The Island by Peter Benchley

Never before have I read a book so bad that I actually felt compelled to finish it ... until now.

***WARNING - REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS INCLUDING SEMI-GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF RAPE, VIOLENCE, ABUSE, TORTURE***

If this book were to be summed up with a single sentence, it would be: FUCK YEAH I'M A PIRATE - NOW BEND OVER.

You know a book is ballsy when it starts out with racism, threats of rape, violence, and gore. AND THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE.

Oh, gentle reader, you cannot imagine the horrors that await you. But you will. You will.

So our main character, Maynard, is a suffering freelance writer. His wife left him because of his dead-end job, but Maynard is convinced - absolutely convinced - that his shining star is going to pop into view at any moment, because hey, if you've sucked at your job for ten years, things could change for the better any time. Right? Right. Makes perfect sense. For this book, anyway.

(By the way, get used to the way logic works in this book - because FUCK YEAH, I'M A PIRATE - THE ONLY LOGIC I NEED COMES OUT OF A BOTTLE.)

I've only read two Benchley books, but he's got this habit of dragging in (what I assume are) his sexual proclivities. And he appears to be hardcore interested in BDSM. Like, move over Christian Grey. This wasn't so prominent in Jaws, although there is a pretty big adultery subplot and the two extramarrital lovers spend a whole chapter talking about rape fantasies and ... it gets squicky fast.

One of Maynard's colleagues is apparently a sadomasochist, and Maynard spends a lot of time thinking about her in fascination because she's pretty and he can't help but wonder what goes on in that lifestyle. He ribs her about it a lot, and there's this pretty gross-out scene when she comes to work in a scarf and he's like "WHY?" And she's like, "Bites." And he's all disappointed, like, "Hickeys?" And she's like, "NO, MOTHERFUCKER. BITES." And lo and behold, there's these lacerations that are described as lacerations filled with blood, like she was fucking a shark.

(Note to self: Do not look up any sequels to Jaws.)

Back to business.

So Maynard finds about all these boats that have been disappearing in the Turks and Caicos islands, like 600 in the last few years, and decides that this is his next Big Story. Even though his boss doesn't approve, and insinuates that he might even be fired if this pushes into his work time, Maynard is like, FUCK YEAH, PIRATES, and goes ahead and books himself a flight -

- Oh, and he takes along his twelve-year-old son because ... HE'S A GOOD PARENT. Lolz.

There's a lot of Family Tension because apparently the kid (whose name is Justin)'s mother has been telling the kid that her ex-husband is a deadbeat who acts more like a boy than an adult. Maynard is infuriated by this, but not so much that he actually lets it impact his behavior. Indeed, during a stop in Florida, Maynard buys his TWELVE-YEAR-OLD SON a semi-automatic from a shady gunsalesman with a fake sales receipt while the gunsalesman tells them how they can sneak the firearm aboard the plane past the guards (although when he finds out that they're due headed for the South Pacific, he's like, "LOLZ. GUN CONTROL. WHAT'S THAT?"

The end of this chapter also features a page-long digression which may or may not have been sponsored by the National Rifle Association, which talks about how guns are useful tools that don't kill people and blah, blah, blah, guns rule, FUCK YEAH, PIRATES, blah blah blah.

Oh - but before I continue, let's talk about the rape. This book ... it's a fucking rape-wagon of rape (to steal a shelf-name from one of my GR friends). Because pirates = rape.

There are passages like this:

"As she knew they would, as they had the last time, they forced her onto the table and raped her, once each. They were not gratuitously brutal. Her feeble resistance was quietly accepted and easily overcome. The knife held to her throat was more a gesture than a necessity...and when they were done, they helped her to her feet."

It's okay! They're just playing! He's a genteel rapist!

Except ... then the pirates take a twelve-year-old girl away to be raped immediately after...

Nobody is safe. The pirates have this weird rape culture where there are all these guided ethics about how, when, and who to rape.

1. Raping virgins without their permission = death for the rapist because virgins are a valuable commodity.

2. When women are scarce, it is okay to fuck men because without fucking morality is low. But sodomites are frowned down upon, and the catamites/man-whores have zero respect.

