Senior Seminar, Part 3 of 12

Introduction

            This is the unedited paper I wrote for my senior seminar back in 2007.  I am posting it as a sort of trip down memory lane during our current apocalypse.

            I have become a better writer since creating this.

            I have become much better informed since writing this.

            I am a very different person than when I wrote this.

Full Introduction Here

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How World War II Changed War Accountability

War was fought during World War II often as an exercise in the infliction of misery on a mass scale.  The targeting of civilian structures was common, as it had always been.  But the idea that the entire world could be systematically bombed and poisoned beyond all future use was beyond comprehension, no weapon of war was capable of inflicting such suffering, so while war was the most detestable of sciences it remained human in a way, it had scale and a limited reach that required manpower and natural resources to power.  The advent of the atomic weapon changed those previously held conceptions of war.  The magnitude and death capable of quick execution was the most inexpensive and catastrophically quick it had ever been.  A single war could end the entire world.

This led to a constitutional problem, since war could be carried out in a matter of minutes following its declaration by a side, the idea of waiting for Congress to declare war in response to the conflict was not logistically possible.  Congress was and currently is perceived as a lumbering clunking political hulk that cannot reach decisive conclusions, and is often so fragmented that to even gather a number of members together to reach a consensus is a labor of considerable effort.  The President, as the core, and only key component of his entire branch of the government, lacks the handicap of a fractured and inherently indecisive gaggle of political minds.

Since the President is the only person kept perpetually in the know of all military actions the United States monitors he is the only elected individual that could make a decision in the constraints of time that had been created by the advent of atomic weapons.  The President was the only person who could authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a short enough period of time to be considered an adequately responsive time to an attack.  The President became the only elected official that could respond to a modern war.  It was totally within his preview.  And thus, the President became the single being able to decide that war existed, and how to respond to it.  The ability, or need, to declare war, ceased to exist.

To what degree must the President be monitored to prevent abuses of this role?

The level to which the President is monitored is almost not an issue.  Short of the President using the armed forces to commit high crimes against the American public or to manipulate the other branches of the government there is no way to lay siege to the President’s authority.  The President can only be brought up on treason charges for bribery, treason, and high crimes.[1]  Since it is not a crime, but is in fact the President’s chief function to order the military to act in the interests of the United States, you cannot impeach him for instigating military conflict outside time of war.

In all actuality, if the President utilized the military to commit an act of treason, using military force to assume all of the powers of the Government and simply dissolving the other branches then no recourse would exist at all.  It could be for any number of reasons, but it very well may be the simple idea that no President till this point has wanted to risk the military simply not obeying his orders.  There is nothing really preventing the President’s ascendancy should the military as a whole follow such orders, though this does assume the military would follow such orders, and that in turn is a tenuous line of reasoning.

______________________________

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[1] Constitution: Article II, Section 4

Senior Seminar, Part 2 of 12

Introduction

            This is the unedited paper I wrote for my senior seminar back in 2007.  I am posting it as a sort of trip down memory lane during our current apocalypse.

            I have become a better writer since creating this.

            I have become much better informed since writing this.

            I am a very different person than when I wrote this.

Full Introduction Here

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To what ends is the President allowed to manipulate the armed forces?

The President has an unequaled level of authority within the armed forces.  There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the President from ordering the invasion or suppression of an area.  There is nothing that limits his abilities to times of war.  There is nothing that prohibits him from assuming more powers, or abolishing various civil liberties, it fact it specifically points out areas that can be trimmed in times of insurrection or invasion.[1]  True such suspensions fall under the area of the Congress, but the President can claim that expediency was an issue and simply invoke such powers himself.

There is some historical imperative for the use of military force unilaterally on the part of the President.  Following the end of the Ottoman Empire former nation states of said empire banded together and began assaulting various trade ships in the area of the Mediterranean, they were known as the Barbary Pirates; Tripoli was the chief combatant in the conflict which included the other states of Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco.

Demanding tribute from the various navel forces of the world these third world nations, were a threat to all trade and military vessels of the Atlantic, especially those of the United States who had no way of paying the tribute that these nations demanded and lacked the protection of the British Navy that had been cast off decades earlier.

President Thomas Jefferson took action on the matter of the Pirates first as a diplomat then as a war maker.  He first attempted to align the various super powers, at the time France and England, to act along with the United States in the elimination of the Pirates, he rather promptly failed to create the theorized international alliance and unified response that would have more than likely led to a dissolution of the Pirates without conflict, the combined shear size of the alliance military would have forced a surrender by the Pirates.  After being unable to gather those forces to muster, Jefferson, without the Congress having declared war, moved American forces unilaterally against the foreign powers of the Barbary Pirates, many whose militaries routed, and primarily Tripoli, who was soundly defeated, with an accord being reached upon its end.

