Caress of Twilight--chapter 7

It is time for LKH to have her main character meet new people. Anybody remember how hard it was for Anita Blake to get into Narcissus in Chains armed? Well, I hope you found that scene to be fucking riveting because we're about to get a replay. 

Remember: Merry is here to meet with Maeve Reed . The chapter opens with a description of Ethan Kane, a character who is manifestedly not Maeve Reed, who is one of her psychic bodyguards/PIs. Why would she hire more PIs when she already has Merry's major competition on retainer?

We will find out. And we will not be happy.

Ethan attempts to be imposing to the Fae men, who pretty much define imposing for the sake of this story. Although I do have to ask...how imposing is Christmas tinsel hair? Several members of my household watch WWE wrestling regularly (...my primary writing place is on the couch in front of the TV, and Mondays are my only real day off. So yes. I usually wind up watching the first and last thirty minutes. The other two hours though, I usually wind up playing Minecraft until a Creeper blows up my house), and the big thing for the past month has been watching the Rock call Paul Haymen "Twinkie Tits" and C.M. Punk "Cookie Puss". So kids? If your descriptions of your Bishe men makes me think of the Rock's kindergarten (if admittedly clever-ish) TV safe insults? YOU FAIL.

(For the record, I'd rather be watching Sherlock, but the roomies get the TV on Mondays. My retaliation has been episodes of Sherlock)

And my attempts at imagining this scene:

He frowned down at us from just outside Maeve Reed’s large double doors. We were all standing at the foot of the marble steps that led up to those doors.

Has me giggling madly. I see this huge, sweeping front staircase, with Merry and Co at the bottom and this dude in little dark glasses and a pressed suit staring down at them with his arms folded. Nobody's saying anything. They're just kind of standing there. And there are four other people standing between them and the door.

This is hilarious.

And then they start talking.

I'm going to be real honest with you guys. Dialogue is not LKH's strong suit. Dialogue exists to develop characters and convey information you would not normally get. Screaming is perfectly acceptable dialogue. Repeating very fucking obvious shit that you already covered in previous paragraphs? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Ethan asks Merry what she's doing there. She says that Maeve Reed invited her. She asks what he's doing here. He says he's Maeve's bodyguards.

Right.

I really hope Merry didn't pay a lot for that PI badge of hers. (...and suddenly I'm hearing Joe Pecci saying "They fuck you they fuck you they fuck you with the cell phones" and I realize they both got their badges from the same place)

Merry says in her internal monologue that she is about to be blunt. Then she spends the next several paragraphs describing everything except what she should actually be doing, which is getting into Maeve's House so the plot can actually exist. 

"Blunt", Merry, is when you actually say the thing you're intending to say in as few words as possible.

...Oh, hey, what's Kitto doing?

He looked oddly out of place in his short-shorts, tank top, and child-size Nikes.

NO.

He’d put on black wraparound sunglasses, but aside from that he could have passed for someone’s nephew,

 

the kind that usually isn’t a nephew at all but a boy toy.

GOOD FUCKING GOD.  WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THIS? WHY WOULD ANY HUMAN BEING COMPARE A CHARACTER THEIR MAIN CHARACTER IS FUCKING TO A VICTIM OF MOLESTATION AND TRAFFICKING?  


Jesus. Jesus Christ. I need to go take medication for this.

Okay. I'm better now.

Merry's form of bluntness is to tell Ethan why he's being a dick--he is worried that Merry and the boys are about to replace him. Merry, I would not want to be within six feet of me with a gun becasue I would not be confident that she wouldn't have a sob attack or decide to get passive aggressive about getting a raise ("...yes I know your stalker killed your cat, but I am allergic to cats. Now give me a two thousand dollar raise so I can afford medication for my allergy to people")(Also: Not saying girls can't guard. I am saying that Merry shouldn't guard) but if I were Fae and the Queen of Crazy's royal guards were suddenly on the market? Fuck yes I'd hire them.

But Merry is quick to assure Ethan that Maeve wants to see her, and only her, and I guess it is that obvious that Merry should never preform guard duty for anything, ever, because Ethan backs right the fuck down.

Hey, how respectful of Merry's person are her boyfriends?

“I can be very nice if people give me the chance, Ethan.” 

Max spoke low so that Ethan couldn’t hear him. “And how nice can you be?”

 Rhys answered, voice low, “Very, very nice.” 

The two of them shared one of those masculine laughs that women never seem to be able to participate in, but are always the subject of.

That's the most sexist thing I've read this year. There are layers of suck in that tiny paragraph. First of all, there's the fact that Merry's fucking bodyguards just told somebody they don't know from fuck all about how good Merry is in the sack. For all they know this dude could have a Merry Gentry shrine in his bedroom (Because remember, kids, Merry is more famous than Elvis) Second, there is how this passage doesn't demonize this at all. It's a comment on Merry's sexual prowness, not an example of what kind of men Merry surrounds herself with. It's trying to tell you how awesome she is. And thirdly, it implies that all men are like that. It takes the whole thing out of the relm of character development and shoves it into the land of gender typecasting. It's not people doing this, folks, it's men. it's not Merry being left out of the conversation re: her ladyparts. Nope. It's women. Here's the age-old divide that LKH swears she's trying to mend, and here's the shovel she's using to make the canyon just a little bit wider.

And I know that some guys do have this conversation, just as some women have it. They're assholes reguardless of gender. But even if we did have that conversation, most of us are smart enough to have it when the object of our genetalia's affection ISN'T FUCKING STANDING RIGHT IN EARSHOT.

And he's doing it in front of her competition. You know how Merry was going on about respect? This is a sign they don't respect her at all. Not that they don't obey her orders, or Rhys's freaking out over man-child goblin sex. It's the fact that Rhys is airing out her dirty laundry not just in public but in a business setting. And Merry doesn't turn around and reprimand him for it.

Gang, the basis for respect is healthy bounderies. If you establish and mantain them, people respect you. If you prove that you're willing to violate both yours and other people's? People lose respect for you. If you are willing to let your employees gab about your personal information? Eventually they're going to start taking cash out of the till. Merry has no bounderies, and neither does anyone else in this god-awful book.

And then we start playing the "We're not letting you in with your guns" part of the "LKH's Main Character meets new people" game. Jesus Christ, you'd think she'd come up with a new way to do this after twenty fucking books.

Anita solved this by talking in circles for hours. Merry solves it by shouting "Maeve Reed, Maeve Reed, come out to play!" at the top of her lungs until Maeve shows up.

I liked it better when Patrick Swayze did it:



Finally Maeve's secretary comes out and asks them to come in. Ethan insists on releaving Merry of her guns, it takes ten minutes for Maeve to threaten to fire Ethan and for Merry to step through the house's front door.

End of chapter.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 13

There are a handful of things that make me go up in flames. This is one of them. I do not promise that ANY of today's post will be fun.

The torturous thing about recovering with rape is, you're never sure that rape's what it actually is. The human brain is wired to assume responsibility for the events that happen in its lifetime. This is because we can only change our own behavior. If it is our fault we were struck by a parent, well, we can change our behavior to avoid being struck in the future. Alternatively, if we go to jail, we can change our behavior to avoid going to jail in the future. The problem with this is one, it lets us off the hook and two, we do it socially. I have ranted many, many, many times on how monster movies=victim blaming, and I'm probably going to do it again. But what happens next is so fucking textbook it...me...I...

Let's just get this over with.

Nathanial is driving Anita and Jean Claude home. She starts shaking in his arms. Hard. Again: This is not the way you react to normal sex, and given the number of times she's been scratched by shapeshifters and shrugged it off, this is not the way she reacts to getting nicked by a kitty cat. Jean Claude tells her it's okay, she's safe. She decides that she has to tell him what's happened in the last few days:

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

No. The fact is, Anita baby, you spent the entire sexual encounter stiff as a board, telling the son of a bitch "No, don't, stop," Coming up with excuse after excuse and remaining numb and frozen both physically and emotionally the entire time. You only got "into it" because he knew enough about female anatomy to stimulate you into orgasm. And given what Jean Claude is about to explain, I think we could argue that even that part is bullshit and happened without your consent. You did not have sex with Micah. You were raped by Micah. And now you're blaming yourself because that's what strong people do.

