Stop Standing in Front of the Screen

Our Saturday Snark begins with a travelogue, as Vicki travels to Minnesota. No real snarkable material here since Ellanjay stubbornly refuse to describe stuff, so think of it less as one of those boring 19th century literary travelogues where so-and-so goes on endlessly about natural features and more like one of those travelogues where so-and-so stands in front of the film projector the entire time, stubbornly refusing to let you see anything. There is a brief mention that the earthquake has damaged Pikes Peak and Mount Rushmore but that's the extent of it.

The narrative briefly has some dialogue in Minnesota but all of a sudden, there's a jump and they're on the road again. I flipped through the pages thinking I must have missed something, but I didn't and I must ask whether an Editor ran over Ellanjay's dogs when they were kids, because seriously...

They go up towards Olympia, Washington, where they notice the locusts are gone. Finally they go south to Chula Vista, California, which is near where the Mexican border used to be. Now I know in my snark, I frequently leave out stuff, because it's unsnarkable or there's a point I want to make, but I feel a need to point out in this case, I'm not leaving anything out. Seriously all that's there is just "They went to [Blank] and preached." It's almost enough to make me wish for one of those 19th century overly long travelogues because at least those require a little effort on both the writer's part and the reader's part.

In Chula Vista, they ease off the narrative gas briefly. Vicki goes there, they preach, some listen and receive the Zod-mark, some don't, and just when I think they're going to hit the road again, she decides to delay their rondeveau in Arizona because she feels Zod is about to do great things here.

In Israel, nothing's really going on except that they're gathering materials and praying for Sam to come home. Apparently now that the locusts are gone, everything's back to normal. I could go into a rant about how even after the demonic locusts left, scientists should still be trying to study them and everyone should be questioning just how the hell all this stuff happens, but that's a feature of the Ellanjay-verse: freakish stuff happens and no one cares.

Judd tries to contact Nada, but gets no answer. He checks only to discover that she and her family have been arrested, leaving him to assume that Kasim's call to Kweesa was intercepted. The selection ends with Sam showing up again, and wouldn't it be a great twist if it turned out that the GC managed to torture a confession out of him, which was why Nada and her family were arrested. That would be a novel twist but it's not going to happen. Remember, torture is ineffective against Brave RTCs, just as torture is good and holy when done by RTCs.

Well, I was expecting to hear more about what's going on in Chula Vista but it turns out Vicki decided to ignore her own words because now they're on their way to Arizona with no explanation whatsoever. Seriously, the editing for this book is abysmal.

Mark calls. Apparently, Chloe is due to give birth any day now, but Our Buck is still stuck in Israel. Also they're afraid there might be something wrong with the baby. And I must commend this series for one thing: when I set out to snark it, I thought it'd just be the kids shadowing the adults and constantly talking about the brilliance that is St. Rayford and Our Buck, and while there's been a little of that, for the most part, the kids have been doing their own thing, something I didn't expect to see in a cheaply written series meant to get a few bucks from RTC parents.

So basically they released Sam in hopes of following him, but rather than implanting the transmitter beneath his skin, they put it in his wallet, so naturally it didn't work. Once again, the eeevil One-World-Government hell-bent on destroying all rivals and wiping out RTC-ianity, did nothing to a traitor. Again, I'm fighting the urge to kidnap Ellanjay and tattoo the Evil Overlord list onto their skin.

So Vicki's in Tuscon and Chloe's had the baby, which Our Buck was able to witness, so I guess we can cancel that candlelight vigil we had planned. Again, there's a lot of summarizing about how inspiring Vicki's message is and the chapter ends with Jeff Williams introducing himself as Buck's brother. I think I recall hearing he had a brother from the adult books, but I couldn't remember if he made any onscreen appearances.

And I'm afraid that's the end of the book and seeing as I'm still broke and unemployed, the end of my snarks for a while. The next book is called Shaken, but honestly, I'm pretty depressed that I'm still unemployed and still have to ask people to buy stuff for me. :sigh: