Gone, Chapter 3

We begin this chapter with a little lines and lines of vernacular dialogue whose only purpose is:  Hey, look, Dan is listening to the radio station that he works at.

This is followed by useless exposition and backstory about the DJ (Lacy), extremely boring crap about how the categories of songs are mixed up through the day, incorrect tense, poor grammar, and more of Dan's shitty driving.

I think Dan lied about being a great driver.

More amusing the vernacular is gone the moment Dan walks into work and starts talking to Lacy.  Magic.  She keeps calling him "Big Guy" complete with capital letters.

"Dan pushed through the news room door and grabbed yesterday's local news folder."

Don't you use the same fucking word twice in one sentence, Lint.  Show, don't tell.  And get an editor for your fucking grammar, you twat.  

Lacy is upset and crying about some car accident.  Dan asks her if she's having a, quote, "guilt thing" about it.

I don't know if Lint is trying to make him a sympathetic character here; he really tried to push that with "family man" and "attentive husband" but with all of his "I'm a great driver" and the Amish people with this too, he's just a total douche.

For two paragraphs, Lacy describes what it was like to be on the phone with a stranger when he called the radio show and crashed the truck.  She obviously needs therapy.  Does anyone recommend it?  Do I really need to answer that?  Psychology and medication for mental illness are sins.  You know it's all the devil.

"The hassle of getting out of the driveway, the tangle with the Amish sleigh, getting in 30 minutes later than he usually did, plus Lacey's state of mind over the accident, to say nothing of the hard knot of excitement at the pit of his stomach at the idea of being, as Lacey put it, the "big guy" now."

What?  That's it?  All you've got there is a list, a stream of consciousness, a recap of everything that's happened in this chapter so far and the chapter previous to it, for no fucking reason because it's an incomplete sentence?  Did you even reread your own goddamn book, you senile goat?

That's rude.  I apologize.  Goats are adorable.

A-fucking-dorable.

This caused me physical pain:

"Lacey said, 'Your Penn State farming friends are ready to tell the world how a black cow can chew green grass and give white milk which churns yellow butter. Anything else before I take off.'"

I don't know whether the subject matter or the grammar is worse.  I guess Lint would say the answer is "Jesus".  Christian college has got to be the easiest thing ever:  Every answer is "Jesus".  Here's your PhD in bull shit.

She leaves by kissing him on the forehead, which Lint describes as "daughterly" and as someone with coworkers, I would describe as totally inappropriate.

Dan is relieved to see her go and seems to think she is "over the worst of her depression".  Uh, no--doesn't look like it from my end and I'm the outsider only peeking in for a few lines of dialogue, dude.

He starts DJ-ing and that's just how it ends.

Speaking as someone who has read a book before, I think this entire chapter was wasteful, its only purpose to set up the next chapter, which will likely be when the rapture actually happens.  I called it here, folks.

There are 26 chapters.

Gone, Chapter 2

So this chapter immediately starts off one leg up above the first because it kindly informs us that it is the Liverpool in Pennsylvania.  Same difference.

The very first sentence, however, Lint has made up a word:  Rumblescraped, used to describe a snowplow clearing the streets.

Dan watches the snowplow for a bit then decided to get his car started, which is described as being packed under an eight-inch "blanket of ermine".

An entire car coated in these?  Think I could deal.

He for some reason kicks his car's right rear tire, something he considers to be "affectionate" and a "wake-up kick".  He brushes away all the ermines snow, which we for some reason need a description of to reveal his "Bug with good rubber all around".  I pitched this phrase into the void of Google and the top result was for table tennis, so I have a feeling Lint doesn't know what he's talking about either, which makes me feel we have a sense of solidarity.

We have about a paragraph of useless prose about how quirky his car is before he finally pulls out of the damned driveway goes back into the fucking house to say goodbye to his sleeping children, which is when we learn this is a flashback.

I hate flashbacks, especially flashbacks to "oh, this happened days ago"--why the fuck don't you just lead with the flashback!?

Then there is a flashback within the fucking flashback of Karen and their twins in the hospital bed.  The narrative refers to her here as a "new mother" while only two sentences later refers to them having one older child who I guess doesn't matter.

