I had a sincere moment of depression when I went through my Kindle library to come back to this book. With every good book I passed on my way to this steaming pile of Right Wing masturbatory power fantasies that somehow managed to congeal into the shape of a book I felt the world darken. Each moment stealing away what was left of my joy and wonder till none was left. So here in front of my computer I was faced with the indisputable truth of existence.
Hope is an illusion and God is dead because neither can exist in the world that celebrates and rewards this drivel.
I am going to do things differently this time. If you want an intro to Mike “Ghost” Harmon you can read Fuck you, John RIngo! Part 1. It’s not hard to find. The blog is new and I’m lazy so there’s not a lot to sift through. So what I am going to do is write the review literally as I read the book. My comments below are real time (no censoring) as I come to it. I want you to taste my pain by the time I’m done.
Thunder Island
Chapter 1 – My Pain Begins
And how does this new adventurer of Conservative Superman start off? Bragging about his newfound awesome life and then complaining about a lack of sex that isn’t actually a lack of sex because he has been regularly sleeping with several of the traumatized girls he rescued in Part 1 despite being under witness protection (sort of) and publicly dead.
Fuck me. I could not intentionally write something that fucking stupid and this is literally the first two pages of the book. I am gonna need a really stiff drink to make it through this shit.
Oh look the ever thrilling talking to girls in a bar scene. Fascinating. Mike might as well take out advertisements that he is super Navy Seal Man. For a SOG vet he cannot keep a secret to save his fucking life. Constantly talks about all his manly classified shit, invites strangers to his home with a not so small armory in it, and even gives them his ID. Even if it is a fake ID he just gave them his current life’s info as well as a picture of him. Fuck me fucking sideways. And after all this he lectures the two girls who came to his boat about being stupid for just showing up at a stranger’s boat despite inviting them.
Mike Harmon champion of conservative American and master of mansplaining. This character is built from every trait I hate in people and filtered through Sean Hannity like a sieve that removes everything good. But thankfully it’s over – wait… that was only the first chapter? Fuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccck!
Chapter 2 – Keep It Together, Eric
Holy shit. It was an entire chapter of boating terms and teaching girls to snorkel. That is literally it. It is so boring. Nothing happens. No characters are developed. No important story info. Nothing but being on a boat, snorkeling, and oggling college girls by the old scarred guy every female inexplicably trusts. I’ve filled out tax sheets more exciting and better written than this. It feels like a filler to build up to something but wh-
Oh good god no. Please don’t do this to me, John RIngo. Let my fears stay unrealized.
Chapter 3 – Fear and Trepidation
Let’s start a chapter with everyone gushing over how awesome Mike is while he mansplains bullshit. That’s new. It’s not like everything ever written about this character is anything other than everyone gushing over how FUCKING STAR SPANGLED AWESOME HE FUCKING IS!
Why do I do this to myself?
Break for (holy shit awkward) flirting and then two college girls talking about how hot the badly scarred, supposedly unattractive man who just admitted to missing killing people is. Sigh. I understand the Bechdel Test isn’t perfect but there is a world of difference between failing it and beating it over the head before dragging it behind a dumpster to violate it’s corpse like a collegiate swimmer at a frat party.
Chapter 4 – The Excitement Is Unbearable
I assume there will be action at some point in this action story but I haven’t seen it yet. There is a slow build to something and if modern literature has taught me anything it’s that awkward flirting lacking anything resembling chemistry or character inevitably leads to BDSM.
An in depth tutorial on ocean fishing. Riveting. It’s a rollercoaster of emotion and non stop thrills. I can’t believe I am saying this but I miss the mindless racist action of the first story. Right now I am just reading a day in the life of the world’s rapiest fisherman.
And welcome back exagerrated accent foreigner but instead of a terrorist he’s a chef and they are haggling over dinner. Seriously. What the fuck am I reading?
There it is! The sex scene and …it is completely vanilla despite all the recurring talk of his darker proclivities. Actually it’s boring. It’s him doing the most basic of things and her praising him like he is the second coming of Christ. So far there is nothing resembling a plot at all. Not even a fucking hint.
Chapter 5 – In Search of a Plot
Nope! Not here. I did get a chapter full of D/S sex with a long discussion of D/S contracts. It is an entire chapter about bondage sex and it is boring and the least sexy talk about sex this side of Catholic school sex ed. I am beginning to think that there is nothing else to this book. Just boating, flirting, and bad sex.
And he is amazing in bed because of fucking course he is. Why have a protagonist who isn’t amazing at everything?
Chapter 6 – What Am I Doing With My Life?
Apparently reading an entire chapter where two girls gush (quite literally) on the phone to their friend about how fucking amazing Mike is at fucking. Seriously. An entire fucking chapter. People pay for this shit. Oh god… I paid for this shit!
Chapter 7 – The Soft Death Whimpers of My Self Respect
You know what this book needed? An awkward conversation between mother and daughter to get the girl’s birth certificate so her new dom that she has known for approximately 6 seconds can take her out of country to the Bahamas. This happens.
Oh and then the mother admits to being a swinger and in the scene and even being open to mother-daughter play. Oh fucking joy here. Can we just go back to killing muslims? Please?
