The Space Raptor and Walnut Trilogy by Lindsay "Hotdog" Ellis

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 9: PLato's Cave, If it Were Dumb
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

Cora appears in a cave.

In the next paragraph... I... look, here's the idiotic prose.

It was obviously not a natural cave, but rather more like what the result of an atomic bomb going off deep underground might look like. This wasn’t a cave eroded away by time and water but by heat, the texture somewhere between recently cooled volcanic rock and glass. It was as though the earth had been scooped out by a shovel of fire.

Lindsay writes like she's at a Starbucks telling a friend about her day. This is terrible terrible writing.

“...but rather more like what...' is shitty writing. It's the way amateurs write. Let me show how easy this actually is. I will now write a better paragraph describing this setting than Lindsay.

Cora found herself in an unfamiliar place. Was she underground? It wasn't how she thought a cave would look. Instead of stony, jagged walls this cavern was smooth like glass, and she knew it must have been crafted by intelligent hands. Ampersand must have made this.

Compare them. I didn't even really try.

Also, this bugs me too.

atomic bomb going off deep underground might look like.

Any average intelligent person knows that underground atomic blasts don't leave caverns; they leave craters (or cavities) on the surface.

This was just the first paragraph, gentlemen.

And then more of this embarrasing writing.

“Where are you?” she asked, her voice bouncing off the smooth rock for several seconds. This space was like a small planetarium, perhaps the size of the telescope viewing area at the Griffith Observatory, but more haphazard than a perfect sphere, as though it had been carved out in a hurry.

You could make a drinking game of how often she uses “like” in similies. But you would die.

A few of Ampersand’s drone lights hovered along the edges of the room, illuminating two passageways, one that led outside into the sunlight, and the other into darkness, another chamber perhaps. It was from this second, darker passageway that Ampersand emerged. Swaying, unstable. Terrified.

So remember that strange psychic earthquake thingie from previous chapter? It was Enola searching for formations just like the one & had made. Problem is, this area's got fault lines. And the searchy thingie will cause earf'quakes. Got it?

Cora can't warn nobody because her phone is dead. (convenient) And there ain't nothing nobody can do anyway. Oh, BTW Enola wants both & and Cora dead. And I just found the hero of the book!

Then erf'quake. They must get outside. But &'s eyes dims black, and he seizures on the floor. So, what does Cora do?

Not knowing what else to do, she fell to her knees and tried to soothe him, tried to get his head and his arms to stop making that jerking movement.

Not much. Except nearly having a full-blown panic attack. Of course.

But she notices a small, second chamber. Read this description. Spoilered for space.

SpoilerShow

This one was smaller, darker without the leaking light from the setting sun that spilled into the main chamber. Unlike the smooth, bare emptiness of the first chamber, this one was cluttered, the walls papered with what almost looked like giant honeycombs. So he did have material objects; it wasn’t that he only needed the machines in his body and the computer in his head; he had other tools, he just kept them well away from human eyes.
It must be storage, she figured, but how it might be categorized, let alone used, was totally beyond her. It looked like a giant wolf spider had built a series of tunnels stacked on top of each other, dozens of them, but not of a material that looked like a spider’s web, more like the thin outer layer of the human epidermis.

Gross.

She goes looking for “a device that would speed the restart of his energy cores after an EMP had taken him out, a device that resembled a pill bug the size of a guinea pig.”
So she systematically starts sticking her hands into these fleshy holes. She finds it, of course.

Suddenly, she's not alone.

The next few seconds stretched into a year, and in that space, she knew. In the same way she had just known Ampersand had done something to her brain after he had rescued her. In the same way she just knew what was happening on the other side of the wall when he was having a breakdown, she knew.
Obelus.

The alien that had fucked her up from the first book. Sigh. I'm betting I'm about to get 2,000 words on Cora's PTSD driven panic attack.

She kept her eyes on him like prey trying to evade a tiger. The memories of the things he had done began nipping at her—that feeling of his claws going right through her, the thought of Vincent Park vanishing into a cloud of ash.

Yup.

Then something,... something shockingly original and a little interesting. Then again, even a blind squirrel...

All her memories were associated with Obelus’s old body, that terrifying machine that stood at around eleven feet and was almost the size of a Cadillac, nothing like this frail, elfin little thing.
If Obelus was alive and in Čefo’s body, that meant Ampersand had put him there.

& made a hybrid from Obelus' mind into Cefo's body*

*Cefo, the one & did an autopsy one, and dumped his parts into a plastic bucket. Obelus, the one that fucked Cora up in the last book.

She backs into the smaller chamber to find the kidney bean weapon & had given her earlier. Obelus follows. & is useless on the floor. As Obelus tries to speak to &, Cora gets the weapon.

Cora didn’t move. Her animal brain was screaming, echoes in her body of the last time she had seen him. Vincent Park’s face, and alongside it, a primal, almost violent urge for revenge. She wasn’t thinking at all of Ampersand anymore. All she could think was that this might be her only opportunity to finish what she had started.

Obelus approached her, and then she heard a static in her ears. Then, a rolodex of words. “ Kezīhi befīti beneberikibeti gīzē ’ayini wisit’i mayeti ālichalihimi.
She froze, unsure if that had come from Obelus, or Ampersand. “What?” she whispered.
“ Lorem ipsum, vi estas same kiel anĝelo, via haŭto min ploras. ”
“I don’t understand.”
“ Object present purpose tangible natural purpose interrogative direct address —”
“I can’t understand you,” she said, her grip tightening around the pulse emitter.
Obelus looked at her as though something inside him had clicked. And then: “ What have you done to him? ”

Was all of that really necessary? It tries other languages like Latin before English? Really? Why?

WHY?

What have you done to him? ” Obelus repeated, stopping about three feet in front of her. “ What are you? ”

Anyway, it doesn't know what's going on. Neither does the author.

“Has this happened to him before?” she asked, keeping her demeanor authoritative, but calm.
“ Many times. ”
“Oh, Jesus.” She looked at Ampersand. This certainly explained a lot. He’d been hiding Obelus from her, from everyone. No wonder he was so fucking scared of Esperas. “How do you know my language?”
“ I have an algorithm that translates your language. ”
“Where did you get an algorithm that translates my language?”
“ I do not know.

Well, if exposition is too hard, best go with a “I don't know.”
Anyway, Enola doesn't want & and Cora dead. It wants & and this thing dead, Cora realizes. So, she's goingt o use the pill bug EMP thingie to restore him.

The carapace of his back was among the parts of him that were most insect-like, and though fused into one piece, it reminded her almost of the wings of a cockroach or a praying mantis.

I'm going to throw up. Gross.

Wait, Cora cuddled with this disgusting thing. EWWWWWW!!!!
He's reviveed. Cora demands to know what the hell that thing is supossed to be. Is she jealous?

“ I told you that I would never allow Obelus to die if I could prevent his death.”

So Cora freaks the hell out.

She grabbed the pulse emitter inside her hoodie, and she saw his focus shift to her hand.
“ That will not work if I do not allow it. ”
She saw that Obelus had inched toward her. “Keep him away from me!” she thundered, her voice bouncing off the smooth walls of the chamber for seconds.
Obelus backed away and said something to Ampersand. Ampersand stood up, loomed over her. “ I would advise you to be cautious. He has not seen a natural alien before. ”
A geyser of rage made her shoot to her feet. “ Of course he fucking has! ”
Obelus started in obvious alarm,

& tells her Obelus' memories ares suppressed, not erased and if she continues in her hysterics, he might snap and remember how he beat her ass. And of course, mansplain anything to a Lindsay woman and...

“Did you hear that, Obelus?” she said, glaring at Ampersand as she spoke, her voice quivering. “You don’t know who you are? Well, I do. You are a murderer. A militarist. You just don’t remember it.”
“ Stop this. ”
“You’ve already tried to kill me once, so you’ll try again as soon as you get your memories back, and this time, you’ll probably succeed. And you’ll continue to torture him, and he’ll be only too happy to let you do it as long as it means he gets to keep that one thread to his old life!”

