Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 4

Just a reminder, my lovely book-readers, that Starbleached: Legacy is live, and that if you go to Smashwords you can get the first Starbleached free and the rest of the series for half price (Coupons here) until June 11th.

Also: Apparently Nook Press has decided it doesn't want to work at all. I may look at my books but I may not load in new ones. So if you want an e-pub copy either go to Smashwords or wait a week, it'll be up at Barnes and Noble by then (via Smashwords. Where it's half off until June.)

Also a heads up to my blog-readers who are also writers and/or interested in Self Publishing: Publish America, a truly toxic outfit for writers, has just rebranded itself. It's still the same shitty outfit. It still does shit like call itself a traditional, advance offering publisher--which offers a dollar advance on a seven year, self renewing contract--frequently "loses" the letters from authors notifying them that they've got no desire to renew the contract, saying that they'll show your book to everybody from the BEA expo to Hollywood Producers to J.K. Rowling (Actually that entire episode was amusing as fuck. Note to would be shitheads: DO NOT FUCK WITH MS. ROWLING HER LAWYERS WILL HURT YOU) and publishes books with no editing and/or minimal editing (Literally clicking "change all" on MSWord spellcheck, clip art covers with frequently recycled art, and a rotating tredmill of hard-sell e-mails begging authors to buy their own books at horrifically inflated prices. The Absolute Write crew sum it up as Published Author: The Role Playing Game.

They are now America Star Books

Inform your friends.

And yes. YES. I am stalling. Merry is going to make out with Kitto, and I don't want to read this, my dear blog readers.

Merry and Kitto start pawing each other. Fortunately, LKH is going out of her way not to point out that this creature is the size and shape of a small child. Unfortunately, she went out of her way to do just that in the last two books, so the image is still there. Kitto gets into it until Creeda starts shouting "Make him glow!" eagerly. I'm now imagining this chick as the little giggling muppet from Return of the Jedi. You know, the one that sat on Jabba's lap? Kitto, meanwhile, forgets all about this "having sex" thing and huddles into Merry for comfort.

Merry accuses Creeda of raping Kitto. Two sentences later, she makes the most nonsensical statement I ever read in an LKH book, and that's saying a lot.

• "Goblins will rape an enemy, or a prisoner, but they do not rape each other." (Merry) said.

It must be so nice to be clueless in LKH's world. Seriously, you expect a culture that allows for unregulated gang rape to balk at doing it to each other? And instead of addressing that maybe, kind of, sort of, everything about this is fucked up, Kurag starts needling Rhys about his own rape.

Rhys then tops the previous quote of unregulated stupidity by apologizing to his rapist for not doing enough to defend himself.

• "I know I was a fool, Kurag. The princess has told me I could have spared myself a great deal of pain, if I had known what to ask for."

It's very sad that I've hit "I can't even" stage on the fourth fucking chapter of this book, but I am like...what the actual fuck. WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.

I know that LKH is trying desperately to write non-human standards of behavior, but...yeah. Well, maybe she won't manage to top that any time--

• Kurag's leer faded into a frown. "A Sidhe admitting he is a fool, it's a miracle."
• I glanced back just enough to catch Rhys's nod. "We are an arrogant race, but some of us can learn from our mistakes."

He was raped. That was his "mistake".

...See, this is why asexual alien life forms should not be allowed to write books. They don't have the proper cultural context for the rules and boundaries of actual human interaction, and their working approximations just freaking suck.

Guys, it's the only explination that makes sense.

I shouldn't have to spell this out, you know? It's basic fucking logic. Rhys was captured by the goblins as a POW, I think, and was tortured and gang raped. HE BEARS NO RESPONSABILITY FOR BEING RAPED OR TORTURED AND ANYONE WHO THINKS HE DOES IS A WASTE OF PERFECTLY GOOD RESOURCES.

But there really is no possible way for LKH to make this any worse. I mean, what on earth could she possibly--

• "Kurag, I know your laws...you do not rape your own people..."
• "There is one exception to that rule, Merry...But if one of us sells his body for safety and shelter, then he gives up his right to refuse his body to anyone. Only his protector can dictate who can touch him and who cannot."

