Shivers 10: The Curse of the New Kid

Let me start off by saying that while the main character of this book does move, it's not the same. In this book, the main character moves about twice a year due to his dad's job as a company "trouble shooter," which makes me think that maybe M.D. Spenser needs to look up the term "trouble shooter." Lucas Lytle is this week's twelve-year-old, and he's basically a less sucky version of Timmy. He is harassed and bullied at every school to which he goes, which probably wouldn't be the case if he wasn't in a Shivers book. He is beaten up a few times, too, maybe because he says things like, "Maybe I have a birthmark on the back of my head that says, 'Beat Me Up.'"

His dad, the "trouble shooter" who does nothing but reads the newspaper and says things like, "Go get 'im, sport!" or "Give 'em heck, son!" or "Seize the day, kiddo!" tells him to make friends with the biggest kid in class for protection. The biggest kid at this school is a kid named Huff, whom everybody calls- I kid you not- "Rough and Tough Huff." If I could zoom in to that a hundred times, I would.
Rough and Tough Huff.
I feel like M.D. Spenser doesn't quite understand the concept of middle school. For him, it's like trying to fit the square piece through the circle hole. No matter how much you try, it will just look messy, and also, the whole concept behind nicknames is that they shorten the name, or make it a little longer but cool-sounding, not add three words, one of which is a conjunction. Jesus, all I want to do is say the dude's name, not grade a freaking essay.

So, Huff and his gang of stereotypical followers gang up on Luke and decide to mess around a little bit. Huff pushes him around, and when he asks Luke what he was looking at, he said nothing. Whoops. Looks like Huff took offense, and he asked his followers what they thought of the situation from a neutral perspective. One of them actually says, "He dissed you bad." ...Burn?

So they start to beat him up, and he is rescued by a cheap Saved by the Bell reference. On his way past Lucas, he says that he likes Lucas's shoes. Right then, we learn just what M.D. Spenser knows of fashion trends when Lucas Lytle reveals that he is the ultimate fashion hipster. His mom dresses him up in the coolest clothes before they're cool by reading her fashion magazines including, get this: he "sagged" before it was cool. It literally says, "I wore big baggy pants that slid down to my hips and showed lots of my underwear long before anybody else did. Everybody made fun of me." Well, there's a reason for that, kid. Also, I don't think fashion magazines predicted that craze because it's visually the stupidest thing done with the body since perms. Like, why the hell do you wear a belt if you're wearing your pants at the freaking knees? At my old middle school, a public school with some twelve hundred kids, we had a security guard, one of two, that was probably in her fifties but looked much older, carried a taser, and actually might have used it on a student if a situation arose, or appeared to. She was a little too invested in her work. When people were sagging in the hall, she would sneak up behind them, grab the waist of their pants, and pull them up hard. Needless to say, it was a very uncomfortable experience. The moral is: don't be a tool. It sucks.

Lucas goes to class, where we find out what he looks like as he stares at his $150 basketball shoes. Basically, he's ugly. He's got big feet, big ears, but small hands (*hint hint*. You know what they say:  big hands, big gloves) and the rest of him is kinda like that too. He then spends a paragraph telling the reader his philosophical and extremely perceptive observation that blackboards are green, and he just doesn't get it because he inherited the stupidity trait from every other protagonist that M.D. Spenser creates.

So M.D. Spenser continually emasculates and humiliates Lucas, and I'm guessing it must be pretty fun. Lucas is yelled at by his new teacher, and heads to lunch. He gives us keen insight on his lunch, "For lunch, we had mystery meat and instant mashed potatoes. I hate instant mashed potatoes. They taste like paste. I have never eaten paste, but I know kids who have. They say it tastes like instant mashed potatoes." That might have been the most beautiful quote I've ever seen, and- although it pains me to admit this- it was reasonably funny. For M.D. Spenser, anyway. So he sits at the same table as the nerds: Muddy, Wanda, and three other kids, one of which is supposed to be very smart. Well, comparatively.

Then there are the cool kids. There is Jason, Heather, Greg, Marcie, Brandi, Dylan, Peter, and Wynonna, which apparently is actually a name. As you may have guessed, there are many characters and no character development. So Lucas gets a mashed potato to the face, and then kids start throwing rolls at him for, like, five minutes and you'd think they work in a goddamn roll factory. Off to P.E.