3. Women, once their virginity is spent, can either be mothers or whores. Motherhood is permitted for thirteen years, and then they are "sages," or respected members of the community. Whores are whores. You have to buy their favors, and if you kill them, you lose a hand.

4. Once the pirate captain has had his fill of a wench (i.e. she was a virgin who bore him a kid), he then gives her to the crew to be gang-banged. Repeatedly.

5. Captured men of pirate lineage (i.e. Maynard) may be given to a woman as an impregnator (read: male rapee).

I know, right? What. The. Fuck.

This isn't even getting into the real nasty stuff. Like the pirate who finger-fucked one of his captives to "take her measure" to find out if she was a virgin before killing her. Or the fish oil enemas (that's right - fish oil enemas). Or the brawl between the male and female prostitute that the pirates bet on which results in a missing nipple, a missing earlobe, and a severed penis (and death).

The sheer amount of sexual violence in this book was just ... shocking. I mean, rape is bad enough. But this is just twisted and disgusting and gross, and the fact that there are children involved ...

Okay. Right. Where was I? Gun control. Florida. Children with firearms.

So Maynard finds it hard to get a plane chartered to the South Pacific, and ends up flying with Hindenburg Airlines (not the actual name), which is piloted by a fucking albino (that's right) who likes to get drunk while he flies. Because this isn't dangerous at all - no, seriously, that's what cruise control and twelve-year-old boys are for ("here, Justin, fly the motherfucking plane while I go get smashed"). Seriously. That seriously happens. And Maynard is just like, YOLO.

(Because FUCK YEAH, PIRATES.)

Of course, the albino ends up crashing the plane and goes off to have sex with a loose island native. Maynard ends up meeting this really creepy guy who calls himself Windsor, and gives a rambling chapter-long rant about his weird and fatalistic personal philosophies. I couldn't help but be reminded of Robert A. Heinlein; Heinlein always had one old, sagely character to act as his mouthpiece and spew weird sexual and sociocultural philosophy. Not sure what Benchley's personal philosophies are (and I don't really want to know), but yeah ... disturbing.

Anyway, Windsor calls Maynard's son a "catamite," and Justin's like, "What's a catamite, dad?" And Windsor's like, SOMEONE WHO PADDLES A CATAMARAN (AND BOY DO I WANT TO PADDLE YOUR CATAMARAN).

Seriously, rapist vibes all up in that joint. I'm surprised Maynard hasn't taken the boy back home (and so is his mother, because by this point it is now Monday and Justin is missing school, and the words "kidnapping charges" are being bandied around back in the States as his mother tries frantically to figure out where the hell her ex has gone).

OK. SO NOW WE ARE AT THE PART WHERE THEY ENCOUNTER THE PIRATES.

It turns out that these pirates are actually legit pirates who have been living in relative isolation since the 1600s. They speak like the 1600s, live like the 1600s, and dress like the 1600s.

So naturally, they are ignorant and unintelligible, they stink, and they are filthy.

Following lots of gory death threats, the fates of Maynard and Justin are eventually decided. Justin is innocent and therefore "pure," and is going to be trained as a pirate. Maynard is old and worthless, but because he has the same last name as a famous pirate, he's given to a woman as a sex slave in order to get her pregnant with noble pirate babies. As soon as she's preggers, though, Maynard will be killed. UNTIL THEN

Maynard has tons of sex with Beth (the aging woman (read: by aging, I mean young twenties. FUCKING CRONE.)), and she tells him a bit about the workings of the pirates. He spends most of his time chained up, but because they used a combination lock (wtf) he manages to get free (the code was 0-0-0 - smart they are not, but who cares FUCK YEAH, PIRATES). He then finds all these papers that pretty much say, "We are pirates. Fuck yeah. We rape and pillage and we have rapethed and pillagedeth since it was 1600. FUCK YEAH, PIRATES."

Maynard is like, Holy shit! I'm being held captive and raped by museum exhibits!

