Narcissus in Chains--chapter 15

Business first:

Starbleached will be free on Amazon all day tomorrow. Snag a copy and be ready for the sequel, Planet Bob, coming out January 1st.

In other words, ladies and gents:

Back to our regularly scheduled bi--

...that one was directed at me. You can't--

Fine. FINE! Sheesh, give a robot authority figure an inch, they take a mile. So anyway, back to this terrible, terrible book.

Anita is awakened from spooning in bed with two formerly minor characters by Rafael, the wererat king. This is apparently something like the werewolf Alpha. Because rats have that.

Somebody pointed out to me the other day, correctly, that wolves don't actually have this pack system. That info was due to a study carried out on a large number of wolves in a small, enclosed area. Wolf packs are actually family groups. Mom. Dad. Kids. There are no alphas. There are no omegas. The "pack" is an artifically created construct due to too many beings in too small an area. It's the wolf version of Universe 25 (Google it. Humanity is doomed)

In short...WHY DO OTHER THINGS THAT NEVER WERE PACK CREATURES HAVE A PACK? Leopards are loners. Lions have a pride, I'd buy that. Tigers...oh god, thank God there are no weretigers in this book. That happens in another book. The fuckery in those books apparently outweigh this one.

So it turns out Anita must go rescue the other Wereleopard tonight. I do not remember this being mentioned, but it's better than screwing around until the full moon, which...is not established as being X number of days away. Maybe it is tonight.

Anyway, Rafael the were-rat king jumps through political hoops until he agrees to be Anita's backup when she rescues the wereleopard. Rafael has a treaty with Richard, the pack assumes the treaty is with all of them, and Rafael wants to send the message that he only has a treaty with Richard. Meaning if Richard is killed, the wererats go bye bye.

This was the fun part of the Anita Blake series, IMHO. And this would be more interesting if the wererats had EVER had to come to the rescue of the werewolves or vice versa. I'm kind of realizing this as I type, but there are never any conflicts with outside groups in this. Which might be part of the problem with the internal politics. No outside threat=everybody inside the group gets grabby. The only group that has to deal with outsiders on a regular basis are the vampires, and the vamps are the least fractionalized group in St. Louis.

What I'm saying is...Anita Blake? Needs a war. Stat. Conflict makes for interesting stories. Were-whatevers coming in force against St. Louis? That would make for a damn interesting story. Especially if the author used it to teach Anita that she doesn't need violent bravado to be accepted as a cop and a warrior, that other people's bounderies have value, and that her first answer to everything needn't be a gun.

Of course, this is Anita Blake and LKH we're talking about. That will never happen.

In fact, I've just realized what I find so obnoxious about this series. You know how the end of Breaking Dawn was everyone standing around talking? When there was all this lovely cannon fodder Stephenie Meyer had taken time to get you sort of attached to? AND THERE WAS NO CLIMAX? Yeah, the entire Anita Blake series is kind of like that, but everything after Obsidian Butterfly is nothing but that, peppered with sex scenes that are about as sexually stimulating as a weed whacker.

And then Anita and Rafael decide to keep this a secret from Richard because:

“Sometimes you have to keep things from Richard to help him.”

NO 

I've been very lucky in relationships. I've never been directly involved with an abuser or a control freak. I've watched it happen with my nearest and dearest, though, and that statement right there? Is textbook.

No. It is not okay to keep secrets from your significant other "to help them". You can hide birthday parties. You can hide Christmas presents. You can hide something that you want to reveal later because it will make them happy. But you don't hide relationship breakers. You don't hide the hole you've dug financially, or the way you're being treated at work, or the fact that you've been fired. If you are in a relationship where you have to hide big, major, huge things from your SO because you're afraid of how they'll react? Either you're vastly underestimating them as people, or they are horrible, dangerous human beings and you need to leave.


Anita isn't proposing they hide Richard's surprise party from him. She's about to make a move that will potentially put his life in danger. She's going in to his political adversaries with one of his few major allies at her side, not his. Richard will have to spin it so that it is clear the rats are with him and not the pack. The wolves might react badly. The whole situation might go up in flames if all three of them do not have a plan in place for spin. Hell, if Richard knew about it ahead of time he could use this as leverage for more control over the pack.

Every time Anita makes a political call, all I can hear is GlaDOS: YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON. IT SAYS SO. RIGHT HERE. A HORRIBLE PERSON. WE WEREN'T EVEN TESTING FOR THAT.

And then Anita hangs up the phone, snuggles down under the covers and realizes *gasp* there are naked men here! And then...*reads ahead*

Sorry. That's my automatic reaction to any A/B sex scene now.

So Anita sees a mostly naked Nathanial and the "ardeur" kicks in. She wants to sex up Nathanial. Jason tells her that Jean Claude stuck him in the room so that Anita wouldn't "feed" off Nathanial, so suddenly she wants to sex up Jason. Nathanial snuggles her, the ardeur gives her some magical insight into their hearts, about how "pure" they are, and to her credit she tells both of them to leave. Nathanial says he doesn't want to go, so I guess it's all okay when Anita picks him up by his hair.

And then the book blows my mind.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

To me (and I know I'm the last person who should talk about this) the worst part of any sexual assault is accepting said assault as your fault. It's your fault that the person did whatever it was to you because you were out late. It's your fault that you were hurt because you were dressed like that. It's your fault, because you did something nice that they interpreted as being a come on. None of this is true, but your brain is so desperate to regain some kind of control over your body and your life that you take on responsibility for what you cannot and will never be responsible for: The reactions of others.

It's a very hard habit to break.

Anita was raped twice, less than twenty  four hours ago. Once by Jean Claude, and once by Micah. She took on responsibility for both rapes when they were not her fault. She allowed one of her rapists to reenforce this bullshit on the drive home. And now she is redefining rape as "taking advantage of someone so willing, they'll never tell you no."

Great. So what about the five or six times you told Micah no? The two times you made it clear you wanted to leave? The way you hugged the door until he dragged you out into the shower? Why is what you want to do to Nathanial wrong, but what actually happened to you perfectly right?

