Robert Stanek novels

[David Selig]

Few more quotes from this masterpiece:

"—it is urgent Your Majesty," Captain Brodst said, "a messenger has arrived this hour from the South."

King Andrew furrowed his brow. "I gather the news is more than urgent?"

Father Jacob wore a solemn, thoughtful expression on an otherwise expressionless face.

His skin was the color of rough leather; the face deep set with wrinkles that covered its entirety was the best indicator of his great age; hair long and black with whispers of gray neither accented nor subtracted from his appearance of age and wisdom. Vilmos stared into eyes as silver as the moonlight, and found the man had a special energy about him. It seemed like an inner flow of light and it intrigued Vilmos, and perhaps beguiled him.

She began to scream. Frantically she kicked her mount and pulled on the reins sharply. Her shrill scream cut short by a rationalization that came too late.

The horse beneath her, confused by the mixture of opposing signs given it, reared upward. To regain a tight grip on the reins, Adrina twisted the leathers in her hands. This again sent misleading signals to the confounded and uneasy animal beneath her. It reared again.

A second pull on the reins caused the mare to shift sideways as it landed. The steed stumbled, and then faltered as it lost its balance on the uneven roadside. Adrina's tumultuous, wanton eyes spun around as horse and rider tumbled.

No longer a participant, Adrina became an observer. The torchlight seemed to dance around in circles before her as she felt herself falling to the ground. Her head was still spinning and her thoughts yet dazed as she landed with a splash into the murky waters and mud of the mire.

In a blur of frenzied thought, she felt herself sinking downward. A split second passed and she relived the fall into the water, eyes wide, cheeks puffed gasping at air, hands flailing, the light of the torch spinning wildly before her and then dying the instant it hit the dark waters with a sizzle.

A scramble to free feet from stirrups ended as she felt the movement of her body come to a sudden stop. Had she hit bottom? Was this it?

She held all the time in the world in the palm of her hands and she released a sigh of thankfulness, cut short by the horse landing on top of her with a horrific crunch. Adrina's pain was sudden, excruciating and vividly real as her world careened to darkness.

[sologdin]

it is like an apprentice's work while under the influence of theis, though it does not have the same degree of malapropism, extraneous adjectives, random prosopopeia, casual sexism, and so on.

[The Marquis de Leech]

it is like an apprentice's work while under the influence of theis, though it does not have the same degree of malapropism, extraneous adjectives, random prosopopeia, casual sexism, and so on.

Surely "wanton eyes" is pure Theis?

[Sophelia]

:lmao:

I came into Lit for a reread of Min's barbarian thread to cheer me up from marking, but goodness me this makes Ryder Stacey look like a pretty good writer. I haven't seen such awful writing as this since I reread the novel I wrote when I was 13 for school homework :P

This one was the tipping point into giggles:

Adrina's tumultuous, wanton eyes spun around as horse and rider tumbled

Now I just want to embellish it even more:

""—it is urgent Your Majesty," Captain Brodst said, "a messenger has arrived this hour from the South."

King Andrew furrowed his brow. "I gather the news is more than urgent?" Then, scrunching up his cheeks with concentration, "And you say the messenger has more than arrived. Leave me while I think very hard what this might mean."

"hair long and black with whispers of gray neither accented nor subtracted, nor multipled or divided, nor even square rooted the exponent of pi away from his appearance of age and wisdom."

"she landed with a splash into the murky waters and mud of the mire, which was a quagmire of boggy wetness, a miasma of a morass."

The slow-mo horse landing... I imagine it catapulting quite a way up in the air, in order to do this.

Thank you David Selig.

[Alytha]

Good Lord, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that. That makes Tairy look like a veritable Shakespeare.

[jagilki]

She began to scream. Frantically she kicked her mount and pulled on the reins sharply. Her shrill scream cut short by a rationalization that came too late.

Rationalization?

[Ded As Ned]

Rationalization?

Aye, one that came too late. Those rationalizatoins are known to carry tetanus ya know.