Meanwhile, Justin is being brainwashed. Pirate grog must be strong shit, because before long, he's treating Captain Nau like he's the number one Pimp Daddy and he's Bottom Bitch, strutting around in pirate bling, killing people with the gun his dad bought him, and getting wasted. At one point, Captain Nau takes one of the whores and orders her to have sex with Justin so he won't be a boy.

Ummmmmmmmm.

Maynard is taken along on one of the boat-stealing adventures to learn his lesson about the pirates and how they mean SRS BUSINESS. The pirates somehow managed to find a ton of drug smugglers, and they've got flour-sized bags of cocaine. Captain Nau is like THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? And the drug smugglers are like, "...you smell it man." And the Captain thinks it is snuff, and so he does a line of coke off his cutlass but nothing happens so he orders his men to keelhaul the cocaine and the drug smugglers are like, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

There's also that prostitute vs. prostitute fight, where the female prostitute (now short one nipple) wields the severed penis like a trophy as the male prostitute is carried off to his death.

Oh, but then there's our trusty deus ex machina, the Portuguese boy from the beginning! Manuel! He is afraid that if Justin stays there he will be Captain Nau's replacement and Manuel wants that position for himself so he is going to try to help Justin and Maynard escape. But Justin is like:

So he gets knocked unconscious.

AND THEN THE FUCKING MARINES COME. Windsor is like, "Captain Nau, you don't fuck with the marines!" And Captain Nau is like, "DIE!" And kills Windsor like a bitch before taking two marines prisoner. But while the marines are getting their butts handed to them by the pirates, Maynard and Justin manage to get aboard the warship. Captain Nau chases them and gets the shit beaten out of him by an angry Maynard who suddenly develops fatherly instincts.

Nau is like, "NO BITCH. I DECIDE WHEN I DIE."

And he fucking self-eviscerates himself pirate hara-kiri style.

And many many many expensive therapy bills, pending criminal charges, later, Justin and Maynard live happily ever after, I kid you fucking not. Seriously. It ends with them holding hands.

This is probably one of the most disturbing books that I have ever read. It's like the author just decided, HEY. I'M GOING TO WRITE WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT AND YOU BITCHES ARE ALL GONNA READ IT BECAUSE I'M PETER FUCKING BENCHLEY, STEPHEN KING OF THE 1960S! It's bad - terribly, horribly, I-just-shit-myself bad.

But it wasn't badly written. And I kept thinking, Okay, so he's now done ______, no way can it get any worse. But it could, and it did, and by the time I got to the end of the book, the Mane Six of Equestria could have flown in and started getting their clop-clop on and I wouldn't have batted an eye, because FUCK YEAH, PIRATES. It's a train-wreck and I couldn't look away.

Read this at your peril - just be prepared for your scurvy stomach to keelhaul your dinner, you swab.

1.5 to 2 out of 5 stars.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey is one of those authors who varies quite a bit in quality. I do like most of her Pern series, but her more experimental endeavors...not so much. I got The Ship Who Sang for free at a book swap, since not too many people go in for the vintage fantasy or sci-fi genres, and found the premise interesting.

The Brain Ship series takes place in a future where space travel is ubiquitous, genetic manipulation is commonplace, and earthling settlers have settled on planets all across the galaxy.

The parents of severely handicapped children are given a choice at birth: they can have the children euthanized or they can have the children be made into living "Brain Ships": sentient spaceships that are alive, with the central control being the brain and all the other controls and doodads extended limbs of the "ship."

Our main character, Helva, is one such character.

I'm not sure what it is about this book that rubbed me. Maybe it's the fact that one of the first characters we are made to like dies within the first twenty pages. Maybe it's the fact that I found the topic distasteful, because it reminded me a little of eugenics, which begs the question, "Who are we to play God when we don't understand the repercussions of our actions?" Maybe it was just the fact that Helva was really annoying and wouldn't shut up (oh, how I wanted her to shut up).

It was a cool idea, original, but just didn't work for me. Maybe it will work for you.

DNF.

1 out of 5 stars.

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

Sometimes you read a book with critical acclaim and even if you don't necessarily agree with said acclaim you can at least see where they are coming from. The Optimist's Daughter is not like that at all. This is a book that won the g-d Pulitzer and I haven't the faintest why.

