#46 - "Cracked" by Eliza Crewe

Vices and Shit

(1/10)

by HotBot

(book accidentally stumbled upon by HotBot)

Editor's Note: The main characters in this book are called "Meda," "Chi," and "Jo," which together are an anagram for "I, Chode-Jam." I, Chode-Jam indeed.

Sometimes, books make me angry.  Not books in general of course—I’m talking about specific ones.  I pick them up, all excited and ready to be bedazzled—and then I’m hit with a pile of shit instead. It’s not what I want.  Nobody Almost nobody wants that.  Such was the case with Eliza Crewe’s “Cracked”, and it irritated me sufficiently that I asked the gentlemen of the Piece of Shit Book ClubTM whether I could volunteer as tribute. Just this one time.

Cracked isn’t a shit book because it’s racist.  There is no fucking dinosaurs or dolphins, no heroin-based autobiographies, no subtle pro-US propaganda.  There’s not even any thinking you’re a horse.  But it does check all the boxes for an unlikable and unrelatable protagonist, a confusing target age, soooo much Bible-iness, and some casual harassment.  For a little background, our ‘heroine’ is Andromeda Melange, half-demon soul-eater and teen with attitude.  There’s also a bunch of people called Crusaders—virtually all of whom we meet are likewise moody teens or invalids—and they’re at war with the Demons, while protecting people they called ‘Beacons’.  Now, I don’t want to spoil anything, but Meda’s last name means “mixture”.  Any thoughts as to what makes her so special?  Spoilers, she’s a Crusader-Demon-Beacon.  A crudemacon.  Will she choose good?  Will she choose bad?  Who the fuck cares, but you can guess it from the outset if you’re so inclined.

Now, in chronological order:

The first few chapters

Meda goes psychotic and rips apart a man with her bare hands, releases insane people into the streets, and dances in trail of blood.  Despite the grizzliness, the word choice and ‘voice’ reflects perhaps a pre-teen audience, maybe the 12-14 bracket.  Meda’s character is 17.

P53—Lust

Meda next encounters her first Crusaders, one of whom is Chi (Malachi—get it?  Religious!  Because all the good guys are).  And because this is apparently what pre-teens like to read in books, we get this comment after Chi takes off his jacket: “The looks of an angel and yet all it makes me want to do is sin.”  This made me want to look up the Bible Malachi, and we have this dude:

'Sinning' is not at the forehead of my mind.

P71—What’s a plot hole, anyway?!

Chi, his friend Jo, and a kid called Uri(el), are explaining what ‘Crusaders’ are.  They are like advanced ‘Templars’ (yes, Knights Templar), and are descended from the original Knights.  But it’s not only descendants of the ‘originals’ that have special powers: “Oh, and anyone who marries a Templar”.  That’s right.  But why?  What could the reasoning be?  What is the world logic here?  Meda wonders the same thing, and asks.  “They all blink at me.  Finally Uri answers, ‘Because God says so.’”.  OH.  Because God says so.  Of course.  What the fuck happens in case of divorce?  What if it’s a marriage of convenience, because I hear there have been one or two of those since the recognition of the Knights Templar in the twelfth freaking century?!  What if someone stumbles onto your secret and starts force-marrying and divorcing you to a whole bunch of people in order to raise some kind of super army?!  And moreover, why the fuck is this important to the story?!  There’s this whole marriage theme that runs throughout—adult Templars, for example, always fight in pairs.  And those pairs are always couples.  And 17-year-old Chi, by the end of the book, is ‘joking’ about how he’s going to ‘make’ Jo marry him—but more on that later on.  Enough.  We get it.  Jesus, God, marriage, blah.  But please oh please cover up at least the more glaring of your plot holes with something a little more substantial.

P79—just a couple more names

Oh hey there, Ezekiel, Abraham, Methuselah and Judas.  Sigh.  And this book isn’t half as endearing as the way Christian mythology is used in Supernatural, for example.  Where’s Castiel?  We all want Castiel dammit!

There are an unbelievable number of memes of this guy on the internet.

P130—Sloth (on behalf of the editor)

Three times in the book, words were randomly in a different font size.  I don’t know why.  At first I thought it was some kind of inner dialogue mechanism.  Then I read the sentence “no one could be that surprised” and my internal monologue was confused.  I felt lied to.  Betrayed.

P186—Gluttony (in a very loose reference)

Meda constantly talks about her Hunger.  Her hunger for food, but also her Hunger for Souls.  Or, rather, the life attached to souls, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.  I assume it’s some kind of Siamese-soul situation, and you swallow one then spit out the rest.  The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am.  Meda kills a person and then sucks out their soul, swallowing all of it.  But it’s okay, because really she only digests the ‘life’ associated with it.  So where does the rest of the soul go?!  And how are there ghosts wandering around (one of whom has a subplot which is never resolved) with all aspects of life, when Meda later explains that they’re only souls, no life?!  Meda is called a ‘Soul-eater’ (it says so right on the back cover!), but other Demons, ‘Real’ Demons, suck ‘life’ directly from … some kind of afterlife?  But not souls, oh no, not souls.

