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Dear airport fiction thread, I just read a Matthew Reilly (I know :/ ) book called The Six Sacred Stones featuring Shane, oops, Jack West, and about two thirds of the way through, a Maghook turned up. Thread denizens, I'm ashamed to admit that I whooped and punched the air. I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. The book ends with a big ol' cliffhanger, which I am fairly sure will be resolved using said Maghook - in fact, I'd put money on it. The book was so horrendously, marvellously bad, I'm kind of thinking about picking up the next one in the series, and hating myself for considering it. Thanks for reading. xoxoxo
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| # ? Jul 12, 2010 15:29 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 20:16 |
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^^^^^^^^ You must read Seven Deadly Wonders. It is required.
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| # ? Jul 12, 2010 15:35 |
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EvilMoJoJoJo posted:Dear airport fiction thread, And yeah, you have to get The Five Greatest Warriors. Anyone who hasn't figured out the 'secret' identity of the fifth warrior before they even finish the riddle that describes them all is officially an idiot. I actually thought it was too obvious and that there would be a twist, but nope, it genuinely is that blatant. Also, one of the other warriors is Jesus. Yes, that Jesus.
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| # ? Jul 12, 2010 19:31 |
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Well duh.. He is the master of Jew-Jitsu 
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 00:15 |
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I'm waiting for Five Greatest Warriors to come out in paperback. I do have my standards you know... Payndz, why isn't The Pyramid of Doom available now? I need my Wilde/Chase fix.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 00:35 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Well duh.. He is the master of Jew-Jitsu
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 03:32 |
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Payndz posted:I actually thought it was too obvious and that there would be a twist, but nope, it genuinely is that blatant. Come on dude, that's like complaining about the fact that if Eddie or Nina speak to or about a billionaire in the first few pages of the book, he/she is the bad guy. Oh, and please tell me the next book is going to be about those purple statue thingies, I want to know what they are.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 12:01 |
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Flatscan posted:Come on dude, that's like complaining about the fact that if Eddie or Nina speak to or about a billionaire in the first few pages of the book, he/she is the bad guy. Purple statue thingies will return.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 20:45 |
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Payndz posted:Hey! That's only happened, er, three times in six books. Maybe three and a half. Pretty sure Cussler's evil billionaire ratio is higher than mine. (Mental note: include non-evil billionaire at some point.) How many times did you count Sophia? She should be worth at least two.
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| # ? Jul 13, 2010 23:25 |
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I'm inappropriately excited that Christopher Reich's Rules of Betrayal is arriving in the mail tomorrow. They're slightly above-average for spy action novels, but still prettymuch the definition of airport fiction.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2010 02:16 |
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The problem with non billionaire bad guys is they can be pretty god damned boring. Think about it, you have a guy with umpteen billion, he can buy pretty much anything and actually BUILD that super secret headquarters and have the fembots with the nipple lasers on guard duty. You have just a regular joe, he's got a shed he built himself, and some mannequins with laser pointers or LEDs in their boobs. One needs a secret agent to take out, the other just needs medication and a hobby. About the only other choice you can go with is SECRET CULT THAT HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, and yet somehow never has been noticed until now, and then once you use em every other single secret cult seems kinda like a lovely plot device. The only other one that lends itself to bad guys is "Some political senator/vice president/cia guy", and frankly that black ops government poo poo gets old really fast. Dean Koontz spent a good 12 years writing the same plot, and I spent 12 years reading that poo poo before I realized "Holy poo poo what is with this rear end in a top hat and dogs? gently caress it, I quit!" I ain't gonna lie, thinking up this poo poo for airport "low brow" fiction is hard to do sometimes. When it gets right, it's loving awesome. When it sucks, oh sweet baby jesus it's like a hoover on steroids.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2010 08:30 |
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:How many times did you count Sophia? She should be worth at least two. In a shocking development, though, the book I'm writing at the moment includes no billionaires at all!  Stupid_Sexy_Flander's point is spot on, though. Billionaires make for good villains in goofy airport thrillers because they have the resources to do all the crazy world-domination poo poo. If Carlos Slim or Warren Buffett wants to build a giant laser to melt the Arctic ice cap (and I'm sure it's crossed their minds), they can just whip out their chequebooks.
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| # ? Jul 14, 2010 09:25 |
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Somebody needs to write a book about Warren Buffet attempting to melt the ice caps with a Death Ray.
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 04:20 |
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Agentdark posted:Somebody needs to write a book about Warren Buffet attempting to melt the ice caps with a Death Ray. "Muahahaha! Thanks to my philanthropic efforts to vaccinate and fully industrialize the Third World, global populations and green house gas levels will skyrocket, causing the icecaps to melt and sending this pitiful Earth into a thousand year ice age! Muahahaha!!!"
