You know what’s worse than watching cable news for hours on end? Reading a book in which the main character does nothing but watch cable news for hourYou know what’s worse than watching cable news for hours on end? Reading a book in which the main character does nothing but watch cable news for hours on end.
You know what’s worse than a book in which the main character does nothing but watch cable news for hours on end? Reading a book in which the main character is presented as a truth seeker exposing a plot that has enormous implications for the entire human race, but in reality he’s a self-righteous and demanding little prick who is a huge hypocrite.
You know what’s worse than reading a book in which the main character is presented as a truth seeker exposing a plot that has enormous implications for the entire human race, but in reality he’s a self-righteous and demanding little prick who is a huge hypocrite? Reading a book that is supposed to be an interesting sci-fi story about the world finding out that the US government has been covering up the existence of aliens for decades, but it turns out to be a maddening slog filled with terrible writing and a plot so dull that it could stun an insomniac on meth into a deep sleep.
You know what’s worse than reading a book that is supposed to be an interesting sci-fi story about the world finding out that the government has been covering up the existence of aliens for decades, but it turns out to be a maddening slog filled with terrible writing and a plot so dull that it could stun an insomniac on meth into a deep sleep? Nothing. Nothing is worse than this book. And I’m including everything from getting socks on Christmas morning to cancer when I say that.
It starts out with a guy named Dan McCarthy literally bumping into a thief who just robbed the office of a man who runs a fictional US space agency. The thief drops a folder of documents before fleeing which Dan glances at and is stunned to find what he believes is proof that the government has been hiding proof of alien contact.
Dan just so happens to be a big believer in that very conspiracy theory so he takes the folder to a library where for a completely contrived reason he only has 20 minutes to examine it. Turns out that Dan doesn’t even need the full 20 to be sure that it’s all true so he immediately scans and leaks the file to the press. He tries to do it anonymously but fails miserably so Dan finds himself at the center of the controversy and media firestorm that follow. After that he goes on TV a couple of times, and he watches cable news for about 600 pages. Then some more stupid shit happens at the end.
The 20 minute thing really highlights everything that is wrong with this book. This guy spends less than a half-hour Googling some things and can’t even translate an important looking German letter in the file yet is 100% convinced that it’s true and immediately leaks it. That tells you exactly what kind of shithead Dan McCarthy is.
First off, the 20 minute thing is a completely arbitrary deadline. There’s no real reason that Dan couldn’t be patient and do more research on the documents. Secondly, there’s nothing in these documents or what Dan looks up that would remotely be considered credible evidence. Third, even if he had absolute proof that it was true Dan doesn’t stop for a moment to consider what releasing the file will mean for humanity. He’s completely blind to his obsession of proving that aliens exist and his bone deep conviction that the truth is all that matters.
At or least he cares about it as long as it suits him because Dan is a goddamn hypocrite of the highest order. Despite his contention that the truth is the most important thing he willingly doesn’t disclose a lot of things like a damning phone call made by the president of the United States to him later in the book just because he doesn’t want to deal with the media hassle it would bring him.
Think about that for a second. The guy who constantly gets on his high horse about the truth being everything does not disclose evidence he has of personal wrongdoing by the President of the United States just because it would inconvenience him. And that’s far from his worse hypocrisy in this book which I won’t get into because of spoilers, but let’s just say that for a character who leads a campaign with a rallying cry of “Truth! Truth! Now! Now! Now!” Dan McCarthy doesn’t have much of a problem with lying his ass off on a massive scale just so long as it makes things easier for him.
Plus, he’s just an asshole in general. Despite being a healthy adult he depends on his brother, a military contractor overseas, who has to hire a house cleaner and have meals ordered on-line delivered to Dan because he’s apparently incapable of sweeping a floor or feeding himself. He talks like a whiny teenager who constantly questions every single thing anyone says or requests of him. “Why do we have to do that?” “Why don’t they do it this way?” “What difference does that make?” “Why can’t you just fly me home from Europe in your private jet?” Yes, Dan literally demands that a rich guy who is already helping him out and flown him and his companions to Europe first class use his private plane to get him home immediately for no good reason other than they can’t get a commercial flight back the minute Dan decides he needs to leave.
In fact, Dan is so inflexible and demanding that I seriously thought for a while that the author was indicating that he might have a mild form of Asperger’s which would at least provide a valid excuse for him to behave this way. That got shot down with two other characters actually discuss this and it’s conclusively stated that Dan has seen doctors and does NOT suffer from any disorders like that. So again, he’s just an entitled asshole.
A lot of other problems come from Dan’s interactions with the media which is the major part of the book. We’re told that Dan hates all the attention, and he’s the victim of smear campaigns against his character. Despite this he’s so dedicated to the cause of getting the government to admit the truth (Or at least his version of the truth.) that he agrees to work with a PR consultant who starts booking him for appearances on various shows.
This is where things get really stupid because on one hand the book is trying to critique the modern media, but the author’s idea of journalism seems to be the equivalent of a certain orange skinned whiner who complains that anything he doesn’t like is fake news. In the world of this book there is apparently no serious journalism because Dan’s first appearance is on a show that is set up as being this world’s version of 60 Minutes yet the format is instead a panel show like Bill Maher with celebrities and hacks with political agendas on it. His subsequent appearances are on a show hosted by a famous UFO believer and he agrees to be hypnotized by another famous TV personality to see if he’s telling the truth.
I know we’re a civilization in decline, but I can’t think of a single nationally popular TV program that features conspiracy theorists and hypnotists as hosts. (YouTube doesn’t count. These are supposed to be well-known TV shows.) Dan is supposedly the guy who just leaked the most explosive news in human history and his credibility is in question. If he really wants to prove that he’s telling the truth wouldn’t it make more sense for him to sit down and do extensive interviews with real reporters? In this world apparently Trump got his wish because newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post don’t seem to exist anymore, and there’s not one serious mention of Dan doing anything but shitty cable news.
The problem is compounded by the author’s apparent belief that 'good' journalists don’t try to independently question, document or verify anything. Instead they just show up when the subject of a massive story tells them to and pretty much do what he asks.
One prime example of this is during Dan’s trip to Europe where he meets with the press, but his PR lady insists that he will only answer questions asked directly in English and not translated. She’s got a legitimate fear that a translation issue will cause problems, but maybe she should have told the reporters this BEFORE the press conference so they could send English speaking reporters. And it’s the height of arrogance to go to a foreign country, willingly attend a press conference where you’re pimping your own agenda, and then assert that you won’t answer questions translated from the native language. Again, this is presented as if it’s a reasonable request by Dan’s representative, and that the ‘good’ reporters immediately agree to this demand.