This is one of the worst things ever written by a human.

Guys, this is supposed to be the "Good" series. And literally every other paragraph in this chapter is something utterly rage inducing. Also: HOW IS SELLING YOURSELF INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY "SAFETY AND SHELTER". IT FUCKING IS NOT YOU FUCKING MORON. FUCK.

LKH, via Merry, dismisses this as "prostitution".

Prostitution is when you trade money for a consensual sex act. Even when you are paid for sex, you have the right to set limits, like the use of condoms or how far a customer is allowed to go. And just like any other retailer, a prostitute has the right to refuse service to a customer for any reason. Her own safety, health, and the well-being of her colleagues and other clients has priority over the needs of the individual purchaser. (And for the record, raping a prostitute is rape, not theft. You're paying for a consensual sex act, not a non-consensual one.)

SEXUAL SLAVERY is when you lose the right to refuse service. Even if you receive beneficial items from the rape, like money or shelter, you are still being forced to have non-consensual acts, and you have no ability to run or leave.

Kurag then introduces Merry to the only two half-sidhe goblins not reduced to sexual slavery, Holly and Ash. Like everyone else, they're pretty. Holly makes it clear he has no desire whatsoever to sleep with Merry. Given that he's probably fought tooth and nail not to be somebody's special party favor, I do not blame him one iota. But Kurag takes offence to this and beats him bloody in front of Merry.

Ash, meanwhile, really wants to get some magic out of Merry's Great Vag of Holding, and he starts trying to talk his brother into sleeping with Merry. His brother starts almost weeping because, you know, he doesn't want to. Ash assumes it's because he thinks that Merry, or someone else in the Unseelie court, are the ones that abandoned them to the goblins, and he points out that nobody in the mirror could possibly be their mother. Thus missing the entire fact that his brother doesn't want to have sex.

 Holly announces that he does not believe in the Great Vag of Holding, so Kurag demands that Merry make Kitto glow. Merry demands that Kitto be safe from the rest of the goblins, because as soon as he goes back to Goblintown--I really can't finish that sentence. Kurag says no, because if you let one sex slave go all the rest will make a try for it. NO REALLY, YOU THINK? Merry then tries to make herself Kitto's protector. Kurag and her bodyguards refuse to let her do this because she isn't strong enough to protect Kitto from the entire Goblin race.

So, in a movement that could have been really fucking cool if I weren't already pissed off past the point of feeling any emotion whatsoever, Rhys steps in and declares himself Kitto's protector, even though he hates Goblins, and has hated Kitto, since the first book. Doyle then declares that Kitto is Sidhe, and Merry senses that this has either kicked off or advanced a prophesy that changes the fates of all, or some shit. Gee, it'd be real nice if we were focusing on fate changing prophesy instead of INSTITUTED SEXUAL SLAVERY.

And then Kurag lets Merry know that not all the half-sidhe they've got are male, which means one of her bodyguards, like Rhys, will have to be a participant in whatever orgy they're planning.

And then he brings Rhys's primary rapist into the room.

End of chapter.

Publishers and Grocery Stores, or: Why we all might be screwed.

So I messed up on the dates for the freebie day. It's today, guys. If you have not yet read Rise of the Winterlord it is free today. Go get a copy.

The big news in the publishing world has been the Penguin/Random House merger. Until they have an official name I'm calling it Penguin House, because I can and because I find the whole idea to be rather scary. At first I was all like, Self Publisher here:

And then I started pretending that I had a career. And if I had a career as a real writer I would NOT like my industry right now. At all.

I used to work for HEB, a grocery store here in Texas. Now, those of you who live up north may not understand what it's like here in TX. You have many choices. Piggly Wriggly...uh...other...stores. I don't know. Here in Texas there are two grocery store options. You can go to HEB, or you can go to Wal-Mart. That's it. And I don't mean "That's it, except for the Mom and Pop store down the street" I mean THAT'S IT. If you don't count the guys selling watermellons out of a pickup truck, HEB and Wal-Mart are the only options in Texas. And I think Wal-Mart is still here because they've got a store everywhere and can divert resources to Texas when they need to. HEB is the nicer option--someday remind me to tell you about what happened when Galveston got clobbered by a hurricane. It was freaking awesome--but as far as consumers go, you might as well flip a coin.