The coach is a hardcore, army drill sergeant type that was apparently in the marines. Since Lucas has the strength of a paraplegic puppy, he has a hard time doing anything, so the coach yells at him. "'I've seen girls -- I've seen fat girls -- do more sit-ups than you. Ain't you had your Wheaties today, boy?'" ......Burn? He goes to the locker room to see that someone took all his clothes, so he runs, totally naked, outside the locker room (even though he has gym clothes, but I don't think they were in last week's fashion magazine, so that's out of the question.) and sees his clothes hung on the flag pole.

The next day, Luke is waking up and pretending to be sick, claiming that he might have cancer. No, I'm completely serious. "'I better go see a doctor,' I said in the voice of the half-dead, 'I think I have cancer.'" To be fair, this kid is seen watching Comedy Central, and if there's one thing that Comedy Central taught us, it's that when in doubt, make a cancer joke. Or an AIDS joke. Those are pretty fun. But, alas, his mother doesn't believe him for some strange reason and he's sent off to school because his intellect is as strong as the rest of him. He has also mentioned, like, five times how expensive his shoes are. Yeah, he's one of those guys. He goes to the bus stop where a few kids are smoking cigarettes, and M.D. Spenser starts playing dirty, "I wanted one of the older guys to offer me a smoke, even if it meant I would really get cancer and die." ............Burn? Yes, because it's a well-known fact that smoking one cigarette gives you insta-cancer, so watch out, kids. On the next Shivers book, Spenser shares his views on the dangers of drunk driving and marijuana usage, so stay tuned.

This kid Billy slapped Luke's head, and he got pissed, and as they left the bus, Billy's arm was stuck in the door. Luke was waiting for somebody to amputate it when the door opened. I'm guessing that Luke also believes that  the best course of action for a stab wound would be to remove all your organs, so the knife can exit cleanly. It's common sense, for Luke at least. When the bus driver looks at Luke, there's a monstrous grin on her face.

In class, Leon trips on a shoelace and busts his head open. The teacher has the maniacal grin. At lunch, he gets picked on by the nerds. Yes, the nerds are higher on the social ladder than Luke. All of a sudden, they start throwing up, and the lunch lady grins. At P.E, the gym coach forces Luke and some fat kid named Ralph to engage in a rope-climbing battle, and coach says things that might get him fired, like that Ralph is "a pitiful pile of pig flesh... I ought to cut you up and fry you with my eggs." ........................Burn? And then, Ralph falls and crushes the my favorite character, the coach. Apparently, they're both dead.

At the funeral, which is a little awkward because I don't think that anybody wants him there, Luke starts hearing voices that tell him that he killed them, he'll burn in hell, he should never have let Brave win an oscar.

"Wait, how the hell was I supposed to prevent that?"
I don't know, interrupt the ceremony? With Seth McFarlane's hosting, it would have been a mercy killing.
"Why are you mad about Brave, isn't that, like, Pixar or something?"
Paranorman should have won. It's an injustice.
"So that's what made you angry about the Oscars? The animated movie?"
Moonrise Kingdom should have won more, too.
"Instead of what?"
I don't know. Lincoln?
"You realize this isn't even remotely topical anymore, right?" asked Lucas.
Months too late, worth the wait.

Guess what kind of face Ralph has in the coffin? That's right, a serene, insightful frown.

Just when everybody else starts grinning too, he wakes up and it's a dream sequence. I hate the dream sequences in these books. They pain me, like when you bite your tongue and you're dealing with the dull pain that is the average Shivers book, and then you get to a dream sequence and it's like Lucas came and just amputated it.

So Lucas goes into his kitchen, where the incidents are in the newspaper and he pulls off what might be the worst poker face in history. His dad says a lot of "Go ride 'em home, cowboy!" type things that explains where Luke gets his sense of humor. And then, he looks at his scrambled eggs and sees that his buddy Ralph is staring at him with blood and brains and stuff. It's never just eggs with these guys. Oh, also, Ralph and Coach are not dead because M.D. Spenser is incapable of actually killing someone off, but is comfortable with breaking limbs and gashing heads. Huh.