Another example of the glass house this book lives in while chucking stones comes from Dan watching a cable news show where they get one minor fact about him sort of wrong. Not entirely wrong, but there’s some context missing which leads to Dan bitterly complaining about the media not doing their research before rushing to air. So a guy who leaked a file saying that the government had been covering up the existence of aliens for decades after less than 20 GODDAMN MINUTES of research is complaining about the media not doing their due diligence, and it’s presented with absolutely no sense of irony or self-awareness. It’s the constant parade of crap like this that almost gave me a rage stroke.
All of this ends up being incredibly frustrating because there’s no real reasons that any of this couldn’t have been dealt with in rational ways. Why couldn’t Dan have the file for a couple of weeks and do research that would at least convince us that he’s thoroughly vetted it? Why couldn’t some of the endless pages of him dealing with the media include at least some encounters with real journalists who ask him tough but reasonable questions? Why must the world immediately treat Dan like an expert on aliens rather than just a guy who works at a coffee shop that bumbled onto something big? Why is Dan such a huge douchebag?
In addition to all this the writing itself is also excruciating. The author doesn’t believe in things like sub-text or a reader inferring anything. In fact, he apparently thinks readers are incapable of forming short term memories because of the way he repeats things to explain in the most simple and obvious way possible what’s going on.
Here’s an example:
"It’s not that simple,” Jan pleaded. “McCarthy has representation. He’s with XPR."
Richard raised his eyebrow at the surprising news that McCarthy had secured such powerful representation.
Notice that the author feels the need to tell us exactly why Richard raises his eyebrow. He didn’t just say, “Richard raised an eyebrow in surprise.” Or even simpler. “Richard raised an eyebrow.” Then the sentence repeats the same information conveyed in the previous one.
Here’s another about a character who (Big surprise.) has been watching the news.
“Not knowing what Thursday might bring she decided to call it a night and catch up on any developments in the morning.”
Think about what the author is telling us here. Rather than just say nothing is going on so she turns off the TV and goes to bed he feels like he must explain to us that the character doesn’t have the psychic ability to know what events the next day might bring so she’s going to get some rest in case something happens and then catch up any new developments tomorrow. Which is what every single one of us do every goddamn time we go to sleep. There's no reason whatsoever to stress to us that she is turning off the TV and going to bed at that point, and yet he feels the need to explain to us exactly why she's going to quit watching the news and go to sleep.
That’s the sneakily awful nature of this writing. It doesn’t seem that bad on the surface, and a few of these could slip by unnoticed but it’s literally like this for the entire book. Every action or decision, no matter how minor, has to be explained and analyzed in the most painfully obvious terms. It gets to be incredibly annoying after a while.
Like if I slammed my thumb in the car door this author would write it up like this:
“Kemper slammed the car door on his thumb. He had not meant to do it because previous experience had told him that slamming a car door on his thumb would be quite painful. It was an accident, and yet he had indeed slammed his thumb in the car door and it was quite painful. Kemper closely examined the thumb to see if had been broken when he slammed it in the car door, but it appeared to only be swollen and red because he had slammed it in the car door by mistake, not on purpose because he knew it would hurt to do so.”
And then the next morning:
“Kemper woke up and felt his thumb ache. He remembered that he slammed it in the car door the day before which had been very painful. It still hurt somewhat because he had slammed it in the car door, and he knew that he would have to be careful with it for some time. Because it hurt. Because he slammed in in the car door.”
OK, I admit I’m exaggerating. But not much.
I could go on and on about this. The supporting characters are all one-dimensional and don’t end up mattering a bit to the main story. It’s boring. You can see every plot twist coming a mile away. There’s a long bit about Dan doing TV ads that made me wish someone would set his hair on fire like Michael Jackson when he filmed that Pepsi commercial. The abomination of an ending alone would be worth another lengthy rant, but I’m not going to waste more time and energy on it.
Suffice it to say that there’s a lot of ways that this book might have been interesting and good. It could have been an exciting thriller about a guy who discovers a huge secret. It could have been a fascinating character study about what happens to an ordinary person who accidently finds himself thrust into a media spotlight. It could have been an insightful commentary about modern media driven culture. It could have been a great sci-fi story about humanity coming to terms with the existence of aliens.
Instead it tried to be all those stories and failed miserably at every single one of them....more
- The Last Starfighter - Ender’s Game -“Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet on a lonely quest- The Last Starfighter - Ender’s Game -“Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet on a lonely quest for a shining planet known as Earth. - Proton packs - Twiki from Buck Rogers - “I’d buy that for a dollar!” - Ms Pac-Man - Mix tapes - “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” - Pitfall - “Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator - and vanished.” - Tron - “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” - Defender - Warp core breaches - “Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?” - Voight-Kampff test - Streets of Fire - “Yippie-ki-yay, motherf...….”
Why did you stop me? What’s that you say? You can’t just string a bunch of nerdy ‘80s pop culture references together and call it a coherent piece of writing? Maybe not, but Ernest Cline is getting rich doing it so I thought I’d give it a try.
Ah, but seriously folks...
Zach Lightman is a high school kid whose only real talent is playing video games. His father was killed in an accident right after he was born, and thanks to an attic full of the old man’s stuff Zach is well versed in ‘80s movies, TV, and music. There’s also a notebook in which his dad theorized that all the pop culture since the '70s was done as part of a plan to prepare the world for a coming alien invasion, and video games were introduced to train the public on how they’d fight them. Zach learns that his father’s theory was right when he gets scooped up by the Earth Defense Alliance because his skills are needed to help fight off the space invaders.
Cline has lifted elements from stories like The Last Starfighter and Ender’s Game, and then used the notion that the EDA has been influencing Earth’s culture for decades to create a loop in which he can continually roll out nerdy references to the point where you’ll want to punch the next person who says anything about Star Wars within your hearing. Oh, and Futurama also did this plot in a much better and funnier way about 7 years earlier.
Borrowing story from other works isn’t the worst thing about this though. The part Cline lifted is used fairly often in entertainment as general wish fulfillment that any kid might be exceptional somehow. So this doesn’t come across as quite the act of plagiarism it sounds like from the premise of the book. That’s far from the biggest problem with Armada.
The important thing here is that Ernest Cline is a goddamn hack.
I thought his first book Ready Player One was lightweight mildly entertaining sci-fi that mainly coasted by due to its appeal as Gen-X nostalgia porn, but Cline is like that guy at work who made one decent joke that got a short giggle out of you once in the break room and after that repeats a variation of it every time you bump into him in the hall. With this second book he’s shown that he has no other moves than playing the pop culture card because Armada is nothing but the same gag repeated ad nauseam.
My irritation starts with Zach Lightman because just as in RP1 we once again have a teenage hero who is obsessed with the ‘80s despite not living in them. Yeah, Cline makes up some reasons as to why a kid in the future or in the present would get into this, but in reality this is just an excuse for a middle-aged man to put his own youth culture into the mouths of younger characters in an attempt to convince us all that the ‘80s were totally awesome and completely relevant today, dude!