So, & has got to pimp slap her.

The air in her lungs froze, her muscles locked, her jaw snapped shut as the invisible magnet held her firm, stopped her from speaking.

But this shit is acceptable to Lindsay, because it's not a man doing it.
More hissy fit.

“I can’t . . . I can’t stay quiet on this,” she said, her air restricted like there were hands around her throat. “He’s a murderer. He’s a fucking war criminal. He can’t be allowed to be free. I have to tell Sol.”
“ No. ” He lifted her off the ground, her arms stiff as boards, and floated her over to him until she was eye level with him, hanging in the air three feet off the ground. “ You will not. ”
“So what are you going to do?” she asked, her throat still constricted. She was still too angry to be afraid. “Suppress my memories, too?”
“ If that is your intent, then I will. ”
She hadn’t expected him to admit it so candidly, and at last her anger cracked,

Lindsay would never written a man doing this to a woman, especially not in a neutral to positive light.

Cora mentally bawls. HE didn't mean it, did he? Boo hoo!

“Holy fuck, you absolute monster,” she whispered.
The constriction on her throat eased, and she floated to the ground, the stiffness in her limbs easing, the air in her chest flowing.
“ I will not allow my symphyle to fall into the hands of those who would kill or abuse him. ”
“ I am bound to you, too!” she yelled, causing Obelus to cringe behind Ampersand.

Bitch, he's got a boyfriend. Deal with it.

Then the most scientifically accurate thing Lindsay has ever written -- what dealing with women in a relationship are like.

There was a part of her that wanted to beg for mercy, swear fealty, tell him that she would do whatever he wanted if he swore to take it back, tell her he didn’t mean it, tell her that he wouldn’t do that to her, not after all they’d been through. But her rage at that moment was still stronger.

Then she runs away like a little kid.

Then she ran into the forest with no clue as to where she was or where she was going.
He didn’t stop her.

End of chapter

To Lindsay and her mob, book discussion is in the NCunt: Black Cocks Only thread, where you may REEEEE without censorship. A freedom of differing opinion that we grant and that you wouldn't.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 10: Filler? But I Hardly Know Her
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

We start with another patented awful Lindsay paragraph.

The only clues she had as to where she even was were that it was on a fault line (which, in California, good luck narrowing that down), and it was nearish where Enola Gay’s Martian horn of terror had blasted. So she was somewhere in the several-hundred-square-mile mountain wilderness between Temecula and Mexico. Cool.

2 pages of this dumb bitch walking around, with inane descriptive prose on the scenery. No cell reception. Of course. It gets dark.

Cora was not prepared for how dark it got, especially with the lack of moonlight this evening. The mountain was dark and freezing and terrifyingly silent, not even the distant sound or even light of civilization. There was some light pollution that probably came from the San Diego suburbs, but it was so far away as to be functionally meaningless. Barely able to see the road, she continued forward, forward, following the texture of the road beneath her feet.

Three pages of this.

Then a page and a half to tell us a car pulls up in the dark and just sits there. Riveting.

It's Murderguy. Because of course it is.

She couldn’t see his face, but she could see his frame illuminated by the headlights, the tall lanky figure, the wavy lion’s mane hair, and her blood, only having regained some of its warmth, froze in her veins.
It was the guy from the rally, the same guy Sol had warned her about. The one who had looked at her like he wanted her dead. The thump of her heartbeat turned into a timpani, and she ran.

She stumbles and tumbles through the dark. Dude follows with a flashlight. She calls out for & several times. He ignores her.

Several pages of this.

An alien finds her. She shrieks, Murderguy finds her.

Murderguy whipped his flashlight in her direction, fully illuminating the owner of those eyes.
It stood in a crouch about twenty feet away from Cora, barricaded on either side by pine trees, its eyes open wide, its head moving in a fluid, erratic way like a cobra following a charmer. It had the shape and form of a midsize Similar, larger than Ampersand by at least a foot, though crouched so low its back was level with the ground. But unlike every other amygdaline she had seen, this one was the color of pitch, its midnight skin shining like the shell of a beetle. Every inch of it was black except for its eyes, which sucked up the light from the flashlight and spat it back out like bright silver suns with purple and blue halos, its head down in the antagonistic position that Cora knew well. The bull about to charge.

Murderguy trembles. Alien leaps,

It took one delicate step forward, and she heard Murderguy’s breath catch in his throat, the light of his flashlight now shaking. It took one more step before it jumped, defying all laws of physics, a dinosaur that jumped with the speed of a flea. In a flash, its hand was holding her torso to the forest floor, and one of its feet had pinned her legs.
She screamed.

End of chapter.

To Lindsay and her mob, book discussion is in the NCunt: Black Cocks Only thread, where you may REEEEE without censorship. A freedom of differing opinion that we grant and that you wouldn't.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 11: Field of Memes
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

We open with the worst paragraph yet. Look at this shit.

The tiny sliver of her mind still capable of thought wondered if this was Enola Gay, or if this monstrosity might be the much-demonized transient sister species. That this might not be amygdaline at all but physeterine, and she was about to get killed and eaten. Perhaps Ampersand had been right and physeterines had been on Earth all along, and Cora was about to discover that in the most gruesome way imaginable. Its movements were animalistic, nothing like the way she had seen Similars move in the past. Its gaze didn’t belie intelligence any more than a machine did, half–wild animal, half-algorithm.

Alien levitates Murderguy, looks him over them drops him like a bag of potatoes. He dead. It gropes Cora, she screeches. It then notices Cora's earbuds. Uh... I don't know. How she contacts & maybe? I don't remember these. What does it matter.

So it wants her to contact &. She protests. It insists, She protests etc etc etc

She has a flashback. *eyes rolling

She was in a field again, Obelus was on top of her, his meat hooks inside her, extracting her viscera, the meat that made up her being, for that was all she was, meat to be butchered. She was begging Obelus, No, no, no, please stop, please stop!
“CALL YOUR MASTER !”

Then the alien squeezes the shit out of her. No really.

The hand holding her midsection tightened, and she felt the fingers burrowing into her skin, the arms of the spider stabbing, clawing, ripping her in half. Blood pooling on the forest floor, her intestines spilling out. Blood, copper, shit, the smell of shit from her guts, ripped open, on the ground, on his fingers, everything, everything. She screamed, it was almost a word, but it wasn’t quite a word, just a scream, a primal scream, the last sound she would ever make as the fingers wrapped around her head like vines, preparing to snap it off at the root.
“W HERE IS YOUR MASTER ?”

& comes to the rescue. Then the most awesome writing from Lindsay I have ever seen! I'm not kidding!

Then a telekinetic blow struck the creature, jerking her off the ground before the monster lost its grip, dropping her onto her side. On instinct, she grabbed her stomach to shove her intestines back inside her, tried to stem the bleeding. She heard a struggle, screeching in Pequod-phonemic. Ampersand’s tinny voice, the other one’s voice a strange, garbled heap of sounds. She grabbed her intestines from off the forest floor, shoved them back in, curled into a ball.

But that was awesome, and this is Lindsay, so you've probably already guessed that it was just a mind trick.

She looked at her hands, looked for the blood, but there was none. Her guts had not been ripped out, there were no viscera all over the ground, no hole in her torso.

Damn. Almost had something good there.

Enola easily overpowering Ampersand, standing over him, the mass of a grizzly bear that moved with the speed of a grasshopper. Ampersand was on the ground on his back, writhing, struggling against whatever force Enola had placed on him.

& is kind of a pussy isn't he? Bitches, broods, gets his ass kicked. Emo space raptor.

She shoots the kidney bean and Murderguy's flashlight goes dark. Cora finds it, and... swapped the batteries around and gets it to work. Because that's how electronics work after an EMP pulse. Also, doesn't EMPs only work on micro circuitry, not on a basic flashlight? Whatever, the two aliens are knocked the fuck out. Cora tries to move & but he weighs 400 pounds. And then she goes a little nutty.

She got them a couple of feet apart before she decided, Fuck it. She turned the flashlight off to prevent it from shorting again, and shot Enola point-blank in the back with the pulse emitter. And then again. She kept shooting him until the pulse emitter had no energy left to shoot. Then she kept firing.

