#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.

#15 - "My Immortal" by Tara Gilesbie

Wait, what just happened?
 (0.5/10)

by Captain Charisma

(book chosen by Admiral Fartmore)

Editors' note: Reading My Immortal has caused Captain Charisma to complain to the committee that since this is an unpublished book, it shouldn't be a valid choice. But we know that in reality, he's really just being a baby about reading such a shitty book. I'll try and respond by channelling the free-flowing, teenage-web-forum dialect My Immortal so vividly captures as best I can: U fukin joyned dis club 2 read shit bookz. Dnt b a fukn P0SER,

In this ‘epic’ fanfiction we see a new side of Hogwarts systematically neglected by J.K. Rowling; the widespread 'Goth' subculture. Clearly Rowling is just like everyone else in her blatant disregard for those not accepted by mainstream ‘preps’; lack of Goth inclusion extends beyond North American suburban high schools to those with magical powers and what are presumably other species, such as vampires, werewolves and demons. Shame on you, Rowling; you’re perpetuating the hardships faced by sad social-outcast teenagers. Either that or, as suggested by the inherent conflictual attitude of the author to anyone not a Goth (“if you don’t like this book then all you preps and posers can fuck off”), they’re doing it to themselves.

Harry has been replaced as the protagonist by a young Vampire named Ebony. Ebony is a sexy, horny, manipulative Vampire Goth who bases her identity on being sexy and loving all things relating to the high school teen Goth subculture. She sleeps in a coffin, slits her wrists regularly, is highly promiscuous, has an obsession with Marilyn Manson, Good Charlotte, and My Chemical Romance (particularly that sexy bastard Gerard), and most importantly, has an intense hatred for preps and posers. Her identity is based on pop-culture accepted by her subculture, such as Hot Topic, a Goth clothing store with a convenient location in Hogsmeade. Also thankfully, her favourite Goth bands seem to perform in Hogsmeade on a daily basis, especially that sexy bastard Gerard from ‘MCR’.

Ebony has a highly sexual relationship with Draco Malfoy, a sensitive, bisexual Goth who slits his wrists on a bi-weekly basis. She also finds Harry Potter very sexy, who’s been renamed Vampire (because he’s a Vampire). She also finds Tom Riddle sexy, which is confusing because in this Voldemort is a different character, who she also finds sexy, “in a evil way”. Ebony finds just about everyone sexy and her highest praise is: “almost as sexy as Gerard”. In fact, the only person not sexy in the book is that fucking prep Dumblydore (spelled this way throughout the book), who always attempts to stop their adolescent substance abuse and risky sexual behaviours. I would like to further point out that Ebony is described as doing everything “sexily”; walking, talking, looking, eating, touching, sleeping, smoking (including crack), drinking, dancing, etc. On one occasion she does something seductively, but then she reverts back to her sexy ways.

In regards to plot, I really didn’t pick up on anything. At one point Ebony has to go back in time and seduce Voldemort, which she of course does sexily. I presume this was a prevention measure to stop something terrible happening, but my graduate degree didn’t prepare me to understand the complexities of this writing. At one point a bunch of people, including Hagrid, film Ebony in the shower. On another occasion Ebony films a bunch of professors banging. Also, whole bunches of people go to Azerbaijan, which I’m assuming has replaced Azkaban as the horrible prison circled by Dementors. Fair enough, I always assumed that place must be a shithole.

To review this work as a literary piece is simply not valid. This is not a book; it’s a testament to the failure of our public school system. Firstly, I have no idea what just happened and what the book is actually about, aside from descriptions of high-school ‘Goths’. The identity of this subculture seems inextricably determined by aesthetics and specific popular culture knowledge/references. Secondly, anyone who has been to school should be able to use some rudimentary form of spelling and grammar. I was previously under the assumption that computers tend to do that for you.

To be fair, a lot of people that aren’t suppose to write books write books. I’m not suggesting the author is an idiot; rather, I’m hoping she have multiple other talents, or at least slightly more ability in every other aspect of her life. I also sincerely hope she has grown out of her casual references to people getting AIDS, slitting their wrists, and teenagers smoking crack.

In sum, the most interesting part of this book is knowledge gained regarding ‘Goth’ high-school subculture. Goth identity is as much about bizarre and small common fashion and music taste as it is about being a social outcast to everyone else.  Goths, like everyone else, have emotions, except it’s sexy when they’re sad. Goths seem to love that bizarre sexy Vampire thing that’s been going on for a few years now. Goths pride themselves on telling everyone else to fuck off.

If you’re up for a challenge, I strongly suggest reading the author’s notes prior to the start of each chapter. Here, in text phrases I rarely understood, she tells all the posers and preps to fuck off, and that anyone who didn’t like her previous chapter is clearly a prep or a poser, clearly indicating they can also fuck right off. I leave you with these two beauties:

“stfu prepz git a lif!111111 U SUCK!11 oh and form now on il be in vocation in england until lik august so I wont be able 2 update 4 a while, lolz. fagz 2 evry1 hu revoiwed expect da prepz hu flamed FOK U!1 MCR RULEZ 666!111

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX666XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX” (p. 64)

“well I hav noffing 2 say but evrt1 stup glamming ok!!111 if any gofik ppl r reading dis den u rok!!!11 omg I stil kant wait 4 da movie!!!1 tom fleton is so hot lol I hop harry wil bekum gofik koz mi friend told me he iz rlly emo in dis book!!!!

