Parker's Full Write-Ups
Chapters 1-3
Chapter 1:
Chapter One was a strange thing for me. Firstly, this is a chapter that feels more like the beginning of a short story and not a fantasy story. Let me be specific, the kind of dull short story that fancies itself a statement about the plight of the poor and blah blah blah OMG BORING DULL AND DEPRESSING. And by the end of Chapter 2, with its totally predictable crap at the end with a young single mother turning to prostitution, violence and then abandoning her child at a convent... wth? I find it sort of insulting to young single women without means or higher education.. everywhere. Jesus what a sad and sacchrine POS.
On the other hand its very nice to read a book you know is genre and part of a particular strain of genre that is generally full of heaving bossoms and moony boys and love triangles and CRAP and it's reading more like froofy "literature". Interesting I say. So little baby girl moses, she of the humble beginnings and orphaned life is OF COURSE destined for some sort of messianic future. This is standard. Absolutely NEEDED in all stereotypical epic/fantasy tales. But in case you are coming to this genre as a newcomer our dear author has TOLD us in the first lines that this girl will be VERY IMPORTANT. So take special care when reading the story of her poor mother. If you don't kill yourself before you finish the chapter.
Good thing I agreed to read this as part of a project, or I would have quit before chapter two. I currently ready to call this fantasy for non fantasy readers, which would fit with all the hype surrounding this novel long before it was ever published.
Chapter 2:
The second chapter is totally saved the novel. I LOVE the set up. It reminds me of those old point and click RPGs where you have to find out what has happened and what the mystery is to be solved by finding old letters and newspaper clippings. I am busy trying to figure out what the angle with the vampirism IS in this novel. Connections with rainforest jungles and the military and ultimately killer bats ala Pitch Black (hahaha.. all I could see when I read that one email was when Shazza gets eaten in mid air near the beginning of the movie.. HILARIOUS). What I don't find compelling is the total acceptance of demise by "lear". Does he have a name? I never learned his actual name, just his email address. He goes from having a drive to discover to.. oh it's ok because I have no one to live for and I'm just going to watch my comrades die around me and SOLDIER INTO THE JUNGLE WOE. Oh but first let me power up my handy dandy laptop and write off an e-mail to my friend at Harvard that is devoid of typos or any kind of grammatical error. All that means is that later on in this videogame he's going to lurch back into the primary story line.. probably deformed... or diseased... ready to tie up the plot and then sacrifice himself without causing us even a drip of emotional reaction. LAME.
I really hope that there are some ancient alien/animal/human hybrid god people in the amazonian jungle that will come out and eat everyone's faces off. Vampires ARE OUR OVERLORDS! The old one's worshipped them, and they lorded their immortality and healing over us puny humansand then they went into the jungle and we forgot them and NOW THEYRE GOING TO SEND THEIR BAT MINIONS TO EAT OUR FACES OFF. Statues are never portenders of good things in fantasy. never.
Chapter 3:
Ok so now we've entered an episode of the X-files... can we PUHLEEESE choose a damn genre?! Where the fuck are the vampires?Armageddon? Post-apocolyptic mail delivering gasoline hoarding Tina Turner's HAIR is coming over for drinks later PLOT?! No let's just follow sad, dumb, boring, did I mention SAD whats-his-name as he exploits yet another down on their luck poor person in the name of Anthony Carter. I'm sure he'll be the hero of the novel at this point because he is the most interesting... because he is confused. 9and probably mentally handicapped) No one else is confused... everyone else is an automoton of plot exposition. God I hope this gets better.
What was happening again? Oh.. yea Mr. Sadmcsadpants and his Partner the plucky but naive Mr Doesitwithcollegegirls are in Texas. Texas sucks. We know Texas sucks because it starts a very long and boring story about how Mr. Sadmcsadpants had to move to Texas when he was in middle school (note: middle school sucks no matter what state you're in) and somehow that led him to getting married and then pregnant and then his baby dies a tragic death of.. what I am assuming is disease or something vampirism could have cured, and then his wife leaves him for some clone of him and there are really embarrassing late phonecalls to the ex wife and crying.
*epic le sigh*
Dear god please give me a glass of iced tea and let Anthony drown me....
What was that insensitive?