It also gives him the opportunity to unleash his never ending stream of nerdy references in lieu of actually writing a book. The main character can’t describe anything, anyone, or any emotional state without using pop culture as shorthand. Almost everything that happens to him has to be expressed by comparing it to a movie, TV show, or video game. He literally can’t describe his own mother without evoking Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley to give you an idea of her toughness even though she’s a nurse, not a robot fighting survivalist or alien exterminator.(view spoiler)[ Yes, I know she does fight aliens at the end, but even if you want to believe that’s foreshadowing, it’s once again using famous sci-fi characters to tell us what to expect out of Cline’s creation rather than trying to do it himself. If he had bothered to build up the mom as tough so that we bought into the idea that she’s shooting lasers at aliens and then compare her to Sarah Connor in a joke or comment, then that might actually pay off in the moment if done well. But then he would have had to come up with a way to describe her early on without using the crutch of references, and that just wasn’t gonna happen. (hide spoiler)]
Some might try to say that this is Cline deliberately writing a hero with extremely nerdy obsessions to explore the nature of geek fandom, but that excuse doesn’t fly because almost every single character in this book does the same thing. Even the hard-core military guy in charge of the EDA makes a Top Gun reference when talking to Zach. After all, this is a book written by a guy who drives a goddamn DeLorean so I’m not buying the theory that Cline is just commenting on people who are rabid fans of the '80s when he’s also foaming at the mouth.
It’s in just about every conversation, and that highlights another problem with Cline’s dependence on nostalgia. He is so enamored with nerd culture that he thinks that name checking some of its most famous elements is entertaining in and of itself, and he acts like every half-assed joke or quote he tosses out is inherently great just because we’ll recognize where it came from.
It’s weirdly out of touch that he writes this like acknowledging a reference puts someone in an exclusive club that only a few like minded souls belong to. When Zach meets the obligatory geek dream girl he falls for after joining the EDA she’s drinking from a flask painted like R2-D2, and that’s supposed to be a sign that they have things in common. As if finding a Star Wars fan in a crowd of some of the best gamers on Earth would be hard to do.
I’d also like to point out to Cline that there is a new Star Wars movie coming out in December, and its trailers on You Tube already have several million views. The third Star Trek after the franchise reboot is in production. Hell, even Adam Sandler made an ‘80s video game movie although it sounds like he couldn’t be bothered to put even this low of an amount of effort into it. So this idea that trotting out “May the Force be with you.” is going to be some kind of secret handshake to identify your fellow nerdlingers is pretty much shot to hell in the year 2015.
That’s part of the problem with Cline thinking that it’s just enough to reference this stuff. Imagine if we show up to that Star Wars flick, and Harrison Ford is in just one scene and says, “Hi, I’m Han Solo. Remember that time I got frozen in carbonite? Boy, did that suck. See ya later.” There would be riots in the streets if JJ Abrams allowed that to happen because it’s not enough to just mention Han Solo, it only works if Han Solo does something cool as part of the plot.*
*(Or at least that’s the way I feel, but for some reason it seems like there are a helluva lot of fans of all kinds out there who will pee themselves at the slightest hint of something they care about. “SQUEEEE!! It makes me SOOOOOO HAPPY just to see a reference to it! Because I love it SOOOOO MUCH! I don’t care if he/she/it just sat in a corner sending text messages for the entire scene instead of doing any of the of things that I originally liked about them to begin with. It was just SOOOOOOO AWESOME to see him/her/it again!!!!”
I don’t get that, but it’s not my problem. I’m here to tell you what’s wrong with Cline, not the world.)
Essentially Cline is just trying to use things we liked from other works to evoke the same emotions we got from them without bothering to create his own, and he’s shoving as many things in there as possible to give readers a sweet nostalgic glow to paper over that shortcoming.
For example, he references Iron Eagle which is a '80s movie about a teenager stealing an Air Force jet and blowing up the Middle East to save his dad. It’s not enough for Cline to cite that or have Zach’s online alias be Iron Beagle. During one scene he has Zach zapping aliens as he listens to Queen’s One Vision from his dad’s old mix tape, but that’s actually done in the movie. Rather than try to build his own moment (Or maybe having a kid from 2015 listen to some music from this century.) Cline points at the film and says, “See, it’s just like that! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”
On the other hand, he kinda has to do this because he’s it’s not like he can rely on his writing ability.
I’ve read Stan Lee dialogue in comics from the ‘60s that was less on the nose and had more sub-text. The characters are all paper thin stereotypes. When Cline has to convey that someone is emotionally upset, and he tries to do more than just remind us of a famous movie scene that demonstrates this he repeatedly describes how their faces contort. For example: “His face contorted in anguish.” or “His face contorted in pain.” or “His face contorted in a mask of pain.” There are multiple variations on that phrase used about every other page for a while in the third act. Maybe if Cline checked a thesaurus instead of IMDB once in a while he could find a new verb.
The odd thing is that I’m not even that angry at Cline. He’s a shit writer who found a hook that made him insanely popular. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it won’t be the last. Usually I wouldn’t even read it, and I’d let someone else put his books on the same shelf as Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer. (Damn, but I am just chumming the waters with troll bait on this one, aren’t I?)
But Ready Player One irked me because its set up was a young guy from the future who was essentially trying to live in my past. Armada outright offends me because Cline takes it even further to the point where the book is nothing but references with the barest bones of any kind of original plot to it. He’s unable to craft a real story that might make legitimate use of his ‘80s obsession so he throws a pot of pop culture spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. It’s a mess, and it’s making me start to hate many of the things I enjoyed during my adolescence after seeing how annoying it is to be subjected to non-stop unfiltered nerd nostalgia.
This is also part of a worrisome trend of shitty movies based on toys and games (Transformers, GI Joe, Battleship) as well as outright reboots (Robocop, Total Recall.), and old TV shows being brought back. (X-Files, Twin Peaks & Full House. That's right, we've hit a point as a culture where we apparently crave the familiar so much that bringing Full House back sounds like a good idea to somebody.) If we keep stuffing the same old stuff back in our mouths again and again, we’re eventually going to choke on it.
To use a Cline tactic of borrowing something from pop culture for my own purposes I’ll modify a quote from True Detective: “My strong suspicion is that we get the sci-fi we deserve.”
I’m really starting to worry that’s true. So let’s try to change it. How about if you’re craving the concept of this book you go watch that Futurama episode Space Invaders instead? Trust me, it’s a lot better....more
King put me through years of mental torture with The Dark Tower series, but I was able to forgive once Shenanigans! I cry shenanigans on Stephen King!
King put me through years of mental torture with The Dark Tower series, but I was able to forgive once he finally delivered a fitting ending to that saga. So I had a lot of concerns about him returning to the story of Roland. I worried that King had come down with a vicious case of Lucasitis that was going to have him tinkering with this story repeatedly.