They make some noises about how wonderful it is to have twins at their ripe old age of however many years like it's a huge deal.  According to a brief search, women are actually more likely to have multiples after 35, so, hate to spoil your miracle who the fuck am I kidding?

Dan bends over the twins and sniffs them to inhale the scent of the "innocent fragrance of clean, warm bodies" which isn't rapey at all.

Like a good little Christian mother, Karen abandoned her career to raise the children, because we all know that's what women are for.

The narrative against refers to the children, repeatedly, as "miracles".  The issue is that Lint is trying to write two atheist, or at least two non-religious characters, which he does poorly because he can't get past his own religious viewpoints.  He tries to roll over this by making his characters sound "elitist" (read, smarter) but little things like this really give him away.  Also, reading an idiot's view of what smart people sound like is hilarious.

He goes to say goodbye to his wife, who sleeps under an electric blanket with a flannel nightgown.

By magic, the blanket is ripped from her past "the hem of her nightdress", so her ankle, maybe?  How risque.

Lint awkwardly tries to write a scene including some sexual tension.  The little Jezebel flirts and tries to tempt her husband with her sinful body.  As a proper Christian in a Christian novel, we can't have such worldly things.

They make some kind of poorly-conceived inside joke about how she gave up her career as an elementary school principal to raise the children while he continued his work at a... radio show.

Good ol' Republican philosophy thrown in:  "Bossing can be harder than working."  Yeah, I'm sure sitting behind a desk is just as difficult as shelling oysters for twelve hours a day.  Yes, I'm being hyperbolic; I'm just tired of seeing this ridiculous idea get touted.  Workers aren't lazy--you're just a shitty manager who can't motivate people properly.

Dan apparently teleports down to his car and climbs in and finally he starts driving to work.  The snow is still coming down but it's slower now.

There are a couple paragraphs of descriptions of Dan driving in the snow peppered with absolutely coated with ermines of smugness about how great his snow driving skills are.

Apparently, Lint forgot his own narrative at the beginning of the story, now describing the road as being a "pristine white" when the snowplow came by minutes ago.

After the smug narrative, we have two whole fucking paragraphs of thoughts.  No actions, just two paragraphs of him thinking about their oldest son, again being a privileged piece of discarded foreskin about how these damned Millennials are so lazy they can't get a job.  Fuck you, right?

As Dan deserves, he slams on his brakes to avoid hitting a slow-moving, 35-MPH vehicle.  The Bug flips around in a 180, which is described in a way that, if it were food, would be plain white bread.

The vehicle in question is described, crazily, while the car is spinning around:  It is a black Amish buggy pulled by a black horse with sleigh bells while two people dressed all in black sit in it.  No idea how Dan heard the sleigh bells from inside his car.  

35 is kind of fast for a buggy, isn't it?

Dan slides hopelessly into a ditch--so much for how good you are at driving in snow, huh, fuckhead?

Even after he is in the ditch, he continues to insist in his own narrative how great a driver he is and that it is all the Amish people's fault that he couldn't apparently just drive around them.

Dan gets out of the car and starts screaming at the Amish couple, who mostly ignore him, but the man spits tobacco at him.  This enrages Dan and he charges after them, screaming, but because this is a Christian book, he can't use any "vulgar language" that might be offensive to the Lawd's ears.

The horse responds by shitting.

They deserve each other.

Dan takes off his hat and stomps on it like an old-timey cartoon.  Delightful.

He watches the buggy "jingleclop" (another made-up word, courtesy Lint) away then goes back to his car.

A guy in a Jeep drives by and stops to tow him out.  Dan checks him out a little and makes eyes at his Jeep.  Lint, Jeeps are not the "classy" cars you seem to think of them as.  Lint expands upon the idea of "class" and "Jeep" by explaining that the car is about 40k.  Lol--look at the guy who doesn't understand how car payments or leases work.  Then again, Lint looks like he grew up in an era where 40k is worth about $125k now, or thereabout, so that's probably where his brain is stuck at, though I am suspicious it has more to do with "rich people deserve it, see how nice this fictional person is".

The fictional person in question is none other than Mr. Masterson.  The plot becomes slightly less watery, I suppose?

The two part ways and Dan continues his journey to work.

