see a definitely straight guy, Finn, indulge in some amount of gay sex, I thought Charlie went too far to be fully straight. But, since he seemed convinced of that, I thought he'd end up being bisexual heteroromantic, meaning bi in terms of sex and straight in terms of romance. Given what he said, it sounds like he's fully bisexual. It's hard to notice this in a school that crushes non-straight thoughts, his interactions with Danny probably helped. Charlie is very brave to come out in King Edwards. I know they've been doing some progress, starting from the work of Charlie and other guys from his year. But a school that's both so homophobic that Mark considered suicide when he was there and so entrenched in being mean to each other is going to take a lot of work to change. Which means that, despite what they've done so far, this is still extremely hard for Charlie and he did it, anyway. I understand why Danny didn't tell Avery about his brother at first, he trusts Levy's judgement and his logic was sound, but I think he should have said after the nightmare revealed how deep his worries are. That being said, the reveal that Avery mathematically can't have been conceived as a replacement and the thought that his parents put him Kingswood to protect him from the same suffering that made Daniel kill himself will go a long way for Avery.
Davide
2026-02-22 12:41:23 +0000 UTCThanks for the comments. I totally understand what you're saying. While I do often strive to include all the main characters a little, sometimes things just get moved around or pushed aside for other storylines. To an extent, he is being slightly sidelined, as many of the characters have been over the years during certain books, but don't worry, still plenty more Chris to come!
Matthew Smith
2026-02-21 17:13:28 +0000 UTCI deleted that because I was unhappy with how I said it, but I was also too tired to reword it. So I got rid of it and redid it in the morning.
Davide
2026-02-21 10:13:26 +0000 UTCThis chapter was great and I'll talk about that later, but there's one thing I didn't like. But, after the study week necessarily led to a couple chapters without some of the main characters, I feel those characters should have been more prominent in this one. Instead, we get a third consecutive chapter without Chris, except for a couple lines when Finn called Danny. I get that he's absent because he's not interested in fighting and sports, but you could have done things in a different order. And this also made me realize Chris is the only main character without a storyline right now and it makes me worry that maybe he's being sidelined a bit.
Davide
2026-02-21 10:12:16 +0000 UTCIt's nice to see Mikey again. I missed him in the last chapters
Mr Luigi
2026-02-21 08:20:08 +0000 UTCA sweet chapter. I see that the previous comment was deleted. Still I'll say, it's indeed strange to see Chris completely out of a chapter in normal school week. Gray is absent as well, but at least his name was mentioned 8 times! Heh. But it's great to see a sweet Danny-Charlie moment for a change! Danny is indeed giving good influences on his peers and friends.
Johnny Kape
2026-02-21 06:35:31 +0000 UTC
