Book review: Catacombs by John Farris
Nov. 8th, 2009 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficLadies and gentlemen, if this book had a penis, I would kick it. It lies. This book is not just deceptive, it outright lies.
A demon trapped in a red gem. Spooky, but it could be just a metaphor. Let's check the backcover.
The Evil Masters. Imprisoned in bloodstones, buried in the catacombs, hidden vaults deep in the volcanic bowels of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Now they are unearthed by archaeologists, freed to work their evil on an unsuspecting humankind.
Bullshit!
Their blood-curdling orgy of nightmare-horror spans continents, crosses oceans, and finally plunges straight into the blazing volcanic maw of Kilimanjaro itself!
THAT SHIT DOESN'T HAPPEN!
As I was reading it, I kept filing away these comments for my review. Like, "two hundred pages and no blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror." But I thought, okay, it's just the set-up. The blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror is coming. Then "four hundred pages and no blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror". I checked the last page. 520. So maybe the blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror is the climax. Dishonest, sure, but okay. Then I got to the end of the book.
No blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror. Not one. Therefore, Mr. Farris, you are a liar and a cheat and a bullshit artist and your book is bullshit! Fuck you! Fuck your mother fuck your agent fuck your publisher fuck your kids fuck your wife fuck your dog fuck your editor fuck your cancer which I hope you get!
You want me to tell you what it is about? Well, really, I have no fucking idea. I think it's part of a series, because it starts off with these archaeologists in trouble like they just escaped from some horrifying situation, but it's not the cryptic kind of mysterious, it's the 'you should know this already' kind of mysterious. Now look up. Did you see anything in the backcover description to make you think this was part of a series? No! They just sell it as a standalone so you buy it, then you realize it's a sequel and you have to give them more money to know what's going on. I hate when they do that! I'm looking at the book and there's no way to know what the prequel is or if there even is a prequel! I looked it up on Wikipedia and it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
But anyway, eventually we get the idea that something bad happened and one of the archaeologists betrayed the other and blah blah blah who gives a diarrhea? After, like, a hundred pages of filler we finally get to the plot. The catacombs hold the remains of an advanced civilization and their ancient technology, including a forcefield that can be used for missile defense. Naturally, both the Americans and the Ruskies want this, but the African dictator who has the technology will only sell it if one side gives him nukes so he can killinate the apartheid guys. Naturally, the Americans aren't fans of that and the Russians don't want to give him a nuke in case it's a hoax. So all sides, plus the apartheid guys, plus the Africans, are trying to find the catacombs.
What this means is that most of the book is the various villains competing against each other and none of them are really interesting enough for you to want to root for them, even in an antihero way. They're just sorta annoying filler.
Now, the book does have a hero, and that's Matthew Jade (really?). Jade (really?) is a retired secret agent who's beloved wife died and he also has learned mystical Native American rituals which let him levitate while he's meditating (Native Americans meditate?). I'll stop before my cliche-o-meter explodes.
Anyway, there's this prisoner in the US who knows where the catacombs are. She's this Patty Hearst type who blah blah, no one cares. She's just there so Jade (really?) has someone to condescend to, patronize, manipulate, and finally sleep with. So then they go to the catacombs... no, they don't! That could lead to a blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror, and there's none of that in this book! They spend most of the book learning to parachute. That's it. Just getting ready to go to the catacombs while all the villains are doing this Whacky Races thing. To be fair, there is this one part where the Commies show up to try to assassinate Jade.
And here's where I hated Jade, in fact, hated the entire insinuation that I was supposed to find him at all heroic or likable or sympathetic or human. There are three Russians. One of them Jade disables by using a fishing hook on his penis. Really. Really. REALLY. Was that at all necessary? You're the Zen master kung fu guy, you couldn't even up something better than that? Then he dresses up as a Scooby Doo villain and literally just walks up to the other two Russians. They shoot him, but for some reason they're using these gas pellets instead of bullets, so he just holds his breath. So Jade walks up to the two Russians, subdues them, THEN KILLS THEM IN COLD BLOOD! What the hell? They didn't even do anything! It's not like he's avenging his dead partner or something, they were just doing their jobs, same as him, and he killed them in cold blood! What an asshole! He makes some patter about "they would've killed me if they had half a chance." Yeah, and if they would've raped a dog, does that make it okay for you to rape a dog? What the hell, hero! Fuck you!