She keeps firing until it's empty, the dumb bitch. She looks around for a pointy stick to try and kill it with. But then...

Now crashing from her high of terror, she was starting to feel nauseous, the thrumming of blood through her skull turning into a headache. What a barbaric thing to think. Her memory drifted back to a moment she had last year with Ampersand, one in which he had expressed confusion over why she hadn’t killed him the first time an opportunity had presented itself. He was an alien, was he not? An unknown thing, a terror, a threat. And she had told him, I wouldn’t attack you when you’re helpless. Even if I had known exactly how to kill you, I wouldn’t have done it. Why would she not extend the same grace to Enola?

Gay,

So the plan is to steal Murderguy's SUV and get the pill bug thing to revive &. That's the stupidest sentence I have ever written. While rummaging in Murderguy's pockets, she finds his press badge.

Kaveh Mazandarani, The New Yorker.
Oh no.
Oh no.

I know Lindsay mentioned this Kevah before, but I can't remember. And I'm a little irritated she doesn't remind us who this is now. Her last book was half rehash of the shit we had just read.

But enough of that shit, she takes his SUV.

She gets back to the lair, grabs the pill bug EMP, but Obelus wants to go.

Cora: No.

Obelus:

Your kind cannot fathom him ,” said Obelus. “ My dear symphyle needs his own kind. He will only do harm to yours. Take me to him, simple creature. You are beneath all of this.

Super gay.

Cora has a page of fee fees. Obelus may not remember but he's still a jerk! Wah! Cora waves the EMP at him and tells him to fuck off.

”Why do you do this? ”
She stood up, shoving the pill bug into her jacket pocket, images flashing in her mind as answers to his question. Obelus disintegrating the blast door at NORAD. Obelus digging his claws into her body, ripping her to shreds. Vincent Park giving her the Yamaha guitar. Vincent Park half-conscious in the back of a van after an accident Obelus had caused. Vincent Park turned to dust.
“Because you killed my friend.”
She fired, and the flashlight shorted, plunging her into darkness, and it was only here that she realized how poorly she had thought this through. That rage plume was immediately doused by terror. She heard something, perhaps Obelus stumbling. In a panic, she pushed the trigger, but nothing happened.

She switches the batteries around to get the flashlight working again. Sigh.

Anyway, the EMP causes Obelus to remember everything, and he psychically knocks her on her ass, then disappears.

End of chapter.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 12: Electriv Bug-a-Goo
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

Holy shit, this is a long chapter!

The reporter, formerly Murderguy, is gawking at the aliens when Cora returns. She freaks the fuck out, pointing the pill bug at him.

At a loss for what else to do, she gun-pointed the pulse emitter at him. “I said, get the fuck away from them.”
“What the—”
“Shut the fuck up,” she spat, her mouth sticky from dehydration and her eyes prickling with exhaustion. He backed away as she approached him, head high, back straight, exuding the aura that yes, she could take his life away, and she’d do it, too. “You saw what this did to them, imagine what it would do to a human.”

I literally just yawned.

“I didn’t see what ‘this’ did to them,” he said carefully, like he was talking to a crazy person. “I was unconscious. Did that thing . . . ?”
“Yes, I said, shut the fuck up, or I’ll fucking shoot you, too. Hands up.”

But she thinks he's kind of cute. Lindsay's projecting?

By now, his expression had turned cold. His eyes were striking, the color of jade coated in frost, even more menacing with the flashlight illuminating him from below as if he were telling a scary story at a campfire.

& wakes up and after spotting a motionless Enola...

The moment his eyes came back into focus, they found Enola, and Ampersand practically fell on top of him. With zero delicacy, Ampersand ripped the shell off Enola’s back. Then he started frantically extracting bits of his body, welding his fingers together and jamming them into his back like trowels into the earth.
This triggered some reaction, because Enola was suddenly spasmodic. At first silently so, then very not silent, making strange, natural-sounding garbling noises that were half-dolphin, half–dying goat, more like the Genome than any noise Cora had ever heard come from a true post-natural amygdaline. It was horrid, piercing, and echoed into the hills. Someone was going to hear this.

Jesus, Lindsay. Kind of brutal for your pedestrian, and milquetoast novel of a crazy girl.

Then, a protrusion grew out of Ampersand’s fingers, something bigger and sharper than the syringe she’d seen him use so many times, and he stabbed—literally, stabbed—the thing straight into the back of Enola’s neck.

Then & binds Enola so he can't escape. The scrapping out of his innards didn't kill him? & spots the reporter and wants to murder him. Cora says no. SO, they take him hostage to question later. So Enola is producing a toxin causing it to act this way or something, and & has to drain it out or it will die. I don't know. This isn't explained very well. But why won;t they let him die?

If I do not do a slow transfusion to get this toxin out of Enola’s system, he will die. I cannot lose another symphyle, dear one.

Relationships are a bitch. Ammiright, guise?
BTW my summary is condensing pages and pages of drawn out over-written prose. She takes forever to get to a point. Seriously, it's like she's telling a story to one of degenerate friends at a coffee shop. This bitch is boring.

Cora takes the reporter back to &'s cave. Here's a small sample of the shit I'm skipping. Two and a half pages just to get him in the SUV page.

SpoilerShow

Murderguy wasn’t quite as tall as her frightened mind’s eye had remembered him, but he was more than a head taller than she was, easily cracking six feet. He opened the rear of the SUV and returned his hands to the back of his head, returning his gaze to her, both unimpressed and expectant, as if to say, What now, genius? He didn’t even look afraid; instead, he looked calculating. Like perhaps the plans to kill her might come to fruition in a different way from what he had hoped, but he still saw it working out in the end.
“Do you have any rope?” she asked. He opened his mouth, but she cut him off: “And don’t lie, or he’ll know.”
That cracked his stone expression a tiny bit. This had been something she’d kept in her back pocket for a while; when in doubt, play off people’s fears that aliens can read minds.
“No.”
“Do you have any twine?”
His lip twitched as though he’d been hoping to evade having to tell the truth if she wasn’t specific enough. “Yes.”
“Do you have any duct tape?”
“Yes.”
“Go get it.”
He hesitated, hands still behind his head, and then he crawled inside the SUV, slowly, carefully. Too slowly. “Move it.”
He pulled out a white cardboard box, out of which he removed a spool of twine and a roll of duct tape, which was nearly used up. She shoved the gun in the back of her jeans before his feet were even on the ground. Then he put his hands back behind his head, his expression a lake on a cold day with no wind.
“Hands together in front of you,” she said, keeping her voice low and serious.
She tried not to touch his skin as her shaking fingers wound the twine around his wrists. She wrapped it no fewer than ten times, cutting the twine with his pocketknife aftershe tied a knot. Then, she tore off a strip of duct tape, and nearly slapped it onto his mouth, then covered his eyes with a second strip.
She pulled the pulse emitter back out, and jammed it into the small of his back to remind him it was there. She grabbed the nape of his shirt, and pushed him to the front passenger side of the SUV. She seated herself in the driver’s side, turned the ignition, and the engine rolled to a purr. She switched on the headlights and looked back down into the woods.

Abd then another page of sitting in the car.

She took a minute to center herself, but this time, she noticed something—his iPod, plugged into the speaker of the car, that it was plugged in and playing, but the volume was low. Out of curiosity, she turned up the volume, and a white-guy-with-an-acoustic-guitar version of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” met her ears. It took her a second to really comprehend that, yes, someone would elect to listen to a sad guy with a guitar bastardize David Bowie. Seeming to intuit that she was looking at him, Murderhostage craned his head in her direction and shrugged. Th e motherfucker shrugged.
Maybe she should have killed him.
His entire playlist was like that.

Note the dig at white men, while at the same time somehow forgetting that David Bowie was a white man too. This dumb bitch, y'all.

And fuck the hipster posers like Lindsay fawning over David Bowie.

It takes a few more pages to get him out of the car and into the cave. He stumbles, she lets him rest while sniffing him.