1111 omfg im leeving dubya pretty soon kant wait!!! Diz wil prolly be da last chaptah until I kum bak.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX666XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX” (p. 73)

Fuck you for making me read that Admiral Fartmore, you fucking prep.


CC

28/11/2014

#10: "The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches" by Robert Stanek

Fucking Br'yan
 (4/10)

by AdmiralFartmore

(book selected by PearTree)

Fantasy world-building has been a bit of a passion of mine ever since the first time my older brother called me a faggot. I was around 7 or 8 at the time, I think. Not sure. Either way, I ran to my room crying, and after feeling sorry for myself for long enough, I picked up a piece of paper and started to draw. I drew a pretty cool guy with a scar across his eye. I decided that he was a paladin and he was a complete badass because he wielded two swords. His name was probably Xenith, or something. I ended up writing a short story about Xenith where he was plucked from obscurity (by prophecy) and met a hot elven woman and a bland cast of supporting characters, and together they ventured out and saved the world from the gathering forces of evil.

Now, I’m not saying that The Kingdoms and the Elves of the Reaches (Keeper Martin’s Tales, Book 1), the self-published novel by Robert Stanek, was written under the exact same circumstances, but the story is juvenile enough for me to suspect so. This book is guilty of every tired old fantasy cliché possible – purple prose, wise elves, an adventurous princess that’s sick of palace life, some place called Alderan, a naïve young boy battling evil’s temptation, and apostrophes stuffed into the middle of names to make them sound cool. For example, there’s a character called Br’yan. Not Bryan. Fucking Br’yan.

“Sunrise loomed across the horizon, pale as jasmine and mostly obscured by dark, feral clouds” is how Stanek decided to start The Kingdoms. Dramatic weather is a very bland, unimaginative way to start a story, regardless of how many confusing adjectives you throw at it (picture a feral cloud, please.)  Not every book needs to start off with an “it was the best of times…,”  “all this happened, more or less…,” or “the past is a foreign country…” to end up good, but don’t dark-and-stormy-night me, Stanek. Though this isn’t the worst example of writing in The Kingdoms, it’s the first, and I’m willing to bet that this sentence alone landed Stanek’s manuscript in dozens of reject-piles at publishing houses. After these first few words, I was kind of excited, because I thought this might be where the book was going:

Sunrise loomed across the horizon, pale as jasmine and mostly obscured by dark, feral clouds. Glancing up from her cluttered desk, a publisher sat entranced by the confusing visage. Pausing for a moment to consider the state of all things, she sighed deeply and deftly tossed this book into the trash. And so this story never existed. The End.

But unfortunately, the book didn’t proceed as such. Instead, it expanded into a classic high fantasy tale about various characters moving about different parts of the world while evil stirs at the kingdom’s frontiers. At one point the semi-evil boy is kidnapped from his room and led into the woods by an old man who just says “don’t worry, I am a Watcher." But unlike the real-life scenario, this is actually a good thing. The distant characters eventually meet up – at least I presume they will, since the book ends out of nowhere, but I know there are three more in the series, so I’m guessing that they will eventually vanquish the evil together.  But along the way, we are treated to lovely prose such as this (I’d recommend taking a breath and reading the following sentence aloud):

“Carefully he dabbed a wet cloth to the corner of his eyes and only then did he become something other than the frightened boy who in his dreams huddled into the forlorn corner because of the sense of security it gave him to know his back was against the wall and that nothing could sneak up on him from behind.”

Poor kid. Sounds terrified, right? Don’t worry; he's abducted a few pages later.

Since this is a fantasy book, there’s also a large appendix at the back in case you want to read an extra sentence about any given flat character. There’s also a cool fantasy map at the start of the book.



As you can see, this map has all the hallmarks great world building: Great Forest, South Province, Dead Sea, Endless Ice, Borderlands, Great Kingdom and Lost Lands. I was actually particularly interested in the Lost Lands. Who lost them? Why were they lost? What is lost there? So I zoomed in to take a look, and I actually found a bunch of missing things:

 Classic Lost Lands.

Unlike other things we’ve covered so far in this club, this book doesn’t really involve the author preying on women or preying on religious minorities or preying on grieving families or preying on dolphins. It’s not evil; it’s just bad. The author is self-published and apparently does a lot to help out other aspiring authors, so I guess that’s kind of nice of him, but there’s absolutely nothing to this story. It’s just the same old tired bullshit all over again - like hearing about your white-trash brother’s third divorce – and there’s simply enough half-baked fantasy like this out there already. It's a dunce.



- Admiral Fartmore