I'm not angry at Anita here, because Anita is not a real person. Anita does, thinks and says whatever her author wants her to. I am angry, because I went through this bullshit. I got fed the wrong information by someone who meant very well, and I called it "the incident" and never talked about it again, until I mentioned it to a friend in a discussion on triggers, and he responded with "You were raped". And then repeated it until I understood, and that was when I really began to start to heal. I am angry because somebody dealing with a rape of their own would be easily influenced by this book. "Oh, it's not rape because Anita had an orgasm. I had an orgasm, ergo I was not raped either, and I'm being silly for pressing charges against that very nice man who forced me to have an orgasm against my will. Therapy is just a waste of my time." When you're casting around for control over your life due to some asshole's actions, you'll grab any twig that will give you the illusion you're not about to fall. LKH has provided rape victims with a big, dangerous, termite riddled branch.

Ugh, I just need to move on.

 Hands on me, holding me down. I opened my eyes to find Nathaniel and Jason holding me down. They each had a hand on one wrist and one leg. They could bench press small elephants, but as my body writhed against the bed, I raised them up, made them struggle to hold me. 

“Anita, you’re hurting yourself,” Jason said.

 I looked down my body and found bloody scratches on my arms and legs. I had to have done it, but I didn’t remember doing it. The sight of those bloody scratches calmed me, made me lie still under their hands.

Hey. LKH wrote about Self Injury! That's my own special brand of crazy! Wow! For those of you who don't know, I have issues with S/I. I've managed to go a year without an episode, but the temptation can be STRONG. I'm getting my chosen cutting place tattooed as both a celebration and a deterrent. I am...very surprised to find this here. LKH even got the stuff before an "episode" right too. The swirling blackness, the absolute desire to do anything to get relief. I am sure that LKH will now have the other characters react in a gentle and understa--

“I’m going to get something to tie you down with just until Jean-Claude rises,” Jason said.

Things you should never do to a person with S/I issues:

-inspections
-restraints
-confrontations
-going through their room to find the S/Iers implement of choice.
-tie them down because you think they have gone crazy.

Episodes occur during transitory states of strong emotion that, for one reason or another, the cutter can't vent in a safe manner. The first episode--ie, this one--is usually bad. I remember actually blacking out for a couple seconds immediately prior to the first time I cut. Once you've broken that barrier and drawn blood, it gets frightfully easy to justify damaging yourself. People do not harm themselves because they have gone crazy. People harm themselves because they feel cornered by their emotions and don't know where else to go. And if a cutter feels cornered by you? They will never go to you for help. Ever.

The way to react to an episode of self-injury is to, very calmly, get the person to talk about why they did it, and when they're done crying on your shoulder, ask them if they would like to get help. All the inspections and restraints in the universe won't do half as much for a cutter as a solid, trustworthy shoulder to cry on will.

And of course, Jason has to go get ropes to tie her down with, leaving Nathan straddling her body so he can hold onto her wrists.

Boys and girls, this was self injury as a convoluted excuse to force two major characters to have sex. Which they do in excruciating detail.

And then Jean Claude wakes up, and mercifully, the chapter ends.

I am not touching this book again until tomorrow.

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 Ten AKA Mommy do I have to?

I took this month off. This means that the little book that would have been released in November is being released in December (Prince of the Gray Keep, not that anybody is really, like, reading Rise of the Winterlord right now). But that does not mean I am doing NOTHING this month. I'm writing my ass off, boys and girls. Planet Bob, the sequel to Starbleached, is finished. The next Exiles book is...uh...fuck if I know. Seriously. Word count wise we're over halfway done, I've had a lot of fun letting these characters bounce around but...uh, I haven't really found a story yet. The problem here is, it's kind of a bridge story. This is what I call a book/episode/strip/whatever where we're connecting point A to point C and creating that point B in the process.

Oh, the story is there. I know it's there. I'm confident in my abilities. There is more of a story to Gray Fox today than there was yesterday, and I'm confident that I will have the full story, plot and all, by Tuesday. Which is also when I figure I'll be done with it.

The good news? After this, it is on to Project: Dragon, which has been languishing in this special hell for about a year and a half now. If I can reshuffle the plot points in Gray Fox, Project:Dragon has a hope of survival. Which I am glad for, because I heart that book so very much.

My point? I'd rather review Captive of Gor and be enjoyably drunk than muddle my way through Casey's confrontation with (CENSORED). And that in itself is sad, sad, sad shit. Which will be better tomorrow, when I am not tired from work, and I have properly assimilated that my job? As The Writer? Is to fuck with you.

Something that John Norman has never quite grasped.

Where were we?

...right. Strawchick being confronted by big animal...thing. This is why I've been avoiding this book like it has plague.

She cowers in front of the chained up animal that had entertained her not too long ago (I am not looking up how long ago this damn thing appeared in the book. You cannot make me. There is not enough booze in the world) and realizes that Dude In Clown Paint (seriously. There is a dude talking to her, and he is in clown paint, and we are supposed to be intimidated, and not thinking about Insane Clown Posse) (Who I have never listened to in my life) sounds familiar. Oh, noes! HE IS THE MAN THAT KIDNAPPED HER BACK ON EARTH! What does this dastardly, dastardly man say to her, having reaquired his chosen Earth-slave?

“Hello, Cookie,” he said.

I swear to God in heaven, I copy-pasted that directly out of the Kindle. This part, too:

“You’re a pretty little cookie,” he said.

I am shaking in my baby-seal skin leather boots. (/Megamind awesomeness) (and awesomeness in general)

So then the Cookie-man suddenly goes all Gorean "Kneel, bound slave" on Strawchick, and of course she just sits in the grass like a good little pleasure slave, because All Women Are Slaves For Realsies.

Oh, and this happens:

I now, commonly, knelt immediately, naturally, appropriately, gracefully, pleasurably, not thinking about it, in the position of the pleasure slave, but I did not do so now, for I was terrified.

One of the "rules" of writing is that every word you attach to a noun dilutes all the other words attached to it. So if you say it is a "stormy day", well, nothing happens to "Stormy" because there's nothing to dilute. "Gray, stormy day" is passible, but not as clear as "Stormy." "Bland, hot, gray, ugly, stormy, wonderful day" has no meaning whatsoever, and neither does "immediately, naturally, appropriately, gracefully, pleasurably, not thinking about it" because by the time you get to whatever it is on the end of the adjective chain, you've forgotten who the fuck is talking. The whole book is full of this shit, but this is the one that jumped out at me. It's a little like reading "whack-a-mole".

