Old Coat Book Reviews

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI

2010-04-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I had forgotten all about this. But, since it's still here, I think I'll get back into it. I need something to do with my off hours.

Expect Part 2 of my long-abandoned Survivalist bit tomorrow. Assuming anyone still gets updates from this thing.

The Survivalist: Total War Part 1; or, How to Write an Action Hero

2009-09-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

And now it starts. The book that will restore your faith in pulp novels. The series I have been wanting to review since I started this thing, but always decided against for reasons unknown. The...you know what, let's just get into it before I burst with anticipation.

Now, anyone care to remember how we opened Out of the Ashes? Well, for those of you who can't or don't want to, it was to something along these lines: "Ben Raines drinks himself into a stupor because American politics aren't to his liking". I think I know what Johnstone was attempting there; he was trying to make Raines into a kind of fallen hero. But really, in a series like Ashes, it doesn't work. I read stuff like this to have fun, and a depressed, drunken fascist is really not my idea of fun. But I've talked long enough about the many ways in which Out of the Ashes sucked; let's talk about the far superior novel I'm focusing on now.

Total War opens with John Rourke leading a group of twelve Pakistani soldiers against a group of opium smugglers. The smugglers, of course, fight back, leading to a very nice fight scene. THIS is how you open this kind of action novel; you establish your character as a badass from the get-go. Just from this one scene, we can already tell a few things about Rourke. For starters, he's a leader, as demonstrated by the fact that he's at the head of this strike force. Next, that he's brave; he's physically at the front, leading the strike force into the fight, charging a group of armed men. Third off, that he has some tactical sense, as the narration (which, as he is our viewpoint character, I assume is a sort of look into Rourke's mind) both cover for the smugglers and for Rourke's team, and he's had the sense to bring in surprise backup in the form of a machine gun-equipped truck. Finally, that he's a freaking action hero. For instance, after the smugglers reveal their own machine-gun truck, Rourke bravely charges it (from behind, admittedly, showing that he's not a brave idiot), managing to take out the gunner just before the man can gutshoot him.

So far, so good. The smugglers are defeated, only two of Rourke's men are killed, and all is well with the universe. In that one scene, we've covered all the necessary requirements for the opening of a good action novel. We've introduce the main character, and established his badass credentials. We've introduced his signature weapons (Aherns had a major love affair with certain weapons, I'm told, and takes the time to spell out exactly what make and model gun Rourke uses. It would be annoying, but somehow, it actually works). And, thankfully enough, we don't have a lot of the gorn Johnstone loved. Admittedly, there is some; for instance, at one point one of the smuggler's trucks explode and there's a hail of bloody limbs, but I'd say that that level of gorn is par for the course. I can handle a certain level from an action book, especially if you're going for the gritty, down-to-earth feel. I'm a big fan of Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series, which does tend to describe the deaths to some degree, but it doesn't over-describe it. But I'll get to those books later. Back to Total War!

It's now that we first get introduced to Rourke as a character, when he's chatting with a Pakistani, Captain Mohammad, after the fight. One of the first things I noticed was Ahern's handling of the race and culture issues. In Ashes, Johnstone repeatedly stated his character's racial views, almost as if he had to convince himself that Raines was not a racist. With Rourke, however, we just get that impression immediately. Both in his interactions with the Pakistani Muslim Mohammad and the Jewish Paul Rubenstein later on, Rourke acts in a casual manner, never making an issue of differences in race and creed that seems to be bothering everyone in Ashes so much. That immediately endeared me to him after the Ashes experience. We also see here that he's more than his badassery; he wants to smoke his favorite brand of cigars after the fight, probably because it steadies him. Stuff like that is what I love; it shows me that he's human. Again, Raines did not; he killed people, he acted out his philosophies on life, and he occasionally stopped to meet new and increasingly unimportant characters. That's it. We didn't have any real character-building moments for him. We get more for Rourke in this one appearence than we do for Raines in his entire book.

So Rourke is forced to return to the States. After giving a speech to his men, expressing his desire to see them all again some day and setting up a new team leader, he departs. Mohammad accompanies him, and they share some exposition. Amazingly enough, it's not boring. We learn that Rourke is a survivalist and makes his living teaching counter-terrorist tactics; that he used to work for the CIA; that he's worked in Latin America with anti-communist groups. We also get another peek at his badass creds; after his team in Latin America was wiped out, he survived for the better part of two months with just a gun or two and a bayonet, eventually making his way back to the US. Awesome. During the banter, we also learn that Rourke fears that the world's going to collapse any day now. This is what motives his interests in survivalism, and it also puts his several leagues above Ben Raines. Why? Because, when Raines was convinced his country was going to collapse, he became a drunk. When Rourke becomes convinced his world was going to collapse, he started training himself to survive it. Even, as we'll see later, at the cost of his wife's good graces.

So, on their way to return Rourke home, Mohammad and Rourke check a Pakistani outpost at the border of Afghanistan in the Khyber Pass, which was at this point a Soviet satellite state. The military lost contact with the post a while back, and are beginning to worry. As the duo and their chopper approach the outpost, they see perhaps the worst site either can imagine; there is a freakin' Soviet army marching through the Pass. The two flee report the news, and we switch viewpoints to the group of soldiers Rourke had just been working with. They're watching as the Soviets advance, and agonizing over what to do. If they fight, they'll all die, but if they run, they'll be failing in their duties to protect their nation. The man Rourke appointed leader, Ahmed, leads his men into a suicide mission to delay the Soviets and allow their people more time to prepare. Before this, we get a rather emotional scene of Ahmed taking his last smoke and saying goodbye to his wife's picture, which was actually very emotional for me. Of course, the soldiers all die in, again, a very emotional scene, but they do manage to cause some damage and some delay. Hats off to you, brave sirs.

...

Dear Lord, did I just salute minor characters? Well, yeah. Like I said in my introduction, Aherns is good at creating characters you want to care about. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wipe my eyes before I finish this...

Okay, all better. Moving on.

We switch viewpoints again to Ambassador George Stromburg, the US ambassador to the USSR. He's woken up at 3 am to learn about the invasion of Pakistan and the US's rather explosive planned response if the Premier doesn't agree to call it off. Stromburg goes to meet the Premier, who despite sitting in the villain shadows and being the man who's about to start WW3, we also find ourselves...if not liking, then not hating, either. The pair dance around each other, until they finally come out in the open with it. The Russians believe that invading Pakistan to make their position in Afghanistan more tenable, after explaining to Stromburg that, being American, he probably can't truly understand the Russian way of thinking. It's not that complicated, really; the Premier knows that the US is filtering aid to Afghan freedom fighters, and that it's making him lose ground. At the same time, the USSR cannot simply pull out of Afghanistan, because that would run the risk of letting Muslim fundies take over and, neighboring the USSR as they do, in particular several important research facilities, perhaps pose a threat to the Soviets. It would also be treated by rebellious factions within the USSR as a sign of Soviet weakness. The plan makes perfect sense to me. The idea behind it continues to evade me, but the given reasons make sense enough.

It's then that the Premeir reveals his trump card to Stromburg; the Soviets have developed advanced particle beam weaponry. They have used it to create cannons that provide a missile defense system that can shoot down any American bomb or missile that attempts to attack them. Ridiculous, I know, but we're reading a book, folks. We can ignore it. Stromburg attempts to convince the Premier that the US is superior, but the Premier calls his bluff. In the alternate universe that I say this story takes place in, the USSR is capable of surviving the war, and winning, with what it has. I suppose being immune to any missiles the US might throw at them gives them a small advantage in that field.

Much as I would like to continue this well into the night, even I, mighty man that I am, need sleep. So, goodbye and good night. For the record, I estimate that there shall be five or so more posts...and that they'll be far more enjoyable than either of the other books I've done so far. Of course, that isn't saying much...

You know what, my eyes are sagging. Good night, my non-existent readers!

Author Preview #3: Jerry Ahern; or, There Is a God

2009-08-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

After the sheer, raw fail that was Out of the Ashes, I almost gave up on this project. Then, as I said previously, I was revitalized by an okay movie and came back. Now, I have given up on permanently, and am ready to move on to something good, as has been requested of my by both my mental health adviser and many of my non-existent readers. At least, something I thought was good.

Jerry Ahern is another pulp writer, and that already sends up warning flags after the...experience...of Ashes. However, unlike Johnstone, Ahern actually understands his genre. Pulp books are meant to be like comic books; each issue should be kept short and sweet, and focus on satisfying the reader more than anything else, whether that be by making them think or just making them smile as things blow up. While Johnstone was too busy pushing his political philosophy in Ashes, in Ahern's own flagship series, The Survivalist, he spends the entirety of every book doing his job; entertaining the readers. And it is awesome.

Like Out of the Ashes, The Survivalist follows the adventures of a former action-man after WW3 breaks out. Both main characters, Ben Raines and John Rourke, are watching their lives fall apart around them just before the war breaks out. And both return to being action heroes following the war. However, the main character is Ahern's first great success. Why? John Rourke is actually a very likable man. He usually reacts in an understandable manner to the situations around him, and responds accordingly. In addition, his character stays relatively constant throughout the story. And, since he's usually our viewpoint character, these all combine to make him worth reading.

In fact, one of Ahern's biggest strengths is in his characters. In Out of the Ashes (expect many comparisons between the two series as this review goes on), the biggest comic relief character was Ike McGowan, a rather unfunny and foul-mouthed Reb who Ben meets halfway through the book and who proceeds to stay on the sidelines for most of the rest of the book, so as not to outshine Ben himself. In the Survivalist series, that role is handled by John's sidekick, Paul Rubenstein. Amazingly enough, Paul is actually a very funny character. Not only that, but he's an actual sidekick for John, actually proving himself to be very competent and useful in John's adventures, as opposed to just a tagalong who occasionally gets John into trouble.

Even more amazing is Ahern's handling of the Soviet characters, who appear both as villains and allies throughout the novels. In the end, the Soviets win WW3 due to some sci-fi particle beam they have developed that acts as a fairly good missile shield. They end up occupying America, and a fair enough amount of time is spent with them as viewpoints to show some of their characters. And, to be honest, I was blown away. Ahern treats everyone from the Soviet Premier to the head of the KGB in America to the female agent who travels with John and Paul for a while as actual characters, instead of the caricatures Johnstone's villains inevitably became. It was positively mind-blowing for me.

Needless to say, I could spend all day heaping praise onto this series, but I haven't got the time (school starts soon, the house must be cleaned, etc.. In the blog, I think I'll do two of the books in succession (Issue #01: Total War and Issue #02: Nightmare Begins), both because they're so good and because, like any good serial series, stories are often told in arcs. Now, this series does morph rapidly into a sci-fi series (to the point where, at some point, I believe John, his family, and Paul get cryogenically frozen and continue their adventures in the future), but that really doesn't bother me. It's that good.

Expect the first update soon. And enjoy. I know I will. ;)

Out of the Ashes Part 9; or, Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies

2009-08-31T10:14:00.001-07:00

You know what? I've finally broken. I am going to skip every last bit of this book and just finish this thing up. This is for two reasons; 1) It's the end of August, 2) I really want to move on to something better, and 3) The last third or so of this book is just concentrated stupid. I wrote a 20-page rant about just how stupid the Rebel's new society was, and then realized that I wasn't even finished. So, I shall just write a short post to tie this up and move on. And, for the record, their society really is that badly done. In any logical world, it would have collapsed within a month.

Anyway, the sequence of events goes something like this:

1) Rebels form Tri-States (really imaginative, guys)

2) New US expands to regain most of its territory within five years, somehow.

3) New US wants to reabsorb Tri-States.

4) Tri-States doesn't like the idea.

5) New US invades Tri-States.

6) There is much rape and murder.

7) Tri-States loses.

8) Rebels regroup to destroy New US.

9) Book ends.

If I might muster one final gripe, the whole "Invade the Tri-States" event demonstrates, for any of you who might still have had doubts, the fact that Johnstone has a love of gorn that has never been equaled. He describes one New US soldier blasting out the stomache of a pregnant woman, for instance, and for some reason, any capture female Rebel is raped. Why? Is discipline so bad in the New US army that the instant there's a woman present, they stop the fighting to force themselves on her?

That's about all I can say about Out of the Ashes, which has become a candidate for "Worst Book Ever Written" by this point. Well, granted, I could say more, but that would take all day, and I doubt any of my non-existant readers want to read things thing for that long.

And now, I shall go read the entirety of The Belgariad again. I need to purge myself...

Out of the Ashes Part 8; or The Last Short Post

2009-08-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

When we last left our Brave Republican, he had finally heard another part of the diabolical plan of evl librul Hilton Logan. What is this terrible scheme? You take the decimated population of the US, center them where he can protect them, rebuild the power of the United States, then slowly retake the country. Why is this treated as monstrous? I mean, yeah, you're kind of ordering people to abandon their land and property, but most of the nation is overrun with modern day bandits. We also have an actively rebellious force moving through the nation, looting government property and openly trying to destroy what's left of the Union. Gathering your resources and strengthening your position is actually the smartest thing you could do at this point, as far as I know. Of course, it's exactly what the Rebels do later, but then, they're Good Republicans, so they're actually doing the right thing.