At school, Rough and Tough Huff is back to bullying Lucas at his locker. He starts calling him "Bad News," but that's not surprising since M.D. Spenser's idea of a burn is literally "'You're new now, but not for long,' Huff said, wiping his nose with the cuff of his shirt sleeve. 'When I get done with you, punk, you're going to be used and abused.'" Huff destroys Luke's locker, and then scares him so bad he pees his pants. In the principal's office, Luke doesn't give Huff away even under intense interrogation. The principal tries everything: name-calling, threats, bribes, even talking to him in a demeaning baby voice because he wet his widdle diapa. Luke stays strong, and gets a new pair of pants to change into. This is when the real horror starts for Luke: the horror of committing a crime against fashion. The pants are plaid and tight and small, and the only era when that could have been in a fashion magazine was the 70's.

Luke, in his state of not catching a break, runs into the 8-person jock/cheerleader group. He picks a fight with the four football players, and remembers his dad's supporting words: "Just keep on sailing, sailor." He fights with his eyes closed, and he totally tears the antagonists a few new ones. It describes in exquisite detail the damage he did to them, including broken fingers, pretty much ripping apart a couple people's faces, and dislocating a jock's shoulder. The cheerleaders are grinning creepily and have blood on them and creepy stuff.

At lunch, the nerds volunteer to sit with him, and he's asked on a date with this pretty girl named Ruby. Now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that girls don't automatically fall for a kid who is ugly and kind of a psychopath. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

After school, Lucas walks in on- I'm one hundred percent serious, THIS IS NOT A JOKE- Huff trying to rape Ruby. I'm not joking. Here are a few quotes to prove it:
1. (said by Ruby) "STOP! Stop it! Please! I'll scream. Help! Somebody help!"

2. He has her pinned against a tree in the middle of a forest.

3. (Huff says) "'Okay,' he said, 'We'll do it your way. I'll take care of you first, and save the sweetie for last.'"

And my favorite: 4. "'Huff, let her go,' I said.
'Not yet, Puke Breath. I'm not done. You can have her when I'm through.'"

Jesus Christ. I know this is a teen and pre-teen book, but holy actual shit. Spenser is going full-on hardcore. I am looking at him in a whole new light now. Jeez. This is why I was happy when Lucas broke Huff's face with a backpack. I'm sure his dad would have told him to "give 'im the ol' 'one-two'." Oh, but Huff keeps going, making me think that M.D. Spenser needs to look up the terms "broken jaw" and "middle schooler." He ends up having his body contorted into some kind of human modern art piece, which I'm personally O.K. with since none of these characters have actual personalities. Oh, and the grin is on the principal's face this time. He was watching them from the bushes. This raises the question: why didn't he step in during Huff's one-on-one time with Ruby? I'll let the reader develop their own opinions.

A week later, nobody picks on Lucas anymore. He's considered cool because he caused kids to suffer major injuries, which makes me think that M.D. Spenser needs to look up the terms "cool" and "realistic." He shows up to class late, and then makes his teacher's skin bubble and burn. Basically, he's a massive douche. He starts smoking now, which you can apparently do out in the open at a middle school, and forces Billy, the kid whose arm was broken by the bus and can only use the un-casted arm, to carry his backpack. He walks around the bus, scaring younger kids and pushing people around. And all the cool kids love him for it.

If I could ask Luke one question, it would be if it was inconvenient. Having a head so big, you can't fit through small doors. Or if it's uncomfortable, overheating because he's such hot shit. Eventually, the principal decides to do his job and calls Luke in, suspending him. After school, the principal falls out of his window, and it's the secretary grinning evilly.

At home, the parents chastise Luke brutally, asking him if he's on drugs. His punishment is basically that he's allowed to laze around all day, watching Comedy Central. He sets up a date with Ruby even though he's grounded, and his mom starts thinking he's weird because he's always changing clothes. He tells his mom to chill, and she replies, "'Well, you better chill yourself'." BBBBBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's about time M.D. Spenser started layin' down some gnarly disses. Luke solves the problem by sneaking out when "Every Friday, my parents rent a couple of videos, close the door to their bedroom, and you don't see them until breakfast the next day. It's like a ritual with them." I wonder when he will realize that it was that very same ritual that led to his conception. I can tell that M.D. Spenser had a lot of fun with this one, since there are a couple not-so-subtle adult themes. This whole new style is freaking me out. It's like reading the bible and finding that they quoted a Lil Wayne song in there somewhere.