However, King’s public statements indicated that it would not change the core Dark Tower story and that it would just explore the long interlude between the fourth and fifth books. I’ve always had a big question regarding that since the end of Wizard & Glass had young Jake still being a new arrival to Mid-World and completely untrained as a gunslinger while Eddie and Susannah still had a lot to learn about carrying the heavy iron. When Wolves of the Calla picked up, all of them were stone cold bad asses after being on the path of the Beam for a good long while. It seemed like King was going to fill in that gap, and that was a story that I would have been interested in reading.
I have to note here that Wizard & Glass is my least favorite of the Dark Tower books. This was mainly for three reasons:
1) After years of waiting, it didn’t advance the core story at all and instead focused on a flashback to young Roland.
2) It involved a long tale with a character who really didn’t have anything to do with DT after that book.
3) It was filled with fucking Wizard of Oz references.
So what do we get in The Wind Through the Keyhole?
1) A flashback story to young Roland.
2) A flashback inside another flashback that tells a long tale about a character that has nothing to do with the rest of the DT story.
3) A couple of Wizard of Oz references.
Adding insult to injury, the main reason I read this wasn't addressed. Even though it’s supposed to be shortly after the ending of the fourth book, Jake is suddenly carrying a gun and going off ahead of the others and no one is worried because “He can take care of himself.” WHEN?? WHEN THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN? BECAUSE AS FAR AS I KNOW HE’S STILL THE KID WHO GOT KIDNAPPED AND NEARLY KILLED IN LUD, YET A WEEK OR TWO LATER HE’S JUST A GODDAMN GUNSLINGER WITH ABSOLUTELY NO TRAINING!!
*ahem*
So instead of getting the one damn question I wanted answered in this, the gunslingers are used as a framing device for Roland to tell them a story about his past that turns into him telling some little bastard a tale about another little bastard wandering off into the woods.
Seriously, this could have been a fun offshoot short story or stories in larger collections someday, but putting them in a hardback and calling them Dark Tower just seems like the worst kind of bait and switch.
I’m going to sell this one to a used book store and pretend it doesn’t exist. ...more
It’s Gender Reversal Day here on Goodreads as I review One for the Money.
So Samuel Plum is an underwear buyer for a retail store who has recently losIt’s Gender Reversal Day here on Goodreads as I review One for the Money.
So Samuel Plum is an underwear buyer for a retail store who has recently lost his job. Desperate for cash, he blackmails his pervert cousin who runs a bail bonds agency into letting him go after a cop named Jane Morellie who was accused of murder and then skipped. There may be a personal revenge motive for Samuel in this because Jane is the girl who seduced him and took his virginity in high school. Since she never called him again, Samuel felt justified in running her over with a car and breaking her leg shortly after that.
Now Jane is worth $10,000. Even though he has absolutely no experience or training in law enforcement or as a bounty hunter, Samuel decides he’s going to capture her. He almost immediately stumbles across Jane who basically laughs at him and walks away. So Samuel gets a pistol he doesn’t know how to use or even load. He also allows his senile grandfather to get a hold of the gun because who doesn’t love it when the elderly start waving handguns around in a room full of family members?
Samuel’s inexperience quickly gets him into more trouble after he gets assaulted by a female boxer who tries to rape him. Rather than pull his gun on the boxer, he panics and hits her with his man purse. Things get even worse as Jane repeatedly shows up to humiliate him and then get away again. Samuel also gets another person shot when a fugitive takes away his man purse with the gun while Samuel just stands there and allows it to happen. Plus, Samuel’s failure to report the boxer to the police for the attack on him because he doesn’t want to look weak allows two innocent people to be brutally raped and assaulted.
Samuel is obviously a moron who has no business running around with a gun and hand cuffs. He also seems to be criminally negligent, and he probably should have been in prison already for running over a sex partner. He also steals Jane’s car when he gets tired of driving his own piece of shit so even though he’s supposedly on the side of law and order, he’s guilty of carrying a concealed weapon and grand theft auto.
Samuel is such a nitwit that I have no idea how I’m supposed to relate or sympathize with him. If this was some kind of comic farce, then I could see how a loser getting humiliated by the fugitives he’s supposed to be chasing would be funny, but that kind of goes out the window with the psychotic rapist boxer thing and people getting shot due to Samuel’s utter failure as a bounty hunter.
In conclusion, I’ll say that Samuel Plum is a fucktarded asshat who should be beaten with….Oh, wait. Gender Reversal Day was yesterday? And it’s Stephanie Plum, not Samuel? Oh….. I guess in that case she’s just a spunky heroine and her vehicular assault on a former lover, overall gross incompetence and insistence on trying to do a job she has no training or qualifications for is just another example of womanly independence. Girl Power!
Now, Stephanie, if you’d just step into this dark alley, there’s a few ladies who’d like a word with you. Oh, don’t worry, it’s just FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling, US Marshal Karen Sisco, Ree Dolly from the Ozarks and Lisbeth Salander from Sweden. They’d like to have a little talk regarding what you’ve done to the image of female heroes in crime fiction. ...more
I originally gave this book 3 stars as harmless lightweight fun, but my opinion of it declined as time went by. Then after reading Armada I fully realI originally gave this book 3 stars as harmless lightweight fun, but my opinion of it declined as time went by. Then after reading Armada I fully realized what a talentless one-trick hack that Cline really is so I changed this rating. Plus, his outraged hardcore fans kept coming on here and telling me that I missed the point since I didn't give it 5 stars so I might as well give them something to really be mad about. If you're one of those Cline fans who wants to whine about it in the comments I will just delete it and block you.
Adventures in Time Mowing
After my laptop fused to my lawn mower due to a freak lightning strike, I discovered that I could use it to travel through time.
“Wow, where’d you come from?”
“I’m from 2011. Got a time mower and decided to come to the future. I’ll spare you the full origin story. My name’s Kemper.”
“I’m Wade Watts. Welcome to 2044.”
“Thanks. I gotta say, things are looking kind of grim around here. Are those mobile homes stacked up like hillbilly skyscrapers?”
“Yeah, I live in one of them. We’ve had a lot of problems once the cheap fossil fuels started running out. Life kinda sucks ass these days. Fortunately, we’ve got the OASIS.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this virtual reality that’s kind of a combination of the Internet and the biggest MMORPG ever made. Here put this on, and I’ll show you.”
“Hey, this is pretty sweet, Wade. But what’s with all this old stuff here in your virtual room. It looks like the ‘80s vomited in here.”
“Oh, it’s part of my research for the contest. See the guy who invented the OASIS was this old nerd named James Halliday. He left an Easter egg hidden somewhere in the OASIS and whoever finds it wins the prize. He was totally obsessed with the ‘80s and nerdly stuff like computers, sci-fi, cartoons, movies, comics and video games. He left three keys to three gates hidden in here, and the clues have to be stuff that he loved. So a lot of people like me have to know all about the '80s to hunt for the egg."