This is going to take me longer than the other books.  Fuck, this was hard to read.

Gone--A Novel about the Rapture by Edwin Lint. Chapter 1

Actual cover image. Need I say more?

A married couple sit down to a dinner of hamburgers and coffee at 6pm in Liverpool some time after what the Christians call "the Rapture".  Everything about that sounds awful.  First, why are you drinking coffee at 6pm?  Second, burgers--really?

"Their arms circled each other for several minutes, the tears of both mingling on Dan's chest."

Several minutes?  That's a long time, dude.  Just stand in your kitchen without your phone for three minutes.  Also, how are Dan's tears getting to his own chest?

Lint does not like commas and enjoys random capitalization.  He also doesn't know the difference between "calloused" and "callous".  Lint:

"Your calloused hand diddles your chicken until it vomits into a sock and shrivels back from your callous abuse."

All this before the second page.

He tries to make the characters sound smart.  For example, Karen says "from the standpoint of logic" somewhere in a sentence.  I'm guessing that Lint once heard someone smarter than he is use a similar phrase and he thought it would make his characters sound smarter.  It doesn't, Lint.

The couple kiss.  Karen's lips are described as salty.

"But I still say that something has happened which has no precedent, not even in the minds of science fiction writers."

Lint, you severely underestimate science fiction writers.

The characters comment that maybe "the President" will have more information.  I thought... they were in Liverpool?  If you meant Liverpool, NY, you need to fucking state that because most people are going to assume tea and crumpets, not semi-automatic weapons and obesity.

Suddenly, a cloaked figure appears in the doorway like a barefooted, snow-bitten ninja.

I looked for a snow-bitten ninja and found this.  This is better.

This figure seems to be one of their neighbors, named Veronica.  Despite that she has just randomly appeared in their kitchen barefoot in a grim reaper cloak and shivering, they are surprisingly calm about it.

Somewhere in the house a cat yowls makes a "blood-chilling ma-rawling" sound whatever that is.   Dan, the husband, goes to investigate and shoos the giant black cat out of the house.  He seems to think the cat can understand him, because he talks to it and points at the door.  The cat, being a cat, goes up the stairs.

The next time Veronica is mentioned, it is by nickname and at first, I had no idea that "Ronnie" was the same person as "Veronica".  Worse, Lint goes back to referring to her as "Mrs. Masterson".  At least be consistent!  What the hell, man?

So in dialogue, Dan says that they opened the door for Grim Reaper Ron (no mention of this but whatever) and that he thinks the cat got in that way.

Another example of Lint trying to be smart:

"The human intellect solves audio problems on the basis of association. Even the simple process of identifying a sound requires the retrieval of a previously-heard sound of known origin and the comparison of the former sound with the current one."

This is absolutely shit writing and completely useless to the narrative.  House of Leaves, you are not.

The sound this is referring to is some unearthly wailing noise.

The prose is littered with a few more useless facts that add nothing to the overall story, various info dumps, and finally Dan moves.  Karen sits down like a trained dog and bites her lip so hard she draws blood--that 50 Shades guy would have a heyday.

Dan gets his gun and heads toward the sound.  Liverpool, NY confirmed.

The prose right here is just bad.  The author uses passive voice consistently, orders sentences so that:  She does x and x because x rather than list things as they happen.  It's just bad, guys.

The cat crouches as if to pounce on Dan.

So Dan... shoots the cat.

"The cat's original trajectory was plotted to put his yellowed fangs and curved claws in deadly contact with Dan's throat. The two well-placed shots, however, marred the flight and the lifeless, bloody body thudded into Dan at the belt line."

That's what I mean by badly written prose by the way.  God, this is an action scene and it's indescribably dull.

Furthermore, it's a goddamn motherfucking cat, dude.

So, I think the implication is that the cat is demon-possessed and was the one making the weird noises?

Anyway, Dan sags into a chair after murdering a cat his arduous battle with a kitty-cat ferocious wild animal.  Life is so hard.

An Officer & a Crook: Chapter Five

John is seized by temporary insanity and rushes off after Deanna, still standing in the foyer apparently.

The authors, never ones to misrepresent police tactics, have a moment of epileptic insanity where they decide that the direction the plot is going is the wrong one.