So the guy acting as this section's plot exposition says that he's keeping his family right where it is. In the middle of lawless territory. When they probably have no guns whatsoever. Somebody slap this lunatic. Ben, of course, treats this as the right decision, because some of the citizens in New Africa are militant. What this has to do with living under Logan, I have no idea. The man has a mostly functional, if corrupt, army. This man could probably live well down in the New US. As a skilled farmer in a time when people will be needing food, he could probably live like a noble for years to come. Of course, we're meant to sympathize with the idiot who basically leaves his family out to dry, so he'll never take the obvious course of action. After a bit of filibuster on race relations and a little more exposition, Raines decides to visit Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the New US. This leads to one of the stupidest comments yet. Raines hides most of his weaponry, save two pistols and a rifle, since the first thing the New US will want to have is law and order, and any lawman wouldn't like the look of a man with a submachine gun. These men of the law also wouldn't like the look of a man with three times the heat they'd be carrying, either, I'd imagine.

On his way into Virginia, he's stopped three times in thirty minutes by the police. They, again, are treated like bad people because they're inspecting a suspicious vehicle containing one man with more firepower than any of them. When one of them asks for the car's registration, and Ben produces it (he filled it out at the dealership he stole it from, for some reason), it's treated like it's some kind of victory. The trooper in that example, by the way, doesn't believe a word of it, and acts as our next plot exposition. Again, Ben tells this federal agent exactly who he is and what he's done. This foul-mouthed trooper reveals to Ben that martial law has been declared, which is just terrible (why is this a bad thing? This kind of situation is why the idea was invented in the first place). Logan's sending troops into New Africa to bring it back in the Union (they're rebels against the New US government, what else are they going to do? This is also used as proof of Logan's racism). We also learn that the New US has begun to hire mercenaries to fill out their ranks. The leader of these mercs (are there readily-available mercenary armies in America? Wow...) is called Kenny Parr, whose primary sin is described as "he'll work for any flag". He's a mercenary. It's in the job description.

Logan is also rounding up guns from civilians, and we get another "gun control makes you evil" speech. It turns out that this policeman is a Rebel sympathizer, who says that they haven't done anything to warrant arrest. Let's just go over some things, shall we?

1) Ordered to destroy government property

2) Ordered to steal government property

3) Ordered to form a new nation on government property

4) Doing all three of the above

We've killed people for less.

So, Ben begins to spread a rumor through his new friend that he's dead. Why? Why on Earth is this is a good idea? The government is literally rebuilding itself from the ground up. They do not exactly have the manpower to put up a nation-wide net for Ben Raines, even with their Magical Disappearing Mercenary Armies. Despite having gone through a world-wide apocalypse, Ben Raines still doesn't seem to understand just how big such a thing it. The government. And the police. Are mostly gone. They're pulling all of their people and supplies back to a small portion of the East Coast because they can't control all of the US at present. Why convince them you're dead when you're leaving their entire sphere of influence two hours later?

He also convinces this guy, who was on the fence literally a minute ago, to join his cause. Again, all because he wrote a book years ago about creaing his own nation. Let me point out something here: just because you write about something does not make you able to personally do it. I used to write (bad) high fantasy. That does not make me able to grab a sword and start slaying dragons This is just as unlikely as a writer/soldier being able to magically pull a nation out of his hat. Everyone treats this as a foregone conclusion, that the Rebs will win. Why? Because they read the blurb on the back of the book. They know who the "heroes" here are already.

I'm going to do us a small kindness and skip a lot to end this section. Suffice it to say that Raines stops ignoring the Call and decides to become the Rebel commander. He meets one more character along the way that is semi-important, so let's pause the skippage here to complain about him. Somehow, Ben meets an aged doctor named Lamarr Chase, who becomes the token "liberal" of the Rebels. I put "liberal" in quotation marks because, in practice, Chase comes off this man's idea of a "good" liberal. Namely, that he mindlessly agrees with everything Raines says, but only after about five seconds of argument. Needless to say, he's the only Rebel I ever got around to caring about, if only slightly.

Oh, and Cecil Jeffries (anyone remember him?), his family, and Future Wife join the Rebels after the New US destroys New Africa. However, not much can be said about him. His family dies at the end, as does Future Wife, so they're pretty inconsequential, and Cecil himself is a rather bland character. The only ways to distinguish him from the rest of the Rebel leadership (who are all geniuses for some reason) are the constant references to the fact that he's black, and occasional "jokes" based off that fact.

Aside from that, though, there's absolutely no reason not to skip the several long scenes between here and Ben finally taking command of the Rebels. We'll get to that later, because despite the relatively short length of this one, I'm bored to tears at 11pm. For now, I'm finally going to sit down and watch the original The Day the Earth Stood Still for the second time. I've been meaning to do it (it's one of my favorite movies by this point), but it slipped by when I realized how much stuff I needed to do beforehand, including finishing up the latest post on my blog which nobody reads.

And tomorrow, fully recharged and having seen how you write a story properly, I shall return to tackle the worst bits of this story: the bits about President Raines. Have a good day, pleasant dreams...and go out and rent the damned movie. Seriously, 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still

is a sci-fi is a sci-fi classic, and one of the best movies ever made. Watch it.

Out of the Ashes Part 7; or, Johnstone is, Once Again, Outsmarted by a 17-Year-Old

2009-08-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

Today was something of a vacation for your friend Alan. I decided to spend a day enjoying some of the finer things in life. For instance, I watched every episode of Firefly. Again. And the movie. I enjoyed spaghetti with lots of garlic. I even set myself up a play-by-post role-playing game. This is not very characteristic for me, but I decided to indulge. Why? Because I knew that, tonight, I had to spend an hour of my life listening to 15 minutes of Out of the Ashes and mercilessly ripping it a new one. Or trying to, at least.

I won't even bother stalling. I just want to get over with this, so I can move on to another book. Besides, we get new riffing material soon.

When we last left Ben, he had ignored the Call again. This is particularly stupid for several reasons. Firstly, because Raines has already shown that he believes that only those with his particular ideology deserve to rule. Secondly, because he's just discovered that Hilton Logan is planning to make himself Overlord of the Americas. Thirdly because he's already antagonized said future Overlord. And fourthly because he's the unofficial leader of the only force capable of challenging Logan's rule. Were I Raines, I would seek shelter with said force, for a very easy-to-see reason. Were I in future-President Logan's shoes, I would have every assassin I had sent to kill Raines. Instead, we have the idiot general from the last update. Why would a general personally try to kill him? Is there any reason for this man to be there, beyond his ability to expound upon the plot? Get used to stupid, folks; we don't see a competent villain for a dozen or two books.

After blowing off the Rebs, Ben heads south. Why? So he can find more material for his damned book. Why is he still going with that idea? Well, two reasons.

1) I now think that Johnstone was being paid by the word, and he really wanted that new Honda.

2) So that we can meet the future main characters.

So, Ben Goes South. He forgets the Rebels, encounters some zombies and hostiles, visits the sites of a pair of lynchings (one of a black man, one of a white man), and generally travels throughout the state. And then, the most awful thing imaginable happens. Ben tunes into a working radio station run by a man named Ike McGowan.

The station's call sign is KUNT. This treated as one of the funniest jokes in the novel.

Raines tracks down McGowan's tower, where he finds that McGowan is a former Navy SEAL who somehow survived World War 3 and managed to cobble together a working radio tower. It turns out McGowan has companions. All of them beautiful young women whose main characteristic is that they wear nothing but bikinis. And they all jiggle. That's about it.

REALITY CHECK!

Even if he is a former SEAL, what are the odds of Ike McGowan, who's weight problem is brought up many times throughout the book, surviving not only WW3, but the chaos immediately following it. And maintaining his weight, might I add. In addition, why are a bunch of nubile young women hanging around with him? It's one fat man who's broadcasting his location to the world. In any semi-realistic world, this place would have been swarmed and overtaken years ago. The women would have been carted away, McGowan would have been killed, and it wouldn't matter how good a warrior he is or how well these ladies aim. If you have the food and supplies to do all this, you are a valid target. In addition, even if McGowan somehow radiates a sheer aura of awesome that drives away any potential attackers, why would they stay with him? He's a foul-mouthed idiot who thinks he's funny. This is not the most compelling man on Earth. In fact, in the real world, I'd imagine that they'd all be dead or worse a hundred times over.

But this is Johnstone's world. In this world, a Good Republican Military Man cannot be killed unless the plot dictates it, and only then when it makes no sense for them to.

So, Ben introduced himself to the heavily armed Ike and his harem. This is a complete derailment of his character; they're pointing guns at them, yet he lets them live! And he gives them his real name! You'd think that, after the first attempted assassination, he'd be a little more wary of giving out his name, but hey, I'm trying to apply logic to Out of the Ashes. Ike, it turns out, is a Rebel. Why he's not with the main bunch who are supposedly heading Northwest is never really explained. He also introduced his harem to Raines. They're introduced, word for word, as follows.

"This one here's Tater, and that one's Junebug, and that one there's Space-Baby, and that one is Angelface. The blond is Honeypooh. That dark one all sprawled out on the floor, too goddamned lazy to get up is Bellringer. "

Does anyone else feel like they've just been looking over slabs of meat? Why the stupid names? Why are they even here? Bellringer serves a purpose; she's Ike's love interest. But what possible purpose do the rest of them serve, aside from providing fanservice? They never do anything important! YOU DO NOT INTRODUCE CHARACTERS WHOSE ONLY PURPOSE IS TO BE THERE!

*Groan*

Anyway, after that unpleasantness is over, Ike reveals that he has a working generator that gives them light. Ike is supposed to be smart; he becomes a general by the next book. Why, then, would he use electronic lights? That would bring looters like moths to a light, no matter what you broadcast on the airwaves. And why would you broadcast it anyway? Were I in this situation, I'd ignore any broadcasts offhand. What're the odds that it's bandits trying to lure you into a trap?

Leaving aside the more stupid bits, this section of the novel is completely pointless. Sure, it introduces Ike, a major character, but what is the point of it? He could have been introduced in a much better situation before or after this, if you really had to include the half-naked women. And again, why the women? Why are they almost naked?

I'm skipping ahead to the end of this little visit, because the rest of it is, again, completely pointless. Oh, I forgot; this is actually where Johnstone states his racial views while providing the tiniest bit of Ike's backstory. According to Ike-Johnstone, anyone who is a criminal or any less moral than he is is automatically given a racial slur. He's rather fond of using "nigger" to describe black villains. Aside from this though, the only thing that happens for the rest of this part of the novel is that Ben marries Bellringer, real name Megan, and Ike. Oh, and it's revealed that most of Ben's future policy comes from his books. That's right; the fictional counterpart of Johnstone is trying to live the life he wrote for his own fictional counterpart. Does this strike anyone else as creepy, stupid, and/or insane? One wonders what would have happened if WW3 had broken out during Johnstone's lifetime...

After marrying two flat characters and masturbating over the idea of Johnstone's idea of perfect government, Ike and his harem leave the tower and head of Mississippi and the new nation of New Africa. Raines starts writing his book, then starts masturbating again. He apparently does this all winter. So it's been at least a year since WW3. Ben's apparently lived off of what he salvaged back from his home for the winter he spent with Jerre, since they were apparently holed up for the entire season, and they continued to keep him until now. The narrator talks a lot about the looting the country's gone through, always in a disgusted tone, but we never actually hear Raines having to scavenge for some food. I don't know why; I can already think of a very interesting scene or two based on it. You could further develop his character, other characters also rummaging for food, force him to actually interact with the faceless masses. But no; apparently, as Ubermensch, Ben is above such thing.

Ben travels to Knoxville, where he discovers, gasp, And they're actual people working to rebuild civilization! And they're not (yet) Rebels! This provides, again, what could have been an interesting scene. It turns out that Logan is now President and resettling people into several centralized areas of three or four states, focused on getting agriculture, industry, business, etc. going again, then expanding into the West again when the nation is back on its feet. And people are going along with it. And, of course, this is treated as the stupidest thing since the Germans ignored the concentration camps.

I'll end this here, because it's getting a bit long, but I want to end with one rather pertinent thought:

Why is this a bad thing? Unless I'm missing something big, it's actually the best strategy presented in the whole series. Concentrate your power and ensure the safety of the people by bringing them into a concentrated, easier-to-defend area. Build your power, get your economy and industry back up to snuff. Then, when you're ready, expand West, using your military to crush any would-be warlords that have arisen in your absence, after giving them an opportunity to rejoin your new USA quietly. Certainly better than Raines' own plan later, which involves stretching his forces so thin that his most constant problem is lack of personnel. In fact, if we hadn't already been informed that Hilton Logan is evil, then we could continue painting him as a hero just doing what he thinks is right. And, for all we know, the general was lying. Hell, here's a scenario for you:

Rogue, pro-dictatorship elements in the Army sent a group of criminals to meet Raines and told them what to say. The criminals are told that, if they say their lines and then kill Raines, they'll be free. It's odd, but hey, it's a shot. If they killed Raines, then the Rebels, a threat to this rogue group's plans for their own personal dictatorship, are crippled. If they fail, then they ensure that the Rebels and the New US will do their damndest to kill each other. It's the perfect plan, especially when dealing with Ben Raines, who already has an insane grudge against the New US's leader, Hilton Logan, and has proven to be insanely gullible when it suits his needs.

I would love to rewrite this one day.

Well, farewell, and may all your books be better than this one. Not that it's that hard...Eragon was better than this. Hell, ANTHEM was better than this...

I'm Back; or Good Novels, Average Movies and Bad Books

2009-08-12T16:11:00.000-07:00

After the last update, I kind of lost my will to continue this project. Why? Because I was just about worn out. This is really one of the most horrible books I have ever read. So, I took myself off the hook, blog-wise, for a little over a month. I wasn't even going to come back; Lord knows I've ended up abandoning blogs before. Then, I saw a certain film that somehow convinced me to return. It's called Parasite Eve.

