Captive of Gor, Chapter 6

The opening paragraph of this chapter is pretty fitting:

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

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

Because I want to. Right.

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Pooh-bear.

And then she sees random people.

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

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

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

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

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

What does Strawchick do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would not be permitted to shirk. 

I had always had my way before...

Here I did not have my way. 

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

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

End of chapter. Thank you god. Goodnight all.

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

YAY!

Book Bitch Mission Earth 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.

Indie Book Review Suggestion Page

So I've decided to do independant and/or Self Published book reviews. Why? Well, one, that's the kind of house I live in, and two...because reviewing books is what I do.

So if you have a book you'd like me to review, let me know here. And please include information on how I can get my hands on a copy of it to read. I actually prefer e-books, as those are easier (and cheaper) to get than good old-fashioned paper books.

Yeah, not a big, earth-shattering post. Yet. We'll see in the future how things go.

Edit 9/7 Okay, let me add a couple of things to this, okay? The response has REALLY surprised me, in a pleasant way. Just a couple of ground rules:

1. PLEASE LINK TO YOUR BOOK. If I cannot FIND your book I cannot READ your book. So please. Please please please please please point me in the right direction. Also give me some form of contact information so that I can tell you when the review is up and/or ask questions.

2. Please have a thick skin. I promise to review your book but! And it's a big but! I have to make the review honest and  entertaining, and I'm concerned that entertaining and honesty might not always be nice to hear.  I promise to list the good points too, don't worry, just...you know, be braced.

One final thing? I have a life that is not always book friendly, and I didn't anticipate how AWESOME you guys were going to be with this. So please be patient. I promise to post one review a week, minimum, but given how quickly the line is filling up (really, I am totally psyched about this) that might be a pretty long wait. If I didn't have the day job, it'd be better. But I do. So it's not.

Thank you guys SO MUCH for being awesome. This is gonna be so much fun...

Mary Sue Pt 3: Skyline and District 9

Point Two on the Mary Sue list is as follows: 2. She is a character so poorly constructed that her inadvertent negative character traits overshadow her intentional positive ones.  Her intentional negative traits, which in a good character would balance out the intentional positives are not credible and thus do not register with the reader.

This is where things stop being easy, and also, IMHO, stop being something I can back up with my own actions, as I am unpublished and thus cannot prove that I know what I’m doing. However, I firmly believe what I am about to explain is true. This is another of CW’s Magical Writing Theories (Consume with Grain of Salt), so get comfy.

Character building: Mary Sue pt 2. Also, Honor Harrington and Bella Swan

The problem with Mary Sue is if you read or watch TV for any period of time, you start meeting versions of her that you like. People who are brilliant, beautiful, always successful and always beloved, who more often than not have that magical pet cat or dog or (insert animal here). And you begin to wonder why this character works, when your own dear Sue collapsed under her own weight.

For myself, there are three characters that I absolutely love, that technically are "Sues": Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who and Honor Harrington (grumblegrumblenextbookinfreakingJulygrumble) All three are badly overpowered in their chosen expertiese, all three have no true equal, and all three are highly idealized. Honor, in addition to being the BEST ADMIRAL EVAR!!one1! has a list of titles longer than most libraries, and Nimitz, her telepathic/empathic treecat that also gifts her with psychic powers in a universe where humans are not psychic (and that kind of universe-breaking is a big hallmark of Sueism) And then there is the Doctor. Ignoring the Tardis, ignoring the large stable of women desperate to play tonsel hockey with him, even ignoring the fact that he is effectively immortal, he carries a deus ex machina around in his pocket. Sonic Screwdriver, anyone?

And yet...they work. And they are hugely loved by the people who read them. People almost rioted when Sherlock died. I only found out that Honor was to die after Weber decided not to kill her (and I will never trust him again. Because you do that once, you can do that again, and it was bad enough loosing LaFollet last book. *sniff*) and the Doctor has survived longer than most socialist governments. What the hell?

Character building ... stuff: Mary Sue

What is a Mary Sue?