So they finally get to the catacombs and everyone runs around a bit and the big Russian villain eventually gets killed accidentally by the African comic relief (who of course speaks pidgin English) and then it turns out that using the forcefield causes the Earth to blow up, so the whole thing was entirely pointless. Oh, but Jade manages to forgive himself for the death of his wife and no longer harbors a death wish... BOOM! Oh no, my cliche-o-meter, it blew! How will I watch Merlin anymore?
But hey, maybe the prose is good? Shit plotting can be redeemed by dialogue and description sometimes, right Joss Whedon? No?
One of the heroines who I couldn't care about because she apparently left all of her characterization in the last book, which may or may not exist, runs into some poachers. Backstory: She's been injured and Pidgin English Dude was taking care of her, but ignoring her requests to get help for her friends who are back in a leper colony or some shit like that. So she summons up her willpower and runs away. Girlpower! Then she runs into some poachers and gets raped. Misogynypower!
Then her clothes disappeared in tatters, as if the men were two callous children plucking the wings off a fly. She lost, in moments, everything but her sturdy shoes. They were adept at rape, it was a professional collaboration
How does one become adept at rape? Do you gain levels in it? Do you evolve into Pyramidhead if you gain enough levels?
She didn't have to look at Lex, whose scabrous face was only a foot or so from hers, or Timothy, who stood staring vacantly over Lex's shoulder as he wrestled his unwieldy peggo out of his pants.
Peggo? Jesus Christ, is she being raped by a clown?
Naturally, Pidgin English Dude shows up to save her. Although if that's the point, I don't know why he can't save her before her rape, rather than during it, other than to just be squicky.
Erika realized that he could only be another hallucination, this avenging angel; yet he seemed more real than the cutthroat now rompering her, laboring with a monotonous broadside of balls against her exposed nates to achieve his mean little spasm.
Rompering? Nates? Is this rape attempt being brought to us by Dr. Suess?
I will not fuck you on a boat.
I will not fuck you with a goat.
I will not fuck you, Mr. Moe.
I will not fuck you, no means no!
Oliver snatched Lex up by the back of his shirt. Lex dangled a few inches above the ground, his penis, like a plucked chicken's neck, at a twitching right angle to the rest of him.
Plucked chicken neck?
Erika runs for it, naked, and gets attacked by a rhino, drawn to her "gleaming pale backside."
The best it could manage, as she plunged into barbed brush, was a blunt toss of its hornless head that caught her in the buttocks and hurled her against a tree.
Just a thought: If your rape scene includes a rhinoceros, you might wanna just call the whole thing off.
Lem Meztizo the Third was a mixed breed of cow-puncher what are these words doing in the same sentence? and, apparently, Matthew Jade's only confidant. In contrast to the other two hands who worked the Warshield's five thousand acres oh, right, Jade is also a cowboy. and were typical of their kind--the squint watery gaze, is that even English? the scuffed-to-the-bone look--Lem Meztizo had a certain brilliance, the style of an eccentric grandee I think that means he's a drag queen. He was big enough to match the wild elegance of his Arabian gelding. He's as "big" as a gelding? Ouch. His teeth were lined with gold and he had long peroxided hair, gathered into a ponytail by a mummified tarantula partly entombed in precious stones. Seriously? Though he carried a paunch he was not a soft-looking man, and he was light on his feet as a roller-skating bear.
How the fuck can I mock that? He was light on his feet as a roller-skating bear? Were people just retarded in the 80s? Did a lot of people read "light on his feet as a roller-skating bear" and nod, like "that is pretty agile." What the fuck? Did they not have editors in the 80s? Am I high? Did someone slip me a mickey? Do I even exist?