As the title of this update should tell you, it is not the world's best film. In fact, if I had to classify it, I'd say it's "so okay it's average". The basic idea of the story is that mitochondria are sentient, powerful, and about to revolt and try to destroy humanity. It's best known here in the States for the Playstation 1 game that was based on it. Also called Parasite Eve, this game was what defined the word "horror" for me. It was the single scariest thing I'd ever seen, and remains at #2 on that list to this day. Even then I knew it was a stupid concept, but it was so ridiculously well-done that I could ignore that. Even the movie, which certainly isn't anything to write home about, managed to get me into the story. Granted, it's J-Horror, so I couldn't understand half of it, but it still manages to be an okay flick.

That one element, execution, is what can save a stupid story from being a bad experience. And, let's face it, Johnstone's scenario is really stupid at the end of the day. The difference between Out of the Ashes and Parasite Eve...or, heck, Battle Royale (which I love, but is in no way a work of art) is that Johnstone doesn't have the faintest idea of how to pull this one off. For example, look at how he treats the villains of the novel. Let's compare it to Battle Royale this time (the villains of Parasite Eve are a collection of sentient microscopic organisms; there's not much chance for character development). The longest-lasting and most dangerous villains in Battle Royale are Mitsuko Soma and Kazuo Kiriyama. The author devotes several sections of the novel to developing these two and setting them up as legitimate threats. Throughout the novel, it's hinted at that these two are the most dangerous enemies our heroes will have, and we even get to use them as viewpoint characters several times. You can understand why they do what they do, and what led them to it. Indeed, the amazing level of character development is one of the reasons why I love that novel so much.

Now, look at the villain of Out of the Ashes, Hilton Logan. We're first introduced to his character when one of his opponents is complaining about him. Okay, I can accept that. We don't go through, say, the Harry Potter books following Lord Voldemort. No, Rowling hints and implies his great evil and power, and by the time we meet him, we can be genuinely creeped out by him, and genuinely cheer for the people fighting him. However, until we meet Logan later in the book, all we ever hear about him is that he is A) An evl librul, and B) That he somehow banned private ownership of guns in the USA. Not exactly Caligula, is he? When we meet him again, he seems even less evil. In fact, he seems downright heroic. In the middle of a crisis, when his nation had descended into anarchy and chaos, he stepped up, took command, and began a fight to restore some kind of order to the world. That takes some major guts; you're standing up to several dozen literal warlords, and you're winning. In any other series, Logan would be the hero here. Instead, the "real hero" of the piece spends his entire meeting with Logan trying to provoke the man. And we're expected to root for him. Finally, when Ben meets the military men in the last update, we discover that, for some reason, Logan is planning to enslave every non-Caucasian American in North and South America, at least. Where did that come out from? Where was that foreshadowed, or indicated in the slightest way? And why, suddenly, is the military leadership supporting this?

Undeveloped and out-of-nowhere villains aren't even the chiefest of Johnstone's sins. His "heroic" Author Avatar is almost a sociopath, your political party almost always determines your moral status, there's no continuity between chapters, the series is the poster child for Disposable-Woman syndrome, and the list goes on and on!

And those are not even necessarily all bad things! Take, for example, the "Raines almost a sociopath" point. That's not necessarily a damning character trait. Look at Roland from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. He begins the story as a cold, heartless character, who is willing to let a child he cares about die if it'll help him reach his goals. Over the course of the novels, as he picks up friends and continues his travels, he learns to open his heart again and care about people. It's a truly touching bit of character development. This is highlighted in the final book of the series, when Roland offers to let Mordred, his evil and insane child, live, in exchange for sparing Roland's friend and companion Oy. Mordred, of course, refuses and kills Oy in a terrible way. Following Roland's victory, he buries and mourns Oy, and I admit that, when reading this, many manly tears were shed.

Raines, of course, never gets this kind of development. In fact, any development he gets in a given book disappears at the start of the next book. All that changes is that he gets older, and that the amount of territory his side holds fluctuates.

I think I'll end it there, before I end up ranting into the late of night. I'll probably have the next update up tomorrow, unless I suddenly lose my drive. Until then, adios, and may all your reading be good.

Out of the Ashes Part 6, or Just too Much

2009-07-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

So, when we last left Ben, he had threatened to kill a man for being anti-white with a semi-decent reason, given how these things go, kissed a woman he'd barely known for half a day, then drove off into the sunset to continue his book. Now that we're all caught up, let the latest section's idiocy begin.

Ben travels as far to the East as he dares, and pretty much stops when he starts finding bodies suffering from radiation poisoning. Forgive me for beating a dead horse (which happens a lot in these books if you haven't noticed), but why radiation poisoning? The nukes were essentially radiation-free! Is Johnstone forgetting his own canon again? If so, why? I mean, this isn't exactly the world's longest book. Really, it's a little shorter than average. Did he not bother to keep notes? And, again a dead horse, did he even have an editor on this thing?

Anyway, after commenting on how hard these people had died, Raines turns southwest, eventually coming to Virginia. He keeps going until, just a few miles north of Charlottesville, he sees a young boy. Of course, when the boy sees Raines coming, he dives for a ditch, apparently injuring himself in the process. Raines gets out of the car and moves to help the boy, who draws a pistol and points it at Raines. Now, normally, this is a killing offence, but there are two mitigating factors here. 1) The pistol's safety is on, which I really don't think is nearly as important as 2) The boy is, in fact, a pretty young woman.

...

Ho...

...

Wha...

...

Okay, someone explain something to me: how does one mistake a noticeably pretty woman for a boy? I mean, is this woman really short and flat as a board, or was Raines thinking he was looking at a tall, kinda fat kid? In addition, does this mean that Ben Raines finds young men physically attractive? I mean, how does one mistake a pretty young woman for a boy. I've never had that problem, personally. Anyone of you ever mistake a 9-year-old for a 19-year-old knockout? Because, you know, within a couple years of 9, we men stop looking like women. Quite noticeably, in fact.

So, this girl's name is Jerre. Never met a girl named Jerre, but let's go with it. Of course, despite having been nearly raped (I was wrong, someone in this world actually DID escape that fate!), she's immediately drawn to the Republican manliness of Ben Raines and the two fall in love. Aww...wait a minute, what happened to Future Wife? You kissed the lady after spending less than a day with her, and here you are already chasing skirts! So, let's compile some of my problems with Ben Raines' character, now that we have several problems to go through.

1) He supports military dictatorship (and will later become a popular military dictator)

2) He's quite willing to murder someone for having the gall to defend themselves against him

3) He's willing to leave you to die if you don't subscribe to his every belief.

4) He's a womanizer. After the end of the world. When building stable relationships with people should really be one of your main priorities. Now, granted, an argument could be made that he's at least making relationships with certain people, but...

Let's just move on. Mercifully, for once, I can skip large parts of this section because it can be summed up in a single paragraph:

Ben and Jerre spend the winter in a conveniently located cabin having lots of nookie, after which Jerre asks Ben to teach her his survival skills. So, he does. Afterwards, they separate, partially because Ben is almost three times Jerre's age and partially because Jerre wants to get out there and help the world while Ben, as we have seen, doesn't. How does she plan on helping the world? Well, she's going to meet up with a bunch of collage students at a certain campus, then spread out and do what they can.

THAT would make an interesting story, to be sure. We've already established that the US is now populated mostly by functional zombie-sheeple waiting for a leader to arise. We've also established that there are many bloodthirsty bandits out there who want to take advantage of all the chaos to do what they do. There's an army of roughly 5,000 Rebels out there just waiting for their leader's orders to wreak their own brand of havoc. These students have so much to contend with, and still they're going out to do their best. In any other story, they'd probably be heroes.

However, they're collage students. Which, of course, means they're libruls. Which either makes them evil or stupid in this tale, sadly. As we discover later in the book, these people are basically doomed. Despite the situation they find themselves in, only a couple of them even carry guns. I'm guessing that even fewer of them know diddly-squat about rebuilding communities. They're just going out there to be naive, just like those stupid, silly people who protested Vietnam and wore their hair in anything but a crew cut.

Not that he says this, mind. He plays at wishing them well, but anyone who has an inkling as to how this writer's mind works can guess how he really feels.

Needless to say, most of them are slaughtered and they don't accomplish a thing. Shame on them for going out in the world to do some good instead of writing a book. Jerre survives and shows up later, but that's a different story.

Anyway, Jerre leaves, and Ben is depressed until he decides that yes, he's an old fart and she needs to be with "her own kind". Incidentally, this does not stop him moping over her for the rest of the series, even when he has another of his hordes of women.

So, what's Raines' first stop after Jerre leaves him? Let's give you the multiple choices again:

A) Find the fraking Rebels and stop ignoring the Call.

B) Find Hilton Logan and what's probably the US government by now and join up with them; there's still much work to be done.

C) Look into the local airforce base where the AEWSOEM MILETARY will have established order and civilization far better than any of the plebs.

D) Go back to doomstead (now located in New Africa, incidentally) and shoot anything trying to force you out?

The correct answer is C. I won't insult any of you that got it wrong, because quite frankly, I haven't the energy. So, what brave new civilization does our hero discover inside the base? Well...he kind of doesn't. It's mostly abandoned, except for a four of card players inside a service club. One of them, a general, brings him up to speed on what's been going on in the world while he was busy rolling in the hay with the girl who looks like a boy: there's about 20 or 30 million people left in the US, the Rebs are still looking for Raines, and that in another few months, Logan shall be made President. Again, we get some bashing on the man, which I still see as completely unfair and indicative of Raines' own character deficits. Raines practically begs the general to take over the country as military despot, rather than have a liberal in office.

I wish he had lived to see the last election. Obama getting into office would have killed him.

The general denies this, and begins expositing on Logan's plan to pull the US out of this mess. So, what is it? A brief totalitarian rule necessary to get the country back on its feet? An economy-focused agenda designed to get up back on our feet and ready to help the rest of the world? Nope; we're just gonna invade the Latin nations and use them as slave labor.

Here's where things start getting trippy. It turns out that Logan was behind WW3, and this whole collapse, and is, in fact, a "pseudo-liberal" who is actually a closet racist who wants nothing more than to become Emperor of the Americas or something along those lines. Umm...was this ever foreshadowed? Did we ever get any indication that Logan was a petty tyrant and hate-filled racist? Nope; we just need to accept that he is, with no investigation whatsoever. A while back, I made a point that you had to root for Raines and the Rebels because the villains are all far worse than he could ever be. It's about here where it becomes the absolute rule.

So, it turns out that this was all Logan's plan after all. He was going to do this even if the Rebs ended up failing, because somehow this very, very liberal man got the entire military behind him (again without anyone noticing) and got them to support him in his bid to become a King.

Here we also have the conversation turn sour. The general Raines is talking to was in on this stupid plot, is also a racist, and after revealing everything to Raines, he foolishly tries to kill him. Ben, despite being outnumbered and caught in a trap, kills them all. After doing so, he finally contact the Rebels, who eagerly accept him as their leader. Raines, however, is still unenthusiastic and tries to pass the buck.

...

Okay, I just have to revisit some of the stupider moments of this part of the tale, just to make sure I've got it all. Hilton Logan, despite coming off as a fairly nice man whose only crime was opposing Ben Raines, was all along an evil, racist tyrant who accidentally sparked off WW3. The instant he's in charge, he plans to practically enslave anyone without the good judgement to be born white, and restore the old concept of the Master Race.

In addition, most, if not all, of the United States military is quite willing to go through with this. I assume that anyone who wasn't is a Rebel. To a man, they'll support him.

...

You know what? I'm going to stop here. I've done one full section, and a part of another, and I'd fully intended to do both in full, but my God, the sheer stupid is starting to get to me. So, there you go.

Out of the Ashes Part 5, or Comparisons, Stereotypes, and a Profound Lack of Editors

2009-06-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Referencing Part 4 for a moment, I’d like to take another look at the Raines-Logan meeting for a moment. It consists, as I said, entirely of Raines needling Logan, actively trying to provoke the man trying to return order to the country. Because he’s a liberal. And banned guns. Both of which have him roasting in the pits of Hell in Johnstone’s way of thinking.

When I write these, I tend to listen to the soundtrack to Les Miserables, and wouldn't you know that I was listening to "The Confrontation" while I was writing that section.

For those of you unfamiliar with the musical, "The Confrontation" is, of course, the first real confrontation between Jean Valjean (the protagonist) and Javert (the semi-antagonist) of the show following the musical's prologue. Valjean once stole a loaf of bread to save his sister's starving child. Javert, an ardent devotee of the law, believes that this makes him an evil criminal for life, and through a combination of Javert's persistence and Valjean's bad luck, the two meet up several times in the story. "The Confrontation" is definitely my favorite of these meetings, because it examines both characters in surprising detail, provides more backstory for Javert, and is actually a very good number, especially the 10th Anniversary version

You can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WdoAnlQ30U

This is, in my mind, the most perfect confrontation scene ever written. Both the protagonist and the antagonist are clearly defined, both set out their motivations and, best of all, you can see both sides of the argument. Valjean is a good man trying to do good deeds...as well as a wanted criminal who is often quite willing to break the law to do above-mentioned deeds. In addition, if you watch the entire play, you find that Valjean jumped his parole, and tried several times to escape from his jail sentence. Javert, by contrast, is sentencing a young girl to suffer. But, at the same time, he's doing his duty, following his personal convictions, and honestly believes he's making the world a better place. Maybe it's just my rather unique vantage point, but I actually have a liking and respect for both characters.