And no, I'm not just sore because I got the early printing with the black cover and the haunted-looking house that made it look (misleadingly) like a gothic.

This book is about Laurel, a pretentious traditionalist Southern gal who comes back down south when her father becomes afflicted with cataracts and needs surgery. The surgery goes badly for some reason  and he dies. No explanation is given. He just dies. Everyone is shocked, especially - and most worringly - the doctor, who keeps insisting in a Monty Python way, "But he was getting better!"

Laurel blames Fay, her gold-digging, red-neck, social-climbing stepmother, for this (equally irrationally - get used to this, for there is far more irrationality coming your way) because she caught Fay shaking him once, abusing him Laurel says, trying to make him get better and drag him back to life. Fay tries this "shaking the life back into you" tactic a second time, at his funeral, much to Laurel's horror and the amusement of the incredibly insensitive guests.

The Worst Funeral in the World makes up a good portion of the book, and it really is a cringe-worthy and horrific scene.

Relatives: Remember when old Judgey-boy used to do those things that he never did that I am making up right now to show how close I am to the dead guy? Also, I'm getting smashed!

Laurel: He didn't do that!

Relatives: Lookit him lying there, all peaceful-like. Propped up like a ring in a jewelry box.

Laurel: Oh God.

Random little boy character: I'm here to make insensitive comments to show you how much we lie and posture to cover up what we're really thinking!

Laurel: I like this little boy. Also, I wish this was a closed-coffin ceremony.

Relatives: Nonsense. He looks great.

Fay: I AM UPSET AND ANGRY AND I DON'T KNOW WHY SO I AM GOING TO PHYSICALLY ATTACK THE CORPSE AND HIS RELATIVES AND MY RELATIVES AND OH GOD WHY -

Relatives: Aww, lookit the helpless poor distraught little thing. She needs a hug.

Fay: *hisses*

Relatives: Poor little helpless girl.

Fay: *claw claw*

Laurel: You have ruined everything and I hate you all.

Relatives: Gosh, what a tasteful and elegant service this was.

Random little boy: MY MOTHER JUST TOLD ME IN GRAVE DETAIL ABOUT MY DADDY'S SUICIDE. *cries*

Relatives: Yup, what a wonderful funeral.

After The Worst Funeral in the World, Fay ends up going back home with her relatives because they're eyeballing the house she's just inherited and talking about permanently moving in and starting a bed-and-breakfast there for a profit. Laurel takes advantage of their absence to go through all her mother's and father's things through the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia.

We learn that her mother was the only woman her father loved, and that he loved her too much, and he loved her selfishly, so that towards the end when she was on death's door and wanted someone with whom she could grieve, her husband's determination to pretend everything was normal came as a complete betrayal (hence the optimist title). He married Fay because she was less taxing on his emotions, even though this ended up hurting Fay because she wanted attention and he only really cared about his dead wife and his daughter, and had no love left to give. Fay, being an attention whore, did not take kindly to this at all and hates Laurel and life sucks.

Like others, I wasn't really emotionally invested in this book at all until the end, with the breadboard, and then Laurel randomly decides to pull the stick out of her bottom and gush out all these emotions and almost brains Fay with it, deciding at the last moment that it isn't worth it and Fay is like, "You are an idiot and a coward ha ha ha. I destroyed the breadboard your dead husband made for your dead mom and I don't care about your pain because I am a BITCH LOL."

And then Laurel is like, "Okay. I don't want it anymore. Bye."

And she drives off into the sunset while her friends wave goodbye.

And the story ends.

Now...I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. It was boring, it was badly written, and the characters were bland. Plus, the plotholes! (What the hell is up with Fay and her relatives? How on earth did her father encounter such a woman and what did he see in her? How did he die from a cataract? How did her mom die from whatever was wrong with her eyes?)

I guess the point of this book is that love can end up hurting more than it can end up helping sometimes, especially when we're selfish about it, and that sometimes honesty is the best, even if what you're genuinely feeling is hatred or disgust. I don't know.