So Jade tricks the chick (fuck it, if the author can't give her more of a personality than that, I don't see why I have to) into jumping out the plane (she has a phobia) by pretending to beat Lem. So, paratrooper training works on the same basic principle as getting your kids to eat broccoli. She nearly dies, but no big deal.
She hid a smile from Jade, the smile of a woman after her first great orgasm, achieved with the one lover in her life she will remember before all others.
Dear John Farris,
She was faking.
Seriously yours,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seriousfic.
She wondered what it would be like to put her head in his lap and go to sleep. The desire for sex with him was the same as the desire to be punished, she knew that. Odd how she could be thrilled and scared pea green at the same time. She wanted to touch him, to somehow let him know how confused she was. But she couldn't.
She was half-dreaming, her mind on her father, wondering what he would have thought of Matthew Jade. They had much in common. Her father was bright but eccentric, indomitable, a loner, stubborn, secretive. She'd rebelled against him often, and loved him without reservation. There was one critical difference. Macdonald Hardie had had a genuine reverence for human life. He could never have killed anyone in cold blood.
Then they get captured by Africans and handcuffed together so they can only drink by licking the water off each other when they're hosed off. A touching reconciliation!
The diamonds are in the Catacombs? I really did us in, didn't I?"
"Why tell me now?"
"Because I wanted--WANT to make love to you, and I couldn't, CAN'T, want a man I'm not totally honest with. Does that make sense?"
"Yes." He studied her for a long time and didn't say or do much, just linked a little finger with hers and held on tightly. "We could probably work something out even handcuffed like this. But to tell the truth, Raun, I've had a hard day and I'm not up to it."
Man, what woman wouldn't want a sensitive romantic like that? He's almost Byronesque. But don't worry, Lem is coming to save them, thanks to his PSYCHIC LINK WITH JADE.
The curious buzzing sensation he got at the top of his spine, around the occipital bulge, when Matt Jade was desperate and trying to hone in on him, had faded early that morning.
I'm glad he told us which bulge it was by. That lends the verisimilitude to really make this plausible.
Raun and Jade escape (still not Star Wars characters) and spend a lot of pages buck naked. All I want is a pair of pants. A SIMPLE PAIR OF PANTS!
"No scars?"
Mind over matter, Matthew Jade said.
"It started a long time ago. I found out I could wish away warts, stop nosebleeds, control pain by concentrating on it. I healed a broken ankle in two weeks, and the sucker was in pieces. I scared hell out of both of my parents by going into a deep trance at a Hopi mystery play. John Tovokinpi of the Black Wolf Society recognized that I had a talent, and assigned himself as my guardian and mentor He took me to his van and there was lots of candy in it! to instruct me in the wisdom of the powaqa--the Hopi sorcerers. Their big advice? Never trust a white guy who wants to give you a blanket. I was also nuts about Harry Houdini when I was a kid. I set out to duplicate as many of his feats as I could."
Gah, if this guy were anymore messianic, he'd be elected President (although he does know the President. He calls him Boomer).
"You're not dying, Erika!" Belov shouted. "And we'll get out of here. Just walk!"
She shook her head sadly. Belov saw that she could absorb no more of this particular ordeal, and he wondered what hell she'd been through in the past month or so.
He twisted her arm painfully, but there was no response. He held her head up then, and made her look at him. Then he kissed her swollen lips.
Where force had failed, tenderness took effect. Something stirred in her eyes, a flicker of acknowledgment of the need to survive. Erika touched his own lips with her fingertips.
Yes.
Got a woman suffering from post-traumatic shock brought on by monstrous evil and rape? Just kiss it out of her!
A demon trapped in a red gem. Spooky, but it could be just a metaphor. Let's check the backcover.
The Evil Masters. Imprisoned in bloodstones, buried in the catacombs, hidden vaults deep in the volcanic bowels of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Now they are unearthed by archaeologists, freed to work their evil on an unsuspecting humankind.
Bullshit!
Their blood-curdling orgy of nightmare-horror spans continents, crosses oceans, and finally plunges straight into the blazing volcanic maw of Kilimanjaro itself!