Needless to say, Johnstone’s meeting isn’t handled half as well. Raines comes off as some kind of arrogant sociopath, while Logan comes off as an overworked man in a bad position who’s being insulted because of something he did before civilization essentially collapsed. Since then, he has been gradually using his influence and the manpower under him to reclaim part of the country, and restore peace and order. Despite this, it’s clear that we’re supposed to cheer for Raines when he finally forces Logan to break. There is no ambiguity as to who is right or wrong; Raines is always right, in everything he does. In addition, there’s no drama to the piece, and it only serves to introduce Logan; compared to the song, where you can almost feel the buildup to the (admittedly brief) fight about 2/3 of the way in, it’s almost pathetic.

Yes, I know I'm comparing one of the best musicals ever written with a piece of trashy pulp, but I think it's obvious that this is supposed to be Johnstone's magnum opus, so I hold it to very high standards. When and if I ever review Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I plan on comparing them to the creme de la creme as well.

But let's get back to the plot. It's been three days since I actually posted one of these things, and I want to get this done sooner rather than later.

When we last left Ben Raines, he’d abandoned a pocket of humanity (after an apocalypse, mind) because they had the GALL to have a former Democrat as their leader, and found out that he’s been appointed the leader of the Rebels. So, given that we’ve spent the better part of a week following his character, what do we expect him to do? I’ll even give you a few choices.

A) Realize he’s a moron, go back to Logan’s stronghold, and help him rebuild the US, hoping to curb his evl librul tendencies?

B) Take control of the Rebels, form his own country, and offer an alternative to Logan’s evl librul nation?

C) Ignore both factions, return to his home (which is probably a doom fortress), and wait to see what happens?

D) Continue his rather stupid idea that he’s the only writer left in America and travel through the increasingly dangerous territory to write down survivor stories. Which, if the country survives, will probably come out anyway.

If you chose anything but option D, you clearly haven’t been reading these reviews at all. Go back and read them, you lazy fellow. Or, better yet, stop reading them and go find something decent.

Anyway, let’s get back to our increasingly villainous protagonist, ja? So, after murdering two men and abandoning a group of men trying to reform the country to their fate, where’s Raines headed next? Well, he heads north, towards Cairo. He spends a little time in some little no-name town and encounters a couple of zombies (see previous posts for my ranting on said zombies) shuffling around. So how does Raines react to these poor people? He says “to Hell with it” and leaves them to starve. He continues north, finally reaching Cairo, where he’s attacked by bandits. After establishing that there’re no women with him, they decide to capture him anyway, assuming he’s “a kid and pretty enough.”

…

This is something of a central theme with Ashes villains. Aside from the ones who later join the forces of light (with one notable exception), almost every Ashes villain is a racist, bisexual child rapist, at best. And gleeful about it, may I add. Although, a problem presents itself in this particular case; why do they not notice that the guy behind the wheel of this large truck in his mid-40’s? I mean, they’re obviously watching him; is the glass tinted or something? Off course, at the end of this little section, Raines kills them. It’s about now that you start having to root for Raines. Why? Because, as I said above, almost every single Ashes villain is far worse than he is.

So, Raines travels the nation and witness how mostly the only ones who aren’t zombies are “scum and slime”. Finally, he heads to Chicago, where he comes across an honest-to-God race war. I recently read a Conservative Republican manifesto; apparently, one of their “chief beliefs” is that racism is dead. And that women are all most happy in the home, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. Point being, despite Johnstone defining himself and his heroes Conservative Republicans more often than anything else, Raines himself barely fits the modern definition. Which I find positively hilarious for some reason.

Okay, so apparently a race war is building in Chicago between the blacks and the whites, and there’s 15-20k people left alive in the city…huh? You mean to tell me that Chicago wasn’t considered important enough to warrant a nuke, or a germ warhead at least? And why, for the love of all things good and well-written, does nearly the entire remaining population of Chicago suddenly want to kill each other? In a situation like this, why oh why does Chicago become the racism capital of the US? Apparently, it’s every man, woman, and child in the city, divided along race lines, ready to kill each other immediately. No one even trying to sue for peace.

For once, Ben does the rational thing and leaves the city be. He stops at a motel just before dark to bed down for the night, and there meets a black party. It turns out, though, that these are good black people. How can we tell? Because their leader, Cecil Jeffries, actually speaks proper English! Yep; nearly every non-Rebel African American in the series speaks Ebonics, and only Ebonics, and THAT is usually how you can tell the good guys from the bad guys. It gets irritating, trust me.

So, despite knowing each other for all of a minute, Jeffries offers Raines some supper, which Raines accepts. It’s also here that Raines and Jeffries come together to reminisce about Vietnam. Raines reveals that he’s a Hellhound, who as we may recall are supposed to be so secret that only about five percent of the US government are even vaguely aware of its existence. Despite this, Jeffries seems to know all about it, and the two men hit it off famously.

When we finally get to the dinner scene, we’re introduced to a few minor characters that will appear later in the book. Cecil’s wife, who only exists to give him something to angst about when she dies later, Ben’s Future Wife (a bit part who I’m not even going to name) who he later admits to not really loving, and Kasim. Who is Kasim? Well, he’s a stereotyped radical Black Muslim/Black Nationalist. He played a bit more of an important part in the complete book, but really, he’s just here to fill up space and give Ben someone to beat hate in the absence of anyone else more worthy of it.

So, after some plot exposition about radiation levels in the nuked cities…wait a second here. Weren’t these clean nukes? Didn’t Johnstone himself explain that they gave off such small amount of radiation as to not matter? Was this man so bad at his job that a minor 17-year-old curmudgeon like me with the writing skills of a rabid badger is better able to keep track of his continuity than he was? And this wasn’t even that far back in the story; each section lasts about fifteen minutes, so at maximum, he mentioned this an hour ago. Where was his editor? Did he even have one?

…ah, who am I complaining about? I haven’t got one either; I’m sure I’ve got plenty problems of my own. But my God, man, you could at least TRY.

Anyway, after we get that startling bit of plot discontinuity/exposition, Kasim begins being…well, his stereotype. He asks why Ben didn’t stay in Chicago and help the whites kill the blacks. This results in a rather strained scene where Kasim plays the above-mentioned stereotype to the hilt. He doesn’t trust Ben, which, if Johnstone has decided to explore the young man’s backstory even the tiniest bit, might have made an interesting conflict.

Were I writing it, I would have forced the pair together, shown what happened to bring Kasim to his present state of mind (beyond a pair of explanations about his sister being raped), and shown him gradually working himself past it as he’s forced to work with Ben to survive in this dangerous new world. Sadly, I’m not writing it. Maybe I could create the first ever piece of Ashes fanfiction and rewrite the whole epic to make the most basic amount of sense, but...maybe later.

Back to the story, Kasim calls Future Wife “zebra” (did people still talk like that in ’88?), resulting in Kasim getting slapped by Future Wife, then threatened with a magnum to the face by Cecil. Here, we actually get the barest bit of backstory of Kasim; apparently, his sister was raped by white men, which is what resulted in his hatred of the race. And I’m okay with that; it’s an interesting idea, and if played right, could make for some truly awesome drama. Instead of going down that road, however, Johnstone simply has Kasim scream about how Ben is white, with no attempt to humanize him. Again, we seem him being there just to be there.

Ben offers to leave, and Cecil agrees that it’s probably for the best. Here, we also get a bit of plot exposition; there’s an all-black nation in the former US, named, of course, New Africa. In the course of half a week, this new nation now encompasses the entirety of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, apparently sticking precisely to the old state boarders. Why? Because.

Here, Raines shows another part of his true nature. He tells Kasim that he’ll leave tomorrow, and that if he ever sees Kasim again, he’ll kill the young man. Why? Because, despite not being an evl librul, he represents racism. While I agree that racism is an evil that could stand to be purged from the Earth, isn’t that taking it a bit too far? Half a week ago, you were apparently a mostly lawful citizen. Now, you’re randomly threatening to kill people for expressing their beliefs in a mostly non-physical manner.

I wonder, what’s it like in the Raines household when he finishes the orange juice?

Raines: I tell you, I did not finish the orange juice!

Stereotype Family Member: Yes you did, dear/dad/uncle/whatever! I just saw you swigging the last of it!

*Raines blows family member away*

Raines: So, who really finished the orange juice?

After this, we get a meeting (again rather strained, though I think it's supposed to sound natural) between Ben and Future Wife, where they discuss the differences between the races. It really serves no purpose, so I’ll leave it alone. Here, we reiterate Ben’s plan to travel and write a book about WW3. They kiss. Which I suppose is plausible. I mean, they DID only meet hours ago, but they’re at what could well be the end of the world as they know it forever. People are trying to rebuild the country, but hey, they’re just stupid liberals, what can they honestly do?

The next day, Ben departs. As is usual for Ashes villains, Kasim rants at him for their entire meeting. Ben handles it coolly and drives away. Thankfully, we will never see Kasim again.

We get some more scenes of Ben interacting with the zombies. Here’s one of their responses to Raines pointing out that there’s probably not a stable government anywhere in the world: “You’re wrong, mister. If the government wasn’t going to help us, they wouldn’t have made everybody so dependent on them. You’re wrong!” Stupid lines aside, is this how much respect this man has for the average American? I thought we Americans were supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread! According to my own Conservative Republican family member, it’s another core belief of the entire freakin’ ideology!

Maybe I should just ignore the "good Republican" line of reasoning and just assume Johnstone's creating his own ideology.

Ah, why do I bother? As we approach the end of this section, we watch as Ben discovers a freaking billboard from the Rebels to him, asking him to call them and publicly telling him which radio frequency to use. Isn’t that just mildly stupid? Not only could such things be easily vandalized or torn down or painted over or what have you, but it also gives whoever feels the need to fight you a way to pinpoint your location. I don’t know if the technology to do that actually exists, but Johnstone makes mention of it in later books, so let’s assume it does.

As the section ends, Ben refuses the call to lead the Rebels and moves on. Why? In the very first section, he said the only reason he wouldn’t join up with the Rebels in the first place is because he’d become content with his way of life. His way of life is now shattered, and he’s got the military power, apparently, to recreate the US in his image, as he no doubt wishes to do. So why doesn’t he do it?

He must have a really good book in the works.

Out of the Ashes Part 4, or The Happy-Go-Lucky Adventures of Ben Raines

2009-06-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

We left Ben last time as he was entering the Sheriff’s office, looking for…something. I’m guessing it was guns, because that’s what he goes for first. A small question though: Raines has been out for about half a week or so since WW3. Even assuming his little town took a hit from the plague, are you telling me that nobody would ever raid this community? According to Johnstone’s worldview, we might remember, those who aren’t either A) Setting up evl librul dictatorships, B) Future Rebels, or C) So mentally dependent on government that they can’t do anything by themselves (i.e. most of the rest of the population) are rioting and looting. Were I the looters (who, unfortunately, did not have the opportunity to read the script before getting into this garbage), I would not stick to the bigger cities. The bigger cities are guaranteed to have more people than you do remaining, and are much more likely to put up a proper resistance. I, personally, would invade the smaller towns, which apparently include Raines’ home, and loot everything that I could, most particularly guns.

Maybe they were turned off by the plague? Who knows. Anyway, we get about a minute of description on Ben’s Tommy gun, which is probably fairly important given that he’s an action hero. Then, he goes to a sporting goods store to stock up on survival gear. Here, we find that the town HAS been looted. So…why didn’t they steal the guns? Including the (rather impressive looking and mint condition) Thompson, which would be one of my first targets? Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. And, of course, the looters took almost nothing of value from the above-mentioned sporting goods store, as Ben makes out like a king off of what he loots. Because, you know, a civilian would NEVER be smart enough to grab portable stoves, lanterns, sleeping bags, axes, decent knives, tents, tarps, ropes, and miscellaneous other items that’d aid one in survival. Because we’re all mentally retarded and require a good Republican militant like Ben Raines to hold our hands if we want to survive anything worse than a strong breeze.

Then he drives to a…local supermarket? Wha? It’s apparently already been looted, but with about the same thoroughness as the sporting goods store…my God, I’ve got it! The Ashes universe is populated by morons! Oh wait…we’ve already established that. Raines gets one rather stupid thought, if I do say so myself: “if everyone’s dead, who did the looting?” Maybe the panicky/sickening/dying inhabitants before they kicked the bucket? Ah well; let’s get back to the plot now, yes? At least we can be thankful that he doesn’t force himself to explain why the looters didn’t steal all the canned food. Instead, the narrator cuts back to Ben going home. If this was one of the abridged bits, God bless you gentlemen.

Back at home, Ben starts a fire an…oh come on, this guy’s a survival expert? Honestly? He retains enough presence of mind to loot a sporting goods store of survival gear, then he starts. A fire. An easily trackable fire. In his front yard. After acknowledging that there are probably looters out there.

…

So, Ben comes up with a plan to find one of those “world-wide radios” and track down other humans. A decent plan, I suppose. So he waits until the next day (again, a good plan, best not to go after dark), then heads back into town. He gets the radio, and finally hears an indication of life. In French. Then German. Then to English, finally, which is a blessing, because Lord knows a man who apparently widely traveled in Africa wouldn’t speak at least basic French. Here Raines learns the full story about what happens. Apparently, the Russians have a virus that only kills now-living humans, and not animals or plant life, and does not infect the water. They were apparently going to use it on us in the fall of ’88. Here, Johnstone himself admits how stupid his characters have been, admitting that if only SOMEONE had tried to talk with someone else, it could all have been prevented. Or maybe not. Who knows?