And a second conversation with the other girl’s mother and lo and behold she is in the scene too! Wooo…. all the kink. Aren’t these supposed to be techno thrillers? Or if they are going to be sex centric could they be sexy at least? Could some scene inspire something other than boredom, cringing, or anger?
It ends with both girls being kind of okay with the thought of an incestous BDSM orgy with their parents. I – I don’t know what the fuck I am reading anymore. Up is white. Black is loud. Purple tastes like syrup.
Chapter 8 – All I Hear Is The Howl of a Thousand Spiders Into The Void
BDSM sex. Crude language. Fairly vanilla. Boring. Literally nothing else.
Chapter 9 – More Lessons In How To Make Sex Unsexy
By the time this book is done I will be a full licensed fisherman with an in depth of how easy it is to kidnap coeds. I think here we see glimmers of what the plot will be. I think the whole story will be him boating, fucking coeds, and then answering a call from local government to deal with something. All in a very short amount of time.
And another deep fuck you to John Ringo for Mike’s bullshit argument that two women pleasing each (against their will) doesn’t make them homosexual but it’s different for guys. Basically every woman is bisexual and that’s okay but any contact between guys makes them gay. All backed up by the worst form of bullshit “science”. There is no redeeming quality to be found in this character, the writing, or the author.
What could possibly follow up forced lesbian actions in a shitty threesome and bullshit macho pseudoscience? If you said fishing you are correct!
I don’t have enough drugs for this shit.
Chapter 10 – Can We Please Get Back To Killing Terrorists?
Congratulations. I officially find BDSM boring. I would say the same about boating but I was already bored by boating.
Chapter 11 – Let Me Guess… More Boating and Fucking?
A wild plot appears! Holy shit. It only took Ringo 11 fucking chapters to get to it. Out of nowhere he gets contacted by the Secretary of Defense and asked to go retrieve a fucking nuke that just happens to be near him and there are no other military forces that can get there. In the Bahamas… we have missiles that can reach that and it’s only a few hours flight but the retired, recently hospitalized wannabe rapist is America’s best hope.
I will never doubt my writing ability again. Not on my worse day could I write worse than this. This is just ass pulling a plot to justify the previous ten chapters of boating and BDSM fantasies.
Oh and the unnecessary and pointless return of Mike’s Goth music fetish. Yay.
And end with the totally not lesbian girls in bed together.
Chapter 12 – Please Be Violence
Ringo’s idea of techno-thriller apparently just means listing off every device carried like it’s a catalogue for aquatic sociopaths. The action part consists of him giving a report of what happened. Like if you asked a military to write a report of an op it would read like this. Clinical. Reporting without evoking.
But at least we’re back to Arabic terrorists and away from terrible sex! They – like the terrorists from Winterborn – are bafflingly incompetent. Smart enough to get a Russian nuke all the way to the Bahamas but not smart enough to have anything resembling security. A branch of extremism known for being hard to track down, hard to dig out, and prone to trapping everything with an IED only has two guys on lookout as they sit with their bomb.
It’s like reading about Mike Tyson attacking a special needs class. It’s one sided and guaranteed to offend almost every living human.
Here we get to the meat of the “action”. Supposed to be 10 people and it’s closer to 30. Doesn’t matter he mows down the massively incompetent mooks but low and behold he takes two bullets – and promply mago-fixes them with tampons, shrimp shells, and novocaine. No I am not going to dwell on how fucking stupid that is.
There is something I must address here. It’s not just the content that is terrible. The writing is piss poor. This chapter averaged 11 uses of the word “he” per page in a 10 page chapter. That’s roughly 110 repetitions. There is a monotony to the word choices that gives it this super bland flow where everything blends together.
Chapter 13 – The Violence Is Terrible. Can We Go Back To Boating?
A surprisingly sympathetic point of view moment from one of the terrorists. I feel like Ringo is losing his touch here. The first story dripped racism like syrup from a stack of hot pancakes. This one there is almost none. A few minor comments but nothing I wouldn’t expect from someone who had spent time fighting extremists. It’s weird.
More fighting and Mike is only seriously wounded once all the fighters are down. Convenient. Wouldn’t want to up the tension by having an injured man fight for his life would we?
The big thing to take away here is that Mike fails. They don’t take the nuke but they set it to go off and he speeds away in a boat while the action cuts to a bunch of different people on radios being told that the nuke is going to go off. Including one cut away that involves telling us that a helicopter pilot has moderate breasts and shapely legs. You know because that’s important when a nuke is about to go off.
Oh and the shockwave of a nuke over open ocean? No problem at all for a small boat piloted by man bleeding like the Kool-Aid man after taking a hammer to the face. Might as well have had him ride out the blast in a fucking refrigerator.
Chapter 14 – And …Nothing?
The final chapter is short and full of nothing. It’s a metaphor for this whole fucking story.
Okay… this story had BDSM threesomes, firefights in exotic locales, and a nuclear explosion being outrun on a small boat. How the fuck do you make that boring?! This should be a sexy action thriller full of one liners and testosterone …and it just isn’t. It is this dry, clinical approach to everything. No matter how you squeeze it there is no blood in the stone. The fact that people read this and wanted to read more legitimately depresses me. I need to not be sober anymore.
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