Now. It's time for Jean Claude to explain everything I just said, tell her that it's okay, and have Nathanial turn the car back around so she can repeat this all to the cops and they can go gear up and fry Micah's ass. Right?

“You are like a vampire newly risen. Even those of us who will be masters cannot fight our hunger the first night, or the first few nights. It is overwhelming. It is why many vampires feed on their nearest kin when they first rise. It is who they are thinking of in their hearts, and they are drawn to them. It is only with the aid of a master vampire that the hunger can be directed elsewhere.” 

“You’re not angry?” I asked. 

He laughed and hugged me. “I thought you would be angry with me for giving you the ardeur, the fire, the burning hunger.”

Preferably Mercy Thompson. She was raped "consensually" too, and she killed her rapist with a tire iron.

First of all, Anita doesn't have the emotional capacity to deal with the ardeur (more on that later) because she's been fucking raped by a fucking stranger who gave her a fucking orgasm in the process. Also by you, Mr. Self Indulgance, immediately before that. But let's say for a moment that she had actually said yes at some point in that horrible mess. You're implying the ONLY reason she would have done so was because of the ardeur, something you gave her without her concent. So this woman who previously was willing to wait until she and Richard got hitched to have sex has just been turned into something who can feed off sex BY YOU, and is very, very, VERY clearly freaked out as all hell about it. She's not feeling guilty, you asshole. I've seen Anita feeling guilty. She gets very weepy, turns into a drama queen, and then goes out and kills something. This is Anita being fucking broken. In short:

Moving on.

Jean Claude explains that for the next few weeks, Anita will probably want to jump every single male she's ever had feelings for, ever.

Jean Claude promises to help her through it.

...I'm going to hate every single chapter after this, aren't I?

Reguardless, they pull up to the Circus of the Damned. *sporfle* and everybody piles out of the car. She runs into Jason, who says that there's a bed Anita can sleep in, that it isn't used much, and when it is used it is by women who want to sleep with "Jean Claude's pet werewolf." who is Jason.

....

And then he tells her the only reason she "hates the monsters" (Vampires, werewolves, ect) is because they are "different".

You know what I miss from the Mercyverse the most? The people who are normal. We had a werewolf who was a doctor, a vampire who was nuts about Scooby Doo, scary strong faerie who doubled as kindergarden teachers and bankers, and I think my favorite was the gay werewolf cowboy. (Warren. Warren wins all the things) There was always an undercurrent of "I don't want to fuck your life up" whenever Mercy had to ask someone for a favor, or vice versa.Sure, there were some interactions that were fucked up, but there were also quite a few that were normal, every day things that never went any further than that.

Why do I bring this up?

We have not had one interaction with the supernatural in this book that has not gone fucking sideways. Richard has gone batshit and is threatening to kill someone for reasons nobody understands, Jean Claude mind raped Anita, Narcissus is David Parker Ray in a dress, and a strange wereleopard just raped Anita in the shower. In the Mercyverse, I'd buy that arguement because...well, it passes as logical. Some of the supers were just people trying to get along, and most of the wolves were people who had been savagely attacked by another wolf, who did not want to be wolves, who wanted nothing to do with being a wolf, and who were re-learning how to live their massively changed life in a framework that made that life safe for them and other people. (Which is why the packs wouldn't tolerate lone wolves unless said lone wolf paid the local Alpha a visit, and I need to get back to Anita, don't I?)

In the Anitaverse? The monsters are moral monsters. Want to bang everyone? You're posessed by a demon. Want to kill someone? It's justifiable because of x bullshit rule. Someone else's Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness? Secondary to our bullshit pack dynamic politics. NOBODY on the preternatural side of the fence is a good person. Anita doesn't (or didn't) hunt the monsters because they were "different". She hunted the monsters because the monsters were doing bad things on a consistant basis. And up until this book, she still had the moral high ground. Some of the monsters, like Dead Dave the bartender and Richard the werewolf teacher, were alright. Some, like Jean Claude, were scary bad but could be tolerated as a better option, and the great majority (Nikolaus, the would-be Mayan god from Obsidian Butterfly, the idiots behind Rawhead Bloody Bones, the former Alpha of Richard's Pack) were marked for death, which they eventually got one way or another. Not because they were monsters, but because they were murderers.

So no, Jace. No, Anita. No, Laurell. You don't get a pass on this one.

Then we get mired down in pack politics again. Bullshit pack politics, because there's no way Richard would have held onto the pack this long if he were so weak, Anita threatening to kill another member undermines his authority. You don't keep the pack by talking. You keep the pack by fighting, and people don't challenge you if they don't want to die. Under those circumstances, it doesn't matter if it's a democratsy or what. Has Richard been badly hurt lately? No? Then Jacob shouldn't have a prayer.

The chapter ends with Jason saying "Nobody's better at dirty work than you are, Anita" and Anita wandering off being all hurt about this.

Next chapter: Absolutely nothing happens.

City of Bones chapter 2

In the spirit of "pot, meet kettle" I'm going to point something out. Chapter two opens with this paragraph:

The dark prince sat astride his black steed, his sable cape flowing behind him. A golden circlet bound his blond locks, his handsome face was cold with the rage of battle, and . . .“And his arm looked like an eggplant,” Clary muttered to herself in exasperation. The drawing just wasn’t working.

Think of adjectives as trailers and nouns as cars. Sometimes--like when you're driving a Ford F350--you can hitch the two together without doing too much damage to the car. Other times--it's a H2 hummer--you can't. My point? You don't have to give every fucking car a trailer. Dark prince, black steed, sable cape, golden circlet, blond locks, handsome face, which is also cold. Every adjective added to a noun dilutes the previous...even when its added to a new noun. Also? I get it. I get it. The fucking prince is fucking dressed in fucking black. 

That said, the concept in chapter two's opening paragraph is something I get. See, Clary is an artist. Clary's mother is also an artist, but Clary sees Mom's art as being effortless, and her own as being a lot of work. I had the same relationship with my mother's art. I didn't draw anything seriously until I was sixteen years old and somehow understood that, when you're learning how to draw, it is okay to suck. You get better at it. IMHO the best thing that ever happened to me was working on the Comic Genesis, then Keenspace forums. Because the other artists NAILED me man. They taught me that this shit is never effortless. Now mom swears our roles are reversed. I don't think so. I still need to use the transform tool to make faces look right.

All this would be great, if the previous chapter hadn't ended with Clary wittnessing a murder and then lying about it. 

I re-read the end of the last chapter and I kind of glossed over how unbelievably quickly Clary lies about what she saw. Jace and the other members of the Murder Trio killed a boy--they claimed he was a demon, but he looked human enough--right in front of her, fucking whipped her, and when somebody says "Hey, you said people  came in here with knives," she said "Hey, I guess I was wrong" while the people with the knives were in the room grinning at her. 

She's got no reason to cover for the Murder Trio. Clare tries desperately hard to give Clary a reason, but none of it works. The fact is that the plot demands that Clary not be an idiot by screaming her head off, when that's exactly what a normal human being would do, and the "plot" my friends, requires we give our all. Or whatever.

So now Clary is practicing her drawing after watching a boy get violently killed, right in front of her.

I saw a cat get run over by a car once. Right in front of me. The thing I remember the most was how he didn't die right away. This big old red truck rolled him, and the cat kept running. He actually picked up speed and ran right past me into our flower bushes. I felt relieved. One, that I hadn't seen the cat get killed, and two, that the cat hadn't died. I started screaming at the truck. Only the cat fell into the bushes and started...I guess it was a seizure, but it looked more like the cat was fighting with some imaginary thorn-vine demon for its right to keep living, and losing. My dad realized that the cat was dead, was more than dead, and he tried to keep me from looking at it after that. But I remember looking back as he picked up the pieces, and seeing just a little bit of blood running out of the cat's nose and mouth. His name was Tux, for tuxido, because he had tuxido style markings. We used to throw rocks at him because he was a mean old thing. When Dad was done cleaning up, he realized he needed to do something with me, fast, so he took me to Dairy Queen and bought me a caramel sundae. I couldn't eat it. I don't think I did much more than shiver for the rest of that afternoon. It was that little bit of blood. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Clary? Sees more than a little bit of blood. And Clary? Doesn't seem to give a fuck.