The powers utilized by Jefferson, the ordering of troops to eliminate foreign powers, was conceived, planned, executed, and resolved without war having ever been declared.  The entire process happened outside the realm of Congress.[2]

Use of these military powers remained sporadic following Jefferson, and more often than not the United States declared war when a perceived threat was present and seemingly able to be defeated rather than allow a military threat to American safety continue to persist (discounting the War of 1812, as a miscalculation of Napoleon left the United States in a conflict it could not win.)  This flickering use of mono-Presidential war power execution remained up until the later half of the 20^th century, when the use of actual war would very well end civilization in a matter of minutes.

Part 3

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 [1] Constitution of the United States Article 1 Section 9

[2] Bernstein covers this occurrence on pgs. 145 and 146

Senior Seminar, Part 1 of 12

Introduction

            This is the unedited paper I wrote for my senior seminar back in 2007.  I am posting it as a sort of trip down memory lane during our current apocalypse.

            I have become a better writer since creating this.

            I have become much better informed since writing this.

            I am a very different person than when I wrote this.

Full Introduction Here

------------------------------------------------

The Theory

The last instance of the United States being in a constitutionally defined war came to a close in the forties at the end of World War II, since that time numerous armed conflicts throughout Asia have called on the United States to serve in a military capacity.  At no point was War actually declared with Viet Nam, Korea, Iraq, or anywhere else in the latter half of the 21^st century.  Since no war was declared, there were no treatise signed or in anyway approved by the United States Congress.  Aside from the American people’s participation as soldiers they had very little impact as far as democratic participation.  The primary decision maker in all of the conflicts of the latter part of the 20^th century was the President of the United States.

The growing number of potent assumed powers by the office of the President, the incredible nimbleness of the President’s political strength, and fewer and fewer effective checks on the power of the office has taken on the appearance of reality.  The United States no longer declares war; the United States no longer signs peace treaties; and the United States Congress has consistently failed to find a politically viable way of placing checks on the White House.  This is a Constitutional catastrophe, and needs to be reevaluated to find an effective way for the system to maintain its speed and effectiveness, while at the same time not degrading democratically.  The United States needs to start declaring war again.

The Problem and Some History

In place of wars police actions and operations have become the vocabulary for furthering the international politic of the United States.  All of that power now flows to and from one person within the United States government, the office of the President.

Article 2, Section 2 of the United States Constitution begins with: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.[1]  To be the Commander and Chief of the United States is the first duty of the President, that much is undeniable, but if the United States government is to have effective checks upon all aspects of it, leaving enough military power to destroy all of humanity at the discretion of one man does not seem conducive to that end.

Part 2

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

[1] Constitution of the United States

Senior Seminar, An Introduction

In April of 2007 I completed my coursework in my undergraduate field of study.  After four years of attending Florida Gulf Coast University I would receive my bachelor’s degree in Political Science with a minor in Global Studies.

In retrospect I was a poor student, often ignoring the need for proper sources, banking on my being an engaged participant in class discussion and talking to my professors about current events as a means of getting good grades.  “You know that I know what I am talking about, just give me an ‘A’.”

That all being said, I regret not writing more stuff down.  Like every other person on earth, I have real issues with remembering every time I got something right, “CALLED IT!” versus the innumerable times I got things wrong.  I wish I could look back on more of what my younger self believed and see how that had broken down as I got older and more informed.  Because, looking back it feels like I got a lot right, and I have no receipts to prove that I got it right.

Since that time I have grown a lot, I have gotten 3 Masters’ Degrees in Political Science, Urban and Regional Planning, and International Affairs.  I have read a lot of world history, written a lot of papers for classes about politics, and have tried to think about ways to make the world better/more efficient via government.

I like the idea of using government as a tool to make the world better.  To provide an environment where people can be safe, healthy, and educated.  There are too many problems and too many great accomplishments that can only be addressed as a massive group, the idea of a “Great Man” or “Determined Individual” solving Global Warming or Going to the Moon is impossible.  I “like” government in the abstract, in the best-possible-form that we all wish it was.

In the Abstract.

Currently we are living in the apotheosis of bad governance.  A worldwide pandemic has shattered the veneer that we had all come to trust, as we have come to witness how Capitalism has cut so many corners and rolled back every contingency and backup plan, government protections are inefficient, and it is all led by the dumbest and most corrupt administration in American History.