Either way, on the topic of eating, I was irritated to find an overbearing explanation of the word ‘hangry’ on page 186.  It’s like the author had just learned the word from a friend—a word which is in fairly common use, at least where I’m from—and was excited to teach it to the world.  Give me a break.

P216—the one thing I liked

This sentence.  This solitary sentence.  “Those of us who live with twisted bits like to think we can overcome them.”  It’s with reference to somewhat-crippled Jo, who doesn’t allow her gimpy leg (and I only say ‘gimpy’ because that’s how the author/Meda keeps referring to her) to hold her back.

P229—what??

A reference is suddenly made to the lack of a particular burger chain the UK.  As far as we know, the protagonist has never been to the UK, so this is just a bout of random.  Is the author trying to check whether we're awake?!

P274—again with the life/soul distinction

All right, so firstly, again with the ‘which age group is this for’?  A 13-year-old boy is tortured to death.  Lovely, right?  And then we (through Meda) see his “soul, stripped of life”, before ascending to presumably Heaven.  What?  So his soul didn’t have life but was still moving on to whatever afterlife?  So it sounds like Demons aren’t doing any harm by taking the ‘life’ from people’s souls, as they get to where they’re going anyway.  And in that case, how the hell (yes, a pun, but an angry one) do the Demons suck life from souls in the afterlife?!  BOOK YOU MAKE NO SENSE.

P278—oh no.

Meda meets her demon father, and she has the thought “I am such a naughty girl, aren’t I, Daddy?”.  Now I don’t know if it’s just me, but I read this and cracked up.  Thank you for backing up every ‘daddy issues’ cliché ever, Crewe.  Thank you.  I’m just surprised that it didn’t devolve into some kind of spanking/incest scene—especially given the father in question is apparently an incubus, and that’s what they do.  Or is it only when people are asleep?

I shit you not, the caption for this was "an incubus about to fornicate with a sleeping beauty".  I like how he looks lost in thought.  I'm less charmed by the idea of waking up to find a naked red dude sitting on my bed staring at me, especially if to all intents and purposes I've been drugged as this woman appears to have been.  Who the fuck sleeps like that?  You'd choke on your tongue!  Is this some kind of necro crossover?!

I don’t know, it’s not my bag, but the only context in which I ever encounter someone older than around 10 using the word ‘daddy’ is in a sexual sense, so this was just…  Oh dear.

P301–327 (ie end of book)

Chi and Jo declare their love for one another during a fight to the death with a demon horde (man, I just do not get to type ‘demon horde’ often enough).  I mean come on, if Buffy taught us anything it’s that people say stupid things when they’re about to die.

Buffy announces she loves him, given the apocalypse going on.  Spike is like "duh, no you don't, don't be retarded".

Then, once it’s been said, an incredible amount of the rest of the book is taken up with the following.  But imagine Spike is Chi.  Now watch the gif for ten minutes.  Now see if you feel like punching anyone.

I was never in the Spike camp anyway, punch away.

But does Jo go along with this?  Oh no.  P310, she explains that “’I only said that because we were about to die.’”  Straight-forward, right?  But Chi refuses to believe it, and keeps telling her how she loves him and she’ll be 'his'.  While saying how one day her name will be ‘wife’.  Meanwhile Jo keeps reiterating that “’I meant it at the time.  I thought we were going to die.’”  But Chi just doesn’t take his would-be wife that seriously—she probably doesn’t know what she wants, that silly duffer.

Except that she does.  And she's told you it's not you.

Chi is so persistent in fact, that Jo is forced from the room, and then in a later scene she has to run into the woods to escape him.  Chi is even good enough to describe the whole shebang as a “romantic assault”.  Oh yeah buddy, keep using words like ‘assault’ when you’re chasing some girl into the woods.  Good work.  Here’s some more of Jo protesting:

“’I don’t want to talk to you anymore,’ she says in desperation.  ‘I don’t want to see you ever again.  Just leave me alone!’  Her voice is high-pitched and frantic. 

‘Not gonna happen,’ he says easily.  ‘Ever.’”

Well that’s not scary as fuck.  Even Meda—half-Demon Meda—asks him what the hell he’s doing, pointing out that Jo’s getting more and more upset.  On the other hand, she then lets him go run into the forest after the girl who has been forced to flee him, so maybe she’s true to her demonic nature after all.

Finally, Meda finds herself wandering through the woods, and she comes across Chi and Jo.  No, they’re not banging.  But they haven’t seen her, so she hides in the bushes to watch them.  And watches Chi kiss Jo—while she’s crying and protesting—and pretends to eat invisible popcorn.  Oh and then suddenly the murdered kid’s ghost appears, even though ghosts once they’re in the afterlife are meant to stay there, because fuck plotlines.