THAT SHIT DOESN'T HAPPEN!
As I was reading it, I kept filing away these comments for my review. Like, "two hundred pages and no blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror." But I thought, okay, it's just the set-up. The blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror is coming. Then "four hundred pages and no blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror". I checked the last page. 520. So maybe the blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror is the climax. Dishonest, sure, but okay. Then I got to the end of the book.
No blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror. Not one. Therefore, Mr. Farris, you are a liar and a cheat and a bullshit artist and your book is bullshit! Fuck you! Fuck your mother fuck your agent fuck your publisher fuck your kids fuck your wife fuck your dog fuck your editor fuck your cancer which I hope you get!
You want me to tell you what it is about? Well, really, I have no fucking idea. I think it's part of a series, because it starts off with these archaeologists in trouble like they just escaped from some horrifying situation, but it's not the cryptic kind of mysterious, it's the 'you should know this already' kind of mysterious. Now look up. Did you see anything in the backcover description to make you think this was part of a series? No! They just sell it as a standalone so you buy it, then you realize it's a sequel and you have to give them more money to know what's going on. I hate when they do that! I'm looking at the book and there's no way to know what the prequel is or if there even is a prequel! I looked it up on Wikipedia and it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.
But anyway, eventually we get the idea that something bad happened and one of the archaeologists betrayed the other and blah blah blah who gives a diarrhea? After, like, a hundred pages of filler we finally get to the plot. The catacombs hold the remains of an advanced civilization and their ancient technology, including a forcefield that can be used for missile defense. Naturally, both the Americans and the Ruskies want this, but the African dictator who has the technology will only sell it if one side gives him nukes so he can killinate the apartheid guys. Naturally, the Americans aren't fans of that and the Russians don't want to give him a nuke in case it's a hoax. So all sides, plus the apartheid guys, plus the Africans, are trying to find the catacombs.
What this means is that most of the book is the various villains competing against each other and none of them are really interesting enough for you to want to root for them, even in an antihero way. They're just sorta annoying filler.
Now, the book does have a hero, and that's Matthew Jade (really?). Jade (really?) is a retired secret agent who's beloved wife died and he also has learned mystical Native American rituals which let him levitate while he's meditating (Native Americans meditate?). I'll stop before my cliche-o-meter explodes.
Anyway, there's this prisoner in the US who knows where the catacombs are. She's this Patty Hearst type who blah blah, no one cares. She's just there so Jade (really?) has someone to condescend to, patronize, manipulate, and finally sleep with. So then they go to the catacombs... no, they don't! That could lead to a blood-curdling orgy of nightmare horror, and there's none of that in this book! They spend most of the book learning to parachute. That's it. Just getting ready to go to the catacombs while all the villains are doing this Whacky Races thing. To be fair, there is this one part where the Commies show up to try to assassinate Jade.
And here's where I hated Jade, in fact, hated the entire insinuation that I was supposed to find him at all heroic or likable or sympathetic or human. There are three Russians. One of them Jade disables by using a fishing hook on his penis. Really. Really. REALLY. Was that at all necessary? You're the Zen master kung fu guy, you couldn't even up something better than that? Then he dresses up as a Scooby Doo villain and literally just walks up to the other two Russians. They shoot him, but for some reason they're using these gas pellets instead of bullets, so he just holds his breath. So Jade walks up to the two Russians, subdues them, THEN KILLS THEM IN COLD BLOOD! What the hell? They didn't even do anything! It's not like he's avenging his dead partner or something, they were just doing their jobs, same as him, and he killed them in cold blood! What an asshole! He makes some patter about "they would've killed me if they had half a chance." Yeah, and if they would've raped a dog, does that make it okay for you to rape a dog? What the hell, hero! Fuck you!
So they finally get to the catacombs and everyone runs around a bit and the big Russian villain eventually gets killed accidentally by the African comic relief (who of course speaks pidgin English) and then it turns out that using the forcefield causes the Earth to blow up, so the whole thing was entirely pointless. Oh, but Jade manages to forgive himself for the death of his wife and no longer harbors a death wish... BOOM! Oh no, my cliche-o-meter, it blew! How will I watch Merlin anymore?