“How long has this been going on?”
“For years now. Nobody has found the first key yet.”
“And you what? Watch movies from the ‘80s? Listen to the music? Read his favorite books? Play old video games?”
“It‘s even bigger than that. Because of the contest, the entire world is obsessed with the ‘80s. The clothes and hairstyles are considered cool again.”
“Really? Well, I gotta get the hell out of here then. Thanks for showing me this, Wade. How do I log out?”
“You’re leaving already? Don’t you want to…Oh, my god! You said you were from 2011? And you’re in your 40s, right?”
“Well, just barely…”
“So you actually lived through the ‘80s?”
“Afraid so. High school class of 1988.”
“That’s awesome! You gotta tell me all about it, Kemper.”
“Kid, why would you want to hear about that? You’re sitting here with enough computer power to download everything from the collected works of Shakespeare to the entire run of The Wire and you want to hear about the ’80s? Just for a contest?”
“I love the ’80s. It was the coolest time ever!”
“Uh, not really. In fact, I think the ’90s beat the shit out of them. That not worrying about the Cold War thing was a relief and the music was a lot better. Plus we got to wear flannel. That was fun.”
“But… you got to play the old video games in the actual arcades, and you saw the first generation of home computers come out. Plus, music videos and John Hughes movies and Rubik’s Cubes and Michael Jackson’s Thriller album and….”
“Yeah, Wade. I lived through it all. I remember when MTV played music videos and when Eddie Murphy was funny. But you’re making me sad, kid.”
“Why?”
“Lemme tell you a story, Wade. About ten years after I got out of high school, an old buddy I had stayed in touch with had a birthday bash and invited a bunch of us that used to run around together. So we’re at his house drinking and playing cards just like the old days and catching up and playing ‘Remember when?”. It was a lot of fun, but we’d been listening to hair metal and classic rock all night, and at one point, I was flipping through the CD’s.”
“Actual CD’s! Not downloads?”
“Hell, I’m so old even my post-high school stories are dated now. Yes, Wade, real CD’s. Anyhow, I found a new Foo Fighters album, and I put it in. And this one guy made a face and asked me why I had taken the Guns-n-Roses out. And I said something like the nostalgia had been fun but I needed something from that decade. Being completely serious he said that he didn’t know how I could listen to that stuff, and that he still listened to the same exact music we did in high school. He had just replaced his old cassettes with CD’s. The guy had completely managed to miss grunge and was perfectly happy with the same play list in 1998 that he’d been listening to in 1988. And that was one of the saddest things I ever heard, Wade.”
“But maybe he just really liked that stuff.”
“I liked it too, once upon a time. And I can still belt out a pretty good version of Relax when Frankie Goes to Hollywood comes on the radio, but it was a certain time and place. Now it’s done. I find it depressing that someone of Gen X would want to be stuck there and never moved on to anything new. But it got worse after that, Wade. Because we got older and then the media started catering to us by going for nostalgia trips on everything from trying to remake the Knight Rider TV show to shitty movies like The Transformers and G.I. Joe to the goddamn Smurfs. I’m tired of it in 2011, Wade. I don’t want a new Indiana Jones movie, I want the NEXT Indiana Jones. But no one is working on that because all of us got obsessed with regurgitating our childhoods over and over.”
“That is kind of sad, Kemper.”
“What’s even sadder is seeing it happen to a generation that didn’t even live through it. When I was a teenager, I got sick to death of baby boomer nostalgia and there’d be these kids my age who tried to be like damn dirty hippies by wearing tie-dye shirts and going to listen to Grateful Dead tribute bands. They were nostalgic for an era that wasn’t even theirs, and I always thought it was a waste. Don’t be like that, Wade. You seem like a nice kid. Don’t sit here watching Family Ties reruns and playing Space Invaders and making jokes about Ewoks. That was then. This is now. It’s your time and you should be out there trying to find the stuff that will become part of your own memories of growing up, not rehashing ours.”
“Gee, Kemper. That’s a really good point. You’ve opened my eyes. Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome, Wade. By the way, what the hell was this prize that was so good that it got the entire world doing the safety dance again?”
“Oh, the winner gets the controlling interest in Halliday’s company and his personal fortune which is about $240 billion dollars.”
“Did you say $240 billion? Dollars?”
“Yes, so how about we log off. Maybe I’ll take a walk and see if I can find this girl I like. I’ve been…”
“Screw that. Fire this rig up, Wade. Put on some Def Leppard and find me a pair of acid washed jeans and some high top Reeboks. Let’s start looking for clues. For $240 billion I’ll live through the ‘80s again.”
I didn’t actually hate this book. It did a lot of very clever stuff regarding an entire virtual universe. And for a member of Gen X, it was a fast and fun romp down memory lane. It was kind of like Snow Crash meets the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World movie.
But I’ve got a personal pet peeve against people trying to live in the past and since this book is nostalgia porn*, the basic premise did rub me the wrong way. The idea that the kids of the 2040s are just watching episodes of ‘80s TV shows and playing Donkey Kong really kind of depressed me.
*I stole that phrase from Flannery’s review. Sorry, Flannery! It was just too good.
I might have been able to get past it a little easier if at least one of the kids said something like, “Jesus, I hate this ‘80s bullshit. I can’t wait until his freakin’ contest is over so I can live in the here and now.” But instead all of them treat it like it’s the greatest entertainment ever. So even though a few post ’80s things like Firefly or the Lord of the Rings movies get mentioned, we’re supposed to believe that nerd pop culture reached a zenith in the ’80s and nothing worth geek obsession happened between 1990 and 2040? Sorry, but that seems kind of unlikely and the kind of wishful thinking that an aging Gen Xer would write as he pines for his glory days....more
Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred.
Did I ever tell you that I’ve got a time machine? There was a freak accident where my laptop aWarning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred.
Did I ever tell you that I’ve got a time machine? There was a freak accident where my laptop and my lawn mower got fused together following a lightning strike, and now I can use it to travel in time. It’s a long story. Anyhow, when I have a chance, I take the occasional trip through history. Recently, I popped into London in 1940 during the Blitz to take a look around. It’s a fascinating time with England hanging on by its fingernails during nightly bombings and waiting for a German invasion that seemed certain.
I was getting ready to return to 2010, and started firing up the time-mower when suddenly three people, two women and a man, ran up excitedly and started wildly shouting questions at me.
“Are you from the retrieval team?”
“Where is your drop?”
“What took you so long?”
After a few minutes they finally calmed down enough to introduce themselves. They were Polly, Eileen and Mike. They saw me with the time-mower and figured out I was from the future. They demanded to know from when.
“My name’s Kemper. I’m from 2010,” I told them.
“Oh, no,” Polly wailed. “You’re not from Oxford?”
“Uh, no. I’m from Kansas,” I replied.
“So you’re not a historian from 2060 like us?” Mike demanded.
