February 27, 2006
Worst book I've read...
...for sure recently, perhaps the worst science fiction book I've ever read, maybe even the worst book period that I have ever read. Certainly the worst good-guy vampires and secret agents travel to the hollow Earth to fight Nazis alined with ancient talking serpent people book I've ever seen. Oh yeah, there's also a plotline about a piece of Cthulhu that got stuck in a decapitated head and some nasty pedophile-baiting program from the NSA crossed with FEMA. Then everything suddenly ends 40 pages from the back of the book. Nuclear explosions, plotlines finished off. Characters that had a lot of development (not that you'd give a damn) who do nothing in the book die. The end.
The jacket picture is far better than anything in the book. The artist certainly didn't read the book, the "good guys" flew to the underland in a Nazi Serpent-person-antigravity powered flying saucer, they didn't walk down the stairs. Oh, did I mention the DNA memory of the Nephilim invansion of Earth? Merlin as the President's National Security Advisor? Vampires removing their fangs with plastic surgery (to better fit in, though they only go out at night still)? The off-screen 1-page death and rebirth of the main character? Within 50 pages of the end of the book.
And this book is some part of a quartet!?! With positive back cover reviews from Michael Moorcock and The Bloomsbury Review? I'm not sure how this book could have been worse. No, wait, it could have used a less readable font. Nope, that would have helped. Okay, I'm lost here, I can't think of how to make the book worse.
Wait! Would you like to borrow my copy? Anyone who is interested, just email me. It took me less than four hours to read it. Hours that I could have spent flossing a neighbor's cat or doodling on my forehead with a sharpie.