What does this have to do with Penguin House?

The problem with comparing grocery stores to publishers is, grocery stores allow for competition within the store. You want macaroni, you can buy Kraft, you can buy Velveeta, you can buy the store brand, which may or may not be as good, but it'll be cheaper. Grocery stores are more like Amazon. They got books from everybody, and they got a store brand--KDP. It might not be as good as the name brand books, but it's cheap and there's a bigger selection.


The Penguin House merger, in my VERY humble opinion--and I am in NO WAY qualified to offer anything more than my own shitty analysis--creates the potential for two big problems.

The first, obvious problem is, you only get one shot at publishing. Once you are, that's it. That's what you get. You get one chance to impress an agent per project, one chance to impress an editor, and if you're self published, you might as well have put your career up against the wall, blindfolded, and offered it its final cigarette. So if you want to be a real writer, you have to pour your heart and soul into your projects, make them their very best thing possible, and then repeat the process over and over when the Powers That Be tell you to stuff it. Yes. I'm bitter.

This system works great if you have talent, and lots of publishers to choose from. Let's assume that you are good (and that's a big assumption) and you have THE BOOK. There are six publishers to choose from: A, B, C, L, Y and X. After doing research, you find out that  A and B don't publish your genre, and that C has some financial issues and has gained a reputation for screwing its authors over. L, Y and X are all fine. Unfortunately THE BOOK is a lot like THE OTHER BOOK, which is published by X. X is not going to buy THE BOOK because X will not compete with itself. They reject you. L has bought all its books for this year, so it passes. Y, however, is focused on competing with X, and it would really like part of THE OTHER BOOK's pie. So Y buys THE BOOK, makes lots of money, gives you lots of money, and everybody's happy. Except X, because now THE OTHER BOOK has competition. (Why people who like THE OTHER BOOK wouldn't also buy THE BOOK is never explained).

Now, let's say before you submitted THE BOOK, X and Y merged. Now X and Y are both X, and X is still the publisher of THE OTHER BOOK.

This is a competative industry. X has more resources, so its books do better than the others. A, B and L do alright, too, though there is a little belt tightening involved. C, however, was already in trouble. It goes down like the Titanic in a blaze of unpaid royalties and uncertain rights holdings. You still have a book to sell.

A and B don't publish your genre.

L rejects.

X is not going to compete with itself.

Your project is DOA.



Publishing is a crap shoot, where the first requirement is loaded dice (AKA a good book. And Good=Gaurenteed Bestseller).  The current model only works for authors when there are a large number of places to gamble at. If you don't win at Harper-Collins, you might win at ROC or DAW or Del-Ray (Yes. My genre is Fantasy, how did you guess?) or, if you're lucky and have an agent, Little-Brown et al. Now, not only has the casino taken one of the tables away, the remaining table has taken up a MASSIVE amount of the floor (35% of the market.)

Is this a good thing? Bad thing? I don't know. I don't know what the game at the new table (Penguin House) is going to be like. Are they going to allow for internal competition? Are they going to take risks? Can they afford to take risks? Who knows.


The second problem, though, and let me stress HARD that I am in NO WAY QUALIFIED, and am probably wrong in this analysis, is something that could be hugely bad for this industry as a whole. INCLUDING self-published writers, given how hugely dependant we are on Amazon.

I do not see this merger as an attempt to better compete with the other book publishers. I see this merger as an attempt to compete with Amazon. And if this is true, it's going to torpedo the publishing industry.

 I might be wrong, and I expect a lot of people to tell me that I am, but Amazon has a freaking choke hold on the book industry. Part of this is the Kindle. Part of the the appeal of the Kindle is, at any one point in time (like today) you can go on there and get good books free. Or cheap. I forgot my bible last time I went to church. So I got on Amazon and downloaded three of them onto my phone, in about five minutes. I'm sad today because I can't get obscure e-book titles I already own in hardcopy. And a lot of authors, me included, have for one reason or another, gotten sick of rejections and being told either "NO" or "NOTHING" and have published on Amazon. A lot of these books suck, but enough of them don't for Amazon to be making a LOT of money. And eventually Amazon is going to get sick of losing its bestsellers to publishers, who are a lot more difficult to deal with than authors, and is going to try to keep most of them for themselves. Which puts Amazon in direct competition with publishers.