“Nope. You guys are from 2060? That’s incredible, what’s it like?” I asked.
“Well, it used to be grand. We got assignments to go back and observe points in history by going undercover to live and work during these times,” Eileen said.
“That sounds like it would be a really exciting adventure,” I said.
“No, it’s awful,” Eileen said. “You see, something terrible has happened. We each had different assignments. I was working with evacuated children in the country, Mike was supposed to observe the ships returning from the rescue of the British army at Dunkirk, and Polly was going to work as a shop girl at one of the department stores.”
“What happened?”
“Well, first, my assignment was terrible. The English lady I worked for made us do all this extra war work while she wouldn’t lift a finger, and I had to deal with all these children. There was this brother and sister, Alf and Binnie, that were always getting into mischief and causing me problems. Then there was measles outbreak so I was quarantined for months with the kids so I was long overdue. When the quarantine finally lifted, my drop wasn’t working. You see, the drops are the spots where we can go back to Oxford in 2060,” Eileen said.
“Yes, and my drop isn’t work either. I got a job at a department store, just as planned, but when I tried to check in, it isn’t working,” Polly said.
“Is your drop not working?” I asked Mike.
“We’re not sure. See, I was supposed to arrive in Dover, but there was slippage. That’s when we don’t arrive exactly when and where we were supposed to. So I ended up 30 miles away in this little village and three days late. A lot of stuff happened after I met Commodore Harold, and it was months before I got back to my drop, and now there are always people around it. They won’t open if anyone from this time frame can see it,” Mike said.
“Who is Commodore Harold?”
“He was this old man at the village. I was trying to get him to take me in his boat to Dover because I had already missed part of the evacuation. But he wouldn’t listen to me and kept insisting that he was going to Dunkirk. Then I fell asleep on his boat, and he took me there. Which was terrible because I probably changed history and now we’ll lose the war,” Mike said. Tears came out of the corners of his eyes.
“We can’t change history,” Polly said.
“Yes, we can. I did,” Mike cried.
“You don’t know that,” Eileen said.
“Yes, I do. It’s all my fault,” he said and sobbed harder.
“Well, if you think you had it bad, I had a terrible time getting a black skirt,” Polly said.
“A black skirt?” I asked in confusion.
“Yes, shop girls must wear a black skirt and everything was confused at Oxford when we were leaving because of schedule changes so wardrobe could only get me a dark blue one. I got the job but the woman in charge would fire me if I didn’t get a black skirt. And I kept trying to get back to the drop so I could go back to Oxford and get one, but I kept getting delayed. When I finally got there, the drop wasn’t working. Plus, I couldn’t wrap the packages properly so I had to spend ever so much time practicing it,” Polly said. Her lip quivered slightly as she remembered the horror of wrapping packages.
“Uh, didn’t they give you any money when you came to the past?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Tons of it,” Polly said.
“And you were working in a department store?” I said.
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you just buy a black skirt there instead of spending all that effort trying to time travel to go home and get one?” I said. Polly only looked at me blankly.
“I had problems, too. I tried and tried to get out of the quarantine and sneak back to the drop, but Mr. Samuels locked the doors,” Eileen said.
“Who is Mr. Samuels? A cop or doctor?” I asked.
“No, just the old gardener at the estate,” she said.
“I had a lot of bother getting a newspaper,” Mike volunteered.
“A newspaper?” I asked.
“Yes, I had to spend some time in a hospital, and I wanted to see the war news to see what I had changed. But the nurses thought it was making me too upset. So I had to pretend that I wanted to do the crosswords so they’d leave me the paper,” Mike said proudly.
“OK, forget about the skirt, and the quarantine and the newspaper. Don’t you people have some kind of back-up plan if something went wrong and you couldn’t get to your drops?” I asked.
“Yes, the retrieval teams!” they shouted in unison.
“I was sure that you were with the retrieval team,” Polly said.
“I’ve spent so many hours wondering what was keeping my retrieval team,” Eileen said.
“I’m sure that my retrieval team hasn’t been able to locate me,” Mike said.
“Where, oh where, could our retrieval teams be?” Polly said.
“I thought Mike and Polly were my retrieval team when they found me,” Eileen said.
“And I thought Mike was my retrieval team,” Polly said.
“I know that you two are women and all that, but the next person to say ‘retrieval team’ is getting punched in the throat,” I said. “OK, so those retre…. Er, people were supposed to come and get you if something went wrong, but they haven’t shown. So what was your Plan B?”
“Plan B?” Eileen said.
“Yeah, for if something really went wrong and they couldn’t find you or whatever? Didn’t you have a pre-determined spot to meet out some time later? Or since all you people were running around this time, did they set up some kind of safe-house you could go to in case of emergency?”
“That’s a good idea,” Polly said.
“We’ll have to tell Mr. Dunworthy that we should do that after the retrieval team… OW!… takes us back,” Mike said.
“So no plan other than just sitting around fretting and speculating about what happened? Since you’re worried that they can’t find you, have you put an ad in the paper or anything?” I asked
“Oh, I checked the personals to see if the retrieval team..OW!..placed an ad trying to find us. I thought about putting an ad in so that they could find me, but haven’t done it yet,” Mike said proudly.
“Uh.. You guys do research in the future before you go into the past, right?”
“Of course.” Polly said.
“That would include reading newspapers?”
“Yes, we get a lot of information from newspapers,” Eileen said.
“And it’s never occurred to any of you that if you put a message in that says something like, ‘Hey, Oxford 2060, come pick me up at noon outside Buckingham Palace on Oct. 1?’ that they might see it and meet you there then?” I asked.
“That’s another good idea,” Eileen said. “You’ve got a knack for this, Kemper.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re goddamn time travelers, and you never thought of doing that? Or leaving a letter with a lawyer for delivery to Oxford in 2060? Haven’t you ever seen the Back to the Future movies? Or that episode of Quantum Leap where Sam and Al switched places?” I said.
“Well, I’m not sure that it’s a matter of Oxford not being able to find us. I think something went wrong and that they can’t come back for some reason,” Polly said.
“It’s my fault!” Mike shrieked.
“Oh, do shut up,” Polly snapped. “Even before we left, something was going on. Mr. Dunworthy was changing assignments like mad, and they were having a terrible time finding drop sites. And they were very worried about us reporting any slippage.”
“That’s true,” Mike said. “Mr. Dunworthy changed my assignment from Pearl Harbor to Dunkirk so I had almost no time to prepare. And Polly couldn’t get the right clothes, and Eileen had a hard time getting the driving lessons she needed.”
“So this Mr. Dunworthy is a douche bag that sends you guys into the past with no preparation?” I said.
“Oh, no! He cares about us ever so much. He sets very strict rules about where we can live and work in the past, and if there’s so much of a hint of danger, he’ll pull us right off an assignment. He’d send a retrieval team …OW!…in a second if he knew we were in trouble,” Eileen said confidently.