It feels like it all went wrong somewhere years ago.

In my entire adult life, really since I was 14, the US government has been banging into walls and failing to live up to expectations.  While I did support George W. Bush back in 2000, before I could even vote, the way he became President, with the Supreme Court stepping in the way they did… really tainted everything that came after with, “we are living in the wrong timeline”.

The truest legacy of the Bush Presidency, the War in Iraq defined foreign policy all the way to the end of my undergrad studies.  I have no way of knowing what happened in the other timeline, maybe we went to war with some other Middle Eastern country, maybe we managed to keep things contained.  But in this world, we were at war in 2007, a war that we had all been led to believe was justified and would be quickly won.

That takes ties me back to where this blog entry started.  In 2007 I was disillusioned (not as disillusioned as I would become) but I used my last big assignment in undergrad to vent.  My senior seminar paper was a poorly written diatribe about how the office of the President was a time bomb for authoritarianism.  That the US Constitution’s idea of about separation of powers had eroded to the point of it almost being gone entirely.

It was badly written, I didn’t like it even at the time, and I was more fixated on being done with school.  I was ready to take my 4-year degree, which I had been told my whole life was the guaranteed hall pass to a comfortable middle class existence, and head out into the world to work in government or teaching while aiming to eventually get a masters degree (I was thinking about graduate degrees even back then, I just needed a break from school).

Let’s ignore the fact that I graduated into the worst economy since the great depression and my hopes and dreams were immediately thrown off the rails for years, transforming my entire worldview from the young libertarian idealist into the bitter socialist I am today.  Yeah, let’s talk about all of that a different time…  Instead I want to show you my final assignment from my senior seminar.

Buried in some thumb drive, untouched since April 27^th, 2007, with the words “Rough Draft” still in the header.  It is a rambling, mess of a thing at 5,837 words.  I found it back in December and kept meaning to post it, but it was low priority.  Would have been more relevant back in January, but it has been relevant since President Trump took office and revealed in sharp colors so many of the issues I was worried about.  (On many levels I am glad he is so stupid, because at least he can’t take control the way I fear a real super villain could.)

Over the next few days I am going to post sections from my paper till the whole thing is out there.  I will not edit it except for the formatting.  And maybe in a few months I will sit down and write out what is wrong with it from the perspective of a much more learned student of the US government and political science.  I mean, I didn’t even know the “Brownlow Report” existed when I wrote this.

Maybe this will be a chapter outline for that memoir/manifesto I will one day write.  I broke it into 12 parts to keep things digestible.  Do not feel obligated to read them all.  Don’t feel obligated to read any of it.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

(Does this work as something special for my 550th blog entry?  I mean it is my 550th because I deleted a blog that was arguably just a copyright violation... ignore that...)

______________________________

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Micro Short Story, "Out of the Cold"

            They moved thru the snow slower than they had hours prior.  The piled up white flakes were deeper than they had been, not just on the path, but on the traveler’s shoulders.  The air was as cold and strangely dry as the slick solid ice that was hidden in the unseen ditches to either side.  Another reason the traveler was moving slower was an earlier spill when stepping just a little too left.

            But toward the song they shuffled forward, pushing thru the white.

            The music had rolled over them in the night as the sun became a fading red line on the horizon.  Echoing and distant was the thrum of the voice… or maybe voices?   But even so far thru so much snow it carried with it a warmth.  The traveler’s mind filled with visions of hard wood floors covered in pelts and skins, a whole tree burning in a vast hearth, a long table steaming with tea and cake and a thousand other indistinct sweet and savory things.

            The little flame they had managed to cultivate before twilight and the little tent that had sheltered the traveler, those things had no song to them.  Still and thin, quite and cold, with fuel running low… The traveler decided to become a listener, a follower of this song.

            Maybe the warmth of the tune would carry them on a night’s journey.

            The song was clearer now, less echo and a low bass of some stringed instrument joined in.  And with the depth of the song becoming clearer, detail filled the room with the tree burning hearth.  The furs were of deer, otters, foxes, great oxen, and bears.  The tea had cinnamon in it, bits floating on the surface of the clear brown gold liquid, ghostly hot vapor twisting above it.

The steam of the drink twisted like a flame thought the traveler.  Seeing the cubes of sugar plopping into the cup and shattering as a tiny silver spoon turned the liquid and the shimmering of now dissolved sugar disappeared into the warm whirlpool in the cup.