But hey, maybe the prose is good? Shit plotting can be redeemed by dialogue and description sometimes, right Joss Whedon? No?
One of the heroines who I couldn't care about because she apparently left all of her characterization in the last book, which may or may not exist, runs into some poachers. Backstory: She's been injured and Pidgin English Dude was taking care of her, but ignoring her requests to get help for her friends who are back in a leper colony or some shit like that. So she summons up her willpower and runs away. Girlpower! Then she runs into some poachers and gets raped. Misogynypower!
Then her clothes disappeared in tatters, as if the men were two callous children plucking the wings off a fly. She lost, in moments, everything but her sturdy shoes. They were adept at rape, it was a professional collaboration
How does one become adept at rape? Do you gain levels in it? Do you evolve into Pyramidhead if you gain enough levels?
She didn't have to look at Lex, whose scabrous face was only a foot or so from hers, or Timothy, who stood staring vacantly over Lex's shoulder as he wrestled his unwieldy peggo out of his pants.
Peggo? Jesus Christ, is she being raped by a clown?
Naturally, Pidgin English Dude shows up to save her. Although if that's the point, I don't know why he can't save her before her rape, rather than during it, other than to just be squicky.
Erika realized that he could only be another hallucination, this avenging angel; yet he seemed more real than the cutthroat now rompering her, laboring with a monotonous broadside of balls against her exposed nates to achieve his mean little spasm.
Rompering? Nates? Is this rape attempt being brought to us by Dr. Suess?
I will not fuck you on a boat.
I will not fuck you with a goat.
I will not fuck you, Mr. Moe.
I will not fuck you, no means no!
Oliver snatched Lex up by the back of his shirt. Lex dangled a few inches above the ground, his penis, like a plucked chicken's neck, at a twitching right angle to the rest of him.
Plucked chicken neck?
Erika runs for it, naked, and gets attacked by a rhino, drawn to her "gleaming pale backside."
The best it could manage, as she plunged into barbed brush, was a blunt toss of its hornless head that caught her in the buttocks and hurled her against a tree.
Just a thought: If your rape scene includes a rhinoceros, you might wanna just call the whole thing off.
Lem Meztizo the Third was a mixed breed of cow-puncher what are these words doing in the same sentence? and, apparently, Matthew Jade's only confidant. In contrast to the other two hands who worked the Warshield's five thousand acres oh, right, Jade is also a cowboy. and were typical of their kind--the squint watery gaze, is that even English? the scuffed-to-the-bone look--Lem Meztizo had a certain brilliance, the style of an eccentric grandee I think that means he's a drag queen. He was big enough to match the wild elegance of his Arabian gelding. He's as "big" as a gelding? Ouch. His teeth were lined with gold and he had long peroxided hair, gathered into a ponytail by a mummified tarantula partly entombed in precious stones. Seriously? Though he carried a paunch he was not a soft-looking man, and he was light on his feet as a roller-skating bear.
How the fuck can I mock that? He was light on his feet as a roller-skating bear? Were people just retarded in the 80s? Did a lot of people read "light on his feet as a roller-skating bear" and nod, like "that is pretty agile." What the fuck? Did they not have editors in the 80s? Am I high? Did someone slip me a mickey? Do I even exist?
So Jade tricks the chick (fuck it, if the author can't give her more of a personality than that, I don't see why I have to) into jumping out the plane (she has a phobia) by pretending to beat Lem. So, paratrooper training works on the same basic principle as getting your kids to eat broccoli. She nearly dies, but no big deal.
She hid a smile from Jade, the smile of a woman after her first great orgasm, achieved with the one lover in her life she will remember before all others.
Dear John Farris,
She was faking.
Seriously yours,
seriousfic.She wondered what it would be like to put her head in his lap and go to sleep. The desire for sex with him was the same as the desire to be punished, she knew that. Odd how she could be thrilled and scared pea green at the same time. She wanted to touch him, to somehow let him know how confused she was. But she couldn't.