Here we learn that, at most, the casualties are a little over a billion. And, given the dullness of the scene, it’s no big loss for Raines/Johnstone. We also learn here that this whole thing was a tape recording, as it repeats in about four languages. So, we get a little bit of Raines trying to figure out just why someone would want to depopulate a land of humans, but not anything else. Hmm…MAYBE they wanted to take over our nation without a fight. And it takes him a while to figure this out. I thought this dude was supposed to be the ideal man…

And why were the Russians planning to invade us in ’88? I suppose that, in the mid 80’s, the threat of WW3 was still there for old hands like Johnstone, but looking back, it’s kind of ridiculous. Three years later, the Soviet Union finally collapsed. By this point, COULD they even pull off something like a massive invasion, even of empty land? And did they never consider that someone would find out? Committing one of the worst war crimes in all of history won’t exactly ensure that people’d leave you alone. And, assuming that nobody ever found out, it’s not like you could just waltz in and claim the entirety of the continental US. Not only might there be other interested parties snatching up former American territory, not only might the rest of the world object to you just claiming the entire US, not only would you stretch yourselves massively thin in the attempt to control both the vast expanses of Russia AND the vast expanses of the US, BUT you also run the risk of the plague somehow mutating or not dying as fast as you thought it would and wiping out the globe.

The so-called plan here is laughable, but in Johnstone’s world, I think it’s probably plausible. I can imagine he was massively disappointed when the USSR collapsed without even a little mass murder.

Oh, and to make it even better, apparently, McCarthy was right, and the Commies have a small army of loyalists in America, waiting to help take the place over. Which smells to me like bad strategy when your main weapon is biological, but hey, I’m not military. After we leave this rather stupid line of reasoning, Ben gets attacked by a pack of feral dogs. While I don’t claim to be an expert here, would German Shepherds automatically go feral within a few days of an apocalypse, with an abundance of food around? I’d personally expect them to still be housepets, with perhaps a little bit of a wild side. But let’s just cover it with suspension of disbelief and move on.

After killing one of them and searching for people, Raines decides to do the obvious, what with his probably easily defendable home which would be filled with supplies, as well as military training that puts him a cut above anyone who’d try to attack his remote home: Ben Raines decides to travel the US, and write a book about what’s happened. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. Raines, in his searches, clearly found a copy of Out of the Ashes and has read the blurb on the back cover.

So, he leaves town, and in his travels, miraculously finds the perfect vehicle for himself at an auto dealer. It’s got CB, a winch for moving things, and probably a variety of other handy functions. Before he steals it, though, Raines signs papers of ownership. So, in addition to looting, he’s now committing fraud. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the paragon of all things American.

On the way through the state, he enters the city of Jackson, where he finds a killing ground and gets shot at. Sadly, the bullet only breaks a windshield, and Raines again takes the obvious course of action and, flashing back to Vietnam, he tries to negotiate while planning on how best to rip these guys a new one. One of them demands Raines leave their turf. So, what does Raines decide to do with this fairly peaceful offer to retreat and avoid casualties with these people who were, quite sensibly, defending themselves from what might well have been an invader? Well, he takes it as an opportunity to slaughter them. Don’t we feel proud of our hero?

After calmly murdering two men, Raines calmly heads towards the nearest armory and equips himself well enough to take on a small army. A grenade launcher, high explosive cartridges for his previous acquisitions, three boxes of White Phosphorous grenades (which are one of the most powerful incendiaries we have, apparently, and are usually used to eat burning holes in anyone unlucky enough to get hit with one), High Explosive grenades, and smoke grenades. God help any poor sap this guy comes across.

So, Ben spends a night outside Memphis, monitoring transmissions from within the city. He hits upon one group who “speaks intelligently”, and is the only group which does not use profanity. This, of course, nominally marks them as the good guys in Raines’ mind. Turns out that this group essentially belongs to Hilton Logan, meaning that, of course, they are in fact NOT the good guys, despite their efforts to clean up the city and fight against the looters and “criminal element”. Were I Raines, I would help them. Surely, with the end of the world as we know it having gone down, past partisan ideas could be thrown aside in favor of mutual survival. Ben has a lot of experience, supplies, is heavily armed, and is alone. Logan’s faction has manpower, even more supplies, and could certainly use Raines’ expertise and supplies to expand their own territory and provide a larger safe haven from the chaos that has apparently taken hold of the country.

But no. Instead, Raines curses the fact that Logan survived, and only just agrees to the Logan faction’s generous offer of shelter. Logan, for the brief time we see him, seems like nothing but an overworked politician who has been thrust into a position he doesn’t want to be in. I already sympathize with the man. I sympathize much less with Ben Raines, who spends the entire meeting trying to provoke Logan. They don’t discuss what exactly happened, or what the other knows, or how they can help each other. No, they spend it entirely discussing Logan’s improbable anti-gun bill. Why? Because Ben Raines is not interested in helping anyone who isn’t almost his clone survive.

Logan, of course, cracks, as anyone would do in the situation. His country has been destroyed, he’s fighting a desperate battle for both survival and to reclaim even a tiny piece of it from the forces of chaos, and he’s being needled for his personal beliefs in a time gone by. I’d expect anyone with any self-respect to get at least mildly angry in this situation. Raines calls Logan a coward (which I don’t think applies at all to Logan, given what he’s doing right now) and leaves. The people there beg him to stay, but of course, he refuses, unwilling to put aside his own petty dislike of their leader in order to serve the greater good.

Here, we get a bit more information from an Army colonel from the Logan faction; eight US cities get nuked, with many more suspected, and most other major cities took germ warheads. Ben, graciously, directs the colonel to the recorded message he heard earlier, and the colonel informs Ben that the remains of the military plan to install Logan as acting President of the United States. Makes sense to me, give his obvious success in Memphis, but it’s treated as a terrible sin, because Logan is, of course, an evl librul.

It’s here we also get this section’s twist ending: just before Bull Dean died, he gave command of the entire Rebel army to Ben Raines, all five thousand of them remaining.

…wait, five thousand? Out of, what was it, five or six million? Okay, does this strike anyone else as mildly ridiculous? The Rebels knew that they were starting WW3, they knew that this would probably result in the destruction of most major cities. Why not move as much of your force out into the countryside as possible? It’s not like anyone could do anything before the balloon goes up. Even an hour or two’s warning should have saved a bigger portion. A million survivors, I could probably deal with; 1/6 isn’t THAT ridiculous. But no, the faction’s more like 1/1000. Did they intentionally kill their own people? If so, why? If not, why was there no warning? And, as my last rant of this post, might I also ask why the number is such a nice, round 5,000?

Ah, forget it. That’s the end of the section, and by this point I’m fairly sure I could write a more compelling and logical post-apocalypse story. And there are fourteen more sections to go. Yippee.

Out of the Ashes Part 3, or The Half a Week or so After

2009-06-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

So, we pick up with…a continuation of the aforementioned Grocery List of WW3. Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London (another continuity error, they retake that city later in the series), China and Russia get half blown to hell. For some reason, the land armies get launched, but nobody explains where. Did the Russkies invade Europe or China? The reverse? Come on, book, tell me!

It’s about now that we can cement one of Johnstone’s biggest problems with this series. In my high school English class, I was always taught to show, not tell. I don’t want to hear a clinical-sounding list of cities destroyed; I want to see it happen! I don’t want vague information about land wars; I want a viewpoint character on the front lines! I don’t remember Johnstone having this problem in his Westerns; why’s it suddenly affecting him so strongly now? I say it’s just a side effect of him jumping genres. He’s just so out of his depth that he’s losing the skill that made me love him in the first place.

And still we continue the list. Now we’re up to South America…why? This makes even less sense to me than nuking Mexico City. Buenos Aires, Rio, Santiago, the Panama Canal Zone…wha?

As Johnstone explains it, the men with their fingers on the Buttons “have no place to return to”, and so they decide “why not destroy the world just because we don’t have a home anymore?” I’ve known military men. These are some of the most well-disciplined men I’ve ever met, for the most part, physically, philosophically, and mentally. While I don’t think that’s all necessarily a good thing (a little flexibility is a positive trait in my book), I doubt my mom’s boyfriend, who at one point did work on a sub, would up and decide “Those Russian bastards killed my wife and kids! Let’s nuke the Panama Canal!” No, if anything, he’d lob another missile at Russia then head back to the US to try and rebuild.

And how does Johnstone treat these sociopathic/incompetent seamen? Well, he kind of doesn’t; to my knowledge, we never meet a single person who served in this area. I don’t see why we don’t, but I’m also not a professional pulp author.

So here we learn that, despite all those major capitals and various large cities that were nuked, the world got off “largely unscathed” by the first wave of missiles, with only three quarters of a billion people killed. I’m not going to bother checking to see if that’s anywhere near correct, as I don’t want to listen to that freaking list again, but somehow I doubt it. Not only were they supposed to have nuked some of the most populous cities in the world (taking in discontinuity, New York City alone holds, what, six or seven million?), but we launched those germ warheads that kill everyone within a certain radius of the blast site. I find the number rather suspect, but let’s move on before I spend the whole day tallying up fictional deaths.

But, as Johnstone says, “all governments, no matter how noble they may be, are vindictive”. Here, I actually agree with the guy. After the first wave, there’s not much you can do. So, I’ll skip the second wave and just give you the results:

…

They don’t give us results yet. All they say is “and the doomsday tapes were silently rolling.” Which would indicate, to me, that the entire world was destroyed. Sadly, this is not the case.

And, instead of actually giving us something interesting and worthwhile, we switch back to Ben Raines, who as we might remember was injected with a probably deadly amount of venom from a swarm of yellow jackets. Somehow, he slept through the apocalypse. That’ll be something to tell your future grandkids, eh?

Grandkid #1: Grandpa, where were you when World War Three happened?

Raines: Well, nameless stereotype, I was passed out on the floor because I got stung by wasps.

Grandkid #2: …jeez, Grandpa, you kind of suck.

So, Raines sleeps through the apocalypse. The worst he’s got is a badly swollen hand and the temporary lose of sight in one eye. Whoopee; drama. So, he spends several days trying to get better, regularly passing out on his way to get Benadryl. I’m so interested.

Thankfully, we leave the sick man and get back to the shopping list…and how often has anyone ever said that? So, the Air Force lost 75% of it’s total strength (what’re the odds that such a nice, round number would really result? Once, just once, I want someone to report, “Sir, we’ve lost 46.3% of our total strength”. The Marine Corps is almost totally wiped out (how and why? You mean to tell me there were no Marines outside of publicly-known and a few less-than-publicly known bases?). The Army’s reduced by more than 60% (round numbers kill kittens). The Navy loses more than 50% (…). The government of the US is destroyed. Whether this last bit is a good or bad thing, I don’t know.

So, Johnstone finally tells us what the American people are doing in the aftermath of WW3. They are still largely confused, which I can completely understand. In 24 hours, their entire world was destroyed; I’d be confused as well. The problem is that, for this broad mass of humanity, this confusion becomes their defining feature. The only people we see actually get a hold of themselves, in this book at least, and do something are A) The Rebels (the good guys), B) The evl librul government and their henchmen (the bad guys), and C) Looters. Aside from that, the American people just kind of sit there and wait for the government to do their work for them.

The American people are not entirely such extreme examples of sheeple-hood. If you looked at any given community, you could probably find at least one or two people that could take the role of shepherds to this flock of humanity, and once people have a leader, they naturally tend to form a cohesive group. Said group might be torn apart after a while by dissent and dissatisfaction, but in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse, I’d imagine that such things would be left for later and, for a while at least, people would band together to survive. Johnstone, however, disagrees; like Rand, he insists that only people like him and/or power-grubbing lunatics are the only ones with the willpower to get their act together, while the rest of us wander around like zombies, waiting for government handouts, completely incapable of doing...well, anything. As this is already patently absurd, I’m not going to waste my time and brainpower on refuting it.

Here, we also see one of Johnstone’s great loves. Gorn. For those of you who do not know the term, it means, essentially, “to describe in near-pornographic detail gory happenings”. The man describes, in said graphic detail, the melting of the eyeballs of the people who looked at the nuclear blasts. He spends long sentences describing exactly how a woman is raped (and, in the Ashes universe, there’s not a woman who hasn’t, apparently). Yep; exactly what I want to spend my off-time reading about. I think he was trying for realism, but there’s one slight problem here; this is NOT REALISTIC! It’s sickening! And, to top it all off, he also includes the same bits…about children. In fact, one of the sections they thankfully cut from this audiobook (if I’m not mixing the first and second Ashes books up) follows the travels of one group of kids, including a 12-year-old girl who is ridiculously well-endowed, as they try to find a place to hide from all this. And one of the (pre-teen, if I recall right) boys ends up as the sex toy of a recurring villain. Yeah.

I’m only three minutes into this section, and already I’ve got an entry about as large as the others on this book, so let’s buckle down, skip the gorn, and get back to the plot, shall we?