Chapter 7.
Anthony (the inmate from the beginning of the novel) is on his way to the facility in a van with two asshole soldiers. They stop at a McDonalds. I fell asleep.
Then we flash to tweedle dee and tweedle dum (now being called Brad and Doyle) who are on the run. They buy a new truck so the amber alert won't get 'em.
Then we're back at the facility with RIchards who goes to collect Anthony as he is delivered. There's some bullshittery in which Richards threatens to kill the soldiers because they were mean to Anthony (I'm not sure as to the motivation except that he needs Anthony to come quietly or there would be more paperwork) and we feel more sad for Anthony because HE'S SO MENTALLY HANDICAPPED.
Chapter 8.
BRAD and Doyle and driving in some shitty truck... they stop at a fair. (WTF?) And Brad gets to relive an hour with his dead daughter at the fairgrounds. So great.. little helpless but strangely self aware Amy now has a champion. Doyle is a double agent.
I just summed up that million page chapter of bullshit in two sentence. SEE HOW I DID THAT CRONIN? THIS SHIT ISN'T INTERESTING. STOP.
Chapter 9.
Back to pedoGrey. He has some time off. Then goes to work (after about a million more pages of fuckery) where he has some sort of wig out moment because Zero (who was called Fanning...) gets into his brain and shows him how he used to rape and murder young women likening it to the kidnappings of young boys that pedoGrey used to do).. so anyways.. Grey pukes. And goes home.. breaking containment because even though you're supposed to report any kind of sickness immediately he.. he doesnt.
AWESOME. NOW CAN WE HAVE SOME SORT OF ARMAGEDDON?
Chapters 4-9
Chapter 4:
Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto has a stupid name with too many vowels. Blah blah.. allusions to horrible life in Africa (wow.. original) but she's special (or more probably totally batshit crazy) because she can hear God in the whispering wind! She if full of inner peace and tranquility. She is so damned nice you don't even CARE what she thinks.. good thing too because she doesn't really think a whole lot.
This chapter IS SO BORING. Ok.. so I hate children. I also don't really give a crap about nuns who don't do anything all day. (BTW... Cronin's take on life as a nun is insultingly stereotypical.. right down to his Madeline references. CHRIST ALMIGHTY). So yea the little girl is safe with the mild mannered nun. And just for stereotypes Cronin throws in the mean old crotchety nun and the "had another life" nun. Ugh. FAIL. Then there's the business with the painful description of Amy's eating habits and what shes wearing (seriously.. the fact that her shirt says "sassy" in glitter comes up at least 10 more nauseating times). Finally the brat goes to sleep and Sister Lacey doesn't pray or do any Catholic things at all all day.. and really I have nothing more to say about that because I fell asleep a long time ago. I am talking to you from Flatland. (it's where I go in my dreams... Big Bang Theory joke? No? Ok, moving on.)
So then instead of a new chapter (I think the chapters are spaces of overlapping time but since I'm also reading A Game of Thrones right now it's just annoying that changes in perspective are all mushed together. BTW because I'm reading GRRM (with whom I have lots of problems but also admiration for) it's making it glaringly obvious how fucking awful this book is so far) (end parentheses). Anyways back to Mr. Sadmcsadpants and Mr. Doesitwithcollegegirls. JOY. Blah blah pointlessly detailed description of their driving route for who knows how many pages and probably what Cronin thinks is character development.. but it's more like watching cheese sit on a table for an hour. Suffice it to say they got orders to go pick up a new target and to stay under the radar, thus necessitating me reading a very boring description of going through a tollbooth. I MEAN COME ON.