Okay, one more and then I promise I'll start recapping the goddamn book:

“The proud, arrogant, rich Miss Brinton,” he remarked, speaking in English. 

“No, Master,” I whispered, in English. 

“Are you not Miss Brinton?” he asked. 

“Yes,” I whispered, “I am Elinor Brinton.” 

“What is she?” he asked. 

“Only a Gorean slave,” I said. 

“I never thought to have you at my feet,” he said. 

“No, Master,” I whispered. 

“It is not unpleasant,” he said. 

“No, Master,” I whispered.

Wish fulfillment much, John? Also? If you have a giant hell beast on a chain, and your hand is on the lock? Bet your ass I'll agree with whatever you say.

Cookie man gives Strawchick a bathrobe from her old apartment, to drive home that she owns nothing, I guess. For some reason I'm remembering the horrendously racist book Calico Captive that I read when I was a kid, where the main character spent most of the book mooning over a pretty dress the indians had taken away from her, and the rest of the book hating the French who were being so nice to her because They Were French, Goddamn It. (I loved the book as a kid but I kind of hate its guts now)

Anyway, she offers him anything if he'll take her back to Earth. Money? Phhh, not enough. What about Gold? Diamonds? Not enough...but maybe...OH NOT THAT! Yes that. Okay, well, maybe...Oh, nevermind ugly slut. Also, Strawchick remembers that somebody tried to pay her a hundred dollars for a kiss and she considered it. Didn't do it, but considered it because selling a kiss is like prostitution only, you know, not, and oh fuck, I think I just broke my italics.

And then...oh, for fuck's sake, John.

Besides I did not kiss men.

The one place that practially screams "COMMA ME GODDAMN IT", and you don't put one? Did you use them all up on that monster adjective tail? DID YOU KILL ALL THE THINGS PUNCTUATION AND THE REST OF US MUST DO WITHOUT? And...wait a minute. WAAAAAAAAIT A GODDAMN MINUTE HERE.

So I chilled the fellow with a look of utter disdain, turned about, and left him behind me. “Please, Miss Brinton,” he called out plaintively, “don’t be angry. I apologize! It was only a joke, a joke!”

I get it now. This is what she did. This is what motivated the writing of this god-awful book. You know, John? I probably would have turned you down too. First, because I'd be fucking offended and...uh...becausekissingsquicksmeoutandIreallydon'tlikedoingit

Moving on!

We get more "But on Earth I was this!" and "On Gor, I am this!" and "I am Elinor Brinton!" and yep, I'm bringing this out YET AGAIN:

Also?

She must, at so little as the least word or gesture, provide subtle, lengthy and complex delights, gratifications and pleasures to a master, rendering him services in her bondage of which a free woman could not even conceive.”

I don't know which is more disgusting. The concept expressed by that sentence, or its basic structure.

Ya know what? I'm going with structure. Norman couldn't actually fix the concept, you know?

We're now deep into this chapter, kids, and I have yet to find a fucking point. I've learned how she was branded, and that it worked like a light switch, and that salve was involved, and that they really did sneak into her bedroom after she passed out to put a collar on her, and then leave. She's also had time to smoke two cigarettes. 

And hey, remember when I said how her being "chosen" back in chapter one was kind of rapey?

“It may interest you to know,” he said, “that you were marked for abduction at the age of seventeen. In the intervening five years we watched you carefully, maturing into a spoiled, rich, highly intelligent, arrogant young woman, exactly the sort that, under whip and collar, becomes a most exquisite slave.” 

I drew on the cigarette, in fury.

FUCKING. EW. Also, I DARE you to "draw on a cigarette in fury". Go ahead. Smoke, as an expression of fury.

And hey? Chapter Ten? Hello? Can we have some sense here? I'm not going to ask for, like, a fucking PLOT or anything, and I rather like all the fail we're having, but a point to all this? It'd be kind of nice.

Okay. So it seems they had some nefarious purpose in kidnapping Strawchick, hence all the elaborate-ish-ness with her kidnapping. And apparently this purpose is best served by a virgin, because heavily veiled references to sex are used.

What IS it with shitty pulp writers and this mincing around that word? It doesn't even have four letters. You can use it and it won't burn your book down. Nobody has slept with Strawchick, and this is good for Cookie-man.

And then, RIGHT WHEN WE ARE GETTING TO THE POINT OF THIS CHAPTER, we're interrupted by a "sleen" outside. Because cutting right to the point would make John Norman's head explode. Then Cookie Man beats Strawchick for being insolent. And whatever satisfaction I derive from this is completely ruined by how far off track we've gotten. The good news, however, is Norman finally uses the word "virginity" in the text, instead of dancing the dance of seven silken veils around it. The bad news is, the text then implies that to kneel as a pleasure slave is probably not work-safe, and I really did not need the mental image of Strawchick's altogethers. Cookie man symbolically burns Strawchick's robe, and the point, oh, my lovely readers, the point is SO FAR AWAY right now...

Oh! It's on the very next page!

“It is our intention,” he said, “to have you trained as a slave girl, to give exquisite pleasures to a master. And then you will be placed in a certain house.” “Yes, Master?” I asked. “And,” he said, “in this house, you will poison its master.”

...what?

you will poison its master.”

Yeah. That's what I thought you said. And it doesn't make any more sense now that you've said it. You're serious? THIS is the only girl you could use for your assassination attempt? Strawchick? The dumbest sack of estrogen I've seen since my grandmother's hormone therapy? STRAWCHICK is your secret weapon? STRAWCHICK?

DUDE. She's more likely to EAT your poison than give it to Tarl. This girl makes rocks look smart. Okay, maybe she could have pulled this off if you hadn't told her, but now? No way. She'll fuck it up. No matter what you do for her, she'll find a way to screw the pooch. Or else she'll just tell Tarl Cabot about it, and he will kill your ass. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I spoiling the end of the book for you? No? Because it's predictable?

Okay, then!

And then the wall explodes! The sleen attacks! Cookie-man's pet monster kills and eats it. And then, because everything up to this point has made something approaching sense, Norman drops acid while he's writing:

“Stop!” cried the man. The beast looked at him, eyes blazing, its face drenched in blood. “Obey your master!” I cried. “Obey your master!” The beast looked at me. I shall never forget the horror I felt. “I am the master,” it said.

