Barbarian snark DOOMSDAY WARRIOR: American Glory!

[Horselover Fat]

Yaaay!

What does it say before "for freedom is the... Doomsday Warrior"?

The antidote?

The president of douchebags?

I'm going to go with something like "the last chance" or "the last hope"

[Antonius Pius]

Oooooh, The American Doomsday Warrior returns!

Looks like same cover artist as the last book, given Rock's continued resemblance to Emilio Estevez.

I think he just took the Kickboxer* cover and put in Estevez' head and a somwhat puny machine gun.

The chick is probably Rona, as the hair is definitely not blonde, but she seems to have lost even more clothing, and from that anatomically-unlikely squat, is either taking yoga or a dump. Impeccable makeup though.

Her white Eva Braun lookalike nipples are still hidden though. (Just thought I'd bring up some of Stacy's golden moments.)

*Classic movie starring Jean-Claude van Damme

[MinDonner]

AFTER NUCLEAR WAR, AMERICA'S ONLY CHANCE FOR FREEDOM IS THE...

DOOMSDAY WARRIOR

...but before I begin, let's recap, as it's been quite a while since we finished the last book. Rock n co were last seen exiting Washington DC, having rescued Kim and Langford and blown up the Russian military HQ with the aid of the Racist Stereotypes. Langford, however, had his mind wiped and is now a vegetable. The Aussies headed off with their camels in the direction of ??? to do ????? and have likely departed the plot as thoroughly as the Nazis. Meanwhile, Zhabnov and Killov are zzzzzzzzzzz... doing some fucking thing, I don't even care. Zhabnov escaped or something? And now Killov is in charge? Whatever.

So then.Chapter One opens with an excruciatingly clunky piece of scene-setting, made all the worse by the fact that Stacy clearly thinks he's being poetically sinister. Check out this purple prose of dreadfulness:

Picture a paradise. Picture a field filled with flowers of every hue, stretching off to all the horizons waving, dancing in the wind like beckoning fingers of purest utopia. Picture petals on these rainbow flowers as soft as silk...

...this goes on for like a PAGE, with our dear narrator exhorting us over and over to picture delicious and juicy fruits, and beautiful hummingbirds and parrots and owls(?!) flitting through the branches. PICTURE THEM DAMNIT! PICTURE THEM ALL! But we pretty much know what's coming next anyway. Having pictured all this shit, we are urged to look closer! Peer beneath the globes of sweet fruit like a woman's hot breasts! And surprise! It's all the usual Deadly Yet Biologically Nonsensical Mutant stuff after all:

See the hooked rows of daggers hidden in the hummingbird's throat, the digestive juices of steaming acid that line the bowels of the daisies nodding happily in the noonday sun. The thorns of the rose bush as sharp as razors and dripping with a poison that could take out the nervous system of an elephant like an ICBM missile shot straight from the underworld. Picture a paradise that is a living hell.

I don't even... so much fail and we're only halfway down page two... there's barely two words together that make any kind of sense. Daisies? With bowels? Which are full of digestive juices?? An ICBM missile??? I may need to switch off my PC computer and lie down for a bit.

[Datepalm]

That is fucking brilliant, yo. Does he really describe something as "like a woman's hot breasts"? Because I was thinking vagina-dentata imagery even without that. The landscape looks to be lush and beautiful and rapeable, but instead it's all secretly nasty and out to get you!

ETA - OTOH, lets recall the last book I read. I think everything is yonic imagery now.

[lacuna]

I was almost expecting a page of pretty-pretty scenery, followed by "NOW PICTURE THE EXACT OPPOSITE!" and then on with the, ahem, story.

[MinDonner]

I was almost expecting a page of pretty-pretty scenery, followed by "NOW PICTURE THE EXACT OPPOSITE!" and then on with the, ahem, story.

That's true, he does use that technique also sometimes, though usually it's more along the lines of misty-eyed rose-tinted Americana of Times Gone By, rather than technicolour owls* and boob-fruit and whatnot.

Anyway, in case you were thinking that this was a mere rhetoric device, to set the tone for the deceptive but treacherous beauty of Future America, as the laboured "Picture this..." device would suggest... the very next words are Kim saying "Oh, look, Rock, how beautiful!". Yep, he was describing an actual field that our heroes are just about to enter, because Dumb Chicks like Pwitty Flowers.

"Nice. Maybe too nice," thinks Rock, because he is Man and Knows Best. But Stacy also tries to give him some Sensible Reasoning for his distrust of the beautiful... flowery place, and this is where things get weird.