After failing at drawing for a while, her friend Simon makes a prank call that isn't all that funny:

“Hi, I’m one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I’m afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you’d give me a chance to make it up to—”

Also, Clary's full name is "Clarissa".

Boys and girls, I'd like for you to take one moment to consider the following trend:

Bella=Isabella
Ana=Anastasia
Clary=Clarissa

WHY THE FUCK CAN'T A WOMAN KEEP ALL OF HER NAME IN A MODERN NOVEL?

I'll spot you one Katness but I'll raise you a Prim

Okay. I'm better now.

Clary decides to meet her BFF Simon somewhere, and then wanders around her own home so we can see what it's like. Also, we find out that she's never met her father, a honorable decorated soldier who died overseas. His name was Jonathan.

Her Uncle Luke shows up! Hey, cool. You want to talk to him about the murder you witnessed yesterday? No? What are you going to talk about, then?

...The Golden Bough. Because a fifteen year old girl who goes clubbing and covers up a murder would totally read really old fashioned fairy tale magic stuff.

And then...oh, my freaking God, given how much the murder thing bothers me, this exchange is kind of incredible:

"What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?"

The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?” 

“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”

Clary. Honey. YOU ARE THE ONLY WITNESS TO A CRIME. Yes. In the universe of the Murder Trio what they did was justifiable. YOU DO NOT KNOW THIS. And you have decided to completely IGNORE a murder because the guy doing it was kind of hot. Google "Karla Homolka" to find out how this usually ends, okay angel cakes?

Then Mom shows up and we find out that Mom is gorgeous and Clary is short and everybody says she looks like Mom but that's not true because Mom is pretty and Clary can't be pretty and blah blahMarySuefreaking blah. She's hot, okay? She just doesn't know it. 

One of my favorite books as a kid was Jennifer Murdly's Toad, by Bruce Corville. Jennifer was not pretty. By the end of the book she has a chance to become pretty and chooses not to. It was probably one of my favorite books because Jennifer wasn't pretty.

There is a really ugly irony here, and I feel like a bitch for point it out, but I kind of, you know, am, so I'm going to do it anyway. The author is not skinny. Personally I think she looks cute, but she's definately not, to directly quote the book she wrote, "willowy and tall". For some reason, western culture has a "thing" where women have value when they are eye candy, and have little value when they are not. The author, who definately has a horse in the "conventional beauty" race, had a chance to do something interesting with beauty standards, and instead chose to go all Glenda the Good Witch, "Only Bad Witches Are Ugly" and hey, let's pile MORE image issues onto YA audiences. And this is a running theme in the book. It's not even Good Guys are Beautiful, Bad Guys are Not, it's more...only pretty people are worth even getting cast in the book, let alone being given a supporting role that doesn't make you want to eat your shorts. The only primary cast member who has any imperfection at all is Simon (Glasses) and as I've already established, he is this book's Ute. He deserves all the things and he will not get one of them.

It's not a huge deal, but if your character is going to aingst about not being pretty, don't make them pretty. It gives them a little depth, and depth is something this book needs. Badly.

Moving on.

So because of what happened last night--which, remember, Clary has lied about, repeatedly. BECAUSE IT WAS A MURDER--Mom has decided to move everybody out of town for the rest of the summer. And Clary, who witnessed a murder and thus has a VERY good reason to get the fuck out of dodge, is all like BUT MY FRIENDS!!!! ALL SUMMER???? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (/darth vader) 

So Mom--whose real name is Joicelyn--and Luke have a stage whispered conversation about how somebody is out of town, and what's Mom going to do, she can't keep Clary locked up all the time, and Luke reminds her how Clary isn't Jonathan. And then Simon shows up and Joycelyn lets her daughter run off with him without putting up much of a fight.

If I pulled half that shit with my parents at fifteen, my ass would have been grounded.

Hey, how much family does Clary have?

Clary sucked in air to cool her burning mouth. “I mean, she never talks about herself. I don’t know anything about her early life, or her family, or much about how she met my dad. She doesn’t even have wedding photos. It’s like her life started when she had me. That’s what she always says when I ask her about it.”

Yeah. We're totally not hiding anything from our daughters, now are we?

Also, Clary sees a random cat dude and does nothing at all about it. Her mom tries to get her to come home, but Clary decides to do things with her friends instead. We're now losing television privleges in my home. They discuss band names for Simon's band, and I would totally love a band called Lawn Chair Crisis, but apparently that's not "Cool" enough for a world where clubs and murders happen in church basements.

And then Simon pressures Clary to become his girlfriend.

“Which means,” Simon continued, “that I am the last member of the band not to have a girlfriend. Which, you know, is the whole point of being in a band. To get girls.”

 “I thought it was all about the music.” A man with a cane cut across her path, heading for Berkeley Street. She glanced away, afraid that if she looked at anyone for too long they would sprout wings, extra arms, or long forked tongues like snakes. “Who cares if you have a girlfriend, anyway?”

One, she's leaving. She'll say no. Two...IF YOU ARE AFRAID YOU ARE HALUCINATING YOU NEED TO GO SEE A DOCTOR.

Contrived plot is fucking contrived, folks.

After ignoring her mother's calls yet again, (At this point, my father would institute a point card system if I ever wanted to see the outside again) Clary goes off to a poetry reading (REALLY?) and the chapter ends.

TOMORROW: Bella Swan ain't got nothin' on Clary in the bitch department.

Captive of Gor chapter 15

Oh, hey, Ute's back!

The guard, by the hair, threw me to her feet. I looked up at her with horror. The left side of her forehead was still discolored where I had struck her with a rock.

Yes. Strawchick aka Elinor Brinton, our protagonist, is at the mercy of the slave girl she betrayed to slavers, beat over the head with a rock and then left for dead rapening. This will not end well for her. For the rest of us, we will get our vicarious pleasure from this. And it is all the pleasure we will ever get, because I re-read the ending and, uh...

By the way, the google image search for "unicorn puke" is surprisingly unsatisfactory.

It's that bad.

Anyway, the Ute and Strawchick reunion (/kickass Paul Simon reference)

It becomes apparent via bullshit clothing references that Ute is second-in-command, or thereabouts, in Rask's camp. And Strawchick cost Ute her freedom by bashing her in the head with a rock. Ute proves she is the better human being by not immediately doing that to Strawchick. She does, however, immediately figure out Strawchick's plan to get Ute's parents to adopt Strawchick out of gratitude, proving that Strawchick is still dumber than a bag of gravel.

We then copy and paste the conversation Strawchick's had with just about everybody else since the start of this book...

By the hair, Ute, bending over me, yanked my head painfully up. 

“Who betrayed Ute?” she demanded. 

I shook my head. 

Ute’s fists were excruciating in my hair. “Who?” she demanded. 

I could not speak, so terrified I was. 

Please, Strawchick, for the love of God. Listen to Yoda. Don't imitate him.

She shook my head viciously. “Who!” she demanded. 

“I did,” I cried. “I did!”

“Speak as a slave!” demanded Ute.

 “El-in-or betrayed Ute!” I cried. “El-in-or betrayed Ute!”

 “Worthless slave,” I heard a voice behind me say.

Yes, Rask, Strawchick's owner and future penis, has heard what she did. Oh, dear, how humiliating! How terrible! How do I feel about this turn of events, given that Strawchick is suffering greatly?

Sadly for me, Ute is a good person. She treats Strawchick like she's just another slave, and not a terrible hell beast that destroys all she touches. Meanwhile Strawchick spends all her time whimpering in fear, so there is that. After a while, Strawchick becomes irritated with Ute.

Because Ute isn't treating Strawchick as a favorite.

Then Strawchick says that she's shirking her tasks as often as possible, because, you know, she's a lazy stupid stuffed shirt intended to prove all John Norman's arguements about women are valid, and...uh, then John Norman fucks up. Ute catches Strawchick not washing the dishes properly, and decides she needs an object lesson. She has Strawchick take the pan outside where there is a pole with chains on it, and this happens:

“The girl’s wrists,” said Ute, “are tied together, and then she is tied, suspended by the wrists, from the high pole. Her ankles are tied together and tied, some six inches from the ground, to the iron ring. That way she does not much swing.” 