I answered this question for the nine-millionth time the other day, and I realized two things simultaneously: One, it's a really hard thing to pin down, and two, I really need to just post this to the blog already and move on with my life, because copy-pasta would really save time and energy.

So without further ado: Mary Sue.

I met her for the first time with my very first novel. Which was never finished. I had an idea for a story about a girl who turns into a dragon. Which was actually a pretty good idea, and in a couple more years I may revisit that story. The descent into Mary Sue territory began with the name. I searched baby name sites anxiously, seeking that perfect name that would fit the character and perfectly express everything I needed to know about the character (because at this point, I didn't know bupkiss about writing for an audience). I settled on D'Lorah. And a good time was had by all.

Then I read the Malloren series by David Eddings, and suddenly my dragon princess was a foundling of another set of princesses. D'Lorah was her real name (BTW it was just "harold" spelled backwards. My female MC had a boy's name, spelled backwards) but her foundling name was "Gracelyn" because she was so graceful, (and psudo-welsh) And she was an elf. And then she was a shape-shifting elf. And the elves became golden beings of light who fought the evil queen of darkness from their magical never-to-be-invaded island kingdom of Riva Iswyn (or something like that.) And she went to war with the evil queen of darkness and recruited the evil queen's faceless minions as her own, and yeah, it was a pretty horrible story. But what I remember most clearly is the progression from "dragon princess" to "conglomerate elvish WTF" (and none of the main cast was proof against this. Talk to her love interest for a few days worth of traumatic nightmares). I would come across something I thought was cool, think "gee, I wish my character was like that", then think "Well, why don't I make her like that?", and then a good time was had by ... me.

However, I had this nagging voice go off in the back of my head: "Hey, this might not be a good idea. Hey, I don't think this is working out. Hey, I don't think you ought to do that, I don't think war works like that, hey, listen, hey, CW, HEY STUPID! WRITING DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY!" Unfortunately my reaction was to pile more cool shit into the story, and not to worry about realism or characterization or anything else that might salvage what was originally a pretty cool idea. Eventually it collapsed under its own weight with just that little idea seed sticking out.

I tried my hand at sci-fi writing, and again, had a pretty good seed idea. That I proceeded to ruin through a combo of conglomerate SF WTF and incest!rape (I was also thirteen). And again, I remember that same progression from "space captain fights monster on space station with a twist" to "what the hell did I just eat read?" (Reading Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series at thirteen DID NOT HELP AT ALL. DAMN, the man has issues with women) Any and all cool ideas that I thought might work got slamned into the book everywhere I thought they might fit until the whole story collapsed under the weight of its (horrible) cast.

And then I encountered the words "Mary Sue" for the first time, and the symptom (because it's a symptom, not the disease itself) got a name. I learned what this symptom looked like (cool royal bloodline, awesome friends, great boyfriend, eventually gets preggers, rainbow hair, mood-ring eyes) and learned to avoid these things in my own writing. And in avoiding them, I learned why these were bad. "Because I think its cool" is not a good enough reason to include it in the story.

However, I hit another problem with Ms. Sue when I started trying to explain why the Sue family is bad. Because the Sue definition is pretty vague, and while we know that something is bad, we're not 100% sure why it is bad. So now, without further ado, we give you yet another of CW's Spectacular Writing Theories (Consume with Grain of Salt):

1.A Mary Sue is an extraordinary character without an extraordinary plot to match.

2. She is a character so poorly constructed that her inadvertent negative character traits overshadow her intentional positive ones.  Her intentional negative traits, which in a good character would balance out the intentional positives are not credible and thus do not register with the reader.

3. She rarely encounters credible danger, or if she does, she will be kidnapped, bound, gagged, raped, physically abused to the point of death, and then rescued by another (*coughmalecough*) member of the cast. At no point will she defeat the credible danger herself.

4. When asked to describe Mary, her author will respond with a list of character traits and attributes so far removed from the reader's perception of Mary, the readers will stare in disbelief. They will either laugh, cry, or start posting slightly vindictive, yet wholly justified reviews of Mary and her story on the internet.