Anyway, after seeing Exterminator 4, he gets busted by his parents. He tries to assault them, but they lock him in his room. The next day, on the way to a psychologist, the family's car gets hit by a truck and both parents die. As he sees his reflection in the mirror, his face starts maniacally grinning and he realizes that-

And the Horrific Conclusion is:
It was a goddamn dream sequence. I cannot express how mad I was at the ending. I felt like punching a fetus. It was all a dream, it was the first day of school again, and I don't even care if Billy recognized him because it was all a freaking dream sequence.

Insight into the Complex Minds of Characters:
"I wish I had a brother. A big brother. He would know what to do.
Or two big brothers. Or four. And all of them bigger than Huff and Billy and Leon all put together. They would protect me.
We would be the Fighting Lytle Brothers. That would be great."
The Fighting Lytle Brothers.

The Fighting Lytle Brothers

Beautiful Imagery: 

"I saw blood on his head. But it turned out to be ketchup." Well thank you for the clarification.

Hip References:

 I think Spenser has a thing for Star Trek, because he mentions it again. He also mentions Nintendo, David Letterman, and, of course, sagging, which Lucas probably should have trademarked.

Conclusion:

It was a really good one. Pretty terrifying with all the grinning faces. In terms of Shivers books, if 10 was The Matrix and 1 was The Matrix 3, then this would be a 7 or 8. If only it didn't have an ending created by ink, paper, and the tears of orphans. Still, I can't shake the feeling that Spencer just redid The Mystic's Spell and made it darker.

Shivers 9: The Mystic's Spell

Before I begin this synopsis, I would like to put forth a cause for celebration. M.D. Spenser has finally gone out of his comfort zone. This book, believe it or not, takes place in the protagonist's home town. Where he has a familiar setting! It's crazy! No more repetitiveness! The setup has changed. The book sucks though.

In the beginning, 11-year-old Timmy is hanging out in the town where he grew up and is not in a car or any other kind of vehicle. Except maybe to the Diversity Express, because M.D. Spenser just bought him one ticket out of Repetiville. When his friend Howard asks whether or not he wants to go to the carnival in town, he answers with a tentative yes, because last carnival kind of sucked for him. First, he ran, screaming like a miniature female, out of the haunted house. Then, he threw up on the Tilt-A-Whirl, and Hank, the local bully, decided to call him "The Human Volcano." In case you couldn't tell, Hank's an idiot. He walks around with his idiot friends, Duane and Jason. I imagine they look a little something like this:

Minus Jimbo. He's all right.

Anyway, Timmy decides that he's old enough not to have M.D. Spenser mercilessly emasculate him anymore, so he chooses to go to the carnival. Which is coincidentally about when the three  stereotypical bullies Hank, Duane, and Jason decide to steal his pocket money for the arcade. He decides to stand up for himself, and gets his money stolen anyway, but this time he gets a free headlock. Values. This book has very little.

In Timmy's first pocket, they find a pencil and an eraser. If you'll allow me to sidetrack a little bit, Timmy is a complete loser. He not only has a pencil, but a spare eraser in case the one on his pencil gets overused. Who the hell worries about that, anyway? You could just buy a new pencil, they are everywhere. Weirdly enough, though, Hank and The Gang decide not to call him out on it. When they find his money, Hank decides to nickname him- I kid you not- Timid Timmy. I have to believe that Hank is just showing off a new word he learned from one of his monster truck magazines, because Spenser's insight as to the nature of middle school bullying is just as sharp as ever.

So, some backstory is now introduced. Timmy is weak, can't play sports, and is incredibly smart, at least when it comes to math problems. There's this girl named Sarah who likes him, and that's pretty much it. So after the bullies walk away, Timmy yells that he would do anything to be stronger than them. I think the real horror of this book is that after nine of them, M.D. Spenser hasn't gotten any better at foreshadowing. Despite his beliefs, there are ways to create tension without also completely eliminating the need for it. Well, I'll tell you what happens anyway.

Timmy goes home to ask his parents' permission. M.D. Spenser decides that since he's been so good at employing literary devices, it would be an injustice not to lay down some similes like the raps of a white rapper with no vocal cords or kidneys. See, that was a simile. So Timmy begs like a dog hoping for a bone. His mom relents, and he skips off with Howard, calculator in hand, his mom actually warning him not to rip his clothes like he did yesterday. Apparently her keen perception isn't paired with an analytical part of her brain, since it doesn't occur to her that something might be wrong.