There is sugar?  How luxurious, thought the traveler.  Reaching for a little cookie the traveler’s hand brushed against something and sugar spilled on the table.  There was a great pile of white.  But I thought the sugar was in cubes.  No, this is the snow.

            Then they stopped and looking thru the vast darkness of night and the falling flecks of ice, they saw a glow from a window.  Perhaps this is an abbey?  A castle?  In the traveler’s mind maps unrolled over the table with all of the spilled sugar, the light of that promised hearth illuminating so many paths, wells, shrines, and any other tiny detail that might be along the road.  Out came a straight edge to guide their eye and sliding it along the map to find this place, nothing leapt to might.  This was something new. 

            It was hard to see the real shape of it in the night’s snow fall.  A light and a pair of doors to a foyer.  No footsteps in the snow leading up.  Well, what fool would be out in this weather?  All around the song’s depth reached its height as small bells and a flute carried in behind the voice and bass.  As the traveler moved closer and closer, the door seemed stranger.

            The traveler had thought it far away, but now they could see that they were right up to it, and it was so small.  It was sized for a child.  Putting out their gloved hand and feeling little etchings in the pair of wooden doors a flowing pattern, like vines on a trellis was made clear to their fingers, as was the coming from within.

            The song had stopped.

            “Well,” came a voice from behind, from dark of the snowfall.  “Aren’t you going to knock?”

            “Hello?” said the traveler.

            “Hello,” answered the voice.  It was so deep.

            “I heard…” started the traveler.

            “I thought so,” said the voice.  “I suppose you have come to beg alms?  Just working up the courage to?”

            “I was hoping for a cup of tea.”

            “Well then,” said the voice.  The sound of a latch unlatching.  “I have some of that.  If you have the nerve to go inside a stranger’s home.”

            The traveler looked into the falling snow.  Looked hard.

            “Thank you,” said the traveler as he knelt and pushed into the warm little house.

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Picture proved by pexels, by this guy.

Audio Book Review, "The Haunting of Hill House"

Review in Brief

The book, "The Haunting of Hill House" is not good.

The Plot Goeth Thusly

            In order to study supernatural phenomenon a psychiatrist gathers a group of people for a study in a haunted house.  The main viewpoint character of Eleanor slowly goes mad in the house as supernatural shit keeps happening.

My First Complaint: Boring

The book is boring.  I cannot fault the prose of the work, as the words have a descriptive power and flow that is nice, the performer allows the words to trip off their tongue quite eloquently.  But the plot drags and there is just not enough meat to the story.  By "meat" I mean revelations, there are few if any twists or surprises, these people are in a haunted house with some architectural quirks (that I am sure are metaphors) and they get spooked by ghosts.

            I guess I was expecting more of a “And Then There Were None” type situation, where the characters clash with one another, all have secrets and ultimately they unravel as the situation spirals out of control.  But aside from several instances of ghosts causing noise and everyone being afraid the vast majority of the book is the main character, Eleanor’s internal monologue which vacillates between demure and bitchy.

My Next Complaint: The Main Character

Eleanor is such a hard protagonist to root for.  The implication in the novel is that she starts out as a good-natured shrinking violet who has had little love in her life and the house sort of twists her insecurities into general bitchiness and ultimately self-destruction.  But, her dialogue is boring, and she is a boring person. At some point you need the viewpoint character of your book to have more of a personality than feckless human chew toy.  I don’t know, I got no vibes of internal struggle, just a steady descent from pathetic to miserable, and ultimately back to pathetic.  Not so much a character arc as a character boomerang.

            How would I have fixed this?  Simple, I would have had more characters.

            For a book where the premise is, “Psychiatrist conducts a study,” the Doctor has a comically small pool of participants.  Seriously, there are two people involved in the study, demure Eleanor and the free-spirited Theodora.  There is another guy there, Luke who is a member of the family that owns the house, but he’s not part of the study.  Beyond that there are some extremely tertiary characters, the Doctor’s wife (who is a sort of proto Gwyneth Paltrow for her use of bullshit in the study) and her… bodyguard(?) Arthur who mostly serves as a gruff salt of the earth contrast to the rest of the cast.  And I guess the rude house help… But fuck’em, their whole personalities begin and end with them being curt to the guests.

Just to sidetrack a moment, I am not going to watch this show.
Calling this nonsense a "lab" is such horse shit that I feel insulted on behalf of science.
Netflix should be ashamed.