Ch. 5
OMG A VAMPIRE. Or well.. what Cronin has dubbed "glowsticks". We are transported into the bowels of the facility for which the X-files suits are gathering subjects (come on ... we know they are subjects) and for which Amy will have a cure or some critical piece of DNA like mitochondrial Eve. So we're hanging out being bored with Mr. Grey, who is also bored with his life of staring at Subject Zero (the most interesting of the vampires.. it's always zero...sorry I'm flashing to those blinky scenes of Sephiroth and Jenovah because my brain desperately wants to think about something interesting...). So Grey used to be a pedophile.. right on. So.. when he dies a horrible death later I won't care? The vamps feed on bunnies (Won't Anya be happy!) and hang upside down and exhibit telepathy but Grey is too stupid to know that. I'm sure there's something to be said about the fact that all the rapists and pedophiles and murderers and mentally challenged people that are running this joint are doped up on all kinds of crap and so are the subjects.. like humanity is a disease or a symptom...and how the least human are the most human.. or the same as the humans.... but I don't care. At this point we haven't gone anywhere George A. Romero hasn't beaten into the ground (and then brought back to notlife). Oh and we get Grey's recruitment story which is just as boring as anything else. Seriously.. I need a jolt. SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Stop parading these cardboard cut-outs in front of me dude. I'm 1/10th into your damn book (that's HUGE) and I don't even know anyone's fucking name (really.. I'm having to look them up.) So anyways, Grey is going stircrazy and something about his personality is making him susceptible to Zero's (ok.. so I'm envisioning the vampires as orange versions of Jack Skelington's dog) emerging telepathic influence. Zombie? OPEN THE DOOR GREY.. LET ME OUT!! I'M EVIL AND WILL KILL EVERYONE, YOU FIRST.
Please... open the door Grey.
So then we snap to Richards, the guy who seems to run the secret facility even though he is called a mercenary, hired security etc. Really? Gonna let an outsider run the joint? OK. Richards is another sorta faceless character that I'm now just totally numbed by. What is interesting is that in a conversation with Jessica she told me she HATED HIM WITH A FIREY PASSION.. and at this point Richards is the only character I like. He's your typical badass soldier vet with questionable morals and no empathy. He's a job man. Lives for the job and doesn't think very much beyond it. The reason I like him, is that he is aware of this. Also because he has some pretty hilarious inner commentary. He uses words like goddamn and diddly. Alright funny man.. I'm with you. Let's go kill some zombie/vampire/whatists. (Via Richards we also get some info on Lear ((one of the emailers.. the one that supposedly up and walked into the forest to die b/c his wife had died, now I'm not so sure that that particular detail wasn't a lie to throw Paul off the trail since he is still alive and crazy and being a mad scientist in the bunker basement)). Another reason I like Richards is that so far he is the only character POV we've gotten with an IQ of higher than 12. Clearly shit is about to go down. The crazy mad scientist is losing his edge, getting desperate for advancement in his project and requesting innocent little girls to experiment with. The drugged up pedo-guards are starting to go crazy. The vampire subjects are all former freakshows, still are, who seem to be incubating. Hell, even Richards is starting to go a little sideways. Good. Crack the egg Cronin!
Chapter 6.
Hello again Sister "I totally have PTSD" Lacey. Why yes, I would like to go to the zoo with the abandoned child even though you think the zoo is a creepy and wrong place. LET'S GO THERE.
Then Cronin totally rips off Harry Potter and has Amy have some sort of empathic moment with a bunch of polar bears that ends up causing a huge zoo riot. Zoo animals are going crazy! People are yelling! Everyone is highly unlikable and I want them all to be eaten by lions and polar bears! (By the way, this scene is so chaotically written that I actually envisioned the scene as if I were there.. but with my eyes closed the entire time... because Cronin couldn't write himself out of paper bag at this point.) So anyway.. STAMPEDE EARL!
Then we flash down the block to Sister Crochity who is being visited by the X-file team (having completed their already totally outlined road trip). Holy Polar Bears Batman! Something is up at the zoo! AWAY! (there is more flashback bullshit mixed in all this.. Cronin at this time has a formula of 30% plot advancement 70% useless boring flashback)
So we get to the zoo and everyone is behaving rather inappropriately. Sister Lacey is running randomly around the zoo clutching Amy to her chest... and upon finally finding the exit runs smack into our 2 faceless heros. Who promply knock Sister Lacy (the NUN!) down to the floor, and steal Amy. They shove her in a car kidnapper style and speed off. Awesome. Let's really ramp up all the pedophile/rape themes. (Didn't Cronin write this story for his daughter?) So anyways they leave and Sister Lacey is left having a wig out PTSD moment in the zoo parking lot where she relives her gang raping. Oh right.. and th eonly ineresting thing is that Amy is a self aware little freak who knows shes different/special/magical/
Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto has a stupid name with too many vowels. Blah blah.. allusions to horrible life in Africa (wow.. original) but she's special (or more probably totally batshit crazy) because she can hear God in the whispering wind! She if full of inner peace and tranquility. She is so damned nice you don't even CARE what she thinks.. good thing too because she doesn't really think a whole lot.