Timmy and Howard walk down through the crowd while being taunted by booth workers who actually call them "chicken." Once again, a stunningly accurate representation of society, this time for carnival workers. He then fools "The Guesser" because he misjudges Timmy's weight, and out of all the prizes, Timmy actually chooses a plastic bookmark with a calendar. O.K, I'm pretty much done with all these characters. And this book, with all its similes.

Timmy goes alone to the lemonade stand, where he chats it up with some girls, including Sally. As he walks away, though, he gets tripped and spills lemonade on some girl. As he hears Hank ask if Timid Timmy had an accident, he suddenly pieces the mystery together. He has a flashback to when he was walking away from the stand and something moved in front of his ankle and he fell. It had been Hank all along, tripping him after he left the lemonade stand. I don't know what diabolical treason sorcery this is, but I certainly wouldn't have understood it if Timmy hadn't explained it to me.

Timmy decided to take the high road and cry and run away. Sarah looks away, and the other girls give him a pitying look, "like they might give a dog that had been run over." I don't think you give a squashed dog a pitying look, I think you either give it a disgusted look, or a holy-acual-shit-that-dog-just-got-run-over-by-a-freaking-car look, like the kind you would give a dog that had been run over. God, I freaking love similes.

He runs into a sketchy shack for Myra the Mystic, who can apparently grant wishes. Timmy wishes to become strong, and Myra warns that he might not like it. Timmy decides that warnings are for wimps and sticks to his gut. After she casts the spells, Timmy accidentally knocks over all her potion bottles and is sent out, not feeling any stronger. He decides to test his strength by picking up a carny's car to help him change a tire. The carny gives him five bucks for his help, and Timmy decides that he does, in fact, have super strength. The carny offers him a job lifting heavy objects for the carnival, but I don't think he realizes how little mass appeal seeing Timmy lift heavy objects would have.

Timmy decides that the first order of business is taking revenge on Hank. He lures them behind the haunted house and picks up Hank over his head. Hank starts blubbering with a voice "like that of a small, frightened child," which, seeing as he's 11, makes sense. They promise to stay away from him from now on, and they ran away "as fast as if they were fleeing a ghost." Or, say, a kid whom they have picked on for a long time and now has super strength. There are better similes than ghosts, and a simile doesn't even improve that sentence. Now, instead of M.D. Spenser moving away from the topic of Timmy with his super strength to pursue something more exciting, which is to say, everything, he decides to keep torturing the reader.

Next, Timmy wows his friends by beating one of those games where you hit a bell with a hammer. This wins Sally's affection, and pretty much kills what little moral value this book had. Timmy sneaks into his room and picks up a wood statue, so that's fun, and decides not to tell his parents about all this. He then joins a softball game, and gets picked first by Hank. Timmy uses his powers of super fast deduction to figure out that Hank picked him so they could get more home runs. He hits a ball out of the school. The principal yells at him and makes him clean with the janitor, which I feel should be a standard punishment for children everywhere. Child labor laws are ruining this country's economy.

This is literally the whole book. First, Timmy tries not to draw attention to himself at school the next day. He and Howard goes to the arcade, where Timmy beats the Bicep Buster, a fictional machine with a concept as unintelligent as its name: an arm-wrestling machine. The man calls his parents, and he realizes that going to a sketchy shack in a carnival for wish granting might not have been such a hot idea, since there was a 9 out of 10 chance it was a child molester. His parents ground him for a month, and yet he still doesn't admit anything, even after they use big words to intimidate him. Now the conversation wasn't in depth, but I can imagine that his parents called him mischievous and deceitful, insubordinate and churlish, cantankerous and deplorable. The next day, Hank is all buddy-buddy with Timmy, and he gets invited to live the Thüg Lyfe by a local thug. He decides that he doesn't need to be liked or respected because he has something better: the power of friendship. But now Howard and Sally don't want anything to do with him. Whoops. He then breaks the vending machine by accidentally sticking his hand through it, and his life gets even worse. But he still doesn't admit anything about his powers.