I looked at her, holding the pan.

 “This is a whipping pole,” said Ute. “You may go now, El-in-or.”

Ute. Is. Bad. Ass. Awesome. OH. MY. GOD, why is this woman not the main character? She's betrayed by a bosom companion, she treats her fellow slaves with DIGNITY and RESPECT, she gets respect from ALL the things Men in this story, and she says things like that. This is not a threat to whip Strawchick. Oh, no. This is an acknowledgement that Strawchick isn't even fucking worth threatening. If this girl were the main character, in another ten pages she would have organized the slaves, male and female, into an absolute rebellion, the whole planet would have been thrown into revolt, a Final Stand would be made, and then Ute would retire with her Fully Equal boyfriend as a librarian in some backwater country, because fuck that leadership shit.

...actually, that's probably why she isn't the main character.

Moving on.

Life in the camp is described, and also Strawchick's misery at not being acknowledged as potential rape meat a dancing slave. She is SOOOOO conflicted. And Inge and Rana are dragged into the camp too! Because if we had fewer characters, THE PLOT MIGHT ACTUALLY GO SOMEWHERE!

Inge and Rana are sent to the same shed as Strawchick, and Ute first imposes her authority over the newcomers, and then demands that they not abuse Strawchick. Or else they will be beaten. She defends her betrayer. WHY IS THIS GIRL SUPPORT CAST?

Right. John Norman book.

Then Free And Noble Verna gets in on the action, too. Seriously, there are so many potentially awesome characters piling in at the last minute, I really don't get this. It's going to go nowhere, of course, but just...DAMN IT, I COULD BE READING A GOOD BOOK RIGHT NOW!

Of course, Verna was only freed to humiliate her captor, because Men Are All That Matter. Then they go through a party, where Strawchick shows the quality of her training, and is further humiliated by Verna and her master...who begins to remember that She Has Boobs...and Stuff from the first books are revealed. Without going into a lot of detail, John Norman's self insert primary main character, Tarl Cabot, has a girlfriend, and Rask captured that girlfriend and has her as a slave. This probably pays off later in the series, but I have no intention of reading Conan: The Knockoff any more than I already have.

Then Strawchick is finally allowed to serve in the main feasts, though she is told very strongly not to let herself be raped, as that would diminish her value as a slave.

I hate these books. Have I mentioned that yet? That I hate these books?

Anyway, she moans about being given the privelage she moaned about being denied, and then goes and picks berries with another girl. Only she steals most of them, is caught, lies about it, and then gets branded by her master. And one paragraph is really satisfying:

“It marks you as a traitress,” said Rask of Treve. He looked at me, with fury. “Be marked as a traitress,” he said. Then he pressed the third iron into my flesh. As it entered my flesh, biting and searing, I saw Ute watching, her face betraying no emotion. I screamed, and wept, and screamed.

Ute should be the main character, guys. Ute should win all the things.

Then Strawchick gets beaten. First, one lash for every letter in each word she's been branded for (Liar, theif, traitoress) and then however much Rask wants to beat her, and then...WOW, Norman. Just fucking WOW.

Ten more strokes he gave to the helpless slave girl, who twice more lost consciousness, and twice more was awakened to the drenching of cold water. And then, as she scarcely understood, hanging half conscious in the fires of her pain, she heard him say, “Cut her down.”

How the FUCK did you miss dropping out of First Person like that? There's a lot of excuses--bad editor, typing one handed--but...DAMN. That is some prime-grade writer fail right there. Look, I get that it's hard to maintain tense (Taker was an unholy bitch to edit, given there were whole paragraphs where I dropped out of present tense, and yeah yeah yeah I know, I probably left a lot of mistakes in there) and maybe perspective is just as hard (I dunno. For me, keeping the voice going is kinda, uh, natural) but DUDE, that's writing 101!

And if it's a style choice...it doesn't work. Mostly because the perspective change goes on for another paragraph. And it IS possible to do a torture scene without dropping perspective like an idol singer falling off key. See Endurance by S. L. Vehil for a good example. (...ya know, Cherijo sure gets the shit kicked out of her. It gets kind of satisfying after a while. Jarn, I liked. Cherijo is in the same category as Sookie Stackhouse. Book=good, character=SHOOT ON SIGHT)

...I have to keep reading this, don't I? Fuck.

So Strawchick gets locked in a box for her own stupidity, and...

The girl in the slave box was under no delusion as to who it was who owned her.

We drop out of first person AGAIN for another whole paragraph. Look, I will be the last person to accuse a professional writer of what "typing one-handed" implies, but...uh, this is happening an awful lot.

Also? After a couple of days, all they feed Strawchick are bugs and water. Then Strawchick is released, and...

Elinor Brinton heard the padlocks unlocked. She heard the flat, heavy bolts slide back. She saw the small door swing open. On her hands and knees, painfully, inch by inch, she crawled from the box. She then collapsed to the grass.

Look, are we having seizures or something? Are you just not reading this shit anymore? HOW DO YOU DROP PERSPECTIVE THIS MAY TIMES? I'm not going to bring this up again, but this is happening literally every other page. It's happened before in the book, but it came off as Strawchick feeling miserable for herself. It's not working anymore. It's reading like every other paragraph, Norman forgot who was talking. Oh, She's still feeling miserable for herself. Woe is me, I've been branded, and so forth, but the tense changes are far, far more interesting than her moping.

Oh, hey, we haven't brought up worldbuilding fail in a while.

It could perhaps be mentioned that such work, cooking, cleaning and laundering, and such, is commonly regarded as being beneath even free women, particularly those of high caste.

...then why do you have free women in this culture? And I'm dead serious. WHY. ARE THERE FREE WOMEN IF NONE OF THEM DO ANY WORK?

Equality of the sexes is not about avoiding work. It's the fucking opposite. It's about getting valuable work. In our modern culture, "women's" work has been devalued by technological advances. Spinning, weaving, basic cooking/baking/canning/preserving and clothing manufacture are done outside of the home due to advances in the textile and manufacturing industries, therefor women have less to do in the home and bring in a smaller income.

Okay, I'm about to go off on a tangent that will, again, break Norman's whole universe. My hobby? Is spinning yarn and knitting lace. I know a little about the history, a little about the traditions, and a LOT about the actual manufacture. And the one thing that is bleeding fucking obvious? Weaving and spinning are women's work. Because large scale thread production? Takes a while. A. LONG. WHILE.

And while we're at it, let's take a second to really look at all those clothing descriptions Norman gives us. First off, they obviously have some large scale looms to justify giving even rough-spun fabrics to slaves as garments. And they can waste a lot of fabric, because the slaves are given peroidic changes of clothes. There is, at minimum, a weaver's caste that is NEVER FUCKING BROUGHT UP, but that does a shit load of work. Second, the dancing silks.

Oh, my God, the dancing silks.

Silk is not an easy fiber to work with. Silk fiber comes from moth cocoons. Fine silk thread is made by taking a whole bunch of cocoons and boiling them, then finding where the moth started making its fiber and unwinding the whole cocoon in one piece. You do several of these at once, adding just enough twist to the thread to keep the individual strands of caterpillar spit together.

This is what it looks like in Thailand:




This is how you get the diaphanous, thin, fine threads that you make things like silk gauze out of. Now, there's a couple other methods to getting silk thread out of cocoons. The first is you use tiny tiny pieces of silk, in a staple (aka individual hair) length similar to REALLY good wool, or you use silk caps, which are a stack of about sixty or so cocoons, cut open, spread over a board and allowed to dry. Neither of these methods produce really fine thread, so I assume that on Gor, their silkmoth-analogue cocoons are unwound strand by strand.

These are jobs that women do. That have high value, because they produce luxury items. And women in this type of culture DO these jobs because it makes them valuable. Just as men slay dragons because it makes them valuable to the village, women knit shawls and weave wedding veils.

When we got industry that could do these jobs for us? We dumped most of them on the industry, because HOLY FUCK, if you don't have an aptitude for it, spinning and knitting can be FUCKING BORING. If you like it, you are as sad and twisted as I am and a part of you knows it.