She sat him up against the tree, now getting close enough to smell him. Whatever he was wearing smelled . . . expensive, like vanilla and leather.

Oh, she ties him to a tree instead of all the way to the cave. Lazy bitch.

She marches off to the cave where she finds & sticking things to Enola's head.

“ I have begun a transfusion. ”
“What are you transfusing from ?” she asked, keeping her distance.
“ Myself. He has altered his chemical makeup to pump emotional nullifiers and hallucinogens into his brain along with basic glucose and other elements needed to stay alive. ”
“He’s altered his brain . . . why?”

Ampersand kept his focus on his task, moving from Enola’s head to whatever was under the “wing” of his back, seeming to rip parts out of him, reshape them, and jam them back in like lawn darts. “ I can only speculate. I assume this particular mixture is intended to keep his intelligence levels high while keeping certain sensitivities low or nonexistent. ”

Cora thinks they need help. & thinks she needs to get the fuck out of here with that shit.

This incident would be the justification Esperas needs to have me euthanized. ”
“What?” she breathed. “He couldn’t possibly . . .”
“ My removal has been his primary goal since he discovered the truth of my relationship to Obelus. ”

um... ok.

This repeated plot point is sooooo played out by now.

Ugh... internal Cora-logue

She hadn’t even considered how Esperas might take the news that Obelus was still alive; disrespectful as it was, it made sense for Ampersand to hide Obelus from Cora (in his alien brain, he’d see it as what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her). But Esperas already loathed him for keeping his relationship to Obelus a secret, endangering the lives of the entire Fremda group and resulting in the loss of their only other Similar. What would he do with the revelation that Ampersand had been keeping another massive Obelus-related secret? She didn’t know the details of their respective destructive capabilities, but she did know that if it came down to a brute force showdown between Brako and Ampersand, Ampersand would lose.

Bored.

Then there is a bizarre transition. I'm going to copy paste this as it appears.
& is babbling

...“Esperas understands the legal situation, and he understands that there is nothing stopping him from exacting his own justice. If Esperas finds out that I have kept Obelus alive, if he sees Enola’s condition at all, that will be all the justification he needs to have us killed, and his subordinates will cheer him for it. If you tell your militarists about this, you are consigning us both to death. ”

(2/1/2008 7:58 PM PST) Paris: Did you
make it past (he police blockade?
(2/1/2008 9:41 PM PST) Paris: The
suspense is killing me. I’m trying to
stay awake by watching Conan but I have
the go to work in the morning
and I’m fading fast
(2/1/2008 9:55 PM PST) Paris: ok I’m
turning in, pis let me know what ET
looks like ttyl image (Image)

Uh, what is this?
What the fuck just happened?
And that's how the fucking chapter just ends.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 13: To Pee or Not to Pee
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

Opening sentence. Kaveh is Murderguy. I have to say that because Lindsay forgot to remind you.

Kaveh’s main concern for a while had been when, not if, he was going to piss himself.

You know, I'm just now realizing Lindsay has a piss and scat obsession. Her first book Cora pissed and shat herself a few times. Telling.

Second sentence.

He’d been in similar situations to this before—not tied to a tree exactly, but he had been detained with no bathroom accessible. In that earlier case, he’d had to soil the corner of the room he was sharing with his photographer, and they’d agreed to endure the stench of urine in the hope that it wouldn’t come to having to endure the stench of that other form of waste humans are wont to produce.

See what I mean?

Anyway, Kaveh (sigh, that name) ponders his situation, written in Lindsayese descriptors.

she’d been gone, somewhere in the vein of three or four years, by his estimates (or maybe a couple of hours).

This cutesy writing annoys the shit out of me. Interesting though, the narrative at this point is from Kevah's POV. A man's POV in a Lindsay space raptor opera? Inconceivable.

Anyway, Kevah, in Lindsay Ellis trademark fashion, recaps everything that had just happened in the previous chapter. Apparently, Cora had duct taped his eyes shut. The fuck? So when she peels them off...

...he got a look at her.
No gun, but she had his pocketknife drawn, and she was trying so, so very hard to look like a badass. But looking at her posturing, he wanted to shake his head. She wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t even a maimer.

A woman looking less than from a man's POV in a Lindsay novel? Did Lindsay giive up at this point and have someone ghost write for her?

She didn’t look much like Nils at all, with her round face and slightly upturned button nose a direct contrast to Nils’s pert little beak. And of course that goofy blue hair, which in the darkness actually looked kind of ethereal, fitting, like what an alien’s herald would look like, just left of human.

Yeah, she's got a simp writing for her at this point.

Cora frees him and orders him to march. Nothing much happens except Kevah thinks over how menacing he looked to Cora when he was actually giving the stink eye to Sol the CIA guy.

After about five minutes, she said, “Stop.” He wanted to plead his case to take a piss,

Pee fixation.

Then he saw where she was taking him—a cave. Clearly, not a natural one,

Yeah, we covered that already.

The inside of the cave was perhaps thirty feet in diameter, rounder than it was square. The walls were glassy like obsidian...

I said we already covered that, dumb bitch.

There's them aliens again.

The white one stood over the black one, which was lying prone on the floor, practically one with it. There was black bile all over the floor like tar, leaking out of the creature. It was grotesque.

Scat fixation.

More painful writing.

“Sit down,” said Ortega. He did as she said, and she tied the twine around his chest, locking his elbows in place, and this time, she tied his feet. Oh, if she only knew that in a different context, he would totally be into that sort of thing (although ideally not the one being tied up).

Ugh.

And more atrocious writing.

Sunrise was coming; he might live to see another day after all, whee. By this point, Ortega had started to nod off, and the white alien monster wasn’t being so violent to the black one’s body anymore. He dearly hoped the black ones were the Decepticons, because what he was beholding looked downright cruel..

This cutesy shit, is this what passes for cleverness in Lindsay circles? Pop references to describe things?

Uh... & finishes up and starts to leave.

Ortega followed it. “Are you going to leave him in this mess?”
The white one stopped, turned, and looked at her.
“It feels cruel to leave him lying in his own filth like this.”

More scat.

Also, we are still in Kevah POV.

Kaveh shook his head in utter bewilderment. Okay, not Autobots and Decepticons. Maybe blackie had just had a rough night and his bro was doing him a solid. Kaveh had been there a time or twenty.

Please stop with the Transformers shit.

“If it’s all biomatter, that means it’s going to rot. I need disinfectant.”
This time, there was a long pause between her words and . . . whatever she was hearing, then she grew agitated. “Wait, how is this my fault?”
what the pluperfect passive subjunctive fuck

And that last sentence is the one that about does it for me. I can't take much more of this shit. The lack of punctuation is how she wrote it BTW.

After a pause, I'll just keep going.

Cora blames & for her hissy fit run off into the woods.

“You threaten my mind, let me wander off into the woods where you know Enola is running around somewhere, trust me with an untested weapon that you didn’t know the full side effects for, and then blame me when a fail-safe you installed to protect Obelus from humans succeeds in protecting him from a human. He could have killed me!”
The alien’s hands relaxed a bit, and he took a step back.
“It’s a good goddamn thing, then! If he wants to kill anyone, he’ll have to get creative.” She looked over at Kaveh, sparing a glance for the condemned. “What about him?”
Oh merciful God, now that thing was looking at him with its horrible demon eyes.

Then...

She turned to look at the alien, and Kaveh thought he saw a flash of worry, maybe even fear pass over her features. “How would you kill him?”
!!!!!!!!!
He nearly pissed his pants then and there. A part of him figured, why not? At least one’s bladder can know peace before one dies.

New York Times Best Seller, folks.

& transports off. Cora unbinds Kevah. He removes the duct tape from his mouth and says...

“I . . .,” Kaveh started, pausing to see if he still wasn’t allowed to speak. “I really have to pee.”
She looked at him.
“Is it okay if I go . . . do that?”
She considered, then nodded, looking toward the monster lying in a pool of its own black bile at the center of the chamber. Kaveh hesitated, still suspecting this might be a trap, before deciding fuck it, he was going to die, anyway, if he didn’t pee.