First off, it's described as "a field filled with trees and flowers and fruits". A field filled with trees is surely a... wood? Or an orchard, at best? Kim says she is fed up with walking across all this sand, with nothing to see but lizards and cacti, so presumably they're in a desert. But Rock doesn't want to "face an armada of attack choppers without an inch of cover for a hundred miles". Apart from... all those trees he wants to avoid, after several days in open desert? I can only conclude from this that they are all somehow burrowing through the sand like mole-rats. It's the only thing that makes any kind of sense.

Anyway, we learn that it is but two weeks since the events of the last book, and they are still trekking homewards. Rock is not afraid for his own life, of course, but he must protect the President at all costs! But Kim's face lights up with a childlike delight because PRETTY THINGS so Rock, the old softy, lets her go into the meadow.

The closer she got, the less Kim could believe her eyes. It wasn't just a field - it was - it was - like the Bible. The word snapped into her head. The Bible - like Adam and Eve. Fruits, dripping with a sappy dew, hung everywhere ready to burst their luscious innards out onto the world.

Nom!

Kim's horse playfully throws her into a cushiony bunch of lilacs "like a bed of the softest fingers on earth" :ack: - I don't care how soft those damn fingers are, I don't want a BED made out of them! Stacy is still laying on the overwrought descriptions of how beautiful and fragrant everything is, and slips in a somewhat nauseating bit of Rock'n'Kim romance at the same time - they gaze deeply into each others' eyes, "their souls flying back and forth like silver fog"(?) - and he's just about to do her right there on the violets, till he remembers that her dad is just a short way behind and it wouldn't be seemly.

Rock sighed and pulled himself away from Kim, with a deep sadness passing across his eyes like green strontium clouds flying high across the face of the moon.

Detroit starts honestly dancing among the dandelion puffs. And all the other Freefighters run around and take their boots off to let the "velvet tongues of vegetation" caress their feet. Good god. Can the hummingbirds start eating people already? Cos I'm feeling strangely queasy.

Balboni was the first to scream.

Oh thank fuck for that.

*what is it with the owls?? When I was editing the title, I noticed in the first post there was another Nature Scene, again featuring owls and hummingbirds. I always thought the postapocalyptic future would be all about the rats and cockroaches, or even just crows and pigeons if we're talking bird life, but looks like owls and hummingbirds are tougher than we thought. Or perhaps these are the only birds that Stacy knows the name of.

[Datepalm]

Oh, ew. That is a remarkably gross description of a goddamned field (er, forest. desert. thing. )

[MinDonner]

Funnily enough, that would be quite a cool technique for a better writer to use. Scratch that abysmal "picture this..." passage, and instead try to describe this beautiful field using the occasional odd, visceral, animal imagery, just so the reader feels slightly uncomfortable but isn't quite sure why, before rolling out the Surprise Deadliness... it might actually work. But here it's pretty clear that Stacy is genuinely trying to make it sound lovely, despite having spoilered us a page or two earlier. :dunno:

[Vampire Squid]

But here it's pretty clear that Stacy is genuinely trying to make it sound lovely, despite having spoilered us a page or two earlier. :dunno:

You wouldn't think that would be surprising after so many of his books, would you?

[MinDonner]

Their faces seemed to uncoil like a steel spring that has been wound up so tightly that the very fibers of its metal being seem ready to pop.

Oh wait! That's neither the owls showing their true colours, nor the terrible torture-by-petals of our Freefighting crew. That's from a few paragraphs up, describing the men starting to relax in the lovely field of loveliness. Aaaahhh.

So then, what has happened to Balboni? (Don't ask me who Balboni is. It doesn't matter. He won't be around long).

He had bent down to inhale the sweet aroma of an immense pink-petaled plant with dayglow green dots covering it like a chlorophyll leopard. He had pushed his face right up into the soft petals, had rubbed his cheeks against the smoothest thing he had ever felt.

Tsk, men, eh? Can't take them anywhere, they always just want to look at the scenery and sniff the pretty flowers.

Suddenly petals were closing around him, engulfing his head. Their softness turned hard as tiny spikes eased out of the petals, grabbing hold of his skull and undulating as they began pulling his entire body slowly, inexorably into the caustic digestive acids of the flesh-eating stomach hidden in its roots below the ground.

On cue, the rest of the flowers and birds all turn EVIL at the same time. Vines curl around the horses' legs, owls divebomb with their beaks full of razor-sharp teeth, and... get this... "every piece of dripping fruit was lunging madly at the humans". No, I can't find it in me to be scared of Attack by Fruit.