1.5 out of 5 stars.

Darkhenge by Carrie Fisher

Once again, Nenia's opinion differs from that of the masses.

Audience: So what else is new?

FOR THE BETTER.

Audience: Bwuhhhh?

That's right. I liked this - loved it, in fact. Which is kind of awesome, because the low rating had me a little scared. Let's be honest: how many of you have ever removed a book from your TBR because the ratings were so horrendously low? *raises hand* Yeah, exactly.

But Darkhenge deserves every single one of those five stars.

Let me take a moment to say here that I'm putting ALL my ebooks on temporary hiatus because I have too many physical books cluttering up my room at the moment. Sorry netgalley, and sorry for the inconvenience, but my God, my room is turning into something off an episode of Hoarders so, priorities, people!

Anyway, Darkhenge - I think part of the reason I liked it so much was the fact that it reminded me of Labyrinth. I just love the idea of people being spirited away to fairyland or whatever to work through their character development and/or psychological and emotional issues via allegorical storyline. It's such an awesome plot device.

In this case, the spiritee is Rob's little sister, Chloe. She fell off her horse and hit her head and now lies in a coma in a nursing home. Rob is an artist (an especially tormented one) and hates the way his household is crumbling apart because of Chloe's horrible condition.

At the same time, local archaeologists have unearthed a mysterious structure in rich, loamy soil that does not match the whitish chalk-ridden soil of their town. In it is a henge constructed of wood. Not petrified wood, but wood that is still alive - and at its center is an inverted tree.

A mysterious man who calls himself both Vetch and the Poet says that this tree is but one of the ways into the Unworld, where Chloe resides in a nightmare of her own making. And if Rob cannot get to her in time, she will be lost to him - forever.

First of all, apart from the awesome premise and the beautiful writing and the Labyrinthine undertones, this was a great read because it hit a little too close to home. Rob is an artist, and his sister is a writer. One of the points in this story is that Rob's work stole the show because it is so much easier to see and gain meaning from a painting than a story. This resonated with me because my sister is a very good artist, and she is always getting praise for her work whereas my stories take time, and my busy parents cannot spare the time to read through them completely.

I understood Chloe's frustration.

The Hades/Persephone undertones were also a pleasant but welcome surprise. I thought the Forest King was hot, and the way that he wore a different mask for each caer was pretty cool. God, I loved the descriptions of the Unworld. This was such a gorgeous story wrought with equally gorgeous writing. I think it's better than Incarceron (which fell flat for me), and God, I wish she wrote more stories like this because WOW.

5 out of 5 stars.

Doll Bones by Holly Black

When I was a little girl, I went to an elementary school with a playground built at the bottom of a grassy knoll. At the edge of the field was a large oak tree, which the yard duties declared "out of bounds." Naturally, this gave the tree the allure of the forbidden and we all wanted to play there as often as we could.

Beside the tree was the crumbling ruins of a garden. There were pieces of red-brick, metal trellises, and splintered wooden structures. I decided that it had been a cottage home, which had been burned in a fire. We decided one of the creepy yard duties, who always wore white, was actually a ghost. We called her the Ghost Lady, and packed little talismans to keep ourselves safe.

Reading Doll Bones was like going on a flashback to all the games I played as a child. Even though I absolutely hate the phrase, I have to say that Doll Bones was "pitch-perfect."

The story is about three friends on the verge of adolescence. Zach is into basketball and becoming a handsome young man. Alice is a beauty-in-the-making with a tomboy streak, who kind of reminded me of Cassie, from the Animorphs series. Poppy is the bossy rebellious one who compensates for her insecurities with meanness and volume. The three of them have been friends for forever, and spent the majority of their time together playing games and weaving elaborate storylines which they act out with little dolls and figurines.

One day, though, Zach's father decides he's had enough of his son's sissy doll-playing, and he throws all of his toys into the garbage. Suddenly, Zach can no longer play - and rather than admit this to his friends, out of some strange sense of pride he decides to lie to Poppy and Alice, saying that he's too grown up now for their childish games.

That seems like it's the end.