Guys...

He stepped outside into the harsh morning sunlight, his muscles electric with a night of fear, still not quite believing this was real, not sure if unzipping his fly was a good idea. What if he got zapped with his dick out? Maybe that was exactly what they were waiting for, those sick alien fucks.

… just...

It wasn’t even a good pee. It was the kind where when at long last the moment comes you’ve been holding it for so long that the muscles are like, Nope, sorry, buddy! The storm surge is coming, we gotta keep these levees in place! When he finally forced it out, it was more painful than a relief.

Would you think poorly of me, if I didn't finish this review?

He could even see the unnatural smooth floor. Yes, now was definitely a good time to run for his goddamn life. But it wasn’t going to happen. In Kaveh Mazandarani’s inner struggle between self-preservation and curiosity, a struggle that occurred more often for him than it did for most people, curiosity was fated to win every time.

And that's how this stupid chapter ends.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 14: Mr. Fancy Pants
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch


We start with yet another really stupid sentence.

A headache was forming that felt like a toothy parasite was gnawing at her left temple from the inside as Cora stared at the monster in the center of the chamber.

Then an amazingly bad piece of writing.

Ampersand had “drained” the “poison,” but the creature still looked like it had been sculpted out of black ink, an apparent permanent side effect. The technique Ampersand had used to weld him to the floor had been crude by his standards, like straps melded one with the glass-like rock beneath him like a straitjacket made of black steel. The longer Enola stayed there, all but welded to the floor of the cave, the more the effluvium around him congealed, and it was becoming harder to clean by the second.

And then pages of inner Cora dialog rehashing everything we read, and worrying about everything that could happen. Would Enola attack? How would she get out of there? Worrying about the reporter, if he got away if he etc etc.


Zzzzz.


Reporter guy comes back though, because he's a reporter with THE NEW YORKER. Lindsay, honey, the New Yorker is a rag that people like to brag about reading because you think it makes you look sophisticated, but no one actually reads it including you. You're fooling no one, you pretentious bitch. And if you DID read it, you'd know they don't have investigative reporters that go hunting down ET in the fucking desert of California. They have poetry, commentary, criticism and elitist satire. That heads-up-one's-ass snobbery shit you do, actually. Go fuck yourself.

Suddenly, the gnawing parasite headache exploded into a firework, and before she knew it, her breath was coming hard and fast, picking up speed with each inhale.

And your metaphors are like what a high schooler would write in her Death Note journal. Look at this rapid fire of ineptness and try hard.

in an attempt to halt the hyperventilation and backed herself into the wall. Her body was screaming for air, outraged at the interruption of its regularly scheduled panic attack.

the pain in her head had now migrated to the outer left parietal bone, as if she’d been bashed in the head with a baseball bat.
Murderguy was standing over her holding his hands up like he was being held at gunpoint, his eyes the size of small moons.

She felt her head to assess the damage. It felt like she’d been clubbed like a baby seal.

Basically, Cora had a panic attack so bad she passed out. I think. I'm barely reading this shit now. Cora really is a useless person. Best put her out of her misery.

Cora and Kaveh talk and we finally get that expostion that we needed three chaptrs ago.

Then it clicked where she’d heard his name before.
A journalist at The New Yorker had obtained documents detailing the detainment of her mother and siblings last year, a guy who’d sent said documents to Nils the second he’d gotten them. A journalist Sol had described as an unscrupulous “shitbag burnout.”

The fucking New Yorker. I still can't get over that. Might as well had made him a reporter from Mad magazine.

UH, then there's some unimportant banter when Cora gets a burr up her ass because this dude passed info about her family's detainment to Nils (her father) instead of publishing them in the New Yorker. Who the fuck cares? Why does this matter? Nils made it public anyway!

“I thought it would be the right thing to do. It was his family, not mine. And he was such a lightning rod, all eyes were on him. I thought he would get much more immediate results than I would have.”
“All you did was give him more power to boost his own celebrity. You didn’t have to go to him. It didn’t have to be him.”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t think about it like that.”

WHY WOULD YOU??!! You're not Cora! This is pointless banter. Something in Lindsay's wine soaked brain thinks this is a major point of contention, but we DON'T CARE!!!

Anyway, Cora finally revisits her “daddy issues.” I guess after trying so hard to avoid it because of the mockery Lindsay got for the first book, she HAD to come back to this because Cora's whole character was wrapped in how much daddy wasn;t there for them.

Then the mighty New Yorker takes a flashlight to check her pupils for a concussion. For fuck's sake.

“Are you a doctor?”
He chuckled. “Yes, I am, actually. A doctor of philosophy.” He put the flashlight down on the floor, sitting it upright like a spotlight pointed at the ceiling. “So you can address me as Dr. Smooth.”

If I had a physical copy of this book, this is where I would have thrown it out the fucking window!

Now that he was less terrified for his life, his natural charm came out, and he was charming. He clearly knew it, too. Ugh, he even has the same degree Nils has , she thought.

Uh oh, Lindsay, your character is about to fail the Bechdel scale. I mean falling for a space raptor with roach wings is fine, but this is a cis male. For shame.


Pages of cringey, non-noteworthy banter later. Kaveh knows Nils because they collaborated on a story CIA bad, much torture, black ops, Muslim countries! They named names including Sol Kaplan.

“So now that I’ve told you who I am,” he said, “do you think maybe you could tell me . . . what the fuck?”

The New Yorker, sophisticated, fancy, talks like a drunken Lindsay.

She laughed hollowly.

Try to laugh “hollowly,” y'all. What exactly does that sound like?

Now more pages of shit like this...

hollowly. What to tell him? She did not know this man, a man with direct connections to Nils, a man who had run right to Nils the last time he’d gotten his hands on material related to her. What was to stop him from doing that again, but this time with something way, way more damning? What he’d seen with Enola was, to make a modest understatement, really fucking huge. But on top of that, she’d helped kidnap this man and then held him hostage for several hours. That was a class-A, grade-A, A+ felony. That could mean jail time. That could mean decades of jail time.
But looking at him right now, he didn’t look like the narc type or the vengeful type. His terror now ameliorated, he looked like the journalist type who probably wouldn’t let some light kidnapping get between friends if there was something in it for him. And what would a journalist want more than information as privileged and valuable as this? He wouldn’t have gotten to where he was working for a publication as prestigious as The New Yorker if he didn’t know how to keep a secret. He could probably sit on this until the Obelus issue was squared away... etc etc etc

Nothing really interesting quoted there. I just wanted y'all to see what Cora inner dialog looks like. And there's pages of this shit. This is the meat of the book.


Anyway, what isn't in Cora's head is banter with New Yorker giving HIM exposition to all the shit WE already know. Pages of this that could have been covered with one sentence. HE HAD MANY QUESTIONS THAT CORA TRIED HER BEST TO ANSWER ABOUT ALL THE THINGS THAT HAD LEAD UP TO THAT MOMENT.

Fuck.

He asks if & ever killed anyone.

“He’s never killed a human,” she blurted. “I . . . can’t really speak to other aliens he might have offed in self-defense, but not humans.”
He eyed her, clearly skeptical. “I feel like there might be a caveat in there somewhere.”
“No. I just . . . he told me he’d never killed anyone or anything on Earth. So no, he hasn’t killed any humans.”
“ U NTRUE .”
Cora jumped at the voice in her ear—a voice that was not Ampersand’s.

Enola says & has actually killed loads of humans.

“ E VERY SAMPLE WE HAVE EVER TAKEN FROM YOUR KIND BACK TO OUR S UPERORGANISM WAS KILLED BY HIS ORDER . Y OU SPEAK MISTRUTH . O UR B ELOVED HAS KILLED MANY HUMANS

An interesting description.

Kaveh. “What did he say?”
Enola struggled to move his head toward them, but there was a strap over his brow ridge. His head was longer than Ampersand’s, his eyes smaller in relation to the rest of his head, making him look more dragon-like than any of the others. Everything about this creature screamed predator.

I'm going to let you parse this next dialog of shit, because I don't care.