Nothing in this book has indicated that animals can talk. Nope. This is just sprung on us. It's like "My mother poisoned my dog". Nothing leading up to it. Nothing to foreshadow this turn into WTF land. Nope. Norman just drops it right on us. Strawchick runs out into the darkness, and the chapter ends.

Next chapter? Uh...I think Norman woke up after the LSD hit, looked at what he'd written the night before, and made a blood pact with his typewriter to never speak of this again. Because we go STRAIGHT to Planet (slave) Girl! and we NEVER find out how she gets back with Torgo.

There. Chapter Ten is reviewed. I'm going to go curl up in bed with a raspberry beer.

Captive of Gor chapter 4

In which absolutely nothing happens. It is time, boys and girls, for EXPOSITION. We are about to find out what's going on. Because KIDNAPPING isn't clear enough at this point.

So Strawchick is taken into a clearing where men are loading other drugged girls onto a UFO. Because Elinor Brinton is SO VERY NOT SPECIAL she gets the drug-free kidnapping treatment. You know. Because when we're reading about girls kidnapped and sold into slavery on alt-Earth we want the alt-earth stuff to start five chapters in. Why am I reading this again?

...because I wanted to. Right.

The dude removes the collar Elinor was given. Why? Fuck if I know. Why was she given one in the first place? Again, how the fuck should I know. At this point it's just psychological torture porn. She attempts to bribe her way out, they laugh--

--wait a second. Remember that part in chapter one?

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

Yeah. That part. If she's worth so little on the slave block, and she's handing over oodles and oodles of gold and diamonds...why not take her up on the offer? I'm pretty sure they've made their quota, and I'm pretty sure they could find her again if they need to squeeze more cash out of her. "Pay us or we'll sell you into alien slavery" is a pretty good blackmail tactic when you can back it up with your space ship. If she talks about aliens she's just another space-brained blond. Nobody's going to listen to her...and again, you can back the threat up with a space ship. And maybe earth-cash ain't worth much but as far as I can tell, gold on alt-Earth is still fucking gold. She's a fucking millionare, boys, and she could probably hook you up with a couple nice slaves a month via fake jobs for less experianced models. The girls dissapear, hey, it's NYC baby. AND you've just made your case for women being horrible, horrible creatures who should be locked up and punished, sexily.

Anyway, they laugh, take her money anyway, and she fights them with the knife she's still got in her purse.

Again: WORST. SLAVERS. EVER.

They disarm her, which I need to point out would not be necessary if they'd drugged her in the first place, then try to fix the damage they she has done to her face by resisting and making them hit her, which also wouldn't be necessary IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, then elaborately showed her how they tracked her with their space ship. Bug in the purse. Which I pretty much guessed.

Again. Awful lot of technology there when they could have just DRUGGED THE IDIOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yeah. These guys and this chick totally deserve each other.

Oh, hey, I think these sentences are too long. Do you think these sentences are too long? Let's let John Norman show us how it's done:

“The light,” I said, “it couldn’t catch me.” 

“You think it was simply your misfortune, a mere coincidence, that you stumbled into our camp?” he asked.

 I nodded, miserably.

 He laughed. 

I looked at him, with horror.

 “The light,” he said. “You ran always to avoid it.”

 I moaned. 

“You were herded here,” he said.

 I cried out with misery.

Like we didn't figure that one out six fucking pages ago. One paragraph, John, that's all I'm asking.

So the dude, whose sole job is apparently to get Strawchick used to being a slave, gently urges her up into the spaceship, instead of IDK hauling her up by her hair OR DRUGGING HER (WHY IS SHE NOT DRUGGED LIKE THE OTHERS?) and then...John Norman does something that's actually kind of cool:

I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.

This perplexes me, and not in a bad way. Why is her first dawn on Earth also her last? This has some kind of umph to it, like rebirth or something else metaphysical. Like an inkling that this experience (being sold into slavery) is the start of her new, true life. Which is oh, so very ick, but let's not go messin' with the zen thing, man (/Jeff Bridges FTW) While the first sentence can go die on a piling (what touched what? Earth touched the sun, sun touched the earth? Elvis touched Miranda? What?) but the concept here is actually kind of awesome.

Does it go anywhere? No. Instead we get Strawchick's description of the slave holding area, where she is dragged kicking and screaming which, may I needlessly point out for the nine billionth time, would be a whole lot easier IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER FIRST. They lock her in for the voyage, give her air, and we get today's contender for MOST OBVIOUS STATEMENT EVER:

The rich, clever, vain, insolent, proud Elinor Brinton, it was clear, had not escaped.

It took you two pages to described being locked into a vacuum-sealed tube. No shit, Sherlock.

TOMORROW: Alt-Earth, aka GOR, the world of a thousand raging hormones without soap.  Be there. Bring gas masks.

Captive of Gor chapter one

Oh, my God, guys, I have wanted to get to this for a WHILE.

But first, a little background. John Norman is a professior of philosophy at a real college in New York City, today. His real name is the first thing you see in his Wiki article, so you can run right over right now and maybe even sign up for one of his classes! And his principal focus of study? Morality.

Yes, folks. This is not a fun book--I mean, it is a fun book, but not the way Norman intended it. This is an issue book. As explained here, an issue book is a book built around an Idea, rather than an Idea being inserted into a story. Everything is subserviant to the Idea in an Issue book, so unless you are a fan-fucking-tastic writer, this usually turns into a mess.

And Norman isn't going for something light like the cause of communism or the end of the world here, boys and girls. He's going straight to the heart of society. Morality. Ethics. He's going to solve all our soil erosion problems. How?

BY PUTTING WOMEN IN THEIR PLACE.

Yes, children! The cause of all this trouble in our world is women. Women are doing it. Women have too much to do. Too much freedom. Too much...too much everything. Yes. Our society will only be happy when women accept their correct place.

This is the premise of the whole series. Subservience to men is good and right, and women will be happy if they just give up and go back to the kitchen.

The problem? These books fail at proving their own point so hard there are cracks in the pavement. But enough from me! Let's get right to this.

Our heroine is a "woman" named Elinor Brinton, and I put woman in quotes there because she's less woman and more, well, stuffed bra. We will call her Strawchick, because that's basically all she is. A strawman John Norman built to showcase how evil-murder-evil-evil the free woman is. And she's so far removed from flesh-and-blood reality that she's not a threat to me. Norman demeans her right off the bat:

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

By the way? That's one of the cleaner sentences in this book. It's gonna be brutal. Anyhoo, when you introduce a character it's usually a bad idea to grind her negative traits into the ground. Sadly for us, Strawchick has no positive traits.