The bikers make some threatening ape gestures and John tackles Deanna, shielding her from potential gunshots with his own body.

Less sexy.

Some guns go off, which is delivered with all the drama of:  Oh, poo, it's raining.

For all concerned parties, both our beloved main characters survive this intact.

As this is a Christian novel, there is no description of bullets hitting people, blood splattering, dying slowly while their internal organs rupture, brain being splattered on the window, none of the stuff that makes a novel decent.

Instead, we cut into another scene, no description of the bikers getting shot or making an escape, nothing.

Now Deanna is a journalist and was doing a story on the diner.  In her briefcase, the police found incriminating evidence of some kind regarding McCartney that the owner of the diner slipped in during her interview with him, which would not incriminate the owner in any way, apparently.

Apparently, McCartney handles loose ends himself without henchmen and was waiting in the parking lot for Deanna to get to her car so he could murder her or some shit, but the police intervened, then she intervened back.  Then was arrested for assaulting an officer.

"Deanna was speechless. John could see that."

Brilliant writing.  I am fucking stunned.  What poetry, what divinely inspired prose.

Well, it fits right into the fucking Bible.

John asks Deanna out and they agree to go to... Earl's Diner of all places, which apparently won't be closing due to the owner being arrested for criminal involvement, nor will the police be swarming the place en mass looking for more evidence and lackeys floating around.

Deanna is acquitted of all charges, John isn't fired, and McCartney goes to prison.

...  You know what?  Sure.  Deanna is more than likely a little white girl, John is a cop so of course he isn't fired for being stupid (probably just paid leave), and McCartney is a criminal of some kind, though certainly no mastermind.  His evil plan barely consisted of thought and hardly warranted even a foul chuckle, let alone maniacal laughter.

I mean, why the fuck would you insist the biker gang break into the police station and kidnap Deanna?  It makes no fucking sense!  Do we ever learn what happened to the rogue biker gang?  No!  Why does so much Christian media think "we need some kind of scary group of people--Oo, biker gang!"  What the fuck even, you losers.

Terrifying.

... Okay, yeah sure--I get it.  Here's the breakdown:

Leather = sexy.

Bikers = leather.

Half-naked girl on a bike = sexy.

Tattoos = awesome.

Piercings = awesome.

All of the above = my pants feel funny.

My pants feel funny = sin.

Sin = Satan.

Satan = Scary.

Math.

Deanna's car magically materializes in the police station parking lot (this is the real story, right here, folks) and John walks her out to her car.

It ends with this:  "This seems to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship."

That last cliche did it.  I am presently bleeding out of my side as if I had taken a spear through the chest like Jesus.

I will return next week after I have risen from the grave.

Final thoughts:  I liked it because it was short and didn't too badly trigger my gag reflexes.  When it climaxed, it was so underdone I barely noticed it and the ending was just as weird and confusing as the beginning.  I think a pube is stuck between my teeth.

Wait, I was supposed to talk about the book, wasn't I?  Fuck.

The next book I'll be doing is Gone:  A Novel About the Rapture by Edwin Lint.

An Officer and a Crook: Chapter Four

This is a really a five chapter long book, so the plot had better either pick up or do some massive summary.

...  It's all just crammed into the last two chapters, isn't it?

This chapter is mostly Rachel and Mrs. Brown, but we have a couple new players:  Lorrie and Sonal.

John has a flashback to his dead wife.

"She had never been one to submit to her husband's wishes and, in the end, that had cost her her life."

Fuck you, right?

How about people are grown-ass fucking adults and make their own fucking decisions rather than submit to someone else's will like a good little slave Christian?  This is what's so god damned awful about this mentality--this garbage is being written by, allegedly, a bunch of women.  Don't you want to make your own decisions?  Why the fuck do you want someone else to run your life for you?  Why would anyone want that?  The fuck is wrong with you?

Oh, I get that the appeal to it is:  "All my life, someone else has made all the decisions for me and trying to break free of that is scary and it's so much easier just to not have any control over it so nothing is ever my fault" but that is no way to live.  Grow the fuck up--previous generations have worked damn hard to give you rights, fucking stand up and use them, you little twats.