“ I HAVE ACQUIRED A LITTLE COUSIN . H OW IS THIS POSSIBLE ? H OW IS IT DONE ? Y OU MUST TELL ME, LITTLE COUSIN, HOW DID HE DO IT ?”
“How did he do what?” said Cora.
“ H E SEEKS OUR OTHER COUSIN, OUR NOBLE O BELUS . N OBLE O BELUS IS BEING PURSUED BY MULTIPLE PARTIES . D OES OUR DEAR B ELOVED KNOW ? P ERHAPS HE DOESN’T . N OBLE O BELUS AND HIS THREE SUBORDINATES, THE THREE SUBORDINATES DID LEAVE THIS PLANET, ONLY TO LEARN THAT NOBLE O BELUS STILL LIVED . T HEY WERE INSTRUCTED BY THEIR S UPERORGANISM TO RETURN, WITH NOBLE O BELUS ALIVE AND INTACT .”
“The Obelus Similars are still here?” She stood up, ready to bolt, like Obelus’s three subordinate Similars might be hiding in the shadows.
“ T HE THREE O BELUS SUBORDINATES DO NOT SEEK TO KILL THEIR FORMER SUPERIOR; THEY SEEK TO CAPTURE HIM AND RETURN HIM TO HIS A UTOCRAT, ALIVE .”
“Are they looking for Ampersand, too?” she asked. “Dear Beloved” could only refer to Ampersand.
“ T HEY HAVE BEEN INSTRUCTED ONLY TO RETRIEVE NOBLE O BELUS .”
“What’s he saying?” asked Kaveh. Cora ignored him.
“ O NLY WHAT WILL OUR DEAR B ELOVED DO WITH HIS O BELUS ONCE HE RECAPTURES HIM ? K EEP HIM ALIVE, INDEFINITELY ? I DO NOT BELIEVE HE HAS A PLAN . A ND THAT IS GOOD, LITTLE COUSIN, FOR THEN HE WILL LET O BELUS RETURN TO HIS A UTOCRAT, AND HE WILL JOIN ME .”
“Join you for what?”
“ J OIN ME IN DEATH .”

Then there's a page of:
Free me!
No!
Free me!
I said no!

Then the static turned into a cacophony, shrieking like a thousand untuned violins. She clapped her hands to her ears, screaming and stumbling outside.
“What is it?” Kaveh was beside her.
“Get it out!” she cried. “Get it out!”
“Get what out?”
“In my ears! The earbuds! Get them out!”

Kaveh has tweezers and removes it. Of course he does.

Then he forgives her for being tied to a tree and not being able to pee.

didn’t suck—it did—but I understand why you did it, and thank you for giving me the option to run free and make millions off your horrible secrets. But I’m not going to, not yet at least.” He hovered his hand about a foot away from her back, like he knew touching her was a bad idea, but miming the act was fine. She found herself wishing he would drop the pantomime and touch her. “Do you think we could start over?”
Cora wiped her face, swallowing the stress that was begging to come out in the form of tears. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, are you hungry?”

Did he just ask her out? A fancy New Yorker asking a schlubby blue hair to dinner? Right.

End of chapter.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 15: Dinner with Hombre
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch


Okay, I know I said I would stop, but look at the worst setting description I have ever read.

his blue-haired passenger in the back “trying” to “get some sleep.” The sky was clear and blue, orange groves lining the road in perfect rows. This area of picturesque farmland was always green, but the winter rains made the whole valley greener than it was at any other point during the year. The brush on the mountains glowed with life, the grass verdant, the bushes on the side of the road dusted with millions of tiny yellow flowers.

All of a sudden, the writing is simplistic, with few of those fancy adjectives she loves. It's like someone else wrote this part.

Next sentence.

Man, it’s been so long since I’ve been in California , he thought. I never really appreciated California enough. Earth is beautiful. I hope it’s not about to get destroyed.

Then references.

Somewhere, a monkey’s paw must be curling its finger.

...Temecula seemed more or less back to normal, War of the Worlds –style doom horns followed by major earthquakes notwithstanding

What follows is Kaveh's inner monolog. Even Lindsay is bored with Cora at this point. So, what does the New Yorker Murderguy think about? Cora of course.

...She was so hopelessly in over her head it would be comical if the stakes weren’t so high...

Easy as it would be to wear her down with a cultivated combination of charm, wit, and intensity, dismantle her like an old car and sell her for parts, it didn’t feel like the right call here. This wasn’t some Machiavellian mastermind...

This was just a girl, alone and afraid, a girl who knew things of great consequence like, for instance...

This goes on for several pages. I'm not kidding.

He drives them to an Indian Casino.

“The casino?”
“I figured it would be pretty empty, though it looks like I might have underestimated the local boomers’ love of gambling. Do you want to go inside and get some food, or would you rather stay out here and take a nap?”

Of course Cora opts for food.

Let's just rapid fire this shit.

He checks her head wound. Nothing major.
He treats her to a fancy expensive meal. An $80 Surf n Turf with $8 side of mashed potatoes. $8? Fuck. I bet a million dollars Lindsay is writing from extensive experience here.

Then the most unbelievable thing in all of Lindsay's career. Cora isn't hungry. The first book she attacked pancakes like Homer Simpson.

Then even more inner monologue thinking about Cora. At least two pages.

couldn’t help but stare. Here’s the disheveled, blue-haired mess who talks to aliens. Her upper lip was slightly fuller than her lower lip, giving her a cute natural pout, and what he’d initially mistaken for frumpiness was really ill-fitting clothes on a willowy frame. If she washed out the Manic Panic and got a few hours of sleep, she’d probably clean up downright adorable.
It surprised him that this person whom he’d never expected to actually encounter in the real world was not a child but a young adult.

What exactly is this “novel” supposed to be? I've never seen an author so focused on the minutiae of a single character before.

Then a very Lindsay moment.

“Sol said you were like this . . . well, the term he used was shitbag burnout. ”
Kaveh snorted, nearly choking on a bite of fingerling potatoes. “I’m a fucking Rhodes Scholar!” he said, mouth still full. “And a bestselling author! I’ve won like two dozen awards, and I’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer!” He swallowed. “Twice! Fuck that guy.”

This. This right here is Lindsay's own frustration of not being taking seriously even though she has all these “important” titles and accomplishments. This is what someone like Lindsay deems important. Not being a good person, but being recognized as an intellectual, and one of the elite. Lindsay, you're not. You make stupid videos, and write stupid novels. You are a joke to the people who you think matter.

Want more proof this NEW YORKER is actually a Lindsay self-insert?

“He’s probably referring to the fact that I used to drink a lot. Like, a lot. He has no moral standing over me, so he has to go for the low-hanging fruit, because he sucks.”

”Now it’s carbs. I spend like half my expendable income at the Cheesecake Factory.”

Lindsay, darling, only women give a shit about the Cheesecake Factory, and shush! Those aren't men you hang out with.

Anyway, Kaveh is an immigrant.

you; I was born in the theocratic authoritarian fundamentalist state formerly known as Persia.

Cringe.

They banter about where he grew up, and his family while scarfing down lobster – in this space raptor space opera fantasy. Riveting.

Wait a minute... he's from Iran and is eating shellfish? Okay. A non Muslim Iranian. I guess they exist.

She forced herself to take another bite. She had gotten through . . . maybe 30 percent of those taters.

Taters? Taters may pass in dialogue... you know what? Fuck it. No one is reading this shit at this point anyway.

Now they're talking about his parents real estate investments.

WHY?! This goes on FOR A FULL PAGE!!!

“How many properties does your family have?”
“Investment properties, or properties in general?”

My dear fellow DHIers, HOW did this book come to be? How did anyone, including LINDSAY think this was something anybody would want to read? Is her hubris so out of control, she believes that whatever she shits out is gold?

Three pages about his family's real estate and wealth.

FINALLY, subject change. His career. GAWD!

Then more of this shit.