Ellie goes to college, where she takes advantage of the magical powers of vagina, ladies and gents, manipulating all her male college prof--

...yeah. Remember when I said that John Norman is a real college professor? In a real college somewhere in this country? Right now? I am praying to God that this story is not revenge fic. I am praying, but I do not think these prayers will be answered.

Anyhoo, Strawchick gets good grades through all of college because she has a va-jay-jay. Aww, you think I'm kidding?

My intelligence, it seems to me, was good, but even when my work seemed to me inferior, it was rated highly, as, indeed, was that of my sorority sisters. Our parents were wealthy and substantial grants to the schools and colleges were often made following our graduations. Also, I had never found men, and many of my instructors were such, hard to please.

It turns out that the only bad grade Strawchick ever gets in college is in French, because her female instructor is a woman. And holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen a book swivel around and shoot itself in the face so damn fast before. I mean, even Mission Earth waited until the last hundred pages or so to kill itself.

What? You don't see it?

Well, the book is about how women are the evil ones. Women are the ones whose submission is required to bring society to a safe and even keel. But...well, it looks like the men are the problem here. Elinor gets a passing grade in the same class when the teacher is a man. Yes, it could be because she just retook the class, which is what you normally do when you fail, but the book specifically says it is sex related. Boy=girl pass, girl=girl fail.

Way to destroy your own argument, John.

Moving on. Strawchick describes more of her life. Then we get this paragraph:

I do not know when I was noticed. It may have been on a street in New York, on a sidewalk in London, at a cafe in Paris. It may have been while sun-bathing on the Riviera. It may even have been on the campus of my college. Somewhere. Unknown to me, I was noted, and would be acquired.

Two things on the bolded part, kids. First off...random period FTW. Second...Jesus christ that is so very, very rapey.

She decribes more of her life. Her rich, beautiful life. Her rich beautiful life with her father who treat both her and her mother like property (implying that this is why Elinor is the way she is. WOW. That's like, twice in as many pages! John, I thought you wanted to prove women were bad.) and her mother, who straight up fucking poisoned Elinor's pet dog. And I cannot tell you how unbelievably random this is:

I recall my mother entertaining in our home. This she often did. I recall my father once mentioning to me that she was his most valuable asset. He had meant this to be a compliment. I recall that she was beautiful. She poisoned a poodle I had once had.

Literally: My mom was pretty. She poisoned a poodle. HOW DO THESE THOUGHTS FOLLOW EACH OTHER?

 Then Daddy dies and Elinor gets money and...yeah, I finally hate her. I don't hate her for being manipulative, I don't hate her for being a rich white beautiful model in New York, who is successful without having to work at it. But this?

Whether my fortune on a given day was something over a half million dollars or something over three quarters of a million dollars did not much interest me.

Fuck you, Strawchick. Fuck you.

And then we finally get to the actual story.

Strawchick wakes up in bed, having dismissed her maid (Who Norman takes care to point out is "colored". Thank you, seventies era racism) and cook for the day, and contemplates being a model while writhing in satin sheets.

I once had satin sheets. They were shiny, and they felt very nice the first night. And maybe the second night. By the third? I went back to cotton. Satin is nice to wear when it is 60F (50, if there are sleeves) and you are getting back out of it in an hour. Sweat, heat, and wrinkles make it very uncomfortable. It looks good in a porn movie, but it doesn't work on a normal bed. Feather comforters? Yes, please.

So she's writhing in fantasy bed, not real bed,  and we get a loooooooong erotic description of her waking process, a looooooooooooooooooong erotic description of her getting into the shower, a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG erotic description of her soaping herself up, and then...

This happens. This is my favorite passage in the WHOLE FUCKING BOOK, kids. It is reproduced exactly as written. Check it:

There was now a mark on my thigh. It was high on the thigh. The mark itself was about an inch and a half high. It was a graceful, cursive mark. In its way lovely. I knew it could not have been the result of a natural wound. It was in its way perfect, rather deep and clean. It was a deliberately, and precisely inflicted mark.

There was a MARK on my THIGH
               It was HIGH on the THIGH
The mark was about an inch and a half HIGH.

Way to get your Dr. Seuss on, John. I mean, seriously. LOOK AT THAT PARAGRAPH AND TELL ME YOU COULD NOT C&P IT INTO A CHILDREN'S BOOK! This is the fucking Hop on Pop of the BDSM world. This is supposed to be a dangerous erotic book about abuse and suffering and slavery and the sexy-sexy is introduced with all the literay pizzazz of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

Look, I know I'm supposed to be going on about PLOT fail here, but...*looks at the paragraph* I WANTED TO CRY! AND NOW WHY SHOULD I CRY? THE MARK, IT WENT ALL THE WAY UP TO THE SKY! Jesus Christ, take three seconds to make sure your description of burn-rape and torture doesn't rhyme like Green Eggs and Ham.

No shit, guys? If SOMEBODY can find a Dr Seuss illustration that'll match those three sentences, or can DRAW a Dr. Seuss-ish thing with that rhyme in it? Free art poster, your choice. It'll make my fucking day. Please do it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do it. It will go on my wall forever.

Ahem. SO anyhoo, Strawchick FREAKS THE FUCK OUT and I don't blame her, because in her sleep somebody came in and attacked her perfect thigh (...*sporfle*) with a branding iron. She RUNS out into her bedroom and:

There, again I gasped, and again the room seemed to reel about me. On the mirror, which I had not noticed before, there was another mark. It had been drawn in my most scarlet lipstick on the surface of the mirror. It was more than a foot high, but it was the same mark that I wore on my thigh, that same graceful, cursive mark.

Yeah. There goes the happy fluffy writer fail. Now we're on to plot fail, boys and girls, and it's not nearly as delightful as the Thigh High rhyme.

See, this is where my Suspension of Disbelief dies. I believe that aliens from Alt-Earth would kidnap a random rich chick for fun and sell her into slavery to get their rocks off. It's the basic premise of the series, and if I can't buy that I might as well throw in the towel and stop reading now. What I don't buy is the sadism inherit in fucking with the future slave like this.