None of the other characters work.  The Doctor comes off to me as a doddering old fool with no real method to the study that forms the impetus for the story.  Theodora has traits but mostly exists as a foil for Eleanor, and her establishing section of the novel paints her as so flighty and detached that she effectively has no motivation.  Luke is just a swaggering dick and offers no conflict to the story (we are told he is a liar and a cad... But it never amounts to anything in the narrative.  How about having him act that way?), mostly he just spends all of his time pouring drinks and playing chess with the Doctor (seriously, that is how a large chunk of his time on page is spent).  Then the Doctor’s hen-pecking idiot wife shows up with her servant(?) Arthur, a dull-witted thug.  Give me someone to care about, and then have that person clash with characters who I also care about.

            Overall there is just a lack of inter character drama and a lack of layers for the cast.  Eleanor is the focus, sure it is good to have a core character, but there is no mystery element, no one is more/less/something other than they appear to be, at least not in a way that comes up in the story or impacts the plot.  It is odd to have characters that all have dimension and contrast with one another just fine… But nothing really comes of it.

Why I Got This Book

I got this on sale for Halloween and because the "Inspired by" limited series on Netflix was so good.  How such a great Netflix series was inspired by it is like the evolutionary steps that moved from especially smart monkeys up to Humans, you can see how it happened, but is such a significant change that you have to marvel at it.

"Hey, what if the Ghosts were metaphors for something and we could couple the aftermath of living in the house with the events as they happened to create a mystery that the audience will feel engaged unraveling?"  "That sounds like a great idea!"

Ultimate Conclusion

            I wouldn’t recommend this even for people interested in the horror canon.  There are just better books out there.  If you want supernatural horror, listen to “Dracula”, and if you are looking for an ensemble piece set in a spooky house then go with the previously mentioned, “And Then There Were None” (which is not perfect, but it is better than this).

            “The Haunting of Hill House” fails with the supreme kiss of death for any work of fiction, the 8 deadly words, “I don’t care what happens to these people.”

______________________________

            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Audio Book Review, "The Scribbly Man"

TLDR: It Sucks

Prologue

            To start off this discussion I want to first talk about another book that is more interesting than this one, “Sheepfarmer's Daughter” by Elizabeth Moon, in her fantasy saga, “The Deed of Paksenarrion”.  I read that book ages ago and for all that time I was trying to get my thoughts about it down on paper.  I would start, get bogged down, start talking about the Hero’s Journey and how character arcs are supposed to work… Then I would stop and throw it all out.

            There was too much to talk about with “Sheepfarmer's Daughter”.  I wrote other massive book reviews for the other murderer’s row “Worst books I have managed to finish”, a strange subgenre of things I tell people to stay away from.  There was my review of “Year One” which I again mention “Sheepfarmer's Daughter”.  And my review of the boring as fuck “Genesis”, a review that I am kind of proud of.  But I was still not able to hammer out all the things I wanted to get into with the first “Deed of Paksenarrion” book.

            There are other things that I feel almost obligated to write about one day to explain in excruciating detail why I dislike them so much, but I don’t feel so bad about Elizabeth Moon’s book now, because something new has taken the laurel as the worst book I have ever managed to finish, Terry Goodkind’s “The Scribbly Man”.

Introduction

I came into reading this aware of Terry Goodkind's status as a prolific writer who helped define the fantasy genre over the decades... I expected this to be good.

Let me start with the first of many complaints, this is not a "Book 1" it is the direct continuation of an earlier series, events from that previous series define the main view point characters, the world, and serve as the inciting action for this story.  I got this assuming it was the author building a new series from the ground up, it is not, and the lack of clear upfront explanation of things makes the material surprisingly obtuse.  What is more, and this only matters to fans of his work (and there is a horde, this thing is intensely well reviewed) the book is comically short, it would be a quarter of a typical fantasy novel, even one meant to start a series.

 

For reference, this book (which I still hate) is 15 hours and 48 minutes.
"Scribbly Man" is 3 hours and 50 minutes.

The Plot

            The King and his wife who is sort of the Pope of a fantasy world are confronted by someone telling them that a “Golden Goddess” is coming to conquer their planet.  This guy is carted off for interrogation and a Witch shows up to be a new character (her presence should be a big red flag to everyone else… and somehow they treat her like they’ve known her for years).

            Turns out the guy in the interrogation tried to kill the Pope with the help of the titular “Scribbly Man” a monster from another world as a herald of the Golden Goddess.  The Pope lives, and together with the other characters they later resolve to fight the bad guy… And that is it.  Shockingly short book, I would not have stuck it out if it were longer.