We get back to Ben, who is somehow still alive and able to care for his own wounds. How has this man not starved or dehydrated? Anyway, he gets better, staying safely inside his home, slowly recovering. He’s finally all better, and, after some minutia, he realizes that it’s his birthday! Yay! This prompts his realization that none of his friends or family called, giving him something to be sad about. Aww. He then decides to go into town to get a paper, and so discovers, roughly, what happened.

This was one of my most favorite parts in the book, as well as one of the only good bits in the entire series. Why? Because, when Raines gets to town, he finds it almost completely wiped out by plague. In his urge to insert more gorn, the narrator actually manages to capture the horror of arriving to such a sight. It was so effective that, when I’ve attempted to write my own apocalypse tales, I always include a similar scene. It really affected me. And that may be the only praise of this book you ever read come out of my fingers.

Then he ruins it with a flashback explaining just why the military shall rule after the Bomb goes off; because civilians are morons. According to this flashback, we don’t know diddly about staying alive, and we don’t want to know. Oh, and also in this flashback, we get a description of these much-hated civilians. “They’re content. They’ve got their pretty little houses, two cars in the garage, membership in the country club, and they think ‘being tough’ means ‘playing football”. You know what’s interesting about that? It perfectly describes one of the longest-lasting villains in the series, a man called Ashley, a Southern gentleman type who not only manages to last from his first appearance to the end of the first North American arc of the story, but also manages to come closer than most anyone to defeating Raines, mainly due to his frequent uniting with various other powerful warlords and being a very good strategist. In the end, of course, he’s defeated, but by that point, he’s outnumbered, outgunned, and has been forced into a box by Raines and his men. And, as his fortress is being shelled, he calmly sits at a typewriter and types up his memoirs. Not only did he stick out in my mind as something of a badass when I read his bits, but he remains one of my favorite characters in this entire series.

Anyway, back to our protagonist. Ben checks his CB radio, looking for anyone who survived. Nobody answers. While in town, he also picks up a Thompson machine gun. This becomes something like his signature weapon. Here we also get more information of Hilton Logan, and what exactly Ben/Johnstone hates about him. Logan’s a dove, and a librul. The author evidently cannot think of greater crimes, so he leaves it at that.

He fills his car and collects all the gas he could. Very good move, Raines. It’s here that he learns some more about the problem, from a note written by a dead man. A dead man who, despite going fast, remembered how to correctly spell “atomic”. Were I dying, I doubt I’d write a freakin’ diary entry. It’d be more along the lines of a last message to my loved ones. It’s also here that we’re introduced to the cannon fodder of the Ashes universe, at least for the first three-fourths of the series or so; common criminals who, in the wake of the worst war ever fought, have decided to become warlords. Aside from a few notable exceptions (such as the above-mentioned Ashley), none of them last more than a single campaign, much less entire books. There’s just a lot of them.

This section ends with a remark from Ben that, in these kinds of situations, “human scum survived, while those more deserving did not”.

And so we end this less-than-marvelous section. This was so tedious for me that I actually screwed up the order of events, going off memory a couple of times when the narrator got into talking in detail about the really, really obvious. And there are still 15 more. This is Nitpicker’s Hell, friends; listening to Ashes for all eternity.

Sadly, Johnstone is now dead, so I don’t wish to speak too badly of him. But my God, man, you should have just stuck to Westerns!

Out of the Ashes Part 2, or the Grocery List of WW3

2009-06-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

I have nothing that sounds witty to put in here, so I’ll skip that bit and just move on to the actual story, shall I?

We open in Camp David, where the President headed at the end of the last section. He’s meeting with his closest advisers. One of them, who informed the President of the rebellion, says that at least a few of the President’s staff and the Secret Service are rebels. It’s here that we actually get some broad information on said rebels. According to reports, there are between five and six million of them in the US, ready to move out whenever ordered.

Here, we have several problems already. First and foremost, just how has this organization remained hidden for so long? Let’s imagine that you had an organization of, say, a million men. We could, perhaps, keep such a large group hidden at first; organize them like militia movements and small gatherings, a dozen people or so per cell. It’d be a logistical nightmare to organize that many, but I’ll just assume it’s doable. Now, we need to imagine that somehow, not a single one of those men has had a change of heart, or is a government spy, or something along those lines. Next, we need to ask how this force is apparently so well-trained. That would require massive coordination, with hundreds of trained instructors moving from cell to cell across the nation, training them full time. These men would probably be Army. Next, we must somehow imagine that they hid their weapons training from the government, also assuming that all of these people were fully trained by the time the gun ban went down (if only to avoid further headaches). In addition, each cell would probably be told to stockpile everything they could years in advance if possible.

Now, multiply these difficulties by five or six. I find it almost impossible that the Rebs have been so well-hidden for so long. Even assuming that they have people in high command, or near it, short of corrupting the entire American government and intelligence service (in which case, why overthrow it?), there’s really no way they could keep themselves from being discovered for so long.

But let’s just accept the problems that hiding even a portion of this rebellion would face don’t apply to the Rebels. Willing suspension of disbelief and all that. So, back to the story.

The President is informed that, yes, some of the military is working with the Rebs, but emphasizes that they are not traitorous, just misinformed and fed bits and pieces of fact. Does this serve any purpose other than to emphasize that the military Rebs aren’t truly turning their backs on their country? No, and shame on anyone who thought so. Oh, and for some reason, China is going to declare war on Russia. Why? Because Rebel agents, posing as Soviets, will assassinate the Chinese Premier and every member of his party. Because, you know, there's no POSSIBLE way that the Chinese could POSSIBLY figure out the plot and/or save their own leader. I mean, come on, they're just Chinamen; what could they POSSIBLY be competent at? After that, a missile will be fired from a stealth sub off the coast of Russia aimed at China, again by the Rebs. The Chinese will think the Russians fired it, and this will start a nuclear war between them. Which will eventually involve the US, because hey, those stupid Commies'll take us down with them if they can.

The President’s men decide against, you know, warning anyone, because the Russians, being nothing more than stupid, drunken Russkies, would automatically decide that since it’s an American ship, with Americans on it and American missiles, that the Americans are automatically trying to kill them. If so, why would they inform them? And, again assuming that the Chinese are incompetents, couldn’t they warn the Chinese, save their Premier, preempt the whole chain of events? Nope. Apparently, it’s “too late”. So, WW3 is the only answer, and almost all of the President’s men agree that it’s useless to try to stop it.

Some more plot exposition…turns out that the sub is armed with *dum dum dum* Thunderstrike missiles, the most deadly missiles ever created! Will they be important in any situation after they’re used to start WW3? No. Again, shame on any of you who actually thought along those lines. So, the President orders that the remaining missiles (stored in California) be counted, then prepped for launch. Yay.

After this monumentally dull section (which I assume was supposed to be dramatic, but any efforts to make it so just fall flat), we get the standard cut-out to show what all the normal people are doing just before it all goes down. Washington socialites are socializing, your average nuclear family is going to sleep, and Raines is listening to classical music and getting drunk. “Then the first missile was fired.” And the world goes berserk.

So, World War 3. Fought not only with nukes, but also with germ warheads. So, just how does Ben Raines survive this? He gets stung by a swarm of yellow jackets.

Yeah. A man survived the worst war in recorded history, where germ warheads capable of destroying all life within a certain radius of their impact site, because for some reason he didn't notice that a swarm of yellow jackets built a nest over his back door, which he used, and then he gets stung several times. Turns out he’s terribly allergic to any wasp or bee sting. He crawls into his den, falls to the floor, and “slips into unconsciousness”.

You all know what’s coming next, so let’s start bitching, shall we? If he’s so “terribly allergic” and he’s stung in so many places, including just under his left eye and just behind his right ear, why isn’t the dude dead? According to the text, after having been injected by what is probably a deadly amount of venom for him, he collapses to the floor, unconscious. He’s not getting any emergency help, he’s not even trying to heal himself. Why is this man not dead? Because he’s Johnstone’s Author Avatar, and he can’t possibly die.

So, do we hear how he somehow managed to survive? Nope; we get back to a summary of WW3. The US doesn’t catch many nukes, but it DOES get a few. Washington is obliterated. Thankfully, all the nukes are “clean”, meaning that there isn’t much nuclear fallout. Way to cop out, Johnstone. Anyway, it turns out that most of the missiles hitting the US were germ warheads, which, as mentioned above, could kill everything within a certain number of miles, after which the bacteria somehow die out completely. He gives you a long list of the targets, but the problem is, he doesn’t even try to make you properly horrified. The narrator talks like he’s reading a grocery list, not discussing the deaths of millions.

It’s also here that we’re introduced to one of Johnstone’s constant problems: continuity. A character will make a statement that is ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN…and then, next book, it’s immediately contradicted. Here, he claims that New York City is completely gone. However, a dozen or so books in the future, we have an entire story arc about taking NYC.

So, continuing the grocery-list of WW3, we list the many, many international cities destroyed, most of them cities nobody would truly bother with. Why is it integral, for instance, to nuke Mexico City?

Ah well, we’re done here, thank God. This whole thing is already starting to wear on me. Did my already shaky quality deteriorate even further, or is it just me?

Out of the Ashes Part 1, or Yay, Dictatorship!

2009-06-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

Like I said in my Anthem review, the first paragraph of a story is the most important. So, let us see what Out of the Ashes has to offer:

“Louisiana, 1984

Ben Raines fought off an urge to laugh in the man’s face. “Are you nuts? I mean, honest to God, fellow, have you got both oars in the water?”

On the whole, not the worst opening paragraph I’ve ever read. Not as annoying as Anthem’s, that’s for certain. It introduces the main character (who actually has a name this time!), gives you a little bit of situational information (Raines is talking to a man he thinks is spouting crazy-talk), and it even introduces at least something of a setting (Louisiana, 1984).

…if you don’t get the reference, I may have to hit you.

Anyway, on we go with the story. Raines is talking to a gentleman who is trying to recruit him for something. As it turns out, this man represents a movement to overthrow the US government. Why is this happening? Well, because the evl libruls in Washington have finally managed to do what’s been on their demented minds since the invention of evl-librulism: the banning of firearms. In America. Where the bearing of arms is one of our most cherished rights.

How did this come about? Well, we’ll get to that later. For now, let us focus back on the story.

Throughout this section, we learn quite a bit about our protagonist. He’s a successful writer, who makes enough money off of it to have bought his nice house, a nice bit of land, a nice dog, and a lot of booze. See, as it turns out, Raines is an alcoholic. Why? Because he doesn’t like the way the United States is going, and he’s drinking to try and forget about it.

Let me give you a bit of information here: Raines is, as mentioned above, a popular novelist, with apparently a nice bit of money. Almost every literate character we see in this series mentions they’ve read his work. And that work, much like Johnstone’s own, apparently preaches Raines’ own philosophy. Now, assuming he’s popular, rich, and has a large number of people who agree with him, why doesn’t he try to get into politics himself? Change it all in the legal way? Logically, he’d have a decent shot at it.

Sadly, logic does not work in the Ashes universe. I personally think that most people buying his books did so for the same reasons I buy Johnstone’s: to laugh at how bad they are. After all, the people we meet later are a tiny portion of the population. But I’m getting off-track. Let’s get back to this turkey.

Raines continues to deny that he’ll join this rebellion, because he’s become comfortable with his life as it is. He emphasizes, however, that he’s not happy; just comfortable. The recruiter leaves, telling him how to contact them if he changes his mind. He then tells him a bit of cryptic information: two men, Bull Dean and Karl Adams, are still alive and leading the rebellion. This infuriates Raines, who insists that he saw their dead bodies. The recruiter disappears before Raines can get even angrier, leaving Raines to drown his sorrow in alcohol and forget all about it.

We then cut to four years later, when Raines is considering WW3. He gives us a little foreshadowing about how most of the missiles pointed by the US at Russia, and vice versa, are germ-type warheads, and then we get a flashback to Vietnam, where for some reason all the good soldiers of America speak perfectly grammatical English. They’re debating how to correct the US government, which they all “know” is not working. We’re not told any of the particulars of the debate, but afterward, we meet one of the mysteriously alive leaders of the rebellion, Bull Dean.

When Raines is alone with him, Dean tells they’re losing the war, and that back in the US, things’ll get worse. “Patriotism will take a nosedive, sinking to new depths of dishonor. There is no discipline in schools; the courts have seen to that. America is going to take a pasting for a decade, maybe longer”. After all these horrid predictions (people’ll stop throwing away their lives meaninglessly for their country? My God!), Bull predicts that the military will step in and take control before things get even worse. I mean, Heaven help us, they might even start allowing gays to marry!

Despite acknowledging that military rule would be detrimental to the country, Johnstone is still trying to paint these military dictators in a good light. As he emphasizes, they won’t want to do it, but they’ll be forced to overthrow the legally elected government of the United States before they do something stupid. Hell, they might even elect *gasp* a non-Christian to the Presidency! My God, if that happened, we don’t know what we’d do!

I’d remind you that all of this was long before the improbable weapons ban. At the time, all this man had to go on was a dip in patriotism and the inability to beat his schoolchildren for wearing their hair long. And he’s already talking about destroying the government. I’m noting a theme in bad writers by now; just like Rand, Johnstone seems to believe that all people who do not at least partially adhere to his own philosophy are either incompetent morons or evil demagogues.

Anyway, back to the story. Bull finishes his discussion with Raines by telling him to remember the words “Bold Strike”. He says that all this won’t mean anything for Raines now, but to wait a couple decades and see where it leads. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s been almost two decades since Raines received these little nuggets of...I hesitate to call them “wisdom”, so I’ll just say “information”. A few days later, Bull’s supposedly mangled-beyond-recognition body is found by scouts, then Karl Adams (who we are not introduced to in the audiobook) goes MIA, then listed as KIA. Didn’t Raines say earlier that he say the “bodies”? As in, both that of Bull Dean and of Karl Adams?

