#23 - "In the Heat of the Cockpit" by Don Johnson

Ornery, Illiterate, Wide-Eyed Apes

(5/10)

By Admiral Fartmore

(book chosen by Admiral Fartmore)

Editor's Note: There's a sequel?

I was quite confused when I first saw that I was assigned Don Johnson’s In the Heat of the Cockpit, because for the most part, I had no idea what it was. It is difficult to know what to say about this book. It’s mostly a pretty awful story of gayness and treasure hunting. But there’s more. On the surface this book is a cheap Piece of Shit™, but at its heart, this book is something special.

The plot is simple. Two gay African children – Blake and Will – have somehow gotten their hands on a plane, which they use to fly tourists around the African savannah. They also are engaged in what is possibly a sexual relationship with a third person, a younger and gayer boy, known as Joey. One day, while flying around Africa, a tourist by the name of Logan who hired their plane, reveals that he is hunting for hidden treasure. The hunt for treasure is a thinly veiled metaphor for Logan’s secret carnal desires. As the European visitor, penetrating the dark continents deepest canyons, Logan is overwhelmed by the open and raw sexual prowess he encounters. This primarily comes in the form of the young African boys he pays to ride.

After flying around for a while, an evil genius called Brady shows up to rob them. They flee to a Pharaoh kingdom, where a crazed king spouts a bunch of random gibberish before they run down a sewer, get on a plane, and escape. That’s about it.

The sub-text of the book is only slightly more nuanced than the childish plot. Society’s dominant narratives of hetero-normativity are challenged by the repressed homosexual urges of the purportedly straight characters. Particularly intriguing is the character Steve, who is described as an “ornery illiterate wide-eyed ape.” He is, quite literally, an ape. He is a monkey in a zoo. He is constantly yearning to crave the only thing he desires; his last and final banana. The homoerotic subtext is clear.

This review is quite short, because the book also is a mere 40 pages. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with this book; most importantly because I only have an epub copy and I don’t want to get turd on my Kobo. However, if this book were printed on paper, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on. So don’t bother printing it.

At the same time, there is something oddly intriguing about this book. It is a clumsily written and haphazardly edited saga of a group of very entertaining boys. Did I mention the additional characters? Brady the pedophile, and Devin the prostitute? I think I forgot to, but their redemptive arcs add to the story of these boys in the desert.

I later found out is the first book in a three-part series known as the Boy Trilogy. The sequel – The Legend of the Leopard Boy – is coming out soon, and I have to say I will probably read it.

There’s more to these boys than meets the eye.

#19. "Shattered Prophecy" by David Standeven

Won't someone think of the children!?

(4.1/10)

By Peartree

(Submitted by David Standeven)

Editor's Note: This is the second time the Piece of Shit Book Club™ has been asked to review a book by its author. The rest of us were so fucking busy that we really didn't have the time but thankfully Peartree is an anti-social loser.
Maybe David will write a review of another book or something or we'll get him to guest post or some shit, what the fuck do I know. Shattered Prophecy is available for purchase here.

Why do dogs circle three or more times before sitting down? Why won't McDonald's sell me hot dogs? And why are the necromancers at war with the knights of Fristad? These are questions to which I fear I will never know the true answer.

Sure dogs have always circled, McDonald's hasn't sold hot dogs in a coon's age, and the necromancers have been at war for two hundred years, but just because it has always been doesn't give it a reason. Ovine acceptance don't cut it here David.

Had we known what their motives were for waging war against the 'metal men' perhaps we could have figured out why the hermitic (hermitish? hermitical?) Guardians had named a bunch of kids as their saviours. Perhaps the Guardians secretly knew that the necromancers were actually decent dudes that were fighting because it's what they believed in, and that they would be taken aback by seeing children on the battle field, thus leaving them shocked and vulnerable. Since child recruitment is a Grave Violation on the United Nation's Conventions on Children and Armed Conflict, and since producing material advocating the violation of those laws is also a crime, this book is not only a Piece of Shit™, but also a war crime.

The 'snakes' (that's the necromancers), who are probably accustomed to fighting off battalions of men, should not be subjected to the killing of twelve year old girls. That is entirely too much, even for hardened warriors. And the Guardians knew that would happen too, just reread the name of the book!