[MinDonner]

Wait, she's sunk in the murky water, and then the horse hits her with a... scrunch? Not, say, a splash?

Or... she falls off the horse... THEN untangles her feet from the stirrups... THEN the horse finally falls on top of her? Are these stirrups made of bungee cord or something?

[sologdin]

Surely "wanton eyes" is pure Theis?

oh, agreed. but theis piles bad bit upon bad bit. he relentless. e.g., this stanek statement--

Adrina's tumultuous, wanton eyes spun around as horse and rider tumbled.

--in the hands of theis would be something like:

Adrina's tumultuous, wanton eyes spun around like a top that had been spun out of the devil's hands that stroked the white, flagrant hair of the nude virgins with no clothing as horse and rider tumbled into the ground that was beneath them under their feet, as the trees listened to the tumbling with ears plugged like a drain into the bowel of the abyss of hell like a sphincter in a constipated ass where the turds pile up and there is no relief.

[Sophelia]

oh, agreed. but theis piles bad bit upon bad bit. he relentless. e.g., this stanek statement--

--in the hands of theis would be something like:

Is theis a euphemism for being on drugs?!

ETA: actually that looks very like the writing of someone with schizophrenia - also known as 'word salad' (though perhaps slightly more grammatical)

[Happy Ent]

Is theis a euphemism for being on drugs?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon

[Lupigis]

People were staring at me on the train because I just couldn't keep myself from laughing at the quote about the woman falling off a horse.

What a gem!

[Sophelia]

http://en.wikipedia....he_Eye_of_Argon

Aaaaaa! Thanks HE. :) I had googled it but turned up nothing recognisable (not helped by google insisting I had misspelled 'thesis').

Had heard Eye of Argon mentioned as an exmaple of bad writing but thought it must be one of Christopher Paolini's.

[sologdin]

"eye of argon" is quick but worth every second, and should be freely available on the intertubes, floating in the lightless chilly aether in the dark, waiting like a bouncing tiger to rend with saberlike claws the addled brains of the unwary reader who is unprepared for the bloodstained horrors that await within like the colossus of rhodes before it was destroyed.

[Sophelia]

OK, I'm with the program now!

I have found in the Eye of Argon what could be the next sentences to follow on from 'girl on horse falls into puddle' (I just changed the name from Grignr):

Consciousness returned to [Adrina] in stygmatic pools as [her] mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.

[Adrina's] muddled brain reeled from the shock of the [horse falling on her]. The events leading to [her] predicament were slow to filter back to [her]. [she] dickered with the notion that [she] was dead and had descended or sunk, however it may be, to the shadowed land beyond the the aperature of the grave, but rejected this hypothesis when [her] memory sifted back within [her] grips.

[Sophelia]

"eye of argon" is quick but worth every second, and should be freely available on the intertubes, floating in the lightless chilly aether in the dark, waiting like a bouncing tiger to rend with saberlike claws the addled brains of the unwary reader who is unprepared for the bloodstained horrors that await within like the colossus of rhodes before it was destroyed.

:lol:

[sologdin]

i move that we all write in eye-of-argonese for the remainder of this thread.

soph--

if you read further, you'll find someone getting kicked in the "urinary gland" during the quest for the "many fauceted [sic] scarlet emerald [sic]," or so.

[Goodbye World]

Is Eye of Argon really good or are you making a joke? I looked it up but I'm not sure what to think of it because the back cover of the book on Amazon says this,

This is not a hoax. Jim Theis was a real person, who wrote The Eye of Argon in all seriousness

[Ded As Ned]

Is Eye of Argon really good or are you making a joke? I looked it up but I'm not sure what to think of it because the back cover of the book on Amazon says this,

I think the answer you're looking for is that it's so bad it's really, really, good. It's so horrible it becomes entertaining. I have never read it myself, but this is the impression I get from reviews and other posts on the subject matter.

[Happy Ent]

LOW

(Laughing out wantonly)