This chapter IS SO BORING. Ok.. so I hate children. I also don't really give a crap about nuns who don't do anything all day. (BTW... Cronin's take on life as a nun is insultingly stereotypical.. right down to his Madeline references. CHRIST ALMIGHTY). So yea the little girl is safe with the mild mannered nun. And just for stereotypes Cronin throws in the mean old crotchety nun and the "had another life" nun. Ugh. FAIL. Then there's the business with the painful description of Amy's eating habits and what shes wearing (seriously.. the fact that her shirt says "sassy" in glitter comes up at least 10 more nauseating times). Finally the brat goes to sleep and Sister Lacey doesn't pray or do any Catholic things at all all day.. and really I have nothing more to say about that because I fell asleep a long time ago. I am talking to you from Flatland. (it's where I go in my dreams... Big Bang Theory joke? No? Ok, moving on.)
So then instead of a new chapter (I think the chapters are spaces of overlapping time but since I'm also reading A Game of Thrones right now it's just annoying that changes in perspective are all mushed together. BTW because I'm reading GRRM (with whom I have lots of problems but also admiration for) it's making it glaringly obvious how fucking awful this book is so far) (end parentheses). Anyways back to Mr. Sadmcsadpants and Mr. Doesitwithcollegegirls. JOY. Blah blah pointlessly detailed description of their driving route for who knows how many pages and probably what Cronin thinks is character development.. but it's more like watching cheese sit on a table for an hour. Suffice it to say they got orders to go pick up a new target and to stay under the radar, thus necessitating me reading a very boring description of going through a tollbooth. I MEAN COME ON.
Ch. 5
OMG A VAMPIRE. Or well.. what Cronin has dubbed "glowsticks". We are transported into the bowels of the facility for which the X-files suits are gathering subjects (come on ... we know they are subjects) and for which Amy will have a cure or some critical piece of DNA like mitochondrial Eve. So we're hanging out being bored with Mr. Grey, who is also bored with his life of staring at Subject Zero (the most interesting of the vampires.. it's always zero...sorry I'm flashing to those blinky scenes of Sephiroth and Jenovah because my brain desperately wants to think about something interesting...). So Grey used to be a pedophile.. right on. So.. when he dies a horrible death later I won't care? The vamps feed on bunnies (Won't Anya be happy!) and hang upside down and exhibit telepathy but Grey is too stupid to know that. I'm sure there's something to be said about the fact that all the rapists and pedophiles and murderers and mentally challenged people that are running this joint are doped up on all kinds of crap and so are the subjects.. like humanity is a disease or a symptom...and how the least human are the most human.. or the same as the humans.... but I don't care. At this point we haven't gone anywhere George A. Romero hasn't beaten into the ground (and then brought back to notlife). Oh and we get Grey's recruitment story which is just as boring as anything else. Seriously.. I need a jolt. SOMETHING NEEDS TO HAPPEN. Stop parading these cardboard cut-outs in front of me dude. I'm 1/10th into your damn book (that's HUGE) and I don't even know anyone's fucking name (really.. I'm having to look them up.) So anyways, Grey is going stircrazy and something about his personality is making him susceptible to Zero's (ok.. so I'm envisioning the vampires as orange versions of Jack Skelington's dog) emerging telepathic influence. Zombie? OPEN THE DOOR GREY.. LET ME OUT!! I'M EVIL AND WILL KILL EVERYONE, YOU FIRST.
Please... open the door Grey.