First, it lets her know you're still chasing her, the downside of which will become VERY clear in the next few chapters. Second...Norman is not trying to present us with a scared woman. He's trying to present us with an alternate lifestyle. And this? This right here? Indicates a sadistic fuckwit. Our first encounter with his alternate reality is a sadistic fuckwit. This does not sell us on his alt-earth bastion of female slavery. For these dudes, this should be no different than catching a wild horse. Fucking with her like this? The drawing, the secret branding and collaring? Giving her time to run? That's sadism. If Norman wants to present his ideas as normal, natural and right, Sadism and Hatred should be Kryptonite in his book (hah).

The other thing that bothers me? How Strawchick describes the mark as beautiful. Consistantly. It's a lovely mark. It's graceful. She's got no idea what the fuck it means, but it's in cursive.

Do me a favor? The most beautiful written language I know of is Arabic. Make a branding iron with some of the prettier letters, jam it on your thigh, and then describe this wound to me, will you? Is beautiful a word you'd use?  Or would you say something more like:

HOLY FUCK SOMEBODY BRANDED ME AND IT HURTS GET IT OFF GETITOFFGETITOFF SOMEBODY GET ME THE ALOE AND GAUZE AND JESUS I HAVE BEEN BURNED HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it'd be more that second one there. I get what Norman wants to do with this book. I really do. I don't agree with it, but I get it. But the problem here is...nobody human would react this way. I don't care if you're burned with the most beautiful shape in the whole fucking universe, you're not going to see your own goddamned burn scar as pretty until after it's healed, and after your brain has accepted that it's here to stay. I mean...her modeling career is pretty much over, she's got about an inch and a half square of burned skin demanding medical attention, and oh, yeah, SOMEBODY CAME INTO HER BEDROOM AT NIGHT AND BRANDED HER WHILE SHE WAS SLEEPING AND SHE DID NOT EVEN WAKE UP.

Write your story about a slave accepting her lot in life. I'm mildly kinked in that direction already. I'd probably dig it a little bit. But for the love of all things good and right and holy, don't insult my intelligance by having her coo over her fresh burn scar first thing in the morning.

Sigh.

So what does our heroine do? In a book that is about proving the weakness of women and our need to be dominated by a strong male maley man? After discovering that she has been home invaded and burned and hurt and all? Do you think you can guess?

...and if this is a surprise, I disown you as my readers.

Come back tomorrow, in which we find out why our heroine is just too stupid to live!

Mission Earth One AND DONE

You know you just have those days when the very LAST thing you want to do is look at garbage? Yeah, this weekend was kind of shot for me. Anyhoo...

...right. back to the garbage. And actually, it's not gonna be much of a review. 'Cause this book and this reviewer have both run out of steam.

So Soltan wastes a little time making sure that he can hear/see everything that Jet hears/sees via the bugs he had surgically implanted into Jet-boy. And I have decided that Jettero Heller is, no shit? The best spy ever. Because there is no way anybody on any planet could be that much boyscout and yet still manage to fuck with our delightful emo narrator quite so much.

Then he goes to meet with his boss, where he is given:

1. enough info to make his boss disappear for good, thus saving everybody from the next nine terrible books. Sadly, Soltan does not do this.

and

2. a bottle of meth. Which Soltan does most emphatically do.

See, he's tired and in dread of the party and stressed out because HOLY SHIT, SECRET MISSION GOING AWAY PARTY GOING ON THE NEWS, so he does half a tab of meth.

Having never done any amphetimine at all.

And you know that scene in Transformers 2 (I only read about this. I know better than to watch most Micheal Bay movies) where the Beef's mom eats a pot brownie? That's the end of the book. Only with fireworks and camera crews and Jet naming his tug boat Prince Calcasia after his racist fairy tale, and that's the end of the story.

And it's time for me to make a confession: I don't get these books at all.

Seriously. I don't. Half the time I am positive that we have an unreliable narrator, that Soltan is the embodiment of every aspect of humanity that Hubbard hates, thus making his misogyny, homophobia and racism a commentary on the negative power of the human race, and if this were true I'd have to say these books are, no shit, brilliant and almost beautiful. And then he fucks it up, and I consider that maybe he's dead serious in all this nonsense, except that Soltan is the villian of this series, not the hero, and it wouldn't make sense to have your bad guy agree with you.

But I knew Hubbard had to have a point with all this. I knew that he couldn't just be pulling random shit out of his ass and throwing it at a typewriter. He's a major religious leader. He's writing these books to edify mankind, right? There's a point to this beyond evil-murder-evil-evil psychology and racism and random homophobic slurs? right?

Then we get to Earth and every female name is a joke. There is a mob boss named "Babe Corleone", a prostitute name Harlotta and Soltan gets a dancing girl named Utanc, which I thought was a sane name until I unscrambled the letter and got "a cunt" out of it, which pretty much describes Utanc.

But weirdly, I still had some kind of faith in Hubbard as a writer. Because even Twilight had something at its core. Something Mormon, but something. Even Fifty Shades of Gray  (Yes. I read it. No. I'm not doing it on the blog) had a heart, mind and soul to build the porn around. And Hubbard had things that neither S. Meyer nor E.L. James had (other than a common story, because 50=fanfic) like a sense of plot and timing and when to make things happen so we're not CAMPING IN THE FUCKING WOODS AGAIN (sorry. Old Harry Potter scars)
 
And then in the fifth book (yes. I've read that far.) Hubbard gives Soltan a ten inch penis.

And has him rape two lesbians into straightness with it. While Jet boy is winning out every casino in Atlantic city and snogging out with a smuggled in Countess Krak. 

 Also? He states that homosexuality is "Psychiatric Birth Control" because gay people don't make babies. Got that guys? Gay people don't make babies. 

Right?

 So at this point, I think he was just writing books, and he legitimately thought throwing all that shit at the reader was a good plan. That it was entertaining, that everyone agreed with him, that rape could work as a comedic device (this is a thing in these books) that plot threads could dangle unresolved (I have NO PLANS on reading further, so as far as I'm concerned all the threads in the universe are dangling in the abyss that is Jettero Heller) and that screaming PSYCHIATRY at the reader would make the villians look like A Thing and not A WIMP.