I sighed and rubbed my temples for a couple of minutes. Then I took a deep breath.
“Let me see, I’ve got this straight. You’re all historians from 2060 at Oxford who work for a guy named Dunworthy who is supposedly very strict about your safety. Yet, he did a last minute change of schedule with no explanation that left people going to England in 1940 unprepared and ill-equipped for the assignment. You were stupid enough to come anyhow, and you’re all seemingly incapable of dealing with anything as mundane as unruly children or overbearing people. Plus, the simplest task like obtaining a black skirt or a newspaper turns into a major undertaking for you. Even outwitting a senile boat captain or a gardner was beyond your abilities. Now something has gone wrong, and your only plan is to sit around whining about your ‘retrieval teams’. Is that about it?” I said.
“Yes, that’s about the size of it,” Mike said.
“Please, Kemper. We really need your help,” Polly said.
“Well, you all may be morons, but it’s your lucky day because a guy with a time-mower showed up. I guess I can’t leave you here,” I said.
“That’s wonderful! So you’ll take a message to Oxford?” Eileen said.
“A message?” I asked.
“Yes. We’ll write a message to Mr. Dunworthy and you can take it to him. Then he’ll send a retrieval team…OW!…back for us,” Polly said.
They just kept grinning and smiling at me as I looked at them in disbelief.
“Guy with a working time machine standing right here,” I said slowly.
They nodded.
“And all you want me to do is to take a message to the future for you?”
They nodded.
“Not, you know, just take you to Oxford in 2060?”
“Oh, no,” Mike said. “What if we left and the retrieval team…OW!…shows up?”
“Changed my mind. Not doing shit for you. Sit here and wait. Hopefully, the Germans will drop a bomb on your stupid, wussy, worthless, whining asses. See ya in hell,” I said as I fired up the time-mower and started to fade away.
The last thing I heard before leaving 1940 was, “When do you think the retrieval team will arrive?”
In Summary of a Shitty Book
I have never been subjected to such painful characters in my life. All three of the major players are exactly the same. Almost the entire book is their inner dialogues which consist solely of fretting about stupid trivial crap, wild speculation that turns out to be completely wrong and repeatedly asking, “Oh, when will the retrieval team arrive?”
You’d think that time travelers should be hardy adventurers with the ability to improvise and adapt to problems. These dumbasses can’t complete the simplest of tasks without it becoming a story of epic proportions. Seriously, the first chapter of this book is a guy trying to find Dunworthy at Oxford and having all these internal discussions with himself about where he might be, where he should look for him, what his secretary will say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, someone please shoot me. The rest of the book consists of characters doing pretty much the same thing.
Even worse, this is the first of two books so even after reading all this drivel, you don’t get any resolution to the story.
When I’m on my deathbed, I’ll be cursing the name of Connie Willis for writing this piece of shit and tricking me into wasting precious hours of my life....more
After watching the movie version of The Men Who Stare At Goats, I figured that there must be a kernel of truth to it coated with several layers of HolAfter watching the movie version of The Men Who Stare At Goats, I figured that there must be a kernel of truth to it coated with several layers of Hollywood bullshit so I read the book to get an idea of what the real story was. I thought I’d get a funny story about some stupid things the military did once upon a time. Instead, the book turns into a template for starting conspiracy theories that really pissed me off.
Oddly enough, the really weird stuff that happened in the film version is the stuff that probably actually happened, but I understand why Hollywood had to wrap that in a fictional storyline because the book wanders around and becomes just a series of odd anecdotes and wild speculation about weird things that the U.S. military and intelligence communities may or may not have done.
An army officer named Jim Channon went to Vietnam and realized that most soldiers really don’t want to kill anyone. On returning home after the war, he somehow talked the army into financing a research project where he experimented with several new age movements and techniques. He wrote a manual based on his experience calling for a new type of unit, the First Earth Battalion.
Channon’s manual called for incorporating several flower child ideas into the army. For example, when approaching natives in occupied territory the soldiers would have speakers hanging around their necks that played peaceful music, and hold flowers and small animals to show good intentions. Channon also theorized that the FEB could become a class of Warrior Monks, complete with psychic powers like remote viewing, walking through walls, and invisibility.
Amazingly, Channon was taken somewhat seriously and offered a small command to implement his ideas. Channon refused because he now claims that he didn’t actual believe any of the psychic power ideas were really possible, that he was just trying to get the army to open its collective mind to some new ways of doing business. (I think that Channon may have conned the army into funding an extended vacation and then turned in something he never dreamed would be taken seriously.)
However, the FEB manual eventually found it’s way into the hands of General Stubbelbine, the head of army intelligence in the early 80’s and a believer in the paranormal. Stubbelbine was a proponent of it and tried to interest the Special Forces in it, but they were already aware of it and trying to adapt some of the techniques without all the hippie crap. One of their big experiments was trying to stop the hearts of goats by staring at them. Stubbelbine had to settle for setting up a small office with several soldiers trying to develop remote viewing and other psychic powers.
The author interviewed Channon, Stubbelbine and several other folks who participated in several programs related to the FEB manual, and all of them freely admit that this happened and provided a lot of the material in the early chapters. That’s a pretty amusing story, but it comes across that these were just some loopy ideas that the military tried on a very small scale but were eventually phased out.
Where the book goes off the rails is when the author tries to say that Channon’s FEB ideas were possibly more widely adopted and in use today. That’s where it turns into a collection of oddball stories related by a variety of unreliable sources, with no other research done that is documented in the book.
The author gets obsessed with the notion that Channon’s idea of using music as part of the FEB was modified and used as torture techniques in Iraq on prisoners by playing songs from the Barney kids show over and over at high levels or that the military/intelligence community is experimenting with subliminal messaging. He also notes how the government has used loud music at other times to try and drive people out of siege situations and ties that back to the FEB. Then he theorizes that the FBI bombarded the Branch Davidians in Waco with subliminal messages based on pure speculation.
First, I don’t think that the idea of playing really loud music is an offshoot of the original FEB manual. I think the military and government, like most of us, realize that playing annoying music at really loud levels makes people crazy. You just have to live in an apartment with thin walls and have a heavy metal fan for a neighbor to figure that one out. And I’m more than willing to believe that the government has fooled around with subliminal messaging, but saying that it was used at Waco without a shred of proof is the kind of reckless speculation that starts a lot of the conspiracy theory nonsense that floats around today.
It isn’t the only things in the book that seem like blue-sky bullshitting. There’s a section where the author outlines how one of the former recruits in Stubbelbine psychic program started going on the Art Bell show after retirement, blabbed about the whole thing and then became a regular guest by making a series of wild predictions about the end of the world.
