Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids Book

You know how there are food deserts? Well, there are literary deserts, too, and Oklahoma has always seemed to wear the title like a badge of honor. It has been bad for as long as I can remember, but between amazon and e-books wreaking havoc in my absence, I returned home to Planet of the Apes, wherein the apes are James Patterson novels and I'm the guy on the ground screaming about bastards. On Thursday, I attempted to find a book. Just one. Something, anything I had the slightest bit of interest in reading. I went to a regional chain and two hole in the walls, and came out with this, literally the only thing I picked up which piqued my interest. Historically, leaving a bookstore with nothing has been the opposite of my problem, but I'll be damned if I wasn't thrifty against my will this time. To top off the insult, the book ended up kinda sucking. That's a literary term, and I encourage college freshmen to use it in their essays.

So let's just start with the elephant in the room: yes, the translation is awful. Duly noted. How do I know this when I've neither seen the original Japanese text, nor could I read it even if I did? Because there is just no way this book is simultaneously this terrible and this tenacious. Having said that, there is also no way this book was ever mind-bendingly great. Seriously, you could spend thirty years in a bunker with the world's largest thesaurus, and it would matter approximately fuck-all when it comes to making this book an actually memorable experience. However, if you must attempt it, let me give you some pointers.

*There are other ways to say "so and so said" besides just "so and so said." Consider embracing synonyms.

*There are visuals to describe humans behaving in a mob fashion beyond the image of a "pack of dogs." Use it once? Sure. Just not a second time, and certainly not a third time.

*Please do something about the narrator's tendency to magically know what his entire troop is thinking in any given moment. Kindly slice or modify quotes illustrating mental interiors like "we thought in silence about the reformatory's one and only bicycle." Obviously, no one told you they were thinking about this random bicycle because you were all too busy thinking in silence. That leaves us with either a) you're purchasing your shades from Roddy Piper, or b) you're a Louisiana fairy princess telepath with the messiest sex life this side of Laura Palmer. And speaking of that...

*Dear god, the sex scene. Hand to my heart, it had to have been written, or at least translated, by a virgin male. Maybe both. Remember that time our hero waltzed into the shed that girl was in, lifted up her skirt, and just rammed it right in there without a word, kiss, or grope? First of all, no he didn't. That, or he did, but you left out the part where she started screaming in pain. Go gently, friend. Our ladybits have gatekeepers, and you're going to need to pay him at least a little something before you can cross. Even just a warning shout, a simple "Hey, so I'm going to place my penis inside of your vagina now if that's cool with you!" would be preferable to nothing at all unless you're looking to break something.

*Put a stop to the myriad of terrible similes. "It was dark in there, like a part of the forest abandoned by people." Hey, I can play that game!

-It was dark in there, like a dark chocolate cake on a black plate in an unlit room.

-It was dark in there, like the insides of my boots when my feet are in them.

-It was dark in there, like my house that one time we got waaaaay behind on the electric bill, and even though they sent us multiple cut-off warnings, we just didn't have the money so they eventually shut it off and it was really dark at nighttime in there because we didn't have very many candles, and the ones we did have were just those shitty tealight candles you use to heat up essential oils in little ceramic burners if you want your house to smell good, which, who even cares how it smells when you can't see shit anyway?

-It was dark in there, like the realm beyond a human anus.

Sorry, moving on.

*If you want to include a scrappy little fight scene in your novel, please don't describe it like so: "We fell on the paving stones and rolled around, kicking and scissoring..." Because, wow. Lost. In. Translation. Incidentally, this series of words could go a long way in dressing up that awful, nigh impossible sex scene.

*Maybe just let this one go, man. There are surely other books in need of translations, and they may even warrant them.

That's all I've got for now. I have a lot more little tabbies in the book that I could continue to harp on, but I'm getting old and feeble and I must take a rest for the time being. Read it if only to wonder at how a small-town wartime plague survival tale could actually manage to be this fucking boring.