EMT 8/16/16 Free Book Edition [krakatoa]

So here's a little something for those looking for sweet literary payback against the overwhelming tide of PC, post-modern, post-morality, ham-handed political manifestos regularly generated by today's publishing houses. I bring you a non-PC, post-idiocracy, double-fisted mud-in-the-collective's-eye romp.

My brother recently lost his job, in a manner highly suggestive of a ideological purge given that, up until he actually came out as non-liberal, he had garnered regular promotions, raises and statements of appreciation from his company.

He had been working on an idea for a series of books, and has self-published via Amazon. The downloads for the first book and a novella are free on the 16th through the 20th. Even if you download it and hate it, you'll be doing a solid to a guy on the right side and trying to provide some entertainment at the expense of a few clicks so, you know, as Boomhauer would say: clickety click click.

The first book is Firing of the Crucible.

And the Novella is called Attila the Runner Episode 1: Awakening.

It's SciFi although not hard SF. Won't make you do math, and mostly, it's a story about kicking a lot of ass. I'm biased, but I did enjoy it more than I expected, with a lot of good pages against only a few parts a little meh.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's high literature. But it's also not at all bad and had me turning pages, especially relative to contemporary fare. It can be heavy handed at points, and the action can tend towards the graphic novel at times. But I've read a lot worse from a lot of people making it through the regular literary channels and into paper publication. A. Lot. Worse.

More on that below the fold, some of which will probably piss some of you right the eff off.

I have a curse: I am compelled to finish any book I start, no matter how bad.

The worst was a cruel joke from my best friend, who gave me a book he claimed to have enjoyed, and for the next 6 months, I was able to read a couple pages at a time before literally throwing it down in anger. I can't remember the name of it. Was a "horror" story by some acclaimed author about evil woods. You knew they were evil, because, quite literally, you were told about it every 3rd paragraph. You should thank me every single day and twice on Sundays that I cannot remember the author or the title. What hurts the most is that when I told my "friend" how much I hated it when I finally finished it and asked him how he could have enjoyed it, he copped an innocent look and said "Shit, I stopped reading after 3 pages. I thought you knew I was kidding."

I've got crappy friends. Well, really, I have one crappy friend. And no others. And being far too lazy to cultivate more, I'm stuck with him.

Now granted, I can be a hard sell, even when it comes to generally venerated authors.

Books of note that I disliked intensely: The first book of the Game of Thrones (seriously, there was next to nothing I liked in that book, and what I did like, got killed). J.R.R. Tolkienwannabe pornified (sexually and violently) ripoff of great authors that came before him.

Stephen King's Tommyknockers. This goes down as the single book in my life I could not finish. I got 2 chapters in, and with great shame flipped to the very end of the book and read the completely predictable and boring end. It sat glowering on my bedside table for a week after that, fueled by the flame of my unrequited literary imperative, feeding my self-recrimination and filling me with thoughts of despair and the general feeling that something was terribly and terrifyingly wrong no matter what I decided to do with the book. I finally pissed on it, shot it, and burned it, but Stephen King had already won.

And a surprising entry in my bad books HOF: Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Surprising, because Heinlein is properly regarded as a heavyweight in the annals of S.F., but this read like nothing more than a commercialized cashing on on his name in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. (I apologize, I puked in my mouth just typing that phrase.)

Anyway, please enjoy the free read from my brother. Or, like I said, even the genre isn't your cup of tea, the clicks alone will help him out. If you don't like it, tell me why in the comments. He'll enjoy any critiques. It gives him names to put to the villains he kills in interesting ways in the next book.

posted by Open Blogger at 06:30 AM

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