She was half-dreaming, her mind on her father, wondering what he would have thought of Matthew Jade. They had much in common. Her father was bright but eccentric, indomitable, a loner, stubborn, secretive. She'd rebelled against him often, and loved him without reservation. There was one critical difference. Macdonald Hardie had had a genuine reverence for human life. He could never have killed anyone in cold blood.
Then they get captured by Africans and handcuffed together so they can only drink by licking the water off each other when they're hosed off. A touching reconciliation!
The diamonds are in the Catacombs? I really did us in, didn't I?"
"Why tell me now?"
"Because I wanted--WANT to make love to you, and I couldn't, CAN'T, want a man I'm not totally honest with. Does that make sense?"
"Yes." He studied her for a long time and didn't say or do much, just linked a little finger with hers and held on tightly. "We could probably work something out even handcuffed like this. But to tell the truth, Raun, I've had a hard day and I'm not up to it."
Man, what woman wouldn't want a sensitive romantic like that? He's almost Byronesque. But don't worry, Lem is coming to save them, thanks to his PSYCHIC LINK WITH JADE.
The curious buzzing sensation he got at the top of his spine, around the occipital bulge, when Matt Jade was desperate and trying to hone in on him, had faded early that morning.
I'm glad he told us which bulge it was by. That lends the verisimilitude to really make this plausible.
Raun and Jade escape (still not Star Wars characters) and spend a lot of pages buck naked. All I want is a pair of pants. A SIMPLE PAIR OF PANTS!
"No scars?"
Mind over matter, Matthew Jade said.
"It started a long time ago. I found out I could wish away warts, stop nosebleeds, control pain by concentrating on it. I healed a broken ankle in two weeks, and the sucker was in pieces. I scared hell out of both of my parents by going into a deep trance at a Hopi mystery play. John Tovokinpi of the Black Wolf Society recognized that I had a talent, and assigned himself as my guardian and mentor He took me to his van and there was lots of candy in it! to instruct me in the wisdom of the powaqa--the Hopi sorcerers. Their big advice? Never trust a white guy who wants to give you a blanket. I was also nuts about Harry Houdini when I was a kid. I set out to duplicate as many of his feats as I could."
Gah, if this guy were anymore messianic, he'd be elected President (although he does know the President. He calls him Boomer).
"You're not dying, Erika!" Belov shouted. "And we'll get out of here. Just walk!"
She shook her head sadly. Belov saw that she could absorb no more of this particular ordeal, and he wondered what hell she'd been through in the past month or so.
He twisted her arm painfully, but there was no response. He held her head up then, and made her look at him. Then he kissed her swollen lips.
Where force had failed, tenderness took effect. Something stirred in her eyes, a flicker of acknowledgment of the need to survive. Erika touched his own lips with her fingertips.
Yes.
Got a woman suffering from post-traumatic shock brought on by monstrous evil and rape? Just kiss it out of her!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-08 07:22 pm (UTC)a RHINO?! Really now, that's just points for creativity! Ayn Rand would be so proud!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-08 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-08 08:34 pm (UTC)On the bright side, I feel a lot better about my NaNo novel all of a sudden.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-08 10:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-09 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 12:42 pm (UTC)"She wondered what it would be like to put her head in his lap and go to sleep. The desire for sex with him was the same as the desire to be punished, she knew that. Odd how she could be thrilled and scared pea green at the same time. She wanted to touch him, to somehow let him know how confused she was. But she couldn't.
She was half-dreaming, her mind on her father, wondering what he would have thought of Matthew Jade. They had much in common. Her father was bright but eccentric, indomitable, a loner, stubborn, secretive. She'd rebelled against him often, and loved him without reservation. There was one critical difference. Macdonald Hardie had had a genuine reverence for human life. He could never have killed anyone in cold blood."
I myself would like to know what the hell she was doing thinking of her father at a time like that.
...
..
Incest much??
no subject
Date: 2010-01-28 12:44 pm (UTC)wtf?!
Her dads name is Macdonald hardie</>
Why does she want a guy that resembles her dad?