What is it about fantasy that elevates children to legendary heroes? It's always some kid from some backwater no-name-town who is thrown into an adventure where they are the only ones who can save the world. It's never the actual armies and generals who have trained their whole lives and studied battlefield tactics. At least Standeven somewhat addressed that issue by having his children warriors brought up as knights for most of their lives, but that probably only exacerbated the Dunning-Kruger effect on their impressionable young minds.

The other issue with having child soldiers is you have to deal with childish antics. Teen rebellion, unrequited love, brash and impulsive decisions, and a general sense of confusion manifest in our protagonists as their bodies go through changes they can't even bring up and talk about because they are on a fucking battlefield. Had they had the time to sit down and mull through their feelings, they probably would have come to the conclusion that kids make poor dragon slayers despite what classic JRPG's would have us believe.

I mean, if you were planning a suicide mission to charge the enemy to allow your squadron time to retreat and only wanted to recruit a small team, how would you do it? Would you go around camp and collect a small team together of those you knew would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, or would you build a huge funeral pyre, light it on fire, and stand on top of it as you gave out a rallying and emboldened retreat speech only to have it backfire and encourage those you didn't want to die come and join the suicide mission? Kids don't think this shit through. That's just self-aggrandising pompousness. He just wanted everyone to know he was going on a suicide mission more than he wanted to help save everyone. I suppose you can't be a martyr if no ones knows what you did but the symbolism of standing on a funeral pyre to get your martyrdom across is laying it on a bit thick.

Personally, if I were to advocate my own martyrdom I would simply let the world know I read Piece Of Shit Books™ on the internet. We sacrifice so much here.

- Peartree

Editor's Note: If we're going to be martyrs, does that mean we get 72 virgins? I'm willing to negotiate down if I have to. All right, I'll take one. One virgin. Provided it isn't Peartree. Speaking of virgins, you can pick up Standeven's book, "Shattered Prophecy," here.

#13 - "Pickles and Ponies" by Laura May

Horse-Cocks and Seal-Fucking: A Hardcore Fairy Tale for Sexual Deviants
 (4.9/10)

by Beau Dashington, Admiral Fartmore and Peartree

(book submitted by Laura May)

Editors' note: This review represents the first time the Piece of Shit Book Club™ has been requested to review a book by the author. It must because of our stinging yet positive literary critiques. That, and the boner gags. And here is that book, written by our very own HotBot, an Australian type person who according to our friend SaltySankhala, may just be an internet bot. Stay tuned for the next review in the Piece of Shit Book Club™, when it will be HotBot’s turn to write as she reviews a book assigned to her by the boys. And that book is going to be a genuine, bona fide Piece of Shit™.

The first rule of fairy tales is that you do not talk about fairy tales.

The second rule about fairy tales is that, as the author tells us, the characters live happily ever after.

Pickles and Ponies is, ostensibly, a fairy tale written by an Australian robot cum author, Laura May (try not to get a mental image of the phrase “cum author”). But as the pages pass, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that the story is just a cover for the author’s own sexual fantasies.

Our story opens in the land of Raduga, a fairy tale world populated only by princes, princesses, and their bizarre sexual slaves. The story opens with a meeting between Prince Randolph and Princess Christine, as he tries to “steal her cherry”... I don't want to say what we thought that meant at first because it might be offensive. Lets just assume its an actual cherry and move on.

In the opening of the story, we learn that adulthood is a sickness, caught from “gu-fairies.” Yup. In Raduga there is a bizarre race of creatures called the “gu-fairies”, whose name is certainly synonymous with jizm (this analogy was clearly intended by our author, as she seems to employ an infuriating amount of puns even Piers Anthony would sneer at). The jizz-fairies assault the children, which turns them into adults. After the assault, people wrap themselves up in a little cocoon for a week and then emerge as an adult. The jizz fairies probably represent someone’s first time masturbating, but it isn’t exactly clear. Though I do know that after I first figured out how to help my Lyndon B. run for office, I probably didn’t leave my bedroom for solid  week. The adulthood part is still a question mark. Either way, the jizz-fairies justify what they are doing by saying they didn’t really mean to hurt the kids, and they only did it because they love the children so much.

Indeed. I feel like I’ve heard that excuse before.