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 07:30 |
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The trouble with evil billionaires is that in real life things cost money mostly because you're paying a lot of people which makes keeping things secret very difficult. 
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 07:39 |
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LooseChanj posted:The trouble with evil billionaires is that in real life things cost money mostly because you're paying a lot of people which makes keeping things secret very difficult. Evil millionaires don't get much further than hiring the occasional hitman or bribing the planning authority to put a bypass through your house. Anyway, evil billionaires have all their evil work done by those legions of minions in orange jumpsuits. The agency that supplies them has a very strict confidentiality clause.
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 08:31 |
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Payndz posted:Which is why they have to be billionaires! Please put that agency into one of your next books....
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 13:22 |
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I was in Waterstone's the other day and I saw a stack of copies of Hunt For Atlantis sitting next to a stack of copies of Mr. Shivers. I was forced to point out to passers by how Waterstones were arranging books by goons together for the following hour.
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| # ? Jul 15, 2010 15:20 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Think about it, you have a guy with umpteen billion, he can buy pretty much anything and actually BUILD that super secret headquarters and have the fembots with the nipple lasers on guard duty. "Look, I was gonna take over the world and stuff but my dick of a manager said I couldn't have this weekend off to build my Fortress of Despair and with my old lady bitching at me every twenty minutes about 'when am I gonna be elevated to Queen of Creation like you promised', I just haven't gotten around to it. Besides, my little girl has been kind of sick and she's my babydoll so I try to be there for her. What I'm trying to say is that if you could just, you know, pretend that this sheet of plywood with the hose clamps is actually a super science table that has a big old laser over it or something, I'd sure appreciate it. Now, Mr. Bond, tell me what you know about project JIMMYDEAN or I'll unleash my killer army of coonhounds upon you!!!"
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| # ? Jul 16, 2010 01:27 |
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I'm an uncultured swine who loves Jack Reacher (Lee Child) and John Rain (Barry Eisler) books. They're great fun, sue me.
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| # ? Jul 16, 2010 20:02 |
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Payndz posted:Which is why they have to be billionaires! Paging Dr Kayanka... do i win a prize, you should tell us about working at Hotdog(best film mag ever RIP) Tim willocks books, although few and far between are awesome pulp hero novels.The Fletch books could do with being more widely available, they are great all be it brief.
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| # ? Jul 17, 2010 19:10 |
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Vimto posted:Paging Dr Kayanka... do i win a prize
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| # ? Jul 17, 2010 22:19 |
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Leovinus posted:I was in Waterstone's the other day and I saw a stack of copies of Hunt For Atlantis sitting next to a stack of copies of Mr. Shivers. I was forced to point out to passers by how Waterstones were arranging books by goons together for the following hour. You stood next to a rack of books for an hour ranting about goons? Are you posting from the mental hospital?
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| # ? Jul 17, 2010 22:25 |
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Think about it, you have a guy with umpteen billion, he can buy pretty much anything and actually BUILD that super secret headquarters and have the fembots with the nipple lasers on guard duty. Ahh, but what most fail to realize that materials costs are very low. Its hiring people that costs the money. Building an elevator down 100yrds would cost me $33,000. A 3,500sqft bunker would cost $15,000. Labor kills all projects. The answer is to have your antagonist skilled and willing to devote the time.
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| # ? Jul 17, 2010 23:25 |
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So does Nelson DeMille count as airport fiction? Every time I visit my parents I end up reading another of his books to kill time.
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| # ? Jul 18, 2010 00:14 |
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M_Gargantua posted:Ahh, but what most fail to realize that materials costs are very low. Its hiring people that costs the money. REAL villains go over the top (and compensate for little things) by have entire islands  A 3500 foot bunker isn't that huge. It might be enough space to maybe put a lab for growing horrible virii or maybe a doomsday machine bomb and requisite weapons lab, but hardly enough room for the bossman's secret chambers, dining rooms, various pipes and tubes, not even coming close to mentioning the barracks for having your help live on site. Don't get me wrong, 3500 ft is awesome for a house, and awesome for a man cave, but for plotting the destruction of the world? That's barely a walk in closet. Besides, nipple lasers are going to be at least 500-600$ a fembot, even if you get the cheapy laser pointers that can destroy your retinas. Granted, if you are building a fembot, that's not gonna be much but why skimp? Oooooooohhh man, I bet that would make a GREAT trap for a main character though. He takes the elevator down 200 feet to the giant bunker, opens the door, and it's WIDE OPEN SPACE that is completely lit. Absolutely nothing in there at all... save a pedestal with a big shiny red button on it, and a sign saying "CAUTION, DO NOT PUSH THE BUTTON". (naturally this button leads to bombs behind every tile and panel in the bunker that involve nasty things like "c6 explosive" and nuclear fallout and maybe even rusty nails and a used condom or two for that biological edge.) If this shows up in a book I want royalties
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| # ? Jul 18, 2010 07:29 |
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The trick to keeping the airport fiction market growing is to get the customer hooked at a young age. Spotted in the actual children's section at my local bookstore:  Click here for the full 600x800 image.
