Hello and happy sunday everybody! I appreciate the spirited comments we had going last week, but I feel I must clarify a few things.
What gets me about Ellanjay's view on The Prayer is that it is spell-casting in its purest form. Basically you are going to Hell and Zod can't do a thing about it--apparently his hands are tied and he can't break the laws he himself made--but if you say The Prayer, you can circumvent Zod and go to heaven. I haven't posted quotes with the prayer but it's always the same specific wording, because apparently saying, "O God save me," or "I'm not sure if there's anything out there, but if there is, save me," isn't enough for them.
So Judd and Buck and Ryan go to the Western Wall to see Moishe and Eli. They also take a tour of the most holy sites in Christendom and apparently see nothing worthy of note because there is no description. Once again, I wish we were in the hands of a decent hack writer like Dan Brown. At least he moves out of the way of the screen and lets the viewers occasionally see something of note.
Meanwhile, the girly girls, aka Vicki and Chaya, decide to revive The Underground. :massages temples: Not that lame plot point again! If you're wondering Vicki gets busted and is threatened with having to return to the detention center.
Judd tries to tell the NWO police that he knows of a lead on the murders of Token Jew's family but ends up busted as well. The NWO thinks that Token Jew murdered his family and has gone on the run, not an unreasonable conclusion to come to since he disappeared and they are evil despots after all. So I don't get why Judd, given how badly he seeks persecution to chalk up points on his fuselage, is so shocked, shocked, that he finds himself being put in detention.
Two chapters and nothing happens. I would have done a third but the next one's long. Sorry to disappoint for this week.
Oh and we do briefly hear from Lionel. Since he hadn't said or done anything, I was wondering if he had escaped to a better written book. But no such luck there.
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Yeah, Brown at least has the decency to regurgitate the tourist guides to the places he's writing about...
I guess for an RTC it's a really huge step to admit that sometimes the guy in authority over you may not be perfect, even if he's not an RTC, because YAY AUTHORITY. I think that may be what this section on Judd is about.
This brutal NWO persecution sounds pretty damn inefficient. How many times have one of the kids been caught spreading Christian propaganda, and been given nothing but a stern talking to and a vague threat to be put into some form of detention at some point. I think Vicky has been caught several times now (and has been detained for some time), but apparently they keep releasing her. And I'm not even counting how many times they just publicly speak up against the NWO.
Several real life dictators would've had them killed twice over by now, and even the relatively leanient ones would have at least ensured they keep quite for more than 6 hours after catching them red-handed spreading 'enemy propaganda' for the 3rd time this month. I'm not getting the 'ultimate evil' vibe here. Is this supposed to be the lull-period where the Anti-Christ is still pretending he doesn't hate Christians per se, or is this just L&J's style of 'nothing really bad happens to RTCs', like the 'brutal torture' of Chloe that would barely qualify as cruel and unusual punishment today (and then mostly violating the unusual part, not the cruel part).
Yeah this is reminding me of that essay which talks about how we're supposed to be shocked, shocked that Chloe lasted a few hours without food. Google "Torture and the Virgin Army" if you want to read it.
I think that's where I read it (I certainly haven't read LB, so I'm only as far as Fred is). Not sure if it's the exact same article, but I prefer not to have that particular search term in my browsing history at work :p
By the way, I was wondering, is the kids book currently palying in the 18 month time skip of the adult book? Or is this afterwards already? I know from the Bruce Barnes Death count down that it happens pretty quickly after the time skip, and from what I can follow Bruce is still around in this book.
If it is during the period, it would give an explanation as to why not too much is happening in the kids books right now. But from just your snippits, I'd say there's a lot more happening than in Tribulation Farce. Cities are getting bombed, wars are being fought... we're skipping all that so we can have a few more pages of Buck acting like a reject of the Duke Nukem auditions to Verna?
RE:Time Skip:
I believe this book follows the events of the third adult book known as Nicholae. Oh and during books 4-8, there was a leap to Christmas time and afterwards to Judd graduating from high school.
Oh and Bruce Barnes is dead at this point in the series. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I know at one point, when I was snarking, I typed Bruce's name when I meant Buck's. Yeah, my face is pretty red over that error.
Ah yes, I looked back and Bruce died about 3 months worth of posts ago. Huh, it has been a bit of a blur since then. Vicki investigated by youth dention, released, detained again. Ryan conveniently falls into a speeding truck with a kidnap victim, escapes, gets kidnapped agian.
I hate to say it, but I would've prefered a sickingly praising book about the Wolverines for Jesus.
Dan Brown at least can do settings well. He can suck you into the Louvre or the Vatican. There might not be anything terribly interesting or reasonable happening there, but he does get across what the place is like!
Myself... I have no idea what New Hope Church looks like, the interior of AF1, Nicky's office in New Babylon, or even the Wailing Wall. Well, I do have impressions of what it looks like, from having seen pictures of it, but sure as heck not from anything Ellenjay have written!
have no idea what New Hope Church looks like
Ahhh ... here it is...
Rayford let that comment hang in the air as he turned the corner and the tasteful little church came into view.
and...
It had been a long time since Buck had been in a church. This one seemed innocuous enough, fairly new and modern, neat and efficient. He and the young pastor met in a modest office.
What more do you need to know? ;)
"The NWO thinks that Token Jew murdered his family and has gone on the run, not an unreasonable conclusion to come to since he disappeared and they are evil despots after all."
Now we're talking! Or at least we would be if this were a better story. Giving a detailed account of the fake story that the NWO put out to discredit Token Jew could serve as an excellent object lesson as to how easily the truth can be manipulated.
Judd can listen in horror as the NWO official describes how they believe Token Jew had a fight with his wife who is outraged over his abandonment of their religious beliefs. There was a moment of blind rage, a punch was thrown. It wasn't his fault! He never even though about the marble coffee table behind her! And the children would never believe it was an accident...
Of course something like that might actually teach young readers to question the things they hear from people in authority. Can't have that.
Evil Paul, I think this rather ties back to the idea that the RTCs' main objection to the global dictatorship and enforced one world religion is that the RTCs aren't in charge of it.
Yeah, that whole Chloe-torture thing (or Chloe-"torture" thing) is the most low-key torture scen you'll ever read. They deny her meals for maaaybe 24 hours, but I think they even give her a health bar, so scratch even that. Oh, and they don't turn off the TV. Indeed, it is a horrific montage of inhumanity, one for the ages.
Technically they don't feed Chloe for 31 hours, but what seems to get most people is that they wasted 1) chocolate and 2) a milkshake in a doomsday story 3) on Chloe. I'm reminded of that line in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road ... "he remembered them. Cows. They were extinct."
The series (both adult and kids) fell in love with its stars, I think, and that made it hard to dispose of them. Imagine Frodo and Sam if Tolkien felt the same way.
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