Rock shoots at a vine which was trying to grab his leg, then shouts "Use your weapons!" at all the other Freefighters, who presumably hadn't thought of this yet. Adversaries include "twisting bouquets of roses" (with poisonous thorns) and "patches of carnivorous sunflowers" which are soon reduced to a greenish brown slime by the various weaponry. Finally he manages to free Balboni from the plant which was eating his head, but it's too late - the unfortunate chap manages to croak out "Ro-o-ock... it got me... the fucker got me" before expiring.

But there wasn't time for deep meditations - not when the landscape was trying to eat his entire force, including the president of the United States.

Suddenly Rock remembers an old video he'd seen about mine-clearing, which technique basically involves blowing shit up ahead of them to clear a path. Grenades (Detroit), phosphorus arrows (Archer) and exploding starknives (Chen) ahoy! Bang, boom, a tree tries to grab them but gets BLOWN THE FUCK UP, some scuttling spider-plants are shredded by starknives, a murder of murderous crows are de-feathered, and Old Man Willow is dealt with by a KUNG FU KICK. Spiked groundhogs and giant hyacinths make one last attempt, but at last they are all clear. Phew!

"You were right, I was wrong" says Kim, with tears in her eyes. And with that salutory lesson delivered (Rock is Always Right!), they say a quick prayer for poor Balboni (we hardly knew ye!) and move on.

But what's this? NOW the narrative tells us that, in order to avoid the deathfield, they will have to go a hundred miles out of their way to circumnavigate? The fuck? At every point previously, it was a charming diversion that silly Kim wanted to pop into to pick some fruit and smell some flowers, even as recently as the previous paragraph. So really, the ONLY point of that was to make the Chick look like a Sentimental Dumbass. I shouldn't really be surprised at this stage, but damn.

And now, of course, the chapter ends with one of those passages I have missed so much - the beautiful Circle of Life as Balboni's corpse is feasted on by the local wildlife. In this case, still the plants, which drain out his blood through leaves which shoot up "like spikes protruding from an iron maiden".

[Datepalm]

I would be more serious about gardening if I could have carnivorous sunflowers.

Also, I think I totally wasn't imagining the evil vagina thing here, what with the soft flower that grows teeth and eats a guy.

[Maithanet]

Balboni was the first to scream.

Does the reader count?

He had bent down to inhale the sweet aroma of an immense pink-petaled plant with dayglow green dots covering it like a chlorophyll leopard. He had pushed his face right up into the soft petals, had rubbed his cheeks against the smoothest thing he had ever felt.

Suddenly petals were closing around him, engulfing his head. Their softness turned hard as tiny spikes eased out of the petals, grabbing hold of his skull and undulating as they began pulling his entire body slowly, inexorably into the caustic digestive acids of the flesh-eating stomach hidden in its roots below the ground.

How big is this flower? What sort of prey has it evolved to eat? Does it mostly consist of a diet of hummingbirds and owls? If so, I am surprised the ecosystem can support such a large and immobile predator.

This reminds me of talking about Venus Flytraps in science class in 7th grade.

Q: Can a Venus Flytrap eat a person? [No, they aren't nearly big enough]

Q: Can a Venus Flytrap eat your finger? [No, the acids they use would take weeks to break down your finger]

Q: What if you left your finger in a Venus Flytrap for weeks? [Why would anyone do that?]

Q: No, but what if they did? [*Sigh* I suppose then it would indeed be eating your finger]

[Sophelia]

Aaaah, so happy to find this thread back again. Much prefer 'trying to be creepy and scary but ending up hilarious' to 'trying to be hilarious but ending up creepy and scary' (yes, I read datepalm's thread but think she got the short straw, and couldn't bring myself to comment on what was too disturbing for words).

Just have to requote some of the deliciously awful sentences Min has found, my favourites being:

"dancing in the wind like beckoning fingers of purest utopia" (concrete-simile-peters-off-into-abstractness fail)

"The thorns of the rose bush as sharp as razors and dripping with a poison that could take out the nervous system of an elephant like an ICBM missile shot straight from the underworld." (mixed-WTF-metaphor fail*)

"a deep sadness passing across his eyes like green strontium clouds flying high across the face of the moon" (facial-emotion-identification fail)

*My main question is how an intercontinental ballistic missile could have the surgical skill required to carefully extract only the neuronal network of the elephant, leaving the rest of the animal (by implication) intact. :o

These quotations, on the other hand, are spot on:

It's all the usual Deadly Yet Biologically Nonsensical Mutant stuff after all:

...