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| # ? Jul 18, 2010 21:49 |
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withak posted:The trick to keeping the airport fiction market growing is to get the customer hooked at a young age. Get 'em started when they're small? 
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| # ? Jul 18, 2010 22:36 |
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withak posted:The trick to keeping the airport fiction market growing is to get the customer hooked at a young age. I guess the Hardy Boys are just too
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| # ? Jul 18, 2010 23:38 |
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I remember discovering a stash of John D. McDonald books in my basement. Those things are perfect for a 2-3 hour flight. How can you not love Travis McGee?
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 04:22 |
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withak posted:The trick to keeping the airport fiction market growing is to get the customer hooked at a young age.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 08:00 |
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IIRC the synopsis made it sounds like Hotsy-Totsy was the boat, which had been transformed from a toy into a real boat by a magic box belonging to the kids.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 13:51 |
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The Adventures of Hotsy Totsy sounds like bad 70s porn. There again the children's adventure novels of the 50s and 60s were pretty awesome.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 16:10 |
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From an amazon review:quote:After flying through the air in the Vin Fiz, Casey and Lacey Nicefolk are back for another adventure. Thanks to the help of Mr. Sucoh Sucop (hocus pocus spelled backward), the non-identical twins still have the magic box that transforms small toys or figurines into life-size objects. Although they had their hands full in their last adventure flying a replica of the Wright Brothers' Flyer, school is almost out and summer seems like just the perfect time for Casey and Lacey to have more fun! I can't tell if this reviewer is being serious or not: quote:I read Cussler all the time and felt my grand daughter would love it at 12, but atlas she said it was too simple for a teen: Think I'm going to have to go back to the bookstore and read it.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 16:12 |
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So it's basically Cussler's version of Tom Swift, with a bit of Potteresque magic thrown in? Riiight. Still, at least it's actually only got his name on it, rather than being one of the 17 or so ghost-written franchises he's got going on. (Did anyone else who read that synopsis think of MGS3 when they saw the name "The Boss"?) Maybe I'm missing a trick, though. Kids/YA spin-off series here I come!
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 19:16 |
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Li'l Eddie and Nina and the Puppy of Cerburus?
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 21:25 |
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withak posted:The trick to keeping the airport fiction market growing is to get the customer hooked at a young age. Do the kids have a room full of vintage Hot Wheels cars? Seriously though, Cussler is so much worse than Reilly because he takes himself seriously. And obvious author self-insertion.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 21:58 |
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Mr.48 posted:Seriously though, Cussler is so much worse than Reilly because he takes himself seriously. And obvious author self-insertion.  Must make plotting easier. "Okay, so Dirk and Al have been sealed up to their necks inside a concrete block and are dropped into the volcano where the atom bomb is primed to explode. How are they going to get out of that? Ah! Of course! I appear!"
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 22:35 |
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Payndz posted:I've probably mentioned this before, but the first - and by strange coincidence last - Cussler novel I ever read had the heroes trapped on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific with no food or water, only for a yacht to appear out of nowhere and its pilot to rescue them, introducing himself as "Clive Cussler". I couldn't believe it, but later heard that not only does he put himself into almost every book, but his fans get annoyed if he's not there. Clive Cussler definitely doesn't take his stuff seriously. I loved his poo poo in high school, and now am hilariously entertained by the awful writing on rereads.
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| # ? Jul 19, 2010 22:40 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 20:16 |
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Greedish posted:I'm an uncultured swine who loves Jack Reacher (Lee Child) and John Rain (Barry Eisler) books. They're great fun, sue me. Anyone who doesn't like Jack Reacher is not actually a human man. Magnificent Quiver posted:You stood next to a rack of books for an hour ranting about goons? Are you posting from the mental hospital? I guess maybe my post was too subtle and nuanced for an airport fiction reader, but I did not actually do the thing I said, no.
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| # ? Jul 20, 2010 01:52 |
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