 Now, I might be wrong in this, but most publishers are already in a state of conflict with Amazon. They need Amazon to offer their books to the public, but because Amazon is THE book distributor, Amazon can absolutely tell anybody they want to go hang themselves and get away with it (temporarily). Sure, a publisher can withdraw their product, but that'd be like taking Kraft macaroni off the shelf. The grocery store still has Velveeta shells and the store brand. It'll survive. The loyal customers will make an extra trip to the other stores, and the undecided will give the store brand a try.

If I'm right, and I really hope that I'm wrong, that I'm an alarmist, that I'm an idiot and that I need to shut up now, but anyway, if I'm right Penguin House will eventually focus, not on the other publishers in the industry, but on freaking Amazon. There will be strong arm tactics first, and we know how that works (Macmillian: Let us price OUR BOOKS the way we want. Amazon: Let me think...how about NO *disables buy button*) and then probably a boycott or two, a major regrouping, and then an all out war.

Which will, not incidentally, take out most of the other publishers as collateral damage. Think WW2. Hitler didn't conquer Europe because he wanted Europe. He conquered Europe because he wanted Russia. Europe had resources he needed, and it was in the way.

Again, I'd like to be wrong. I want to be proven wrong. I want to be told to sit down and shut up. Repeatedly. But I don't see Penguin House merging to compete with Tor-Forge and Little Brown. I see this as them wanting to take on Amazon, because breaking Amazon's choke hold is the only way publishers can survive. The only way to do that is to have the clout (read as resources and market share) to tell Amazon to stuff it.

Like with HEB and Wal-Mart.

And a universe where we have ONE bookstore (B&N) ONE online store (Amazon) and ONE Publisher (Penguin House) is a VERY ugly universe for writers, no matter which side of the contract you print on.

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 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 END PART ONE

Okay, I'm going to blow through the rest of this book in two big chunks. But first...BUSINESS, boys and girls. BUSINESS.

ITEM THE FIRST: CONTEST! Yes, this is still going until October first. PLEASE guys. I know at least SOME of you have either purchased/...you know, I just realized there is no match word for "getting something for free"...anyway, SOME of you have either read one of my little books because it's ALL I TALK ABOUT on the blog, or you're here because I've been giving books away on Amazon (Um, yeah. I've given away over three hundred copies of things in the last five days) and you want to know who I am. ANYWAY! REVIEW MY BOOK AND WIN AN ART POSTER! OF ART! YES! I do not expect there to be more than ten entries (Okay, I expect there to be ONE entry, maybe, and you know who you are). If there are more than ten entries I will do something so that everybody gets a thing anyway. It'll probably be a wallpaper of something. Maybe even non-book related art. Because my jaw, boys and girls, my jaw will be on the FLOOR if there are more than ten entries.

ENTER THE CONTEST! REVIEW ONE OF MY DUMB LITTLE BOOKS! INSULT IT IF YOU HAVE TO! JUST PUT SOMETHING THERE PLEASE FOR MY SANITY'S SAKE!

Okay, got that out of the way.

ITEM THE SECOND: The Next Book I Bitch. Right now I have a vote for Captive of Gor. Let me remind you that this is the book John Norman wrote from the female perspective. Which means we will most likely be doing that one, as it has been sitting on my harddrive FOR MONTHS, along with copious copious notes on the fail that is the Gor series.

But there are still other options! There is still time to turn the tide if you do not want to drown in a myre of mysogyny and purple prose! Remember, these are the options:

1. Captive of Gor
2. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs (Yes, indeed it is a blissful vacation of stupid)
4. Mission Earth: Black Genesis. By the way? My love of teh stupid has me reading the third book because it is there and I am frequently bored. I got to a point where I literally shouted "What the FUCK am I reading?" in the living room. My stepfather gave me a very bizzare look.