We also learn that the special move that Princess Christine uses is “the poke.” I wonder what that means. Here’s a quote; “Randolph had witnessed the power of the Poke many times growing up with Christine, and was committed to making sure his son was an expert in all aspects of poking.”

Indeed. I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before.

The poke, which it's hard not to assume refers to banging, functions as a cure-all response to pretty much any obstacle the characters of Raduga face. If there’s a tree in your way, just bang it into sawdust. If a plank of wood is too short, just bang it until it extends to your desired length. If your daughter is depressed, just hire Raduga's Ron Jeremy to come in and sort her out. While fucking a tree may seem a bit far fetched, keep in mind that in Raduga almost everything from a ship to the ocean itself has some anthropomorphic qualities. Nothing is safe from the poke.

After a bunch of magic, cherry-stealing, and the poking of innocents (mostly, it seems, children) we eventually learn of our main characters. One is Vanya, the Prince of Quite Large and Really Rather Big Fish (if you imagine our author as a female Douglas Adams playing on the floor with My Little Pony dolls, a lot of the themes in this book start to gain some perspective). Due to a curse, he has no emotion. He has assigned to him a horse, named Horse, who is able to talk, and explains Vanya’s emotions to him.

Vanya’s female counterpart is the Princess Melodia of Rather Fish-Like Things. After reading too many fairy tales, she decides to exile herself to a deserted island while awaiting her prince to come rescue her. For some reason, Vanya’s parents decide that if he were to rescue Princess Melodia, he might get his emotions back.

Along the way, he must complete a number of tasks. One involves a witch, from whom Vanya frees a new sidekick named Theo. Another task involves Vanya, Horse and Theo assailing a giant cliff. They receive assistance from Hammy the Hamster. I assume the author got copyright clearance for that one.

Melodia, meanwhile, gets bored and is manipulated into banging a dude every day for the promise of new clothes. Once he starts to find their relationship dull he threatens to start banging new island floozies unless she starts doing it a “new way” by insinuating she is stuck up and not “willing to explore a bit” (italicization is the author’s). Of course the author means anal. This all by a guy who is half-man half-seal, known as a selkie. Whereas I thought this was made up, I found out later that it is actually a real thing. There are actually references in Gaelic mythology to people fucking seals. What. The. Fuck.

If you were hoping for our protagonists to stop fucking seals and horses and whatnot, you will end up disappointed. As Vanya’s quest to save the Princess Melodia continues, he ends up deciding to join a circus for seven years. He abandons his Horse, who starts fucking a sea-horse... who knocks him up. True story.

In spite of all the build up, which seems to be bringing Vanya and Melodia together, this does not come to pass. Instead, Melodia starts banging Theo, and the book ends tragically; the mentally handicapped Vanya left by the wayside while the emotionally stable ride off into the sunset. Vanya gets his heart restored just in time to get dumped, breaking rule number 2: characters live happily ever after.

Although well-written and not a Piece Of Shit™ by our normal standards, it’s hard not to wonder if the author just needed a cheap cover to write a story about sex with seals and horses and getting covered in goo by jizz-fairies. That’s certainly the impression up-front. But past these curtains of spunk sits a window overlooking some interesting themes; feminism, a woman’s role in the world, expectations and fantasy versus reality, isolation and friendship, horses, etc., are all examined from an innocent and very literal perspective, akin to South Park’s social commentary. They are well placed and fitting.

However, at times it feels like the fairy-tale is a vehicle that perhaps hinders the author as much as it aids her, insofar as while it grants the author plenty of maneuverability, it also means that we the readers have a tougher time connecting with characters or empathizing with their jizz-coated tribulations. It IS satire, of course, but she who fights fairies should be careful lest she herself become a jizz-fairy. And so in the end, we’d recommend for May to light some candles, put on some Lionel Ritchie, wrap up in a seal-pelt, and get acquainted with her own gu-fairies. ‘Cause fairy tales are for perfect princesses, and judging by the undercurrents of sexual depravity in her first book, a perfect princess she ain’t.

If you haven't already caught on, Laura May has a wicked sense of humor - not just by the fact that she submitted her book so we could take the piss out of it.  Grab her book here.

Beau Dashington, Admiral Fartmore, and Peartree

14/11/2014