I don’t know, I stopped looking for reason a long time ago. Anyway, Raines goes home wounded and is disgusted at how the Vietnam vets are treated. For once, I actually agree with Johnstone; it was horrible what those young men went through in Asia, and they returned home hated and reviled for it. But here’s where I start to get a bit iffy. “He had been sent home to a land of hairy, profane young men who marched up and down the street, shouting ugly words, all in the name of freedom. Their concept of freedom.” So…what, you’re free to oppose the evl librul government, but people on the other side aren’t supposed to oppose you? It’s one of the chief freedoms of America, the right to protest, to legally assemble and attempt to get your point across. But, according to Ben Raines, America is by now evil, because we no longer live in the 1950’s. So, he leaves America as soon as he can and works as a mercenary in Africa for a while. Evidentially, he would prefer to kill people than to reason with them, so he’s working out his excess aggressions as a merc for “anyone who wanted and appreciated fighting men”. I’m sure that many of those who signed on with him would be regarded by the rest of the world as evil. But, as we’ll see later in the book (and later in the series if I can stand it), Raines himself is a pretty evil man.

One day, by chance, Raines meets a writer who recommends that he write a book and send it to the man’s agent. He has been writing ever since, and has been in Louisiana for almost 15 years. Finally, we end the flashback to hear the phone ringing. Raines hears two words spoken before the call is ended.

“Bold Strike.”

After this, Ben, of course, turns on the news. Sounds logical; it’s what I would do. He learns that certain military units have been put on low alert, with no reason given. The Pentagon says it’s just testing security, but Ben angrily demands more information from the screen. Of course, none is forthcoming. In his quest to learn more, he dials up his old super-secret special unit, the Hellhounds. And with a name like that, you know they’re supposed to be awesome. Sadly, we never see any of them, at least as far as my recollections go, aside from Raines. Who is the Chuck Norris of the Ashes universe.

The Hellhounds, of course, no idea what’s happening, and prove singularly unhelpful. All the advise they can give him is to hunt a hole and keep his head down.

We now cut to the White House, where the good, belabored President is bemoaning his fate. Here, we get the plot exposition and a list of the usual Republican reasons why the country’s going down the tube. “The unions are bitching and striking as usual. Every minority group in this nation is complaining, loudly, that I am discriminating against them.” He also includes some complaining about how people are being imprisoned for resisting the anti-gun law. The law that the legally elected government of the US passed. Apparently, the disgruntled minority is more important than the evl librul majority. He also complains about Hilton Logan and his “pack of liberal bastards”. Logan, by the way, is the champion of the illogical anti-gun laws. He’s also apparently the shoe-in for President. That actually makes sense to me.

This part of the book finally ends with the President being informed that there is a rebellion on his hands. The President heads to Camp David, and we end the section there.

I went over most of my problems with this story before, but let me sum them up for you: the “good guys” support military dictatorship, liberals are evil, the American people are stupid, and somehow the Constitution has ceased to matter to either side.
For the record, there are 18 sections. I had originally planned to do two sections per update, but that kind of flew out of the window. So there are 17 more of these, at least. Whoop.

…it’s times like these that I wish I actually had a gun. I’ve got a blunt axe; think I could get through the skull in one blow?

Author Preview #2: William W. Johnstone, or Why, God, Why?

2009-06-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

I, personally, am a lover of pulp novels. You know, those trashy little paperbacks you can pick up at Wal-Mart for a couple bucks. They usually include dashing heroes saving helpless damsels, lots of gun-porn, and are almost always written, in my experience, by right-wingers. And I don't mean right-wingers like that Republican uncle we all have who insists Obama is going to destroy America...I mean the kind of right-winger who fantasizes about overthrowing the government, booting everyone more liberal from them from the country, and forcing Christianity on every man, woman, and child.

Not that they'll admit it, mind.

I may be stereotyping here, but in my years of reading this trash, I've found one series that is actually decent (which we will be returning to in a later review :D), and it is certainly nothing to do with William W. Johnstone, who is our target this time.

Johnstone is most famous for his Westerns, which I actually enjoy quite a lot. In fact, he may just be one of my favorites. My personal favorite of all his series would be his The Last Gunfighter series, about a man called Frank Morgan, an old gunslick who wants nothing more than to settle down, only to have his reputation as the best gunfighter left in the West come calling every time he tries. It's an enjoyable series, if you don't mind the author occasionally trying to make a point through his characters.

On an almost equal footing is his Mountain Man series, about a man called Smoke Jenson, who is of course a mountain man, and a gunfighter with skills that rival Morgan's own (yes, these series do take place in the same world, and ever reference each other occasionally). Smoke has much the same problem as Morgan, and when done well, the Mountain Man books are actually quite good reads.

However, nothing good can last, and Johnstone just couldn't keep writing good Westerns. Oh no; he had to get into military fiction.

And not just military fiction, but apocalypse fiction, a staple in the diet of all pulp lovers. For some reason, nothing quite captures these guys' imaginations like the end of the world as we know it. When done well (say in my personal favorite pulp series The Survivalist, which is thankfully NOT written by the above-mentioned right-winger), it can be actually enjoyable. When there are developed characters, three-dimensional and threatening villains, and a genuine sense that the world's been nearly destroyed, I love nothing more than a good apocalypse novel.

Sadly, Johnstone's Ashes series has none of that. At all.

Ashes tells the story of Ben Raines, a Mary Sue, Author Avatar/Wish Fulfillment and all around wannabe-badass as he goes through the process of rebuilding the shattered world after WW3 nearly kills it. Along the way, he fights every staple of apocalypse fiction every to be introduced: cannibals, criminal gangs, Soviets, Nazis, Middle-Eastern terrorist, insane liberals, and a few others I can't quite recall.

Might I also point out, just as a preliminary complaint, the narrator's love of describing, in graphic detail, every rape and death that happens to...anyone? In a world where there is apparently not one woman who has not been raped, and where death comes swiftly to anyone who is not a main character? And the fact that, despite being in, I believe, his 50's by the midpoint of the series, Raines is still a supersoldier and chick magnet of the highest caliber? Or the fact that, despite apparently having the love of women worldwide and supposedly meeting the perfect girl for him every two or three books, he replaces them roughly every two or three books? And how his army, the Rebels, lose roughly two major engagements over the course of 40 books, despite going up against impossible odds on a regular basis? And how, despite estimates that winning just about any engagement will take months to years, the Rebels always seem to wrap it up with time enough to deal with the next in their long list of crises?

I'm getting ahead of myself, but suffice it to say that this entire series is, essentially, Johnstone creating his own personal hell and showing how good Republican militants can get out of it. And it is, as I think I said above, awful...but I just can't look away.

The first book in the series, Out of the Ashes, is available as an abridged audiobook, and THAT is what I'll be basing this review off of. If I have to read the whole book over again, I may have to hurt something. So, I present to you, as soon as I can force myself to double-click the file, the horror that is William W. Johnstone's Out of the Ashes.

Anthem Part 3; or, Ayn Rand Loves Making Me Nuts

2009-05-21T12:24:00.001-07:00

I can understand that this is suppose to be a novella. Which means, according Wikipedia: "A written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is disagreement as to what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000."

So, Mrs. Rand set out to write a short novel. The trouble with that idea is that the first half of it reads like the beginning of a novel. Sections I and II of Anthem take up 51 pages out of 105. Roughly half the novel in the first two sections. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Logically (and isn't Rand supposed to be logical?), part III would see the Wimp facing the novella's conflict, and part IV would see him either winning or...this is Ayn Rand, so winning. He is the great logical hero, after all.

So you reach part III, in which the Wimp...discovers electricity? I'm a sci-fi fan, so I find absolutely no problem with this scene. Granted, it's about now that he starts to sound like Dr. Horrible, but it's legitimate character development. It almost makes me want to have a little more respect for Rand's abilities. Wonder how the rest of part III will go...

Okay, so part III lasted exactly three pages. A little odd, I suppose, but the Wimp made his major discovery. Perhaps a very long part IV will show him introducing it to society, changing the world or some such.

...no, part IV shows another meeting with THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles*. So far as I can see, this has absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever. Apparently, THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles* has given the Wimp a name: the Unconquered. If I may point out, these two have had, what, one conversation that we've seen so far? Rand doesn't hint that they've ever met again as far as I can see, so they've now had a total of two short conversations. The first established their ages (she's 17, he's 20 or so by this point) and their undying love for each other. Based off the Wimp stalking her and her being flattered.

I don't know, maybe the nickname's worth it. After all, the Ominous Councils of Ominousness have apparently destroyed human sexuality, so I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised that...

You know what? I'm going to ignore this section now. It serves no point but to infuriate me. Maybe part V will actually give me some more of that part III semi-enjoyment...

Nope. It's him discovering the light bulb and having a mental orgasm at the idea that he did it himself. And yet more purple prose from the street sweeper. Do I really have to beat that particular dead horse again?

So, he's determined to guard the light bulb and present it to the Scholars as a work he created on his own. In a society that despises such things. And that has intentionally and knowingly left behind such things. And who you readily admit would smash the thing if any but the Scholars knew of it.

...yes, I can see no possible way this could go wrong.

So, after an astonishing four pages of part V, we go on to part VI. Did the Scholars like his strange creation that he made himself nerdgasm? We don't know; before we can learn about the conflict of the story, we're treated to a scene where he's taken away to jail because he's finally caught away from the collective. They beat him within an inch of his life, but he still refuses to tell them.

Apparently, he lost his mental virginity to the light bulb and is now A MAN, because he not only survives, but keeps his secret. They put him in his cell...which is sealed with an old lock. As he breaks it, we're informed that there are no guards in the prison because nobody would defy the OCoO. Yes folks, despite the need for a prison, nobody would dare to defy...you know what? Let's just move on, nothing else happens here anyway.

Part VII is...actually important to the story, so I kind of have to talk about it. Basically, THE MAN (which I shall be calling him until something else occurs) presents his light bulb to the Scholars. Who not only reject him, but decide to kill him. See, there's this big plan written up to apparently govern the whole world's development so detailed that the introduction of the candle took 50 years and messed up the plan so badly that it had to be rewritten. I assume that you all have the mental ability to detect the stupid in this paragraph alone.

When the Scholars try to destroy his light bulb, THE MAN grabs it, breaks out through a window, then runs away into the prerequisite ominous forest despite the wounds such things tend to cause. Because, you know, all good stories need the prerequisite ominous forest. This was touched upon earlier, but I ignored it. Because, to be quite honest, aside from possible symbolism, it's not very important that it's a forest.

Blah blah blah, two more parts that could be summed up in a paragraph. THE MAN stumbles through the forest slowly starving. After he collapses, THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles* arrives and saves him. They say outright that they love each other...

PROBLEM! How do they even know how to say this? Were I Rand's villains, I would have killed that particular word ages ago. It implies a certain depth of feeling that suggests you have it for one thing and not another. For instance, I love my mother. I like my friend Zach well enough. When you've got the entire population wrapped around your finger, probably drugged, and you want them to become collectivist drones, I don't even see the need to teach the drones how to speak at all, beyond the basics they need to be ordered around. I sure as hell wouldn't teach them the meanings of words like "love".

...let's just end this mockery of literature before I have to kill someone. Anyway, the duo find a house that, despite the tide of years, is somehow not only livable, but contains clothing and books and beds and all the conveniences one can expect. Including dictionaries, where he learns "I". I think it's supposed to be an emotional scene, but about now he switches from Dr. Horrible to a self-centered jerk. Rand's perfect man, from what I gathered.

It's also major character derailment for THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles*. Our former proud, shining example of feminism is revealed to be...a vain and easily-dominated little lady. When she discovers a mirror, she spends long periods of time staring at herself. In addition, our newly jerkish narrator decides to give her a name. Which she docily accepts at once, without a moment's hesitation. Way to portray a positive female, Rand.

You'd expact that the woman who later wrote a book called "The Virtue of Selfishness" would have her female lead be a bit more...assertive...about her own life, if nothing else. But from the instant they escaped, she's just gone along with THE MAN in every way, shape, and form. Aside from when she was busy being vain.

THE MAN talks about freeing others from the society they just escaped. I think it's supposed to be inspirational, but it just comes off as narm to me. And then we get this delightful little passage:

"For here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word that will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.

The sacred word:

EGO"

Do I really have to say more?

Anthem Part 2; or, Solid Snake Kills the Wimp

2009-05-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

Oh I so wish this would happen. It would make a truly interesting story. Who wouldn't enjoy watching everyone's favorite hero tearing this stupid society a new one? I really wish someone would share my vision, maybe write a decent fanfic on the subject. Because I could guaran-dang-tee you that it would be better than Anthem.

Why am I stalling? Because, quite frankly, I do not want to go any further. I'd forgotten just how bad this book is. This is what happens when you let a book sit on your shelf gathering dust; you convince yourself that it could not POSSIBLY have been that bad. Nostalgia goggles blind you to just how terrible things are, I suppose.

...okay. If I keep stalling, I'll never finish this book and I can't move on to something decent. So, here we go again, back to the Land of the Stupid.

______________________________________________________________________________

So, when we last left the Wimp, he was moaning about his childhood. He was indoctrinated from birth, denied his favored profession, and made a street sweeper.