All that said, Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan is not the worst book I've ever read, or the worst PUBLISHED book I've ever read...hell. It's not even the worst book in the series. And even if you take the whole series as one book, It's not even the worst Hubbard book I've ever read. What is?

Taken from here

In his defense, the movie is much, much better.

And stay tuned boys and girls, because we start Captive of Gor NEXT WEEK. Is it worse? Oh god, yes. Is it better written? Oh, God, yes! WILL WE HAVE FUN? I think so, my children. I really think so.

Also, do not forget the "review my books" CONTEST that is still going on, and last but CERTAINLY not least, Blue Ghosts comes out first week in October, so BE HERE WHEN IT DOES.

Peace. Out.

Book Bitch Mission Earth part one billion

This will never end. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. I will be here forever. This book is slowly driving me insane.

Let's keep going! Why not! I don't need the braincells Ron's killing! What happened yesterday?

...right. Soltan now has an excuse for why he's been sitting on his ASS for three hundred pages. What will he do now?

Well, Doctor Cuttysmark here tries to blackmail Soltan, incidentally confirming that Jet's friends in Spiteos are dead (OUR PROTAGONIST, boys and girls. POISONS HELPLESS STARVING MEN AND RAPE VICTIMS). How does Soltan respond (and Ron show that his protagonist now has a spine?)

He straight up murders the doctor.

OUR PROTAGONIST. MURDERS PEOPLE WHO TRY TO HELP HIM.

We also get this gem of a quote from Soltan:

Hells have no demon as full of hate as a man covertly hypnotized. 

You know, I didn't think I'd get to use this so soon...

L. Ron Hubbard. Best selling novelist. Cliche butcherer.

So now Soltan has to get his REVENGE! (Pronounce it like Megamind, and you'd have the right mentality) And also get Jet off the planet in one piece. (And Hubbard has to fix the fact that ALL THE ACTION is going to be happening with JET, and not our Narrator. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE? BECAUSE I SURE DO) HOW! WILL! HE! DO! IT!

Actually, by being smart for a change.

He goes and has a couple documents forged, as if coming from the EMPEROR HIMSELF, and then shows them to the Countess. One of them pulls Jet off front-line dangerous type stuff and sticks him on the Emperor's own staff. The other one gives the Countess a full pardon from the crimes she didn't commit, and permission to marry Space Elvis. Suddenly blissfully happy, she promises Soltan she'll get Jet moving as soon as humanly Voltarianly possible.

Why this could not be done THREE HUNDRED PAGES AGO I will never know. Also, Soltan moans some more about how terrible it was, being hypnotised by the Countess. Hey, Soltan?

Moving on...

Soltan goes and finds a stupid female clerk (I really need to stop expecting better of Ron. I really do) to tell him who the best "cellologist" on Voltan is. He's pointed to a young kid, desperate for work. He recurits this kid by disguising himself as the kid's idol and promising the kid a job with the Emperor. The kid promptly falls all over himself to do the job that Soltan wants done. Soltan has another victory! Wow! And even better...the plot is moving. 

 Now all he needs is the equiptment, a hosptial and some personal money. Where is he going to get that from?

Via RAMPANT MISOGYNY, of course! With a side dish of homophobia.

Oh, god guys. OOOOOOOOH God. I thought this was a few more chapters away. Soltan remembers a woman who killed her invalid husband, who he blackmailed for things, who he didn't really have to blackmail for anything because this woman would literally fuck a doorknob. As in, I'm pretty sure she does, in this book, on camera and more than once. Her name?

The Widow Tayl.

This is the second female name that I have to desperately pretend is not a direct reference to her butt. and it's a lot harder with this one.

What does he tell her about the top secret operation that will happen in her tiny hosptial room? A Lord bribed Soltan into providing operating space because he had a son that HATED women, and said son needs to be lobotomized so that said son will make babies. She agrees, of course, and then...

OH NOES! Hubbard has to write a sex scene. HUBBARD HAS TO WRITE A SEX SCENE! L RON HUBBARD IS ABOUT TO WRITE A SEX SCENE!

Tayl's robe hit the floor.

 My right boot hit the far wall and fell with a thud.

A standing lamp began to reel. 

A table of instruments was shaking, and every instrument on it clattered.

 The lamp crashed to the floor.

The double window blew open inward with a terrific blast of wind.

The outer door looked solid. I got to it and put my hand on it to steady myself. I was totally shot.

The sybarite (The hell if I know. CW) looked like he was laughing as he sprayed out water into the pool.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you SO MUCH for that image of a cherubic statue's ejaculate. I'll treasure it always. And for once, FOR ONCE, Hubbard has a long chapter. OH MY GOD, it's more than three pages! What happens next? Well, having helped the Widow Tayl scratch an itch, he now introduces himself to Dr...

Really, Ron? Really? You're really naming a character that? For reals, this is not some crude joke you're preforming with just my copy? You, a grown-ass man, actually thought naming a character this was a good idea?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender. This is not a typo. This is his name in the book. Prahd Bittlestiffender.

PRAHD BITTLESTIFFENDER.
 
And the kid is hungry, depserate and absolutely WORSHIPS the guy Soltan is posing as. Yadda yadda, a repeat of before. I think the new, spine-filled Soltan kicks puppies, too. Chapter closes with Soltan gleefully wringing his hands, thinking of all the fun Widow Tayl and Prahd Bittlestiffender will be having together. Because ,you know. He's Bittle. Stiff. End. 'er.

Sadly, this picture is ten times funnier than Ron can ever hope to be.

See you tomorrow, kids.

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1

Guys! GUYS! GUYS! This is a thing! Look at it. LOOK AT IT! PEGASUS VS. CHIMERA. HOW CAN THIS BE A THING? This is simultaneously the most terrible and WONDERFUL thing I have ever seen! And the suck part is, I will be working the night that it shows (is a saturday. I will always be working) BUT I WILL FIND A WAY TO WATCH IT ANYWAY. OH. MY. GOD. This is going to be blogged. This is SO totally going to be blogged. OH MY GOD.

Right. Where were we?

...oh. Right. Mission Earth. 