So then we snap to Richards, the guy who seems to run the secret facility even though he is called a mercenary, hired security etc. Really? Gonna let an outsider run the joint? OK. Richards is another sorta faceless character that I'm now just totally numbed by. What is interesting is that in a conversation with Jessica she told me she HATED HIM WITH A FIREY PASSION.. and at this point Richards is the only character I like. He's your typical badass soldier vet with questionable morals and no empathy. He's a job man. Lives for the job and doesn't think very much beyond it. The reason I like him, is that he is aware of this. Also because he has some pretty hilarious inner commentary. He uses words like goddamn and diddly. Alright funny man.. I'm with you. Let's go kill some zombie/vampire/whatists. (Via Richards we also get some info on Lear ((one of the emailers.. the one that supposedly up and walked into the forest to die b/c his wife had died, now I'm not so sure that that particular detail wasn't a lie to throw Paul off the trail since he is still alive and crazy and being a mad scientist in the bunker basement)). Another reason I like Richards is that so far he is the only character POV we've gotten with an IQ of higher than 12. Clearly shit is about to go down. The crazy mad scientist is losing his edge, getting desperate for advancement in his project and requesting innocent little girls to experiment with. The drugged up pedo-guards are starting to go crazy. The vampire subjects are all former freakshows, still are, who seem to be incubating. Hell, even Richards is starting to go a little sideways. Good. Crack the egg Cronin!
Chapter 6.
Hello again Sister "I totally have PTSD" Lacey. Why yes, I would like to go to the zoo with the abandoned child even though you think the zoo is a creepy and wrong place. LET'S GO THERE.
Then Cronin totally rips off Harry Potter and has Amy have some sort of empathic moment with a bunch of polar bears that ends up causing a huge zoo riot. Zoo animals are going crazy! People are yelling! Everyone is highly unlikable and I want them all to be eaten by lions and polar bears! (By the way, this scene is so chaotically written that I actually envisioned the scene as if I were there.. but with my eyes closed the entire time... because Cronin couldn't write himself out of paper bag at this point.) So anyway.. STAMPEDE EARL!
Then we flash down the block to Sister Crochity who is being visited by the X-file team (having completed their already totally outlined road trip). Holy Polar Bears Batman! Something is up at the zoo! AWAY! (there is more flashback bullshit mixed in all this.. Cronin at this time has a formula of 30% plot advancement 70% useless boring flashback)
So we get to the zoo and everyone is behaving rather inappropriately. Sister Lacey is running randomly around the zoo clutching Amy to her chest... and upon finally finding the exit runs smack into our 2 faceless heros. Who promply knock Sister Lacy (the NUN!) down to the floor, and steal Amy. They shove her in a car kidnapper style and speed off. Awesome. Let's really ramp up all the pedophile/rape themes. (Didn't Cronin write this story for his daughter?) So anyways they leave and Sister Lacey is left having a wig out PTSD moment in the zoo parking lot where she relives her gang raping. Oh right.. and th eonly ineresting thing is that Amy is a self aware little freak who knows shes different/special/magical/
Chapter 7.
Anthony (the inmate from the beginning of the novel) is on his way to the facility in a van with two asshole soldiers. They stop at a McDonalds. I fell asleep.
Then we flash to tweedle dee and tweedle dum (now being called Brad and Doyle) who are on the run. They buy a new truck so the amber alert won't get 'em.
Then we're back at the facility with RIchards who goes to collect Anthony as he is delivered. There's some bullshittery in which Richards threatens to kill the soldiers because they were mean to Anthony (I'm not sure as to the motivation except that he needs Anthony to come quietly or there would be more paperwork) and we feel more sad for Anthony because HE'S SO MENTALLY HANDICAPPED.
Chapter 8.
BRAD and Doyle and driving in some shitty truck... they stop at a fair. (WTF?) And Brad gets to relive an hour with his dead daughter at the fairgrounds. So great.. little helpless but strangely self aware Amy now has a champion. Doyle is a double agent.
I just summed up that million page chapter of bullshit in two sentence. SEE HOW I DID THAT CRONIN? THIS SHIT ISN'T INTERESTING. STOP.
Chapter 9.
Back to pedoGrey. He has some time off. Then goes to work (after about a million more pages of fuckery) where he has some sort of wig out moment because Zero (who was called Fanning...) gets into his brain and shows him how he used to rape and murder young women likening it to the kidnappings of young boys that pedoGrey used to do).. so anyways.. Grey pukes. And goes home.. breaking containment because even though you're supposed to report any kind of sickness immediately he.. he doesnt.
AWESOME. NOW CAN WE HAVE SOME SORT OF ARMAGEDDON?