VOTE, my loyal blog readers! Vote!

ITEM! THE! THIRD!: You know what would really make my day, loyal blog-readers? More than reviews on my books or votes for the next book I tear into? Comments. Talk to me, sports fans. I'm all ears. Make comments. It will put me on the MOON, guys and girls. the very MOON.

And last, but not least:

THE END OF MISSION EARTH! PART ONE!

Oh, god this is going to suck.  Where were we?

Right about... Here. The drug macguffins. So after revealing the dastardly dastardly plan of the dastards (I just managed to make that stop looking like a word) in the dastardly CIA, Soltan Gris commits random murder of side character we never really gave a fuck about. Right. He then picks up the bug he's going to have *snicker* Prahd Bittlestiffender (WHO WILL BE IN THE THIRD BOOK TOO! YAY!) implant into Jettero Heller. And then he murders the clerk who gives him the bug. And crashes an air car into a hospital because bugs, I guess. I don't know. It's great that our narrator finally grew a spine after five hundred pages, but it is a murder spine, and after the first three that kind of gets a little boring.

Then he checks in on Prahd and the Widow Tayl.

They're having post-surgery post-sex cookies. Meaning that Prahd and the fine madam Tayl had surgery to remove such terrible disfigurements as warts (in a futuristic society) and saggy boobs (Because this is a sign of evil in women, according to Hubbard). And then had sex.

Wait. scratch the parentheses for a second. Having read three books in this series I think I can say the following without shaming his good name. First, the books? Do not get better. Oh god do they not get better. I am now reading the ones published after he died. GOOD. FUCKING. GOD. Second, Jet-boy and Soltan are equally shit-stains, in my book. Third: SATIRE. WHY DO YOU USE THIS WORD? I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS. Fourth: Hubbard does not have a Virgin/Whore complex. He has a Virgin AND Whore complex. As in the evil women? Are whores. And the good women? Are virginal whores. It makes no sense, but that's the only way I can explain this "I am the Madonna sans child, so let's go fuck in that corner" attitude every girl has in this book.  Hubbard makes a BIG DEAL out of how horny the Widow Tayl is, but honestly? I don't see a difference between her and every other woman in these books.

Also? In the third book? There is heavily implied pedophilia. And that was still not the part that made me scream what the fuck am I reading. At some point Hubbard went way, way past OH, JOHN RINGO, NO! and right into face-melting territory. All the hugs in the world will not make it okay.

Okay, back to book.

So first Soltan scares the shit out of Prahd. Which is okay, the dude doesn't have much of a spine. And then Soltan and the Widow Tayl have an "interview." And by interview I mean this:

(Widow Tayl) was saying "And Prahd and I had the most wonderful night. In fact we had the most wonderful...wonderful...wonderful...wonderful..." The cupid was really rocking! (MM:TIV pg 521)

But there is one great quote in this chapter:

There is nothing quite so discouraging as going through this sort of thing with a woman telling you how great another man is. Wearing.

One: Best. Writer. Ever. Second: Ron, it's one word. Three letters. Sex. If you're going to use the voices you can describe the actual act. Also, I am beginning to think you are permanently thirteen.

Next chapter! Lombar inspects the ship! And he finds what Jettero is planning to do on Earth! And he disables it! And it is exactly as exciting as it sounds!

However, in trying to get Lombar out of the ship without Jet-boy noticing, Soltan agrees to Jettero's going away party. It will have:

-rainbow booze (aka "yellow, pink and purple bubblebrew")
-flowers
-blue skinned party favors ("blue skinned dancing girls for the contractors and their crews." Thanks a fucking million, Ron. The cause of feminism is set back thirty years every time you touched a pen)
-Dance bands
-Dancing bears
-fireworks (TO SEE OFF A TOP-SECRET MISSION SHIP)

And will, frankly, be the best part of all time, forever. You know that Katy Perry video? Last Friday Night? Yeah. It's that party.

To see off a top secret mission. That should have already left over a month ago.