But again: GOR DOES NOT HAVE THESE INDUSTRIES. There IS a job for women to do here that has value, and it's not sitting pretty on Terl Cabot's arm. And because "Slave training" does not include "How to use a drop/supported spindle" (There is no way in FUCK Gor has a decent wheel. Otherwise the girls would be tripping over them every ninety minutes) I HAD assumed that the free women were doing it.

Apparently, they are not.

Also, also? Yo, John?

there are often public slaves who tend the central kitchens in cylinders, care for the children, but may not instruct them,

Yeah. They're gonna teach the children. You can't not teach children if you take care of them.

OH, and this is the VERY FIRST MENTION OF CHILDREN IN THIS SERIES. I think they've been keeping them in the textile mills, right next to the spinning wheels.

Thirdly?

Such girls, also, have a low use-rent, payable to the city, should young males wish to partake of their pleasures. Here again, the mere word of the free person, that he is not completely pleased, is enough to earn the miserable girl a severe beating.

Thank you for supporting state-financed prostitution. AND RAPE.

This whole passage SCREAMS "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW WORK GETS DONE IN ANY SOCIETY", actually. Apparently the only people who do ANY real menial work are slaves.

And again, textile production and food production are MENIAL TASKS in this society level. SO WHY ARE THE SLAVES NOT TRAINED IN THIS? Jesus Christ, even a pleasure slave isn't going to be fucking all the live long day. They've got 'em ironing shirts and washing them. Give Strawchick a spindle and a set amount of shit to produce, and she'd stay in one room all day long with no danger of escape.

Oh, and ONE BEATING and ONE TRIP TO THE PENTALY BOX has cued Srawchick of her lying, her stealing and her pride. Right. Well, we needed a Psychology Fail merit badge to add to the collection, didn't we, John? Oh, wait. Strawchick is still proud to be a virgin.

...well, we haven't seen Rask around in a while, anyway.

So she's all dolled up, and of course she hates every minute of it, and forced to wear earrings, of all humiliating things, and shipped off to the master's tent, where she's forced to dance. And the whole dancing scene?

It's. Awesome.

The energy in it, the momentum, the internal monolouge in Strawchick's head, it all works. If the whole book were like this I'd be screaming READ THIS SHIT from the rooftops, even with the misogyny. WHY IS THE WHOLE BOOK NOT LIKE THIS SCENE?

Of course, Norman has to ruin it:

“Of course,” said Ute. “They are men. Too, do not fret. You will come to be pleased that they so strip you, and look forward to it. It is quite a compliment to a woman. She should be flattered.

Yeah. I should be flattered that somebody I don't know finds me pretty enough to assault me. No, thank you, John.

After the dance, Ute dolls her back up and she's sent off to Rask's tent. Strawchick warms up some wine, and there is this one sentence that stands out:

I saw my reflection in the redness, the blondness of my hair, dark in the wine, and the collar, with its bells, about my throat.

Syntax? Sucks. Structure? Double suck. Image expressed? I. LOVE. IT. Seriously, we've gone from UTTER FAIL to these momentary stepping stones of quality. Ute's character, the dancing scene, a couple descrptive sentences...it's like I've wandered off into a different book or something.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The suck is still there.

I did so, and he, spilling some from the broad rim of the crater, I feeling it on my chin, and throat, as it trickled under the collar, and body, poured the remainder of the wine down my throat.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

So there are sweet, seductive moments, and I'm actively enjoying this scene...and then Strawchick opens her mouth and, using about five hundred words, tells Rask what essentially boils down to "fuck you."

It does not end well.

END OF CHAPTER.

Captive of Gor chapter Eleven

So if you remember the last two chapters, Strawchick AKA Elinor Brinton has been abducted from her slaver owner by Panther Girls (aka wild things) and sold to a dude who called her Cookie, symbolically burned her Last Posession From Earth, and almost got eaten by Cookie-man's giant talking man eating pet before running out into the Goren wilderness, bare-ass naked, to be eaten and devoured by the Things of the Night?

How does she make it back to her slaver owner, Targo/Torgo? We never find out, because the next chapter opens with her getting her ears pierced.

First of all, I understand wanting to skip the boring parts and not wanting Strawchick to wander around in the fucking woods by herself again, but John? Dude? There is no way in fuck Strawchick survived the woods naked on her own. Girlfriend is dumber than a bag of rocks on acid and BTW I still haven't forgive you for the Random Talking Bear-Monster-Thing. I might have two X chromasomes instead of your preffered target audience of XY, but I AM smarter than this.

Second...Strawchick was a model on Earth in the same era, or thereabouts, as Edie Sedgwick. Let me remind you what Edie Sedgwick looked like:

Those things? On her ears there? Those are earrings. And one of the trademarks in the seventies were earrings pretty much like what Edie's rockin' in that picture up there. So why are you asking me to believe that a model from the seventies would not have had her ears pierced LONG before she became a Gorean love-slave?

But hey, I'm expecting logic from a guy who wrote this sentence:

There were tears in my eyes, for my eyes smarted.

Because it'd be really weird if your knees were weeping, I guess. Moving on.

ALL the other girls are upset. Apparently pierced ears are a Slave Mark above and beyond the branding every girl got when she entered this lovely club, and NOBODY in this group, other than Earth-Girl-Is-Easy Strawchick is willing to go under the needle.

You know? A lot of the "customs" I've seen in this book so far? Have something similar on Earth. And there is nothing in this book so far that is not something seen in Caucasian culture, or something that we White Folks haven't absconded with and then bastardized. There's a great essay on cultural perspective that kind of makes me realize how very, very, VERY lazy this is (not that I'm any better, mind). The ear piercing thing is just kind of the last straw. It's a little like how sci-fi books mention MODERN masters and then Random Name, to sell that Random Name is just as good as Shakespere and Stephen King. Here's this cultural thing that is common on Earth that has a completely different meaning here. Because women only wear decorations for men. 

Now we take a long break from screaming slave girls to discuss the Culture and History of Turia. Which I don't care about. NEXT!

The girls are being kept in pens for training. Oh, hey, we haven't murdered many commas in this chapter. This needs to be fixed:

When released from the pens a girl is almost always desperately eager to please her master, that she not be returned to them, for further training.

These cages are heavily barred, and the bars are rather, irritatingly, widely set, but we cannot squeeze between them.

That's better. Damn, those uppety commas. If we don't practice decimation they might get uppety and start asking for equal rights! Keep 'em barefoot and in the sentence fragments, I say.

Oh, hey, Strawchick wasn't actually degraded by having her ears pierced. Let's do her nose, too! Equality among the sexes slaves is always a good thing.

So there is a discussion of training, and of what the girls eat (Stew) and of more training, and more of what th girls eat (stew) and...okay. This has to be addressed.

Steve Brust is a writer I love, and I actually got to meet the man personally a couple years back. One of the best pieces of world building advice he gave me (...and the room full of people around me, because this was not actually my question) was that you start with the food. So the endless descriptions of slave fare COULD be serving this purpose...

...but it's not. Because "start with the food" IMHO means you first look at the land your characters live on, what could grow in that ecology, what they would have to do to produce those staples in sustaniable levels, and what jobs this industry would create in their community. As an example, the world of Rise of the Winterlord and Prince of the Gray Keep (Due out in December. End needless self promotion) the Gray islands are...well, islands. In a cold zone (I'd say north, but...um, not exactly.) The islands aren't majorly small (Hawaii to Indonesia size) but have a tiny growing season. They can grow a wheat-analogue, but the growing window is pathetic. Bread is a luxury. Mostly they eat sea-based products (Deepwater fish and seaweed. They have limited access to shellfish and the products of a reef-type ecology) or things that can grow well when its so cold outside, spit goes "clink". Five hundred years down the line from Rise, the Isles have a highly developed import/export culture...but their biggest import is still grains, and their biggest exports are plant-based oil (olive oil analogue) and products from a fungus that grows on the oil plants.

The girls on Gor? Eat stew with bread.

And the entire fucking universe breaks down once you start thinking about it.

The stew? I'll buy that. Stew is stew, you throw water, meat and some potato/carrot/cellery analogue into a pot, add salt, you get stew. But Bread? Gor might have bread, but if Gor does have bread, it is too valuable to give to slaves.