The author ties some of the comments that this guy made to comments that other guests made regarding the Hale-Bopp comet that were then linked to the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. Uh….why? Just because one nutjob who used to be in a military program went on a radio show hosted by a nutjob who interviewed some other nutjobs that might have influenced some other nutjobs isn’t really a link to anything. It’s ironic that the author mocks Art Bell and then uses Art Bell methodology for the rest of the book.
There’s a lot of this kind of crap with various people making claims about how some of the old psychic spy programs are still being used, but again, there isn’t a shred of proof. The only thing close to a fact is that he notes how much Bush increased the intelligence budget. Duh. I’m not a Bush fan but a country that suffered a devastating terror attack and then got into two wars is going to increase its intelligence budget. It doesn’t mean the money is going to psychic spy programs.
Adding to the conspiracy theory vibe, there’s a long story at the end of the book that tries to tie the documented MK-ULTRA program the CIA ran where it doped unsuspecting people with LSD in 1950-60s to even darker claims about murder and potential torture techniques used by the military/intelligence community today. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility, but again, there’s no real proof presented, just interviews and theories of a couple of people who claim to have researched it.
This whole book left me baffled. I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. does look into using new age or psychic spy ideas in military or intelligence programs today, but trying to tie it all back to the FEB is a stretch. Especially since he doesn't prove that anything like it does actually exist today. Here you’ve got a story about the military doing something kind of crazy, but then the author went off on these even crazier and unsubstantiated tangents that make trying to kill goats by staring at them seem rational by comparison. ...more
At the end of the year, Time Magazine did a cover story on The Decade from Hell. It was an interesting article, and I noticed while reading that the wAt the end of the year, Time Magazine did a cover story on The Decade from Hell. It was an interesting article, and I noticed while reading that the writer had this book out. I assumed that the book had been written and that Time had asked the author to make a summary out of it to do the article. Since I liked the article and think that 2000-2010 will indeed go down as the decade that sucked hairy gorilla testicles and am interested in reading more about why, I reserved it from the library.
Imagine my surprise when I went to pick up the book and saw that it was only 96 pages long. And if you throw out the intro, acknowledgements and a page eating timeline that consumes about 30 pages, you’re down to less than 50 very short pages of content. And as near as I can tell, the book IS the article.
Is there a more perfect way to sum up the miserable decade than this? To be expecting an in-depth analysis of all the things that made those years so craptacular only to find out that it was a bait-and-switch tactic to sell the article (which is still available free on-line) in book form? It’s as if Bernie Madoff has gone into publishing. I’m just glad I didn’t order from Amazon and spend the $15 on it or I would have been really peeved.
As content goes, it’s a good magazine article. It’s not much of a book since it’s long on generalizations and short on facts and analysis. If you want to read it, just check out this link and save yourself $15 or a trip to the library.
This reads like an '80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A big tough ex-military guy drifts into a small town and is sucked into uncoveringThis reads like an '80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A big tough ex-military guy drifts into a small town and is sucked into uncovering a vast criminal conspiracy through completely unbelievable coincidences. - Check.
Hero has a cool, manly sounding name: Jack Reacher. - Check
Hero is quickly given a personal grudge against the villains. - Check
Bad dialogue. - Check.
Stereotypical villains including corrupt businessmen and politicians. - Check.
Hero finds a few trustworthy allies, but is betrayed at some point. -Check
Hero shacks up with hottest girl in town within two days of meeting her. - Check
Hot girl gets kidnapped by bad guys at some point. - Check.
Stuff blows up real good at the end. - Check.
I know this is a really popular series these days, but unless it gets a lot better in later books, I just don't get it. I've read far better action scenes from guys like John Sandford who actually write thrillers that have plots that hang together and don't trot out every action movie cliche in the process. Plus, there are massive gaps in logic. A murder victim turns out to be a federal agent who is working on a super-secret case that is so important that it literally threatens the United States. Yet, after he's killed and it's reported, nobody else from the government even shows up to check it out. WTF? I can gloss over unrealistic procedural stuff in the interest of a good story, but since this isn't a good story, the plot loopholes are too horrible to ignore.
Another problem is that Child couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to write just an action novel or a detective story, and he tried to split the difference. Not good.
Reacher is the worst fictional detective I've ever read. Giant clues are put in front of him that anyone who has ever read a book or seen an episode of television since 1962 would instantly recognize, but he misses them. Yet, when called for, he can make ludicrous leaps of intuition that would make Sherlock Holmes scratch his head at the sheer implausibility of them. This might have been a better book if Reacher was just a revenge driven killing machine mowing through the bad guys without the pretense of playing detective.
This would have been 1 star, but I gave it an extra star because the main piece of the criminal plot is actually kind of clever and not something I'd read before. Unfortunately, it's the only original thing in this book.*
* Update 4/10/16 - I recently read another crime novel that used an identical idea of (view spoiler)[ bleaching $1 bills to use for counterfeiting purposes (hide spoiler)]. Since that book was published 36 years before this one it seems a lot less original then I initially thought so I took away that second star.
I think that Orson Scott Card and George Lucas must have had a meeting at some point and came up with all the ways you can destroy a franchise by addiI think that Orson Scott Card and George Lucas must have had a meeting at some point and came up with all the ways you can destroy a franchise by adding on useless and clumsy story to your original work.
Card wrote one of my favorite sci-fi books, Ender's Game, and then ruined every good feeling I had towards him by a parade a horrible sequels and tie-ins that either have nothing to do with the original story or repeatedly revise and rehash the original material so much that it's in danger of becoming just as bad. And how stupid am I that I've kept reading long past the point where anger and frustration are now souring my enjoyment of the original?
While the original Ender's Game actually had action and events that had emotional consquences, all the rest of the books are just tedious dialogues about things that will happen and debates about the emotions they should be feeling. And all the characters know what events will happen because of how incredibly smart they are! And they'll tell you that. Repeatedly. It's like sci-fi done by Aaron Sorkin. Painful. Just freaking painful.
There's no genuine conflict here because Card has built Ender up into such a saint and all-knowing being that there's no chance of any outcome but Ender winning by being oh-so-wise.
Set shortly after the ending of Ender's Game, a large part of the book revolves around a power struggle between Ender and the admiral of the ship taking him to the colony where he will be governor. But because Card can't stand to have anyone be smarter or an actual danger to his heroes, all the 'good' characters instantly know that the admiral is planning to sieze control once they get there. Even before the ship leaves. If they knew he was going to try and take over, then why send him at all??
Oh, and be warned. The afterword here states that Card is going to rewrite Chapter 15 of Ender's Game to correct 'mistakes' that don't correspond to the garbage he's written since. My advice is to buy an original copy of EG before that happens, and never, ever buy another one of these craptastic Ender follow-ups. ...more
Ugh. What happened to this series? I don't think I've ever read a series that was rooted in reality introduce a supernatural turn in a later book. AndUgh. What happened to this series? I don't think I've ever read a series that was rooted in reality introduce a supernatural turn in a later book. And I hope I never read another....more
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