Then he manages to get Jettero to the Widow's secret hospital, where Prahd sees to implanting the bug, and the Widow Tayl sees Jet!

"When I first saw him...I thought he was some woods God. So strong, so powerful." The lamp in her ceiling began to swing and the music took on a throb. "he stepped out of the airbus so smoothly...so smoothly...so smoothly..." A huge multipetaled blossom by the door seemed to get larger. "Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" Cried (Tayl) and the blossom burst like an explosion!

Two things I want to point out. Apparently if you orgasm on Voltar things randomly explode. Also, you'll note the (Tayl) I put in a couple of places. This is because, like the Countess, Widow Tayl has spontaneously developed a non-insulting name: Pratia. Right around the time that she becomes attracted to Jet.

Jet can purify women. With his penis.

This happens three more times, and Soltan is stunned. She isn't even touching him. Honest-to-God, this book does not imply masturbation. It implies that The Widow Tayl is having spontaneous orgasms just by repeating Jet's name. And this drives Soltan to swear more eternal vengeance against Heller, that EVIL man lying unconscious in the hospital under the care of the doctor Soltan basically conned out of life. 

Our hero, boys and girls.

Come back tomorrow to see the party, AND BE DONE WITH THIS FUCKING TERRIBLE BOOK!

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

<---Obligatory self plug first. The Freebie code is GX35X 

I am plugging the book because the next two lil books I'm releasing (In October and November/December, depending on when I decide to take time off from this thing) will pick up DIRECTLY where two of these stories leave off. So you might want to read that book.

Okay, so where were we.

...Right. Sitting out in the hall. Thanks Ron. Thanks a ton.

So after we listen to the main character have sex--LISTEN, mind. We see nothing becasue we're not even in the fucking room--we get back to a theme of Soltan Gris is a failure. The narrator is trying to defeat the book's antagonist, but he can't because he is SPACE ELVIS, And I really need to just do this now and get it over with:

 Look, I don't know anything about how valuable Hubbard's philosophy was (actually, I know a great deal about it, but I am TRYING to keep the Church That Shall Not Be Named out of this flog) but in his writing? He kind of takes his subconsious and vomits it all over a plate. The value of this book is NOT the plot. It's NOT the romance, it's NOT how interesting sex looks when you're listening to it through a wall (yes. I AM going to bring that up a lot. HOW CAN YOU DO THAT TO YOUR READERS, RON? HOW CAN YOU?) It's the fact that once you crack the covers on this book, you are looking directly into the mind of a founder of a major religion. And it is amazing. Scary and disturbing as fuck, but very educational.

So what happens to Ron's self inserts today?

Soltan argues with a computer. And loses. Again.

Oh, but he finds out that Jettero's weakness is GAMBLING. And he sets up one of the evil murder evil evil guards to gamble ALLLLLLLL Jettero's money away so that he can't spend any more on the Countess Krak and will have to go into space because bankruptcy, I guess. Only the loaded dice Soltan gives Evil Guard fail, and Soltan ends up losing a years worth of paycheck in a game of dice that he isn't even playing in.

And I am flabbergasted by this scene. No, I am truely amazed by it, and the plot sequence to follow. I have no freaking clue why Hubbard chose to write this book the way he did. The Gor novels, I get. Eternal Prey, I get. The book about having sex with a lake? Asexuals exist, and they need porn too. But...okay. You're not going to get why this is so astoundingly weird unless you know at least a LITTLE bit about L. Ron Hubbard's life. There is a book out there called A Piece of Blue Sky. Go find it, go read it, come back here, and OH MY FUCKING GOD you will realize how deep we are inside of Hubbard's head.

And the thing is?  I don't think he intended to do it. Hubbard is not that good at writing. Oh, he's good, don't get me wrong, but if he were that good, Ladies and Gents, he would have had Jettero as his main character. This is Hubbard's subconsious screaming THIS IS WHO YOU ARE, STUPID, and I honestly don't think he was listening. It's like S. Meyer's strong Mormon theology in Twilight. It's there. It is a thing. But she doesn't have the subtly to have pulled that off. Trust me. Nobody tries to write a morality play and makes their male lead a fucking pedophile stalker at the same time.