“What’s interesting about those guys?”
“Oh, you know. Their brand of conspiracy theory tends to leak into real-world consequences. Religious fundamentalism, xenophobia— the human-on-human kind. Anti-Semitism is a biggie.”
“Anti-Semitism?”
“Yeah, it’s a thing. The Jews are using the aliens to control the world, see. The Jews hate Western Civilization just like they always have, so they’re helping the aliens make it crumble in exchange for, I don’t know, power or something.”

“Yes, a lot of people actually believe that.”
She leaned back into her chair, clearly unsure if he had his facts straight. He couldn’t blame her for that—so much had changed so quickly in these last few months, between the Bush resignation and the world economy collapsing to the revelation of motherfucking aliens, it was hard to keep up with how poorly society at large was coping.

Uh huh.

He gets Cora her own room. And he wants to borrow one of the ear pieces to talk to Enola.

End of chapter.

To Lindsay and her mob, book discussion is in the NCunt: Black Cocks Only thread, where you may REEEEE without censorship. A freedom of differing opinion that we grant and that you wouldn't.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 16: Interview with a Symphyle
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

SO Kaveh (funny, Lindsay has to write about a man because she got bored with Cora) goes looking for Enola.

But he talks like a chick.

“And you pinkie swear that you wrote it down, with a pencil?”

Or more like a stupid cunt.

“Okay. Do not share this. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars...

“If you don’t hear from me within ninety minutes, call in the fucking SWAT, the FBI, the CIA, call the army, the air force, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts.”

“I . . . You know. I don’t say it enough. To anyone. So just an FYI. You’re my friend, and I love you.”

He's talking to Paris. I don;t remember if she's been brought up before. She's kinda like his “guy in the chair in front of the computer” trope, I guess. Something about gettign coordinates of where he is at the casino to figure out where Enola is. Because you know, coordinates and you magically find people. But why doesn't he use Google maps? He doesn't want a search record of where he is. Uh, Lindsay, the phone can be tracked already, you idiot.

Then a few pages about his investigative instincts. Shit like this:

His instincts about sources were usually correct—who would talk, who wouldn’t, what type of charm would work on whom and what wouldn’t.

Then he ponders endlessly on the aliens and how neat it is. Then pops in an earpiece and saunters over to &'s cave. You know, there's a lot less & in this too.

He tries talking to the still bound Enola.

It begs Kaveh not to kill him. LOL, those Three's Company-like misunderstandings.

Please, free me.

Nah.

Please?

Nah.

Pages of this shit.

I need medicine. If you free me, it will heal me.

What's wrong with you.

I feel bad, because I miss my butt buddies.

Kaveh might have been projecting, but Enola’s description felt awfully familiar. A desperate craving for some chemical that could numb whatever demons were haunting him. Alien as it was, it was also as familiar to him as the feel of a light breeze on his skin.
Enola was going through withdrawal.

& shows up. And a weird descriptor.

He shot to his feet, instinctively putting his hands up. Ampersand approached him like he was a cockroach that needed to be swatted, but slowly so as not to spook him.

Hmm. Maybe we're wrong. This ain't no raptor. It's a two-legged space roach. Actually, I get the impression Lindsay was going for a praying mantis.

So, Kaveh does what any great New Yorker does. He runs out of the cave like a sissy. Apparently, & let's him.

End of chapter.

This chapter was mostly, Kaveh's inner thoughts. Nothing of note really.

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 17: More of the Same
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

This chapter starts with Cora's ringtone.

Guess what is is...Show

”I’m an asshooooyooyoyoooyoyooole. ”
Denis Leary’s voice jerked Cora back into wakefulness as it piped from her cell phone,

It's Sol wondering where she is. & is in her room demanding to know why Kaveh is free and has an earbud. She pees and gets water. Then this indecipherable shit:

“Enola said Obelus’s three Similars are still here, looking for him. Is that true?”
“ Yes. Obelus’s subordinates returned upon direction from their Autocrat.”

&, like a man, is trying to fix a problem and is curt. Cora, as a woman does, gets sand in her vagina.

If the surveillance apparatus finds him, then his Similars will find and extract him immediately. If you intend to disclose the truth of Obelus to the militarists, I will prevent it. ”
Holy shit , she thought, stung. He did it again. She knew they didn’t have the luxury to squabble, not now, but it was so hard not to be mad at him, not to allow the internal space for how hurt she was by all this. In his alien head, he was only acting logically; really, wasn’t she the problem for having a problem? Obelus wasn’t even in the body that had harmed her so badly anymore. And now Ampersand had taken a mere suggestion about using the American surveillance state to their advantage and assumed it was a threat of betrayal.

Yeah, I bet to Lindsay reason and logic is very alien.

Anyway, Kaveh returns. He has questions.

Why Enola wanna die?

Then this tiresome response.

“Their social structure is basically built around a practice called dynamic fusion bonding in a social group called a phyle ,” said Cora. “It’s sort of . . . nonmonogamous pair bonding. Group bonding, if you will. A phyle contains between five and ten symphyles fusion bonded to each other. As they are exceptionally long-lived, this practice helps maintain social bonds over a very long lifetime, but one quirk of the deal is that they all choose a predetermined date to die, together. So no one dies alone, and no one ever really knows grief. In theory.” To keep things from getting too confusing, she omitted the whole “ Oligarchs aren’t allowed to form phyles ” detail. Trying to keep track of who was connected to whom in the Superorganism’s top caste required vector calculus that she was too tired to explain at the moment.

Fucking look at that mass of pointless words. That's one fucking paragraph!

&: Dude, what do you really want?
Kaveh: To talk to Enola.
&: What's in it for you?
Kaveh: (insert convoluted explanation about aliens and personhood and civil rights)
&: But you make propaganda?
Kaveh: Nah. You get editorial approval.

This is so stupid.

Kaveh: You gonna clean Enola?
&:

I must prioritize locating Obelus. Enola’s well-being is secondary.

Kaveh: Can I wash him up then?
&: Sure, buddy. But don't tell no one where he is, or I'll move.
Kaveh: Cool beans!
&: But you hurt my butt buddies, including Cora, I'll kill you!

Cora omits that last bit. & bugs out.

Kveh: Whoa! Did he teleport.
Cora: That's stupid. He turned invisible and left out the window.
Kaveh: The name Enola Gay is kinda... gay. Can we change it?

She regarded him, suddenly struck by how eager he was to get involved in this. “What do you want, Kaveh?”
He considered, then gave her a cheeky smile. “A Pulitzer.

Sigh.

“What do you really want?”
“Full, natural personhood,” he said, growing serious. “Full human rights. No in-between. You are either a person, or you’re not.”

Double sigh. Nothing ever happens in this book. Just talking and talking and feelings and inner monologue.

“That’s very generous for someone who’s only just met them.”
“It isn’t about them.”
His growing seriousness shook her. “What do you mean?”
“The paradox of anti-government hysteria is it tends to lead to authoritarianism. The arrival of space aliens has not united humanity; they’ve only made us more tribal, more fractured, and it’s only going to get worse in the months and years to come. And now you have these proto-fascists arguing against the very idea of alien personhood and advocating for the creation of a whole different category of person altogether. One might almost say . . . three-fifths of a person.”

Trump bad. Is that the symbolism here? I think Lindsay has gone so far up her own ass, she's gotten completely lost in her own literary devices and doesn;t even know what she's railing about anymore. It's all just dumb.

She curled her lip up in disbelief, almost offended by such a comparison.
“We’ve been down this road before, we Americans,” he said. “Do you see what I’m getting at? Starts with ‘slave’ . . . ends with ‘ery.’”

Oh, shut up, you vapid whore.

“I feel like you’re not listening to me. It’s not about them. I have no doubt Ampersand could protect himself, or hell, leave the country, settle in a less fashy one. Leave the planet, whatever. This isn’t about them.”
“Then what is it about?”
“It’s about us. It’s about how we treat our aliens, our lower classes. If they create a whole new class of person with fewer rights than a natural person, one created specifically for a nonhuman alien, how long do you think it will be before they start applying that to human aliens as well?”

Yawn, Lindsay. Yawn. This is so played out.