I want to pause (again) to make a point about just how awkwardly written this book is. I see what Rand was trying to do, once again, I really do, but there's no real reasoning behind it. (Edit: I suppose in-universe there's a reason, but I addressed this in the last post) Every "I" is replaced with "we", which is just confusing. If you give this book to someone that's an average Joe, instead of an Objectivist or a book fanatic, they stand a good chance of getting confused. I know my high school class certainly was. In addition, they refer to different characters by a random, Communistic-patriotic word followed by a string of numbers. Example: the Wimp's real designation is Equality 7-2521.

The characters, the Wimp included, read like they're saying these aloud. Or thinking them, as is more often the Wimp's case. Try saying the above example aloud. Don't know about you, but I'd say it's a tad clunky. Why can't we just call the Wimp Ted, his fellow street sweepers Bill and Dave, and the chick he meets in a little while Sally? Because, again, non-Objectivists are morons and seem to think that individual names will poison the people and break them free of their ridiculous society.

...not that I will call him Ted, of course, because I find "the Wimp" amusing.

Anyway, the plot thickens as, one day, the Wimp, Bill, and Dave find a strange grated hole in the city's cesspit. The Wimp goes down, which is apparently also forbidden, and finds himself in *dum dum dum* a subway! Not that he knows it, Rand's society having done away with such useless things as mass transport years ago, along with the power motor and common sense.

She then proceeds to break her own rules. While Dave is having a seizure, the Wimp gets Bill to promise not to tell the Ominous Councils of Ominousness about the Wimp going into the hole. I wish to remind the author that, for the past 18 pages (yes, I summed up about ten pages in a few sentences), she has been telling us how they’ve been brainwashing these kids from birth to obey the OCoO and the rules down to the last letter. Yet, suddenly, the Power of Friendship overcomes years and years of brainwashing? Rand wrote this when she was 32, though, which…isn’t young at all. I really don’t see an excuse for this wonderful example of Bad Writing.

Having made Bill promise to keep his illicit hole-entering a secret, the Wimp starts going there every night. Nobody notices, because they’re supposed to be watching Evil Communist Plays in a giant, poorly-lit, and completely unguarded theater. I choose to believe that they think they’ve subjugated all thought by this point, because other than that, I can find no possible reason for not having someone watching the doors.

Also, apparently we’re in some bizarre section of the Discworld, because the street sweepers can go everywhere unnoticed. Seriously, the Wimp tells us he’s stolen candles from the Home of the Street Sweepers and bricks from the city street. These would not be as illogical, and could be forgiven by me. Then, he tells us he’s stolen stuff from the Home of the Scholars. Did the inventory list die along with a round Earth and the light bulb? And nobody notices the Wimp stealing possibly dangerous powders and solutions? He’s not a trained Scholar; for all he knows, he’s stealing freakin’ nitroglycerine!

Again, a much more interesting story. “The Wimp Blows Up”. I’d read it.

Even worse, this guy steals, of all things, BOOKS! Hand-copied books that apparently take a year apiece to make. Nobody appears to notice him walking around with a bulge under his tunic, or whatever exactly he’s wearing in this futuristic society. If he hadn’t somehow managed to sneak off with this, I’d have assumed they all walk around naked. I would not put it past them by this point to have banned cloth-making.

At least he promotes homeschooling before he ends the first section. Apparently, he learned more in two years of being down in his hole than he did in ten years as a student. Purple prose, once again, is an exception.

So, two freaking years. Nobody’s noticed him running away and stealing supplies for two. Freaking. Years. Remember in part one, where I supposed that the villains had slipped something in the water? New theory: they’re drinking it too. There is no other possible explanation.

Thankfully, we’re done with the first part. No more of the Wimp’s backstory! Yes! Now, we can move on to the really exciting bits, in which our moronic hero is discovered and killed, and a more interesting protagonist discovers what he did and carries on his legacy!

If only.

Okay, so, on to Section 2. Here, we’re introduced to the female lead, Liberty 5-3000. Say it with me: Liberty five-three thousand. This was not a good idea. For convenience, I do now dub her Sally. Just for continuity's sake. Anyway, Sally is described as perfect in every way as she’s…working the field. Yes, dear Sally is a farmer, which is not work truly conducive to become “straight and thin as a blade of iron”. Farming, particularly in a pre-Industrial society, was very hard work. It did not make you thin, it gave you muscles. So, for the sake of consistency, I’ll assume that all Sally does is dramatically throw seeds, as she’s doing at this moment.

So, Sally is perfectly beautiful and apparently haughty and proud, and the Wimp is enthralled. So, obviously, is she, because she’s faced with the hero. Were I in her position, I would notice that I am being constantly watched by a creepy street sweeper every time we’re in the same area and report him or something. Yet the author treats this as in no way, shape, or form creepy, despite the society they live in. Rand had a very interesting romance, I think. Probably the same kind that Stephenie Meyer went through. Also, even if I could accept the Wimp breaking free of his condition, what're the odds that his perfect gal had the exact same reaction?

*Crickets*

Anyway, after a while, the Wimp gives Sally a name: THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles*. On second thought, let’s call her that. Sound effect included.

It is here that we learn that Rand is slipping something more than the Stupid Drug into the water in this society. Yes, friends, they’ve even regulated sex drive. How exactly do you stop a young man from getting horny without the use of powerful, mind-altering drugs? Don’t ask me, I’m not an Objectivist. Maybe they've slipped them enough stuff over the years that it's just genetic, I don't know.

Anyway, the Wimp and THE GOLDEN ONE *sparkles* eventually talk and declare their undying love for each other and go out Romeo-and-Juliet style.

Again, it would make a much better book.

No, they part here, and the Wimp returns to his hole, where he thinks about the past as he knows it. That is, as he DOESN’T know it. Here, the OCoO have actually made a good choice. You don’t let the plebs know that there was anything good in the past, or you run a bigger chance of them wanting to return there.

Here we also learn about the Unspeakable Word *drama*, the knowing of which is apparently a burning offense. What is it? We don’t know…but it’s gotta be something totally awesome, Earth-shattering, something that’ll bring the society to its knees!

…of course, remembering what story I’m reading at the moment, I doubt it. Very much.

I have to stop here. This level of badness for someone like me is worthy of an award. And people are supposed to be inspired by this?

...

As I search for words to end this entry, my dear reader, all I can say is "sweet zombie Jesus, I have to read more of this!" At least the Wimp gets what's coming to him in the next chapter for being Book Dumb. Maybe I'll get lucky and my memory is failing. Maybe they actually killed him, and I just forgot!

...please, Undead Christ, tell me I'm right!

Anthem Part 1; or, They Killed Mankind's Brain

2009-05-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

The first paragraph of a story is always important. It tells you what the story is about, serves to hook your interest, maybe introduce you to the main character. In a first-person novel, like Anthem, it gives you the narrators first thoughts, introduces him as a person. It's supposed to make you interested in him and his plight, whatever it is. Let's see how Rand handled this most important section of the tale:

"It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!"

Let me tell you what I get from this first paragraph. First off, the character is defined by his fear of being caught. That, and his knowledge of the really stupid rules of his society. I'll get to the society later, but let's just focus on the narrator. He's got a designation (another thing that bugs me), but for now, I'll just call him the Wimp.

The Wimp is, at this moment, sitting underground scribbling on paper. As we'll learn later, he's a street sweeper. A street sweeper capable of purple prose, apparently. Later on, it describes his education process, which is basically rote memorization with a hatred of overly inquisitive students. The Wimp was, of course, one such child, who wanted with all his heart to be a researcher, an inventor, a Scholar! *Cue angelic music*.

Here I want to point out a minor problem with this society. Apparently, at one point, these people decided that the best way to end the world's problems (after a nuclear war, I think) was to give up individuality. To the point where the word "I" has been removed from the dictionary. This is, as I'm sure all of you must know, complete and utter bull.

It's called suspension of disbelief, Mrs. Rand. It's when you call upon your readers to accept something ridiculous for the sake of the story. You can, and have, stressed it too far. I would be swearing, but I've got some respect for the dead. People who do not agree with your ideology are not all sheeple. Nobody I've ever known in even the most oblique sense would ever do this. Human beings enjoy their individuality. The shock of nuclear war would not be enough to do this.

So, in order to preserve my rapidly straining sanity (I'm on page 5!), I'll just assume that mind controlling drugs were involved at one point.

Anyway, The Ominous Councils of Ominousness knows of the Wimp's intellectual tendencies and, not liking them, makes him a street sweeper. Might I point out that you wouldn't have this problem if you didn't educate your citizenry well enough to produce purple prose? Teach the plebs that 2+2=5, put on the conical cap, and give the idiots something to do! Heck, if you must keep the very good education for all, you could say he was sent elsewhere and kill him if you truly want to stifle intellectuality. Even when Rand's villains are in charge of everything, they act like morons. Which is of course Rand's deranged point. I don't think she believes that people can be truly smart unless they're Objectivists at this point.

May I also take this opportunity to point out that they brainwash these children from birth? Somehow, the Wimp manages to break out of this with no trouble. Him and only him. Again, we'll deal with this issue later. Let's just get back into this muck.

The OCoO have as their apparent goal the destruction of human thought. If you're "useless" (my words, not Rand's), you don't deserve to live. If you like science more than history, you're evil and deserve punishment. If you believe in a round Earth....wha?

Another passage from Anthem, about what these kids learn:

"We learned that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it, which causes the day and the night. We learned the names of all the winds, which blow over the seas and push the sails of our great ships. We learned how to bleed men to cure them of all ailments."

So, for some reason, they're Medival. I can understand abandoning lots of sciences in the case of an almost Earth-shattering nuclear war. But is there any practical reason to remove the fact that the Earth is round? It's not as if things were more peaceful with a flat Earth. I think that this is more of Rand insisting that all people who aren't on her side are completely illogical, but it just strikes me as Bad Writing on her part. Again.

You know, I'm 8 pages into this turkey and I'm already wondering if jumping off my roof will kill me. I think I have to end this now, before I really do.

Tomorrow, we shall continue the Tale of the Wimp, which includes such tremendous discoveries as sex drive. Assuming I can get as far as Section 2 before I have to stop again.

Let me just say that you could sum this whole entry up with the title: They Killed Mankind's Brain. Or, better yet, Ayn Rand Killed Mankind's Brain to Facilitate a Stupid Backstory.

...

...I will not speak ill of the dead, I will not speak ill of the dead, I will not speak ill of the dead...

Author Preview #1: Ayn Rand; or, Ayn Rand was Awful

2009-05-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

I'll come right out and say it right now: I hate Ayn Rand. Everything I've ever read by her serves as nothing more than an Author Tract about her theory, Objectivism. Her stories, almost undeniably, suffer for it. Somehow, though, she's become one of the most influential authors in America.

At least, that's what the Atlas Society believes. Me, I've read her stuff. Ayn Rand was a sociopath, among other things, which she considered a virtue based on what I know about Objectivism. Most sociopaths are viewed with fear and loathing when their views come to light. Rand is celebrated. Go figure.

I do not personally have a copy of Atlas Shrugged, the manifesto of Objectivism and often regarded (by fans) as Rand's best work. I do, in fact, specifically avoid the book, for two very important reasons. 1) It's long, boring, and full of Author Filibusters. 2) When you buy an enhanced edition (which, I am told, contain essays from Rand's supporters), it has more pages than the Bible. Did I mention it's astonishing length? No way am I going to read something that long. I have better things I could do with my time. Like strangle puppies, or start World War 3.

I do, however, have Anthem, which was forced on me in high school by my English teacher. It was written in 1938 by Rand, and concerns a dystopian society and a man fighting to escape from it. Sounds at least decent, no? The concept is. The execution...not so much.

Rand's dystopia, for one, is just goofy. Outside the mind of an Objectivist (which, as I indicated above, I do not see as entirely right), such a society could never, ever come to exist. I'll indicate why as I move through the novel.

In addition, the protagonist is unlikable to the extreme. He reads increasingly like a mad scientist, in a bad way. Him as a hero; in the insane context it makes sense, but in the logical world Rand supposedly wants, it just don't. The female lead is no better. She starts out as a strong, independent woman. She ends up as a slave to his will.

I want to burn this book. I cannot tell you how much I want to remove this book from existence. Still, it's against my policy, which is to to keep every book I have.

I'm starting to regret this policy.

Anyway, I'll start on the book now. If my sanity breaks from having to read this thing yet again, tell my non-existent wife I loved her.

Me; or, Why I'm Doing This

2009-05-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

I like books. That is all.

Seriously, though, I have a ton of them. And, like all major readers, I have lots of thoughts on what I read. This little blog thingy is my way of letting those thoughts out before they drive me nuts.

That's the skinny of it. Anyone reading this is going to be listening to me complain about the thousands of stories I have in my collection. I am going to be doing a section-by-section look at as much of my collection as I can before I die.

Seriously, this is going to be boring to all but my fellow nuts. You're on the internet; there's a hundred more interesting things to do.

I'm warning you now, things get honestly and truly dull from here on out.

...

If you're still reading this, welcome on board. Even if I don't have readers, I'll still be doing this. It's more of a vanity project than anything. Those of you who do come here, feel free to call me an idiot.

Well, I'll get started picking my first book. See you later, Ghost Readers.

P.S.: In case you're wondering about the weird title for my blog, it comes from one of my favorite quotes on the subject of books.

"Wear the old coat, and buy the new book." - Austin Phelps