Sunday, November 6, 2011

Another Four-Part Snark or I've Never Been So Bored in My Life

As you guessed from the title of this post, this is a rare four-part snark, because nothing happens. I apologize if I cause worldwide blackouts due to terminal boredom.

You're probably wondering what Lionel's going to do about his GC gig now that he's got his memory back. Well, wonder no more: he's decided to be a double agent, working as a Morale Monitor but as an RTC. This is probably the smartest thing we've seen a character do so far; before you cite Our Buck and St. Rayford, remember that they never seem to do any actual double-agent type work and they continue to blab about God at every available opportunity and never get in trouble for it, even though they work for the anti-Christ.

So he and Conrad come up with a ruse to make their commander think they got into a confrontation with the enemy and narrowly escaped and it works and that's all that happens in this chapter.

Basically the GC have Charlie and with his talk about helping Vicki bury Ryan, now they think maybe she's responsible for two murders. Afterwards, Lionel tries to convert Charlie.

If you're wondering what Vicki and Judd are doing, they're hiding in the Junior-Hole-in-the-Ground trying desperately not to get caught by the GC. It's as boring to type as it is to read.

We do get a bit of a conflict as Vicki tells Judd to stop bossing her around the way he used to boss Ryan around. Judd says he's kicked himself a thousand times for the way he treated Ryan which is news to me; Judd's always been a mini-Rayford in that everything he does is right, even when it appears to be wrong, he's always in the right.

Anyway, end of chapter, Conrad converts and Judd and Vicki leave the shelter in order to seek out another, only for something to fall on Vicki's leg forcing Judd to carry her. I suppose they're trying to build more romantic tension between them but honestly, I'm so bored I'm practically comatose.

Last chapter, Vicki and Judd are on the run with the GC in pursuit. Lionel contemplates shooting Phoenix (aka the YTF's dog) in order to protect his friends. The GC searches the tent hospitals for Judd and Vicki but they escape by stealing the commander's jeep and oh god is this the most boringest section in the history of boring books. At least when you read the phonebook you get useful information that you can apply in your daily life; what do you get when you read Left Behind: the kids? You either get a concussion from bashing your head against the desk or you become comatose due to terminal boredom.

6 comments:

Apocalypse Review said...

Huh! Interesting that Vicki's actually telling Judd off. I wonder if this is because the ghostwriter working with Jenkins knew that teenagers these days have a bit of a different notion of gender roles than L&J do.

I like the double-agent thing being worked out properly for Lionel :)

Aside from that I am surprised the book didn't seem to contain that much in the way of action/adventure/drama. You'd think that it'd be more riveting, like movies about secret agents who have to work to stamp out a major threat - like Jason Bourne did in the Bourne Supremacy (the book, not the movie) in which he needed to take out a dangerous and ambitious Chinese official who might have provoked a war were he allowed to continue in his career.

no one said...

I am so sorry that nothing is going on in this series.

Then again, I suppose that this is a problem in the Kids' books that isn't present in the adult-version of Left Behind...wait, yeah. The adult's version has pages and pages of Jack and Diddly happening, followed by a few pages of stupid, but here...there isn't even a whole lot of dumb to go around in the kids' version. It's just pages of nothing followed by pages of nothing.

Kudos to you for slogging through it, though. I know I don't have the patience.

Apocalypse Review said...

Judd and Vicki leave the shelter in order to seek out another, only for something to fall on Vicki's leg forcing Judd to carry her.

Oh, how authorially convenient.

As I note over in my EoA reviews, this habit of using authorial fiat to create implausible coincidences kind of works against the desire of the authors to try and draw people in and care for the characters.

Judd in the books doesn't seem like a likable guy after the Disaster because he starts being a mini-Rayford (at least HIS fully-loaded 747'll make it into Vicki's airport terminal post-Trib), whereas I kinda felt a bit of sympathy for him pre-Rapture because a sixteen-year-old acting impulsively in stealing his dad's credit card amid strained family relations is kind of believable.

However the *wiggles fingers* WOO CHAMPAGNE thing? No.

That's why I changed it in my fic to Judd having a half-way worked out plan to take off somewhere and to be a beer-drinker.

Firedrake said...

LaHaye and (whoever) seem, across many of their books, to be very keen on the double agent idea. I wonder if they've ever read accounts of real-life ones? It's not quite like being an undercover cop, though the stress level and problem of being required to do a lot of things you find objectionable is very similar; it's also that nobody on your own side will ever trust you again, even after you've "come clean", because a convincing double agent could easily be a triple agent...

Of course it would never be something falling on Judd's leg forcing Vicki to carry him. That would never do.

Apocalypse Review said...

That'd be awesome if she had to. She could be like the crossfit trainers I've heard about and make Judd be all like O_O WUT when she can pick him up like a cat. :P

*tries to make this headcanon somehow*

Mau de Katt said...

Why on earth would killing their dog be at all helpful?