Daisies? With bowels? Which are full of digestive juices??

:rofl:

I can only conclude from this that they are all somehow burrowing through the sand like mole-rats. It's the only thing that makes any kind of sense.

Quite!

But what's this? NOW the narrative tells us that, in order to avoid the deathfield, they will have to go a hundred miles out of their way to circumnavigate? The fuck? At every point previously, it was a charming diversion that silly Kim wanted to pop into to pick some fruit and smell some flowers, even as recently as the previous paragraph. So really, the ONLY point of that was to make the Chick look like a Sentimental Dumbass. I shouldn't really be surprised at this stage, but damn.

Damn indeed. I can't believe how the continuity is out even from one paragraph to another! Amazing.

*waits eagerly for more*

[Antonius Pius]

Well, it's Stacy. He doesn't do logic, he does faux-scary and less-than-intimidating, with a hint of insanity and a strong scent of misoginy.

Glad Rock's back in action.

[MinDonner]

Chapter Two, and our intrepid band finally reach the sekrit entrance to Century City. "Didn't know where the hell you'd gone off to this time," says one of the guards to Rock, whose urgent and weeks-long mission to rescue the President appears to have concerned no-one; they all act like he's just gotten back from vacation or something.

Brief reminder that CC is still under repair after the nuking, which is quite a surprising bit of continuity from the authors:

The neutron bomb dropped by Colonel Killov's Air Force had nearly decimated the subterranean world, destroying almost a third of its facilities.

:devil:

The next batch of guards react in much the same way, welcoming home their errant military commander as if nothing particular had happened, and they also completely fail to recognise President Langford - Stacy can't even get his minor characters to pay attention to those unconvincing speeches about how important this Prez is. Possibly realising this, he has another go right now - Rock muses on how Langford has spent years trekking back and forth across America, trying to revive Democracy, and had apparently become "the most well-known man" among all non-enslaved Americans, which is just so convincing when no-one ever actually recognises the guy.

The only purpose I can envisage for all of this is to make Rock seem all humble and Freedomtastic - he's doing all this for AMERICA, not for personal power, even though it will undoubtedly be forced upon him against his will at some point. And strangely enough... this actually makes him a better character than Richard Rahl.

Anyway, Rock's rise to the presidency can't be far off, on account of Langford's mind being wiped; all the guards comment on how rough and vacant the guy looks, and Rock can't help but agree. Maybe (I wonder), can Super Scientist Shecter quickly invent some kind of Mind Restoring Device to stretch out Langford's career a tad longer? Or...

Rock couldn't bear to look the man right in the eyes, to see the signs of defeat, of old age, creeping in. It wasn't his fault. How much can a man take? How much pressure can his heart, his veins stand? How many thoughts and fears and paranoias and crushed dreams can his brain withstand before it crumbles like a wall beneath the grinding tides of life?

Or, Stacy can just completely retcon the mind-wiping out of existence. Defeat? Old age? Crushed dreams?? Langford's debilitating Mindbreaker injury now appears to have been downgraded to "being a bit tired and disheartened".

[Lummel]

Meh. Well you know what it is like with presidents in your post apocalyptic future, easy come, easy go.

The main question is are we going to have any more mutant engineers in this story?

[MinDonner]

*has a quick skim forwards*

No sign of mutant engineers. But we do have the further adventures of the Pony Express, this time in the form of Eisenhower the Horse, plus a Kim/Rona showdown AND a brand new set of racial stereotypes!

[Antonius Pius]

*has a quick skim forwards*

No sign of mutant engineers. But we do have the further adventures of the Pony Express, this time in the form of Eisenhower the Horse, plus a Kim/Rona showdown AND a brand new set of racial stereotypes!

Wow, Stacy doesn't pull any punches for this one, does he? I'm sure he'll make the Kim/Rona showdown suitably misogynistic.

[Maithanet]

Kim/Rona showdown

Holy lutefisk!

I'll admit, I was sort of looking forward to some sort of Kim/Rona confrontation. I wonder which porn movie cliche he will use to get them into bed?

The Robert Jordan? (we both love him so much, it would be wrong take that that away!)

Perhaps their fighting gives Rock an unquenchable thickening?

Or maybe Kim is just a big Eva Braun fan too?

[Maltaran]

The neutron bomb dropped by Colonel Killov's Air Force had nearly decimated the subterranean world, destroying almost a third of its facilities.

So it destroyed almost a third and nearly a tenth at the same time? Is there some kind of quantum superposition of states going on here?