Here's what you need to have for bread to be a cheap thing: You need to have farms, and I mean massive, mass-production, be-careful-or-we'll-repeat-the-dust-bowl kind of farms. Also, the technology that makes large-scale farming a posibility. Plows. Things that can use plows, that aren't going to eat you or your children. Graineries. Flour mills. Bakeries. None of which are described even once. We get slaves and slave pens and descriptions of breif clothing (rather than brief descriptions of clothing) but not one description of waving fields of wheat-analogue. Do you know why America is memorialized for "amber waves of grain?" because those endless fields of wheat means we have enough grain to make bread that make bread-lines a possibility. Do you know why "Let them eat Cake!" got Marie Antwonette cut down a few notches? Because there was a drought and France's crops failed and they didn't have the wheat to make bread. A lot of the riots of the french revolution? Were about getting their hands on flour. 

I'd also go as far to say that Gorean social structure, which has NO emphasis on family whatsoever, does not support farm as an industry. Gender ideology aside, farming requires a family. Farming requires a large family that does not need to be paid a standard wage. The reason why farm wives had ten kids? At about six, sprog number ten becomes another pair of hands during Planting Season and Harvest Season. Slaves on Gor are not viewed as potential baby-making machines, but rather as toys for the sexy-sexy. If you had farmers on Gor they'd be looking at women's hips in terms of child-bearing and not how many times they could play hide the salami.


If wheat-analogue is scarce and the bread-making industry is so small it doesn't appear in this book even once (Seriously, John. How hard would it be to thread in one description of a bakery?) then bread becomes valuable. Too valuable to be given to slaves.

Oh, and one more thing? Do you know why women are historically bakers? Because it's a lot of labor. A LOT. OF. LABOR. And it is best accomplished on a large scale when you have all the population working at it, rather than just half. Men can do the outdoor half, women can do the indoor half, and twice the work gets done. Twice the work=bread on a large scale. And the chicks in this book? Are not working. They are sex toys for men. They are either slaves for the sexy-sexy, Free Companions chosen for the sexy-sexy, or cloistered virgins awaiting their chance at the sexy-sexy.

In short? Gor is a hunter-gatherer society, not a farming one. By giving his slave girls a staple common to Earth society where women are free to work themselves into an early grave, John has broken his universe.

And the worst part? he is dedicating pages to food porn. And unlike Hunger Games and Sunshine, because John wants to degrade his slave girls, the food porn isn't very porny. Accurate depiction of bread in this kind of society? The part in Hunger Games where Katniss and Gale go bananas over a couple whole wheat rolls, and the part where Peeta, the baker's son, admits that the only bread his family, the baker's own family, can afford to eat is stale. Not "EW MORE BREAD GIMME ANOTHER PASTRY". (Jesus. They don't have farms and they're feeding "female animals" pastries.)

I know it's a small point, I know it doesn't really matter that much in the scale of things here, but for fuck's sake, the man is dedicating pages to something that breaks his whole universe.

And that whole rant about wheat? Is more interesting than reading about slave guards playing grab-ass with Strawchick, which is what I've been doing for the last few pages.

I had found, over the recent weeks of my bondage, to my fury, that men were becoming ever more interesting and attractive to me. How this thought angered me! I must struggle against it! Part of this was doubtless simply because I was in bondage and the effect of this on a female is no secret. She is dressed, if dressed, in a certain way, which excites both her and men; she must obey; she is familiar with bonds and being made helpless, which, aside from the security involved, impresses the mastery upon her and is sexually stimulating; she is vulnerable, and she is, for most practical purposes, legally and institutionally accessible, accessible as a female; indeed, legally and institutionally, as she is an animal in the eyes of the law, she is literally, and thus is accessible as, literally, a female animal; certainly she is owned, and she knows, particularly if she is a pleasure slave, that she is intended for, is seen in terms of, and exists for, the pleasures of men. That is her raison d’être, to serve and please men. It is hard then not to see men as her masters, for that is what they are; and she naturally, ineluctably, finds them attractive, men strong enough to command her, and do with her as they wish.

First of all, is it just me? Or halfway through that paragraph (which is in itself half a paragraph) did this stop being Strawchick's internal thoughts and turn into John Norman ranting? Also, there's this one "sentence" that...oh, fuck it. Here it is again:

She is dressed, if dressed, in a certain way, which excites both her and men; she must obey; she is familiar with bonds and being made helpless, which, aside from the security involved, impresses the mastery upon her and is sexually stimulating; she is vulnerable, and she is, for most practical purposes, legally and institutionally accessible, accessible as a female; indeed, legally and institutionally, as she is an animal in the eyes of the law, she is literally, and thus is accessible as, literally, a female animal; certainly she is owned, and she knows, particularly if she is a pleasure slave, that she is intended for, is seen in terms of, and exists for, the pleasures of men.

Apparently the humble comma has become an endangered species. John has moved on to wholesale slaughter of the semi-colon.

Also, and I might be wrong in this, but I think most of Norman's later Gor Novels were self-published. This was not one of them. I've tried not to go with the whole "A real editor somewhere approved this" because my stuff got rejected wholesale and with prejudice, and that means I've got no room to talk about shitty writing, but I have to say it here. Somebody read this sentence. Somebody with grammer training. Somebody whose job it is to look at sentences and fix them. They saw that lovely train wreck up there and left it alone. 

The scarier alternative--which I've seen comparing the published version of Twilight with the ARC--is that the train wreck is an attempt to fix an even bigger train wreck.

So the Guards are lusting after Strawchick and Strawchick is lusting after the guards, and I'm back to trying to find the plot instead of picking at the shitty writing. And...oh yeah. I forgot about this part.

The thing that I hate most about this book? It's not the shitty writing. I actually kind of like that. It's not the rampant mysogyny, the racism, the terrible worldbuilding, the lack of logic. Really, all these things are icing on the crazy cake and something that is fun to bitch about.

But to me, the heart of any book are the characters. I love Sunshine because Rae Seddon IS TOTALLY WHO I AM and the people around her ARE TOTALLY MY FAMILY. I love the Mercedes Thompson books because Mercy kicks ass, and it'll probably be yours. I love Hunger Games because CinnaKatnessGalePeetaJohannaFennickAnnie RUE! (sobs!) and I squee over every encarnation of Sherlock Holmes I've ever met because he is just that awesome. Even Twilight is redeemed by Alice, who should have been the main character of the series if there were any justice in the world.

The characters in Captive of Gor are all, every one of them, right down to the most minor character you can imagine, terrible people. The only thing that should happen to Gor is carpet nuclear bombardment. Not because of the slavery, the mysogyny, or the rampant stupdity, but because of the utter lack of anything remotely resembling moral character. None of these people are good, and the only lucky thing about this series is it is all fiction.

Two characters I may have mentioned in passing are Ute and Inge, fellow slave girls and Strawchick's sort-of friends. Ute, especially, has been Strawchick's comforter. The one who pets her head and tells her everything will be alright. Right now, Strawchick is sharing a pen with Ute, Inge and Lana, who is basically Strawchick 2.0. Ute and Inge clean the pen, Lana and Strawchick do not. Ute and Inge ask Lana and Strawchick to help clean the pen, and they refuse because they are far too valuable.

Here is what a sane person does: clean the pen, because otherwise you'll be beaten, and withdraw the friendship from this terrible woman, who is taking a great deal of comfort from your kindness and who doesn't deserve a single ounce of your time.

What do the ONLY two nice people in this book do?

Tie Lana and Strawchick's nose rings together and then torture them with the string. After the cage is cleaned, the two formerly nice people tie Lana and Strawchick to the cell bars by the nose ring and leave them there, all day.

From this point on the interactions with the other girls and Strawchick are basically catfights, followed by exceptional cruelty, followed by pretend kindness, followed by mind numbingly stupid betrayal, followed by something that straddles make-up sex so firmly those paragraphs should have their own dildo. Also, Strawchick lies, gets caught lying, gets a reputation for being a liar and hates how everyone else views her. She's better than that.

This is a real attitude that real people have. I'm dealing with several people like that at my job. I don't get it at all. I get it when the rep is because of gossip and isn't true, but when you know you earned it, why do you hate that people see the real you?