In the flashback  It's not a flashback.  It tries to be, says it is, but it's just a summary.  In the summary, Julie was four months pregnant, was for some reason involved in a sting operation, and McCartney killed her.  The language here paints John as a piece of shit:

"She had lost her life... and his baby."

It goes on to say that he blamed her for the death of his child.

Possessive piece of shit--your wife fucking died and you get mad at her for dying?  Oh, maybe she should just apologize for dying, you filthy little diarrhea stain.  You can impregnate some other chick and have a kid--you won't even know the goddamn difference--but you'll never have another Julia.

So, back in the police station, alarms go off and John intuitively realizes that the station is... under siege.

If you play this scene backwards, it will be better written and make more sense.

I don't know what it is about Christians that think that bikers are scary, but the "evil biker trope" is a common "bad guy" in Christian movies, so it makes sense that it's a biker gang with sawn off shutguns holding the police hostage.

The biker gang demand Deanna in exchange for the building.  To prove her innocence, she declares that she's not clever enough to think of this--she is a woman after all--and that she will march down there herself and say she refuses to go and they had better release the captive officers, you big meanies.

Apparently, her speech stuns the officers and she marches out of the room, I assume by phasing through the "several" officers near the door.

John stops her, because no one else could possibly lay a hand on her--he did claim her by pissing on her and all that or whatever Christians do to mark territory.

Anyway, that hook Deanna up with a wire and do the exchange.  The bikers call her "Dee Babe".  There is nothing I can make fun of about that that is not worse than it already is.

"Cut out the unmeant terms of endearment."

Says Deanna to the biker gang.  I don't think Rachel has ever had a real conversation with another human.

She whines a bit more and one of the bikers replies, "Com'on baby what are you thinking?  Don't behave like a baby.  Com'om let's go."

Translation:  "Now there, darling, what is on your mind?  It would be best to not behave in a childish manner.  Come now, let us be off."

Am I the only one that thinks it's a bit ironic that he calls her "baby" and then tells her not to be a "baby".  We all know you'd say "bitch" if you weren't so Christian you couldn't swear, but Mumsy dearest would wash your mouth with soap, you dirty little slut, so better not swear, Sonal.

"Her voice was shaking."

How does your voice shake?  Does your voice take on a more physical form and become wracked with tremors?

Deeana thinks their bikes are "big and scary" and asks them to let her go back for her briefcase.

Elizabeth Personality again seizes control and loses her fucking mind.

Elizabeth has decided that Deana's new backstory is as a private investigator and her boss sent her out to investigate Earl's Diner, to find out "what had kept him open this long".  The diner is a in a seedy part of town that, for some unexplained reason, rich people frequent "for the food".  Drugs.  It's drugs.

Hilarious, considering some of the other Personalities authors wrote her as a young girl (implied, teenager) or as a homeless youth.

If she's a private investigator, she should have told the cops long ago and been willing to cooperate from the get-go.  Is some internal consistency too much to ask for?

Inside the station, John rifles through her briefcase.  Through the speaker, the bikers grab her, she screams, blah blah.

"You've got what we want... and we're gonna get it."

Sounds like biker gang rape!  Which is her fault of course; rape is mostly the woman's fault. #sarcasm

That's why the Bible says to kill rape victims along with the rapist.  Deuteronomy, look that shit up.

An Officer and a Crook: Chapter Three

The last chapter was pretty light on religious tones--this better pick up or I'll really be scraping the bottom of the barrel for it.

Elizabeth isn't disappointing:

"He sighed and pushed back on the irritation."

He has a rash?  Why is he pushing on it?

"... brains that were fried from highs".

Elizabeth, I know what you're trying to say, but it isn't getting high that fries a brain.

It's the skillet.

As personality Crystal takes over, Deanna goes against her prior convictions to not accept food or drink and make nice-nice with the po-po and accepts the offer of food and rest.

Deanna prays for a moment and follows John Peterson.  He escorts her away with her hand on his arm, which I guess is a standard police procedure in this universe.

John gets her some coffee and takes her to... the police station's break room to continue working on her statement.  Just a standard procedure, nothing to see here.

