[This review was written and published at Amazon.com in February or early March of 2005. I'm re-publishing it here today as an extra little birthday gift for Nitro Wilbury. Who's your Santa, Nitro?]
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ALIEN RAPTURE: The Chosen
by Edgar Rothschild Fourche & Brad Steiger
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Hokey-Smoke and Hoo-Wee, this was B-A-D!
How bad was it? It read like the screenplay of an Ed Wood movie! It could just as easily have been titled PLAN NINE AND A HALF FROM OUTER SPACE. In my entire adulthood, I have encountered only one other book this poorly written.
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In ALIEN RAPTURE by Fouche & Steiger, the characters are underdeveloped mouthpieces for the authors, with the vocabulary and verbal style of each character virtually identical. The dialogue often exists only as an excuse to relate expository information to the reader, and as such, it is stilted and unbelievable. Imagine one member of an Ultra-Top Secret Committee reminding the Committee Foreman: "SHOULDN'T WE BRING THE PRESIDENT IN ON THIS? I MEAN, PRESIDENT TRUMAN SET UP THE ORIGINAL ... COMMITTEE IN SEPTEMBER OF 1947, RIGHT AFTER THE ALIEN BODIES WERE RECOVERED FROM ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO." (--page 22)
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The book is riddled with trite phrases: "I KNOW THAT YOU MUST ALL BE WONDERING WHY I CALLED AN EMERGENCY MEETING..." (--page 20) // HE "WAS A PROFESSIONAL KILLER WITH ICE WATER IN HIS VEINS." (--page 265)
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Not to be outdone, there are typographical errors galore: "WHAT APPEARED TO BE BITS OF SKULL OF BRAIN WERE SPLATTERED ON HIS COLLAR." (--page 248) *Yeah, that skull of brain does tend to get messy, doesn't it?
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You will also enjoy the unique sentence structure and keen insight: "DOZENS OF TINY EQUIPMENT LIGHTS SPARKLED IN THE DARKNESS OF THE ROOM THEY ENTERED AS THEY STEPPED INSIDE." (--page 230) // "HE KNEW THAT HIS HANDS WERE SHAKING." (--page 2) *It goes without saying that a person knows if their hands are shaking!
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And then of course, there are multiple instances of utter nonsense: The senior member of the Government's most elite Committee bemoans the fact that he couldn't convince NBC to cancel a program on UFOs that the network intended to broadcast in order to inform the public of nefarious government coverups. Ha!-Ha! Like our mainstream media consists of renegade watchdogs looking out for the well-being of the general populace and operating beyond the reach of coercion from the highest levels of Government. Right!
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Here's my favorite: On page 28 we meet COLONEL TY TRENT, a decorated Marine Special Operations and Intelligence Officer. In chapter 16, COLONEL TY TRENT enters an office for a closed-door meeting. This meeting continues through chapter 17, but suddenly we find that Colonel Ty TRENT is being called Colonel Ty TREAT! No, I don't mean that this occurs just once. If that were the case, I would consider it a mere typographical error. No! Throughout chapter 17 the Colonel is named TREAT! Thereafter, he resumes his original name, TRENT. In other words, for an entire chapter, the author forgot the name of his character. And nobody caught this in proofreading? INCREDIBLE! That's how much care and thought went into ALIEN (C)RAPTURE.
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I won't say that the book is entirely devoid of truth, but the conclusion that it draws is not only in error, but downright dangerous to accept. If you are the least bit inclined to embrace the dubious analysis presented here, then I strongly urge you to first read ALIEN ENCOUNTERS by Chuck Missler, ENCOUNTERS WITH UFOs by Weldon & Levitt, and ALIEN INTERVENTION by Paul Christopher.
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Before ordering ALIEN RAPTURE from Amazon.com, I read all of the negative reviews, but being the Idiot from my Village, I ignored them and bought it anyway. Don't be as big a fool as I was.
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In his Foreword to this book, Brad Steiger wrote: "ALIEN RAPTURE is presenting many facts with a little fiction to protect the guilty and shield the innocent." If Mr. Steiger had REALLY wanted to "shield the innocent" (that's you and me), he wouldn't have published this mess in the first place!
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Sincerely,
Stephen T. McCartney
(Oh, McCarthy, McCartney -- what does it matter? Like Colonel TREAT, I was close enough!)
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This sounds almost like a "fake book", a parody, definitely of Ed wood proportions. I'd probably buy it too--if it were free. My biggest regret would be time wasted on reading it. But I guess it couldn't be a worse waste of time than some of the TV shows I've watched.
ReplyDeleteArlee Bird
Tossing It Out
LEE ~
DeleteYeah, I agree about TV. With a small number of notable exceptions (and most of it old stuff) the Boob Tube is precisely that.
I haven't had any TV service for about 2 years and I ain't missin' a thing!
~ D-FensDogG
'Loyal American Underground'
Ha, ha, ha! You have got to love the 'art of self-publishing'. Where everyone is a star and no one an artist. There outta be a law.
ReplyDeleteAll stars and no artists -- nicely put.
DeleteI'm hoping Trump will sign an Executive Order giving us that much needed law!
~ D-FensDogG
Your review is so colorful that I almost want to read this book for laughs. Almost. But I can feel the skull of my brain shaking my head no. Not a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI went over to Amazon, and they can't even get their author bio(s) right. It says, and I quote:
Brad Steiger (right) is the author of more than 100 books, with more than 15 million copies in print. Edgar Rothschild Fouché (left) is a member of Air Force intelligence and a cryptological expert.
But... there's no picture...
By all means, follow the advice of your skull of brain and just say "No".
DeleteI think they may have meant that Edgar Rothschild Fouché (left)... before the photographer arrived.
Or perhaps he is a UNDERCOVER member of Air Force intelligence and a cryptological expert, and the bio writer accidentally left a word out.
Then again, considering the book itself, the missing picture makes perfect sense.
~ D-FensDogG
'loyal American Underground'