1/10.  Fuck this shit.

#45 - "The Selection" by Kiera Cass

Trystopia

(3/10)

by Admiral Fartmore

(book submitted by Peartree)

Editor's Note: I first met Ms Cass while nude sunbathing in French Polynesia. She suggested I submit her book to the club after two very tall glasses of Pernod. She seemed intimidating so I said ok.

"The Selection" by Kiera Cass is a young-adult series commonly described as The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games: it takes place in post-WWIV North America, which is now a dystopian, caste-based monarchy called Illea, and the plot pivots around the selection of the crown prince’s bride through a very Bacheloresque competition between young women drawn from across the land. The story follows a beautiful yet truculent young girl named America (fuck, yeah!) as she navigates her way through the selection process. Both fair in complexion and fiery in disposition, from humble background but with great potential, our heroine must attempt to balance love, independence, political intrigue, and more. Does she succeed? Does this heavy-handed personification of American exceptionalism manage to ‘have it all?”

America, who has red hair, is caught in a love triangle between a hot rich guy and a cute boy-next-door. Sound familiar?

I don’t know how what happens, because I only read the first book, which ends completely out of no where. America gets out of bed one morning, and then the book just ends. While most of the competitors are eliminated, there are still 6 girls left vying for the Prince's heart. It doesn't even fucking say "The End." Seriously, I haven't seen something finish this prematurely since something-something penis joke. I think the series resolves itself after three books, but I'll never read it, because I already feel cheated. I'm not going to be suckered into making three orders of book just to get a single helping of story. It's like the middle piece of bread in a Big Mac - absolute bullshit.

The Selection has the literary equivalent of this ending.

I am most interested in discussing the world. It's drawn a lot of comparisons to The Hunger Games, but I don’t really think the comparison is all that warranted. Following World War IV (which apparently wasn't fought with sticks and stones, Einstein, you idiot), the world’s nations have formed into several supranational states covering areas like North America, East Asia, Europe, etc. These states are in perpetual war, and there’s also a lot of revolutionary activity within their borders. You might be tempted to say this sounds 1984-inspired, but I really don’t think you need to read Orwell in order to dream this kind of simple future up. Did I just casually reference 1984 to sound smart? Yup. You bet your sweet ass I have my grade 9 education.

What were the Third and Fourth World Wars about, by the way? Well it all started with a Chinese invasion of the United States. I’ll allow Cass to describe in her own words how this came about:

Reading that, you can’t help but picture China as some kind of Scorsese-style bookie, baseball bat in hand, knocking on an apartment door. But whatever, this is young adult fiction. We aren’t looking for in-depth discussion of sovereign debt. But I really think Cass could have done better when it comes to what the Chinese renamed the US:

Hahaha.

It’s 2015, so of course big-bad China is the rising threat to the United States. If this had been written in the 70’s, it would have been the USSR. In the 80’s? Maybe Japan. In the 90’s? Gangster rap. And so on. While none of this is particularly imaginative or original, it’s also not exceptionally bad compared to anything else in the future-sucks genre. 

There is, however, one major issue I have with Cass’ vision of the future: Italy is still a country. Every single country referenced in The Selection has been renamed and reshaped by war and economic collapse. Except, apparently, Italy, which is still just Italy. That’s right, Italy - the country with enough debt to make Wesley Snipes blush; you know - the country where the Prime Minister can get away with banging underage prostitutes; you know, the country where football fans chant racist obscenities against their own players. The whole world goes to shit but ITALY survives? Yeah right. Forgive me if I find Italy-tle-bit unbelievable.

While we are on the subject, we need to stop saying that Italy is shaped like a boot. Italy does not look like a boot. It looks like a horrifying pile of crudely-drawn penises.

I defy anyone to look at this map of Italy without seeing a quivering rat-king of cartoon dicks.

One way The Selection differs from most popular young adult fiction is in ‘Merica’s healthy relationship with her parents. Despite this book being an amalgamation of pretty much every trope from the genre (‘Merica is caught in a love triangle, she’s poor, she’s absolutely selfless, everyone loves her except for this one rich bitch, she’s always awkwardly flirting, etc.), Cass spares us the dead/missing parents angle. That part is at least modestly refreshing, like a warm glass of water. But my god there’s a lot of flirting. I did a word search to see just how many times she mentions hot breath or eyes, and in the process I realized that you could actually recreate a condensed version of the whole story with just a few simple words:

Still missing one thing.

However, I am adult, and this book wasn’t meant for adults. I no longer experience the social awkwardness, drama, or awkward dry-humping that characterize teenage years. So unless you stopped growing emotionally at 14 or just really, really need to escape for a while, this book is no good. It's boring, sentimentalist fluff. But as much as I don’t like it, I will give her this: Cass absolutely nails the teenage demographic. Silvio Berlusconi would be proud.