5. Mary will not be the biggest problem in the story. She will, however ,be the most obvious.

I'm going to do a more in-depth post on each of the five points over the next several days, so ... yeah, get comfy.

Pallate CLENSER man!

So ... been working on another book review/analysis thing, only I've decided to throw out the idea of being even handed and fair. It's now called "Book Bitch", where I will STILL talk about the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't work in books ... but I'm not going to go out of my way to find good books to work with. Mostly because I keep finding oh my GAWD awful books EVERYWHERE and if I matched every book on a level with Tale of the Body Thief to a book on the level of say, Sunshine or Lovely Bones, I would run out of good books really, really fast.

BTW my co-worker has turned up another bad paranormal romance. And by bad, I mean that it is, no shit, worse than Twilight. And not maybe kinda sorta, uh-uh. I've read three chapters, and I'm making that call right now. This is worse than Twilight. Because body glitter aside, Twilight made sense. I cannot imagine this book making sense.

So just to give people an idea of what I'm working on, in addition to gutting the first half of WtBR's fantasy sections (That's all I'm redoing. I promise. I promise) I'm trying to do a quickie on Sunshine, to prove that I actually do read good books, and probably will start one on The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveler's Wife because those two are just as awesome as Sunshine and deserve much shilling. As for the suck ... I've yet to start my review on the first Merry Gentry book, which desperately needs to be done, and I've decided to embark on a massively epic Bitch on the great, massive pile of steaming batshit that is the Left Behind  series. Because I found the first prequel for cheap at Half Price books, and oh my God. At least Stephenie Meyer stopped at four. There's fifteen of these puppies, and they all deserve it.

Also Tale of the Body Thief and if I can track down a copy, The Caterpillar's Question. Because that book was oh so very much KILL WITH FIRE.

As for the personal writing front ... I am still of the mind that the drive for professional writing credits is hopeless, as I am not writing Paranormal Romance and the requirements for a first novel for everything else is generally perfection. So until somebody tells me differently and hands me a check, this is a hobby. It's the only way I can handle it, keep revising and stay sane. Some people do model trains, some people do their houses. I do books. That doesn't mean I'm giving up on writing. It means I'm giving up on writing professionally, for now, for the moment, until somebody (with a check, made out to me) proves that I'm wrong. The odds are totally against me, and the faster I accept that and stop daydreaming about seeing my book in a bookstore somewhere, the faster I can get my sanity back. The alternative is to quit my job and get shifted back over to days, because THAT is what's really going on with me, and I can't afford to do that right now. It'll also make writing fun again, because it hasn't been for a while now.

And yes, I'm still gonna try the agent-and-publisher thing ... when it's ready. I'm just not going to hold my breath or wait for a reply that probably won't come.

Book Analysis: Bone Magic

Okay, so I've intended to do book analysis on this thing for a while. Not reviews, exactly, but taking a book apart to determine what makes it good and what makes it bad. And my intention was to start with a good book (Sunshine, Robin McKinley, my baseline for awesome) and then do a really bad book (The first in the Merry Gentry series, whose name I have completely forgotten) and then go from there.

But a friend of mine lent me Bone Magic, and while it's not quite at Merry Gentry/Anita Blake's level of book suck ... it sucks. Hard.

So without further ado, let me give you the basic, spoiler free details in case you should ever want to read it, and then on with the ripping.

Title: Bone Magic
Author: Yasmine Galenorn
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Readability: Look, this thing managed to upset BOTH Sunshine and Laurell K. Hamilton. VERY VERY VERY POOR.

What you need to know before you buy: Witches, magic, sex, vampires, fairies, dragons, demons, basically the author took the Paranormal Romance bottle of Mrs. Dash and sprinkled it over the manuscript pages. Writing is sub par, there are many, many MANY moments where I am thrown out of the book, characters are flat and uninteresting. Rent from library before you blow your money.

Review and details after the cut.