Back to review.

...oh for fuck's sake.

My thoughts strayed back to that terrible night, when I fled from the hut, into the darkness, leaving the beast feeding on the carcass of the destroyed, bloodied sleen.

NO. This goes back at the beginning of the chapter. I've just read six pages about cat fights, lying slaves and girls being tied up by their hair that I didn't bother blogging about because it was that boring. I don't care about how she got back to the slave chain now. I want her to get out of the slave pens and on with the story.

Nope. Basically, Strawchick wandered around in the murder forest until she stumbled upon a member of Targo's team, who stayed behind while everybody else went on to Koroba. Ah, well. At least he didn't chase her with his space ship.

And then the flashforward is over and Strawchick rambles on about how Women Are Natural Slaves, and then we find out that Verna the Panther Girl has been captured by a character from the first Gor book. And Targo's hundred girls are on their way! Have we forgotten about them? I sure had. Also, Rask is attacking Places. The outlaw. Who was mentioned once, a long time ago, back when Strawchick met Torgo.

God, this chapter is long.

And we get a recap of how Rask attacked Torgo, because even John Norman knows its been too long for us to remember who the fuck this guy is.

THIS CHAPTER IS WAY TOO LONG.

But there is one plus. This line of description:

...only the wild, bleak crags of the scarlet Voltai...

Is a few letters away from being the best Twilight/Gor Crossover EVER.

...the wild, deep craigs of the scarlet Volturi. And I would totally pay money for a cage match between Tarl Cabot and Aro. Strawchick can be Bella's first meal post vamping.

 Oh, and you know how Strawchick is scared of men?

Women, it was said, had special reason to fear Rask of Treve. It was said he had a gargantuan contempt, and appetite, for them. It was said that when he used a woman, he then branded her, with his name, as though she, once used, no matter to whom she might afterwards be given or sold, could truly belong only to him. It was also said that he would use a woman only once, claiming that he had, he, Rask of Treve, in once using her, emptied her, exhausted her, taken from her all she had to give, and that, thus, she could no longer be of interest to him.

Wanna take bets on who her master will be? Oh, and after all that description, Strawchick gets a random mysterious male visitor!

Once, there was a visitor to the pens, a tall stranger, partially hooded, who wore robes of blue and yellow silk, those of the Slavers. He had, over his left eye, a strip of leather, which was wound about his head. He was shown through our section of the pens by Targo.

Gee, I wonder who this could be! We're not going to find out. Instead Ute and Inge, realizing that Strawchick is a terrible human being, stop wasting time on her, and she has to beg Lana for friendship. Lana, of course, uses Strawchick for favors and extra food. They deserve each other. Strawchick then dreams about her MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. AND THEN...end chapter, THANK YOU GOD.

TOMORROW: ...I hate this fucking chapter with the fire and passion of ten thousand suns. All I had to do was see the title, and I now have the frantic urge to start rocking in a corner. STRAWCHICK PICKS BERRIES! CW GOES FUCKING INSANE!

Captive of Gor, Chapter 6

The opening paragraph of this chapter is pretty fitting:

I awoke in the morning, near dawn. It was very cold, and gray and damp. I was terribly hungry. My body was stiff, and ached. I wept. I sucked dew from the long grass. I was alone. My clothes were wet. I was miserable. I was alone. I was alone. I was frightened. I was hungry. I wept.

Why is this apt? It is exactly how I feel reviewing this book tonight. I am tired, I am buzzed from working the floor at the J-word tonight (WAITRESSING SUCKS FYI) I desperately want a drink and cannot have one, and holy fuck does this book suck. Why am I doing this again?

Because I want to. Right.

 For the next six pages or so, we...okay, what the fuck is it with male writers and Disney Princesses? Seriously, I thought this was supposed to be BDSM nastiness well seasoned with non-con, but so far we've had Strawchick be chased and wake up in a field to this:

That's Gor, boys and girls. That's how it's presented in the book. Oh, you don't believe me?

When the sun was overhead I found some more berries and, this time, I ate my fill. Not far away, in another outcropping of rock, I found another pool of trapped rain water. It was a large pool, and I drank as much as I wanted. And I washed my face... It seemed to me not impossible that I might be able to live on this world. It was beautiful. I ran for a little way, my hair flying behind me, laughing...I had not done that since I had been a little girl.

Tell me that does not just reek of an incoming "I Want" number and much flocking of the birdies around her dainty little wrists.  And she is lonely, my lovely blog-readers. So very very lonely. She could live on this world but she is so bleeding lonely, and while I cannot believe I'm bringing this out so early in the game:

Thank you, Pooh-bear.

And then she sees random people.

Now, let's have another game of Space/fantasy Opera Trivia. You are a young woman, professional model, who has been abducted and branded by intersteller slavers before being dropped off when their ship crashlands. You have escaped obvious restraints somehow. You have been alone for less than twenty fucking hours, do not give me that look, Strawchick. I know better than that. And now you come across two men, a wagon, and about twenty butt-naked girls being restrained by something you can only describe as a "harness", who appear to be pulling the goddamned wagon. DO YOU:

1. Turn around and go back to your space-berry patch

2. Turn around and RUN back to your space-berry patch

3. Shout "STOP! STOP!" from the side of the road, then scream your name in English while flailing like a moron.

4. DO ANY SINGLE THING OTHER THAN NUMBER THREE WHILE RUNNING BACK TO THE AFOREMENTIONED SPACE-BERRY PATCH

What does Strawchick do?

“I’m Elinor Brinton,” I told the men who had come to meet me. “I live in New York City. I’m lost.”

Ellie, dear, at this point I would not only cheerfully assist in restraining you, I would make my only compensation for dragging you to the space-slave auction block be your immediate sterilization because SWEET BLUE BABY JESUS you are too stupid to fucking breed. You reproduce and the entire universe loses IQ points.

One of her ...do I really have to pretend they rescued her? REALLY, book? I REALLY have to? Fine. Her...sigh...."rescuers" lead her over to the slave chain while she prattles on about how glad she is to be rescued. Meanwhile the naked girls at the wagon look on apprehensively. I am choosing to interprete this as WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? repeated about twenty times. Also, one of the slavers' names is Targo.

Targo. We are one letter away from him being this:

There is no way out of Gor. It will be dark soon. There is no way out of Gor.

And now I get to imagine a Katness/Torgo/Tarl Cabot three way and it can only end badly for two of them.

So Torgo..sorry. Targo spends the next few minutes trying to get this windfall of a hot blond to shut the fuck up, and Strawchick spends the same amount of time thinking that if she speaks LOUDLY and SLOWLY these strangers from another world will magically understand English. HAS SHE NOT TRAVELED TO OTHER COUNTRIES BEFORE?

Strawchick looks around at her rescuers and realizes that these are simple barbarians, and so she'll be able to buy her way back to Earth! Sterilization, John! A full on hysterectomy! That's all I ask! I will hold her down for you, just please ensure this broad never breeds!

And oh, we must be introduced to the theme to the next hundred pages or so:

On Earth I had never met a woman, personally, whom I had regarded as my superior in beauty. Here, incomprehensibly, but obviously, there were at least eleven. I was puzzled how there could be so many in this one small place. I was shaken. But, I told myself, I am more than their equal in intelligence, and in riches, and in taste, and sophistication. They were doubtless simple barbarians. I felt pity for them. I hated them! I hated them!...The haughty bitches! I was superior to them all!

I'd add a lobotomy to that wish-list of mine, but for Strawchick that'll be a lateral move. So after monologuing about how much better Strawchick is than the other slave girls--because she is rich and beautiful and rich and rich and I think John Norman has issues with moneyed women, don't you?--she gets stripped down, and they find the brand on her thigh. So long, freedom! What? You didn't think that had any meaning at all, Strawchick?

So they hold her down and whip her. And this chapter isn't over yet. Why isn't this chapter over yet? We've done the prerequisite shift from Disney Princess to Bondage Fiend, can we move on please? Please? No?

Fuck.

And then she kisses Torgo's feet. And fuck it, if I have to read this book much more this guy is fucking Torgo. Torgo puts her into the harness with the other girls and makes her pull the wagon. At the same time, she notices that--gasp!--they've all been branded too. And this happens:

I was dismayed. If someone saw us, as we were, they might think that I was no different from the others, that I was the same as they!