...Third Option to become law because it could apply to all aliens. Not just the extraterrestrial kind....

...the first thing that happens is the revocation of hard-won human rights. That’s what happened in Germany when the Nazis came to power....

...That’s what happened during Reconstruction after the Civil War. And that’s what’s happening here now...

This book finally got funny.

And the chapter ends with these “deep” themes .

[pibbs]

Truth of the Divine by Best Selling HotDog Girl. Lindsay Ellis
Chapter 18: Bath Time
DHI Book Club Discussion by pibbs
protected by Fair Use, bitch

The chapter starts with a Lindsism and then throttles it for the next two paragraphs.

Operation: Probably a Huge Mistake but Fuck It began as most huge mistakes do: with a trip to Wal-Mart.

...so Operation: Probably a Huge Mistake but Fuck It needed to be done completely off the grid...

Next sentence...

So for Operation: Probably a Huge Mistake but Fuck It, Kaveh decided to bring the minimum that he thought he’d need in the Land Rover...

I honestly didn't think her writing could get worse until I read that. She has to be trolling at this pint, right? But it gets better, she then lists everything Kaveh bought.

he packed ten gallons of water, several types of organic soap (from floor soap to dishwasher detergent to shower gel), two big packs of paper towels, a box of garbage bags, thick plastic gloves (four pairs), a mop, a broom, about twenty of those giant fluffy disposable sponges that his dad used to wash his cars (the kind that don’t leave a scratch), three battery-powered lanterns, two empty plastic buckets, various and sundry other supplies, and some snacks.

Or you know, “He put the supplies in the car.” See how easy this can be Lindsay?

Anyway, basically Kaveh is hiking to the cave to wash Enola. No really. No mention of where Cora has fucked off to. Probably an all-you-can-eat buffet. It takes three trips and three pages to describe it.

SO, he turns a bucket upside down to sit on, takes a bite of Subway sandwich and proceeds to get to washing. Have you ever tried to bathe a pet while eating? Neither has any person ever. But here's why, because the “plot” needed him to eat while trying to bathe this thing.

was clearly trying to, wriggling uncomfortably.
Kaveh took another bite of the sandwich. “You’re not going to talk to me today?”
Then he saw what Enola was focusing on— not Kaveh himself but the sandwich in his hand, like he was afraid of the sandwich. But why? What was there to be afraid of? It was just cheese and meat . . .
Meat. Oh.
“Excuse me.”

These things are cyborgs. Why does this bother them again? Is Lindsay trying to virtue signal veganism? That fat bitch ain't no vegan.

He took the turkey sandwich outside and, a nice, safe distance away, horked down the rest of it.

Horked. Beautiful.

Before he retook his seat, he rummaged through his snacks and got rid of the Alien™ Fresh Beef Jerky (in hindsight, not the most sensitive of purchases in several regards).

Cute, Lindsay, but dumb and forced.

So Kaveh gets Enola's consent, apologizes for the cultural misunderstanding and tells Enola to let him know if he makes anymore mistakes like that.

This is a very stupid scene.

The insufferable virtue signaling contimues.

the organic dish detergent in the buckets and the organic floor cleaner on the floor...

Kaveh: What is this black stuff?
Enola: Blood.
Kaveh: Why he bleed you?
Enola: Contaminated with medication.
Kaveh: Is you afraid?
Enola: Yes.

I know I'm writing that like a retard, but that is the essence of the conversation.

Kaveh: Why is you afraid?

Y OU ARE A NATURAL ALIEN, A FLESH-EATER OF A SPECIES HIGHLY INCLINED TO VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION, AND I AM PRONE AND VULNERABLE AND UNABLE TO DEFEND MYSELF, AND THERE ARE NONE OF MY KIND HERE WHO WOULD DEFEND ME FROM YOU . O UR FIRST INTERACTION WAS ANTAGONISTIC AND VIOLENT . I T STANDS TO REASON YOU WOULD SEE ME AS A THREAT

I've lost count how many pages in we are in, but she's using many more just to say “He got Enola clean.”

Because of overwritten shit like this...

Kaveh was overcome with the desire to reassure him, that of course his fear was rational but in this case unwarranted. Was this more projection? The new country had been so overwhelming. Temporary, his family had thought. How temporary? Who knows, but certainly temporary, because the revolutionary craziness could not last. It would not last. They’d go back home eventually, but in the meantime, they had to survive in this foreign place.

And on and on.

When he’d first arrived in the States, he’d expected to step off the plane and see the smiling denizens of white suburbia waving welcome banners...

...There were no welcome banners, and California was not always welcoming—kids were shitty, especially when he was still learning English. But not all of them were shitty; he’d never forget the first two American kids (Luis and Carlos...

Kaveh: Since I'm washing your dong, I'm Kaveh. What's your name?
Enola GAY: I have many names. (Direct quote)
Kaveh: What are they?

M Y DIRECT ADDRESS DEPENDS ON WHO IS ADDRESSING ME, AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCE .”
“What would I call you?”
“ Y OU COULDN’T PRONOUNCE IT .”

Kaveh: Say it!

Out of two holes on the side of his neck, a singular noise came out that could inaccurately be described as “ Bllkstsksxzzztst. ”
“Nice to meet you.” Kaveh soaped up a new sponge...

What is the point of this scene? Really.

“ W HY ARE YOU DOING THIS ?” Enola asked

Question of the year.

Kaveh: Beacuse you need it.
Enola: I didn't ask, asshole.
Kaveh: I don't want you to die.
Enola: But I must.
Kaveh: Noes!

Mother fucker is the Spoony of space raptor-roach cyborgs!

I CANNOT STAY, BUT I HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GO . T HEREFORE , I HAVE COME HERE TO SEEK OUT MY LAST REMAINING SYMPHYLE, THAT WE MIGHT END OUR LIVES TOGETHER . B UT WHAT I HAVE FOUND , I NEVER COULD HAVE EXPECTED, THAT I AM NOT HIS LAST LIVING SYMPHYLE, BUT HE HAS CREATED ANOTHER . A NOTHER, A NATURAL ALIEN . I MPOSSIBLE , I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT .”
Kaveh paused. “He has created another ‘symphyle’ . . . You mean . . . Cora?”
“ M Y LITTLE COUSIN, YES . B OUND TO MY DEAR B ELOVED, BUT NOT IN A WAY I HAVE EVER SEEN, IN A WAY THAT MAKES THEM BOTH SUFFER . T HEY ARE BOUND TO SUFFERING, AND WHEN ONE SUFFERS, SO DOES THE OTHER . I WOULD LIKE TO STUDY THEIR BOND, FOR IT IS NOTHING LIKE I HAVE EVER SEEN .”

Enola: Muh butt buddy is scared of me.

Show him that you’re not dangerous, and maybe he’ll let you go.”
“ B UT I AM DANGEROUS.”
Kaveh sighed.

And so did I. A thousand times already.

I know you’re going to want to go back on the substance that changed you, your ‘medication,’ but I’d like to ask you not to.”
“ I WOULD NOT KNOW HOW .”
Kaveh paused, wringing the sponge in front of him. “Your kind don’t have any ways to treat addiction?”
“ O UR KIND ARE NOT PRESENTED WITH THE OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME ADDICTED .”
“Then where did your . . . ‘medicine’ come from?”
“ I CREATED IT .”
“Oh . . . dear.”

I so don't care at this point, I can't come up with a smart ass comment.

Then a diatribe about assisted suicides, for some reason.

I was going to keep doing the quote-comment thing, but let's just wrap it up.

Enola wants to die, Kaveh argues he shouldn't

On impulse, he peeled the yellow gloves off his now-clammy fingers and reached his hand out toward the ridges that formed the sort of crown on the back of his head. Enola eyed him warily, but not shakily, not frightened like he was earlier. Trembling slightly, Kaveh grazed a finger over the “skin.”

uh...

Kaveh doesn't like that Enola is named after the plane that nuked Japan, so he comes up with a new one. Since Enola was a physics engineer of sorts, Kaveh renames him....

SpoilerShow

Nikola. Because of course.

End of chapter.