Deanna apparently has the hots for John, because she laments for a while about his wedding ring.  Because she's a nosy asshole who needs to take her meds regularly, she makes it her life goal to know if he is married or not.

Now, a normal human might just casually ask about his family, but Deanna has all the social graces of a dead cat.

She asks outright if he's married and then demands to know why he would wear a wedding band if he's not.  She literally bullies him into telling her about his two years deceased wife.

Step one:  Normal.  Step two:  Floppy.

Works for non-babies too.  May need to shake harder and more frequently.

Without warning, John yells, "Dick!"

I got excited for a moment--I honestly thought he was loudly proclaiming that the passing of his wife meant he could be true to his own sexual desires, or that he was calling her a dick.  Instead, he was calling to a coworker, whose name is Richard, in the hopes of moving her from the John to a Dick.  Dick refuses.

Because Deanna thinks that all things in life are related, she surmises that John's dead wife has something to do with Crook McCartney, because no cop ever wants to catch and condemn a criminal unless it's personal.

An Officer and a Crook: Chapter Two

Crystal switches perspectives to the "Crook", McCartney.  I honestly want an entire (short) book written by Crystal.  She fills her prose with cliches and sentence fragments, not like a dash of pepper in an omelet, but more like egg in an omelet.  Not only was she excited (longest section yet) and jumped to a brand new character with gusto, she is responsible for this:

"He laughed to himself. How could he pin this on her? There was always a fall guy, well, in this case, a fall girl. He was doing his best not to crack a smile. Looking at her, he could smell the fear she had of him. That made him relax."

What a wild fucking ride you've taken us on, girl!  Is he laughing?  Is he trying not to smile?  Is he relaxing?  More fascinating, he can smell by looking.  That is pure talent, right there.  Humans smell fear?  Maybe he isn't human!  After The Werewolf and His Boy, I am half-convinced that it is just normal for people to smell emotions, sexual orientation, and possibly thoughts so sure.  Why the fuck not.

Then, in the very next paragraph, Crystal unexpectedly switches perspectives to Deanna, whose name I forgot so had to look up again.  Apparently she's scared.

I still don't know why it's apparently standard protocol to have the two perps meet.

"Her trembling was a sign of fear."

I am just going to assume that Deanna has Parkinson's at this point.

Deanna has apparently been bleeding from a head wound this entire time, sitting in the police station, not handcuffed to a chair sitting beside the officer's desk.

It switches again to Officer Petersen's prose, where he beats himself up over her snapping at him and blaming him for her head wound.

With a mere eight sentences in contribution, Rachel scribbles in Deanna's new personality, this one bold and decisive.  Rachel Personality takes charge and bolts from Officer Petersen, running down a doorway to escape the popo.

However, Sarah Personality rears her malformed head and has Deanna inhale paint fumes, which makes her faint.  Petersen for worst cop ever?  He let a suspect get away, after all.

The Painter Man whose paint had made Deanna faint goes to her and starts... dragging an unconscious woman across the floor by her arms.  That seems healthy.  Petersen hears Painter Man call for help and runs off toward him.  Deanna must have gotten farther than any author has bothered to mention, because there are suddenly more officers that spawned from somewhere, all running toward Painter Man.  Petersen overtakes them and arrives on the scene first.

Depicted:  Child abuse.

Painter Man, I have to assume, is still dragging her across the floor when Petersen gets there, because no one ever mentions that he stopped.  In fact, he is not mentioned again.

Petersen kneels beside her and examines the head wound, presumably crawling along beside her prone form as Painter Man continues to drag her.  Deanna wakes up and thrashes at Petersen.  He restrains her and picks her up, bride over a threshold style.  Did he and Painter Man have a tug-of-war about this?  

I'm sure the paramedics, and other officers and her court-appointed lawyer, will be pleased at his behavior.

Deanna and Petersen fight childishly; she whines about wanting to go home and he... won't let her?  He claims that because her story and McCartney's don't match up, she can't leave.  No words on being arrested or not.  She accuses him of being a bad cop.  That's true anyway.

And that's it.  I still can't figure out why the authors thought that cops regularly introduce possible cohorts to one another, nor do I understand why they think it's appropriate to drag around someone who just fainted by the arms, or pick them up without waiting for a paramedic.