Some Complaints

My initial and core complaints about this title have to do with the comically bad writing.  Dialogue is so stilted that the voice actor seems to have no idea how to deliver the lines, halting, flat, and repetitive.  I swear to god, the number of times the word "Gift" or "Witch Woman" show up in some chapters the words start to lose all meaning.  And of course "Scribbly Man" and "Golden Goddess" which are repeated dozens of times to the point where you just want to shake them and say, call one of them "They" or "Gary" or something else so that I can stop rolling my eyes at how overly formal you are all being.

And everything has such boring nomenclature.  "War Wizard" "Sword of Truth" "Confessor" "Witch Woman", they all feel like place holders that you put into the script until you can think of something distinct or punchy to give the world flavor like "Fremen" in Dune, “Istari” in Lord of the Rings, or “Jedi” in Star Wars.  “Scribbly” lacks sophistication with the writing terminology and that makes it feel flat.  I don’t need a whole fictional language or whatever, but come up with something more interesting sounding that “War Wizard”.

 

Tank Mage would have at least been a cool visual.
But he is just the 10,000th fantasy jerk off with a sword.

Some More Complaints

The plotting makes little sense too, there is a part where the heroes all decide to interrogate a villain, so they walk into a cell and then they stop and have a 10-minute private conversation that they all could have had in another room.  It is like the chapter is in the wrong place.  Same goes for lots of cuts to the action.  A chapter ends with the Confessor in complete control of a situation, zero tension, and then when we come back the villain has stabbed her, and an unseen monster has viciously attacked her.  What?  You were fine?  Why didn’t the last chapter we saw you in end with a violent attack?

There is also just a lack of characters.  There are 2 main, 2 supporting, and 3 minor in a book about a fantasy kingdom being invaded by incorporeal mind controlling ghost monsters from the stars.  Where is the war council?  Where are prominent heroes, intellectuals, and advisers outside of the two heroes and the random "Witch Woman" who happens to show up the same day as the evil ghosts... and for some reason no one treats that as massively suspicious.

There is the real twist that needed to happen, the “Witch Woman” should have been concocting the whole alien invasion thing to put her in a position to harm the two main heroes… She even has motivation to do so… not that it makes any sense because it was the conclusion to the last series of books, but the Witch doesn’t seem to take, “Sorry I screwed up the source of one of your many super powers… But I literally was thwarting the end of life on this planet.  You should probably just get over it.”

"Sure, the dead would have walked the earth...
But you would have gotten to keep your ability to tell people's fortunes.  Idiot."

Some More Complaints

Also, the heroes are assholes.  One of them uses magic to completely enslave the will of a person who is already brainwashed by the villain and she is so pissed of at him for telling her that the bad guys are coming she kills him… Like he was a victim of the monsters.  And what is more that scene has another hero brutally and casually mutilate the guy to break the villain’s control over him, it is unpleasant and shocking… and the main heroes are just like, “Ha!  I’m starting to like her!”  Which is gross.

Another small thing, the title is stupid.  This is the start of the series and while “Scribbly Man” is said to the point where the words boarder on meaningless it is not technically the main threat, the “Golden Goddess” is.  And what is more there is some asinine argument between the two main characters about how one promised the other a “Golden Age” and she is mad at him because she is now conflating “Golden Age” and “Golden Goddess” in a train of logic I could not follow.  The book, which takes place as a SEQUEL to the past series should have been called “The Golden Age” to show the contrast between the promise of the main hero and the looming threat of the villain, you know, the parallel he was trying to establish and failed to.

A Backhanded Compliment

To switch gears, I will give it one credit.  The idea of the shimmering ghost like entity, the titular Scribbly Man is a good image.  The way its tracks are described, the idea that it has claws and venom, that it is especially alien and sees causing fear and killing akin to sexual pleasure.  They are a fitting threat to the protagonists who are the undisputed supreme monarchs of an entire planet with magic powers and seemingly limitless resources… Yeesh… way to write identifiable characters am I right?  Guess that isn’t a lot of credit there…

This is from the show... Which is... Shockingly bad.
Also, gotta love that old trope of superior bloodlines making them magically awesome

Conclusion

Note: I did not pay full price for this, I got it for $1.99 and still thought about returning it.  Overall, this is garbage.  The sort of flat clunky mess that I would expect as the first fantasy novel hacked out by a 15-year-old.  Made all the more disappointing because it is apparently the work of a rock star in the genre.  Baffling.

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