No, Strawchick. They are not the same as you. They've got two braincells to share between them.

 Also...why are they making the girls pull the wagon? This is a legitimate question. An animal would be better at it, and...uh, it's not good excercise. This is more likely to break the innocent little flowers than it is keep them in the sexy-sexy, you know? Bad use of slave labor, gents. Bad form.

And then...oh, my fucking God. Really?

But I was Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, of Earth! She had been rich, beautiful, smartly attired, tasteful, sophisticated; she had been well educated and traveled; she had been decisive, confident; she had carried her wealth and her beauty with élan; and she had deserved her position in society; it had been rightfully hers, for she had been a gifted, high-order, superbly intelligent individual, an altogether superior person! She deserved everything that she had had! Whatever she had had she should have had, for she was that kind of person! That was the kind of person she was!

I got that back at the beginning of the book, sweetheart. And bullshit on the highly intelligent part. You literally ran into their arms. And then...you really have to be kidding me.

I would not be permitted to shirk. 

I had always had my way before...

Here I did not have my way. 

Here I would not be permitted to shirk...I would be expected, I realized, to my fury, for the first time, to do my share.

Yeah, because everybody knows women don't really work. Waitresses? They're just there to fill shoes. Not like anybody's cracking the whip over them. Modeling can't be hard work. All you need to do is file your nails. No woman has ever had to work hard to get through college, to succeed, to be something other than a male's arm-jewelry. Lil tip, John-boy? Just because a woman's success isn't immediatly benefiting you, does not mean her success is either easy or a non-thing.

End of chapter. Thank you god. Goodnight all.

...and the counter just clicked over to zero. BOOK RELEASE COMES SOON. I am not excited yet, but I am looking forward to it. BOOK COMES OUT ON MONDAY, KIDS! MONDAY! MONDAY!

YAY!

Book Bitch: Mission Earth One

Almost there. Almost there. THE END IS IN SIGHT. WE ARE ALMOST DONE WITH THIS TERRIBLE TERRIBLE BOOK.

Soltan, having conned a doctor and knocked boots with a woman named the Widow Tayl, Soltan checks the tug boat. Jettero is now zooming along, because his future bride's freedom is hanging in the balance. All is good here. Soltan moves on to his TRUE purpose in life: Graft.

He needs medical supplies for the clandestine operation on Jet-boy. So he goes to a medical supply depo and buys it. ALL OF IT. He begins inventing things to buy...and then for some reason he says to double the order and send most of the doubled cash to Lombar, because...cops? I don't know. Why things must be done this way is never very clear. But Soltan takes some of the money and mails stuff to Lombar to prove that he's giving Lombar money.

Am I giving you the impression that this plot is moving? Oh, I'm sorry. This whole thing is done item by item. We get a full list of everything Soltan is buying.

Also? He lets Lombar know he's stolen half a mil from the government through the most transparent code possible. This might shock you this deep in the book, but these guys SUCK at being spies.

Soltan does do something smart, though. He goes to the metal yards and buys as much gold as he possibly can. Apparently the value of gold is compounded on Earth--you know, America uses a gold standard and no other country really exists--so once Soltan gets to Earth, he'll be an all powerful millionare, Jettero will be poor and abandoned, and...Yeah. I'm just going to bring this out again and get it over with:

Moving on. Soltan goes BACK to the hanger, sees that Jet is redoing the paint coat on the tug boat and...

...oh boy. OOOOOOOOOOOH GUYS! WE ARE AT THIS PART! YAY!

If you can't tell by now (unless this is the first time you've been at my blog, in which case, sorry and fair warning and welcome, I hope you'll stick around a while) I'm a bitch. And nothing warms my bitchy little heart as much as watching somebody's plot swivel around and shoot the whole story in the face. It takes a lot of work, a lot of stupid, and a pretty good amount of talent to make this happen, and when it does, it is a thing of beauty.

Soltan goes over to a ship that has just arrived from Earth. We are about to find out why Jettero has to go to earth and fail to save it, why Lombar hit the fucking roof when Jet-boy's report came in. We are about to find out how Lombar is going to become Emperor of the Voltarian Empire. We are about to find out why Earth is so goddamned important. 

It is because Lombar and Soltan are importing drugs and alcohol.


The dasterdly plan of the dasterdly evil murder evil evil CIA is to import drugs and alcohol from Earth to Voltan. They're going to first addict the entire population to heroin, meth and scotch, and then control the supply, undermining the Empire's sanity and allowing Lombar to seize the throne.

Meth. Heroin. And Johnny Walker Gold Label Scotch.

Hubbard is serious. He seriously thinks this is a good plot. Aliens are using unaltered Earth drugs to control their own population. And scotch! Don't forget the scotch!

Guys, there are a few things that I like to think I know a lot about, due to my upbringing. Collective works of C.S. Lewis, basic theology, the large number of ways one can discover scorpions upon one's person (long story) and drugs. See, my dad? He's a drug and alcohol abuse counselor. I know how these things work. I know how they're developed. I know that heroin>morphene>opium, and that the more technology you have? The bigger, badder and nastier drugs you start to develop. Part of it is you have a greater facility for creating new chemicals, and part of it is you have access to things like lithium batteries and matchheads (two prime ingredients in meth. Part of the reason why I've never done drugs is, I know where they come from)

Now, this is not a drug-and-booze-less society. Earlier we had a scene where Soltan Gris tries to talk logic into Lombar, and Lombar replies with:

"Have a chank-pop." 

And the effect of a chank-pop? Is not something earth drugs can do easy. There's another scene not too long ago, after the nightclub, where Soltan is sitting and being miserable because he is hungover as fuck.

Hubbard seriously wants me to believe that, in a universe where trailer trash can make methamphetamine in a two liter coke bottle out of batteries, matches and cold medicine (among other things. You're better off drinking the battery acid, kids. Trust me) the Voltarians haven't come up with something worse for you? With a stronger high?

Or let me put it another way. This is like your local drug dealer discovering a magical portal back to the era of vikings, and bringing back mead and unrefined opium to addict the modern world to. These things are, I am sure, very nice, very addictive, and not something you ought to abuse. But we have Everclear and Vicodin. It's not like we need it.

THIS is what the whole book is resting on. THIS CONCEPT. RIGHT HERE. That the drugs a primitive society (this being ours) is capable of making are SO MUCH BETTER than the drugs a high-tech society is capable of making (and remember, kids, Voltan does have drugs to use) that people plotting to overthrow the empire can use them for leverage.

The plot of this book is all about scotch, smack and meth. THESE THINGS ARE THE MACGUFFINS DRIVING THE PLOT.

 I got nothin, guys. This is a level of stupid even I cannot compete with. See you tomorrow.

Oh, and hey? If you're enjoying this (Thirty people are visiting this page EVERY DAY right now. I KNOW YOU ARE THERE, PEOPLE) you can help me out.

I am pretty sure we're going to be finished with this book (oh god oh god we are almost done) in probably the next two days. SO! You lot can help me pick out the next one. Here are our options:

1. Mission Earth Two. (Honestly? You guys are gonna have to TELL ME you want this one, otherwise I am taking a break from El-Ron for a while)

2. Captive of Gor, John Norman. This is one of the books he wrote from a female perspective. You have no idea how bad it is.

3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs. First, it is a paranormal romance novel written by a woman named Nina Bangs. Second, it is a book about men who are posessed by the ghosts of dead dinosaurs. IT IS FULL OF STARS.

4. City of Bones, Cassandra Clare. I read it, it was boring as hell, but for some reason the author's history has been washing up on my internets a lot, and there will be a movie of it soon.

All of these, I have avoided doing because I could not think of how to summerize it.

My pick right now is City of Bones. Second choice, Captive of Gor. HOWEVER, If I find out one of you has a preference, I'll switch over to that one. But it will take more than one of you to get me to do Mission Earth Two. It sucks. It sucks in a way that I'll have trouble making it funny. It is Manos, the Hand of Books. 

 So COMMENT, my loyal blog readers. COMMENT! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO!  AND YES THIS DOES MEAN YOU.