Okay, back to the flog:

Now, it may not look like I've reviewed much, but this whole sequence: the dice, the failing, Soltan Gris becoming hugely in debit and moaning about how he has no money? It took three whole chapters. Which is what my usual reviews have been. But I see no reason at all to pad my blog as much as Hubbard does his book (and thank all your lucky stars I've spared you more of his poetry) we're going to continue. And the next part...Okay, let me preface this with a direct quote from the man himself. In fact, I am linking directly to the book I got the quote from, and I REALLY recommend you guys read the whole thing. It is Hubbard's biography, pretty well researched, and it is facinating. This is what Hubbard said about China. These are his actual words:

"They smell of all the baths they didn't take. The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here"

In his defence, and I can't believe I'm saying that, he was seventeen. I said some pretty disgusting things about gays when I was ninteen (which I no longer believe in, and someday I'll write that up.) (and before we go any further, to the homosexual community in general: I AM VERY VERY SORRY THAT I WAS A PIG WHEN I WAS YOUNGER. I NO LONGER FEEL THAT WAY AND WILL BE HAPPY TO ABASE MYSELF FOR SEVERAL HOURS IF IT WILL MAKE UP FOR BEING SAID PIG)

So, got that memorized?


 In the next chapter, as part of a circus freak show, the Countess is training a primate and something Hubbard describes only as a "yellow man." You get no description of the "yellow-man" where he is not directly compared to the ape. All this thing is, is a brute. And he almost kills the trainer (who allowed the slave to get a neck lock on him. TSTL trainer) and is stopped by Heller. And then, when Jet-boy leaves, the "yellow-man" goes the Countess and says (text reproduced EXACTLY as written):

"You keep that (bleepard) Heller away from me or I'll break his (bleeping) neck!"

I've been putting up with this through the whole book, people. The whole fucking book. Also note: the "yellow-man" is provided no  humanity. But he can talk, and he can swear, and he is saying this after Jet-boy nearly killed him. So this isn't a brute. This IS a human being...or, you know, sentient being, given the whole alien thing. But it is a being with thoughts and feelings and whatever, that is identified only using a racial slur for the Chinese.

And then the Countess fucking straight up kills the "yellow-man". Specifically for insulting Jet. What does she say when she finds out that she just cold-bloodedly beat a man to death? "That'll teach him not to threaten Jettero!"

I. am. in. awe. of. this. 

Oh, it is fucking morally reprehensible. We have a white woman (as established by the "Earth-Caucasians are our direct relations" sequence) straight up murdering a creature identified only by a racial slur for the Chinese because the...sigh..."yellow-man" insulted her white love interest's honor. Not because any actual hurting of the white man went down. No. The yellow-man insulted Jet's honor, and the Countess defended him, and everyone is supposed to be okay with this. 

Why did Hubbard write this? I am serious. Why in the name of all things holy did he write this scene? It serves no purpose in the book whatsoever, it doesn't evolve anyone's character, it purely exists so a white woman can defend her white man by beating up a brown person. Later on in the chapter the Countess apologizes to Heller for ruining the boots he had given her. While she was killing the yellow-man. to defend his honor. And they go back to their epic plan to rescue the defendants of Prince Caucalsia and his colony of Atalanta.

Let me repeat this sequence of events.

-A white woman. Kills a brown person. For insulting a white man.

-And then she apologizes to said white man for ruining the boots he gave her while she was killing this brown person.

-And then they go back to planning their rescue of the caucasian race of Earth.

This exists in a book written by the founder of a major religion in the last year of his life. Please explain how this is a thing.
 
TOMORROW: Jettero rents a tug. For several chapters.

Seriously. That's all that happens. Jettero rents a tug. I've just reviewed the next...hold on. (counts) SIX FUCKING CHAPTERS RON ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???? SIX CHAPTERS ON A SPACE SHIP oh who the fuck am I kidding. He spent ten years sailing around the Atlantic ocean with his own private navy. I should be glad we don't get an account of every fucking rivet.

Be here tomorrow, kids, where we find out if CW can make renting a fucking tug boat entertaining.