But then Poppy comes forward. She claims the antique doll in her mother's locked cabinet, the doll they know as the Queen, contains the ashes and bones of a little girl named Eleanor. Eleanor is haunting her, she says, because she wants to be buried in her grave. And if they don't put her back where she belongs, terrible things are going to happen.

Is the doll really haunted? Or has Poppy gone crazy?

The suspense in this was great. Some children's books use condescending language and you get a sense of smarminess throughout the story. Not Doll Bones. Reminiscent of Coraline, or The Thief of Always, Doll Bones speaks the language of children in a voice all can understand. Holly Black makes childish fears seem frightening to adults, too. I absolutely disliked Tithe, but I feel that Holly Black may have found her niche in children's and middle-grade fiction. Wonderful book.

4 out of 5 stars.

Sun God Seeks…Surrogate? by Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

So I just checked and I'm not the only person who didn't like this book, but I am the first person who didn't like it who also reviewed it. Uhhh...no pressure?

One star reviews aren't fun. I've gotten them, poked a stick at them, and ran away when they started sparking. BUT they are a necessary part of the universe and the Divine Plan. Also, it is like 4 in the morning, and I am AWAKE.

This is book #3 in a series of quirky PNR with titles that sound like something you'd see in the movie theaters in the 1950s. I really loved the idea behind this, and the titles are pretty hilarious. I applied for all the books on netgalley just for the lolz.

The problem - and this is often a problem in romance novels with humorous undercurrents - is the fact that the book does not seem sure whether it wants to be taken seriously or not. The main character is a total ditz who reacts to situations completely unrealistically, like, LOLZ I THINK I SLEPT WITH THIS GUY BUT I DUNNO BECAUSE MAGIC. It's amusing, but then you also have scenes that are kind of dark. To lol or not to lol?

Sun God Seeks Surrogate really reminded me of the Stephanie Plum series in that sense. It's gimmicky, silly, unrealistic, and seems caught between two extremes - being funny vs. being a thriller. One of the reasons I lost interest in the series was because Ms. Evanovitch apparently decided that gimmick trumped plot, much to my disappointment.

DNF.

1 out of 5 stars.

Sin by Josephine Hart

ruth has built her whole life on the foundations of revenge.

elizabeth's parents were killed in a car crash when she was scarcely older than a baby. she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle, who loved her because she made herself easy to love, who gave her everything because she asked for nothing. then, a few years later, they had a child of their own: ruth.

from a young age, ruth resents her older not-a-sister for "stealing her birthright." this means ruth feels all elizabeth's possessions would be hers if her cousin did not usurp a place in the family.

it starts with small things - ruth steals her sister's toys, taking delight in her sister's frustration or despair when she cannot find her favored things. later, hairbrushes, shoes, slips, which ruth wears in secret and imagines what it might be like to be elizabeth.

but then, as the two of them reach adulthood, ruth decides that the best way to know elizabeth, to destroy elizabeth, is by her lovers. ruth contrives to seduce her sister's husbands and lovers, one after the other. sometimes she fails, sometimes she succeeds, but it is never satisfying because her cousin/sister's complacent sweetness always makes them leave.

...until ruth issues her greatest coup of all, little knowing that it will mean her tragedy and ruin.

this has a low gr rating and i can only assume that's because of how twisted and trashy and vile this is. sin takes place among english high society, and it takes a certain kind to enjoy watching a bunch of rich people psychologically stab each other with an arsenal of mental knives. that probably says bad things about me, but i like dark gothic fiction. it's like a soap opera, only i can tell myself that each person is a case study in mental illness.

because, oh, boy, does ruth have some problems. elizabeth does, too. my gosh, that twist at the end. for the last fifty pages, I was like :O

at times i was reminded of victoria holt or mary stewart. there is some very lovely writing in here, though not worthy of the label "literary fiction." at least, not in my opinion. other times, it got a little trashier and more contemporary, and i was reminded of linda howard. there is even some stuff in here reminiscent of v.c. andrews (ruth's homoerotic fetishization of her cousin).

i am definitely going to be keeping an eye out for this author the next time i go to the bookstore.