So as I said earlier, I've read the second Mission Earth book, and two things became IMMEDIATELY apparent:

1. Hubbard did not edit as carefully in '85 as he did in 84.

2. HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT. IT SUCKS.

I have been cutting Hubbard a lot of slack, both for being a dying lonely old man (read one of his unofficial biographies. Is sad) for being a product of the pulp era of sci fi and for being a product of the fifties. I am not cutting that slack for him any more. I still haven't figured out what the FUCK is up with the gay guys (unless it's just blatant homophobia) but women? His attitude towards women goes WAY past virgin/whore complex. WAY past. As in there is not one, NOT ONE female name that doesn't make me want to hurt something. THERE IS A WHORE IN THE SECOND BOOK NAMED HARLOTTA. HARLOTTA.

RON NEEDS TO STOP NAMING THINGS.

But we're doing the first book. What happens?

Soltan Gris (Who is L. Ron Hubbard. OH MY GOD is he totally LRH. IN EVERY POSSIBLE VIABLE WAY) having gone three days without eating or drinking (DO THEY NOT HAVE PUBLIC WATER FOUNTAINS HERE?) halucinates:

1. Satan, who interrogates him on the things he does not know he does not know, and no, I did not just fucking repeat myself.

2. the crew of the space shuttle they dissappeared way back in the first chapter, and

3. Jet-boy's tug boat.

I would elaborate, but the plot thread this event kicks off goes fucking nowhere. Jet, being Space Elvis, figures out that Soltan hasn't eaten in three days and sends up a case of Perrier and cinnimon rolls. Oh, sorry. "Sparklewater". Soltan eats. The reason why Soltan has not eaten is Soltan has no money. The reason why Soltan has no money is Soltan tried to cheat Jet out of his cash and lost all of his paychecks for the next year, because somehow this is a thing.

Soltan decides to apply evil evil psychology to his problem and does the kind of bullshit connect the dots reasoning that makes dream analysis give me a headache. The devil is a father figure and the space shuttle crew are phallic symbols, and HELLO STRAWMAN, I guess you're hanging around for a while. For the record, I do think that Jungian dream analysis has SOME merit because our brains are smarter than we are, but it's more "the tornado represents your fear of loss of control because tornado" and less "THIS IS THE UNIVERSAL SYMBOL OF A PENIS."

Also, given the number of gay guys and Perfectly Platonic Man Love (TM!) there is in this series, I think that Hubbard was really religious that Freud got there first.

Anyway, Soltan decides that the meaning of his halucination is not his stomach saying FEED ME SEYMORE STUPID, but rather his subconsious telling him to go interrogate Jet's last crew, because they know what Soltan doesn't know he doesn't know.

Next Chapter: Soltan decides to go blackmail somebody into helping him. See, he watched a man murder a woman and took many many pictures on the off chance he could use that info.

By the rules of narration, this guy is the protagonist of the book. WHY? PLEASE GOD, WHY. Realize that at this very moment we could be following Jet around Voltan. We could be listening to his lady love tell him not to trust that dasterdly evil Soltan, we could see the plot through his eyes, THERE WOULD BE SO MUCH LESS TELLING.

Sigh. Blackmail murder guy gives Soltan what he asks for: counterfit money and poisoned food, so that Soltan can bribe Jet's old buddies into telling him what he needs to know that he doesn't know that he doesn't know (Thank you Ron, for making me type like an invalid).

He also picks up a girl. The way you'd pick up a squash from the grocery store. Poisoned food, counterfit cash, and a prison camp whore. And this sequence of events contains these wonderful gems:

A lot of riffraff will do anything for a female.

 "There are a lot of men involved. She could get pretty used up."

It dawned on me that I had been swindled. This was one of those non-compliant, won't types the customers reject.

In the roster office, the half naked yellow man clerk (emphasis mine--CW) spent a long time going over the records. 

Let me un-Ron that language up there: He went to pick up a whore for a gang-bang and got a rape victim instead. Also? That bolded part? Yo, Ron?

THAT'S RACIST

Why am I harping on this stuff? Because it's not part of the plot. It's not something the plot needs. It's little side stuff Hubbard threw in there because he needed to pad the book. Most authors reach for fight scenes, intrigue, romance, humor, Hunger Games usually reached for food, Sunshine, my favorite book in the whole world, reached for Stuff That Goes On In Restaurants That Also Involve Baking.

Hubbard reaches for racism, sexism and homophobia.

Could it be a portrayal of how nasty those behaviors are? No. First, because there is not one. single. positive. female character. in this book. Or in the next book. There isn't one positive portrayal of someone who isn't blatantly white. IN A NOVEL WHERE THE PROTAGONIST AND THE ANTAGONIST ARE BOTH ALIENS, THE HERO IS A WHITE CAUCASIAN SUPERMAN. And so far none of the gay guys have been anything other than pitiful victims, or just plain gross. And lesbians haven't existed yet, but I hear that changes much later in the series and it's not a change for the better.

It's the same garbage that makes Twilight so repellant. It's not the god awful plot, the sparkling (in Twilight's case) the adjenda of either book. It's the casual dismissal of real issues of substance. And it's fucking damning in Mission Earth, not because it's written by the founder of a major religion, but because of the nature of sci-fi.

Science Fiction is written in the spirit of "This is where we are going". That's why technology figures so predominantly. We're taking where we are, right now, and projecting it into the unknown future as far as we can see, and in doing so we're placing our hopes and fears for the future there, too. That's why IMHO sci-fi right now is very dismal. We've lost hope in our future, lost the optimism we had in the seventies and eighties.

There's nothing forward-looking about this book. It's a stagnant, drippy, self-fulfilling fantasy dressed up in a space helmet just because. The deeper you go, the worse it gets. It's the ugly parts of humanity shown bare, with no hope or solution offered beyond a half-hearted attempt at Space Jesus that Hubbard wished he could have been. The message of this book is not "Solve humanity's problems". It's "Gather at the feet of the redeemer."

Which is probably what Hubbard intended all along. Too bad he couldn't pull it off worth a damn.

So what happens when Soltan bribes Jet's best buddies?

"When Heller gets word of what has happened to us, he will kill you with his bare hands. Run like mad and maybe it will save your life!"

Do they show up again? Given that they have poisoned food and haven't appeared in book two? Probably not.

Next three chapters: Soltan gets lost on his way back to Jet's tug boat! For three weeks! AND NOBODY NOTICES! AND IT TAKES UP THREE CHAPTERS. You know what?

BOOK FUCKING REVIEWED.

TOMORROW: We get our vicarious revenge. Sort of. It's complicated.