I'm sorry, this is killing me. 80 pages of pure, uncensored boringness. Reading this book is like staring at that color scene that goes on for, like, 10 minutes from 2001: Space Odyssey for three days with no food and water while M.D. Spenser reads The Mystic's Spell to you in a monotonous voice over a loudspeaker. Timmy goes to get his spell reversed after tucking a sleeping bag under his blanket, a trick that would only work if your parents are blind, stupid, or Timmy's. He gets directed to her daughter by the carny from earlier who doesn't get a name or personality, because Myra left. Without her daughter. I think the real scare in this book is the lack of parental behavior that occurs throughout. Timmy's dad threatened to send him to military school earlier in the book, there are tons of snide comments on how clumsy Timmy is from adults, and the principal makes him work for two hours every day with the janitor. Using these clues, I used my powers of super deduction to decide that this town sucks.

Timmy finds the daughter, but she warns him that something could go wrong since she's a novice. He doesn't care, since warnings are still for wimps, and she casts the reversal spell. It works! He's a weakling again!

But, in the horrible and also boring twist: He starts moo-ing in the middle of class. I don't care.

Insight into the Complex Minds of Characters: "In a flash, Timmy realized what had happened. He had been so busy putting his change in his pocket after he had bought the lemonade, he hadn't even seen Hank step up from the side, kick him in the ankle and trip him." Like a sort of Sherlock Holmes.

Beautiful Imagery: "Hank started whimpering like a puppy." Picture someone actually whimpering like a puppy.

Hip References: "'Yeah, we got somebody in there like that,' the man replied. 'I don't know her name. For all I know, she's Demi Moore.'" That might barely be able to be passed off as topical.

Conclusion: This book was by far the worst. M.D. Spenser has had some pretty good stories, but this and number 8 were some of the all time worst pieces of literature I've ever read. Also, there was nothing to make fun of. Everything was so drab and lame, I had to make cheap shots at Timmy's parents and the overuse of similes (which was actually quite painful) since there was not enough detail to make any good jokes. For my final words, let's just say that if this book's life, history, and formulation were combined into one being, and that being had a face, I would punch it.

Shivers 8: Terror on Troll Mountain

So last week I couldn't write a post. The week before, I synopsiesed (synopsysed? synopsiezed? synopsneezed?) The Awful Apple Orchard. We've had a lot of good times so far, through good and bad, and despite the quality of some of the books, I really had fun with the whole process. All of this changed the moment I read this book. There have been some terrible, boring, and just overall stupid Shivers books in my petite little 7-novel collection, but this is by far the worst of the worst. If you took all of the the worst moments from A Ghastly Shade of Green, The Locked Room, and The Awful Apple Orchard, then first of all, M.D. Spenser would probably shiver in delight at the concept, and second of all, it would be this book. But, you came here for jokes. So here they are.

So this book starts out with the worst protagonist yet: Paul Alberti, a tall, fat, glasses-wearing, idiotic, and overall near personality-less twelve-year-old. It's basically Winston combined with Daniel. Right now, he's with his father and uncle on a trip from his big city in Chicago to a tiny little town in Italy. The whole family on dad's side is Italian, with the mom on a cross-country ballet tour. You can read that again if you need to.

The strange thing about this book is that it actually shows work. True, the fun facts about Italy could literally have been copied and pasted from a website on fun facts about Italy, but at least M.D. Spenser tried. Also, every character in the extended family is an Italian stereotype, so I will bolden them for you.

Paul also has huge feet, which is what kids make fun of him for at school. I happen to have a hard time believing that, seeing as how this kid is literally a walking target. He could be made fun of for, say, his weight and overwhelming love of food, or his nerdy hair and glasses, or the fact that he loves to whine about being carsick. If Danny were here, I bet he would say something like, "Hey Sir Nerdy McDorksalot, you gonna gwet cahsick and pook all ovah ya little nerdy dork fatso body, ya little fatterd?" God, what a wordsmith.

Anyways, the trio is riding along with uncle Frederico behind the wheel, and he happens to be a terrible driver. The three of them are zipping along, all happy and carsick, when all of a sudden, it gets quiet, and the brothers in the front seats start whispering, and Paul realizes that they are going 90 miles per hour towards a fence blocking the side of the mountain road, but they crash through and start to fall to their deaths and-

It was all a dream. This book started off with a crappy dream sequence. The three of them actually just got to Pinzolo, the little aforementioned town. We weren't lucky enough for the book to end. So Paul goes outside and is greeted by his very large and loud family. One of them, Natalia (which Paul helpfully points out is Italian for Natalie) loves to pinch his cheeks (I'm pretty sure that's a stereotype somewhere). His grandma is a short, friendly woman who speaks very little English. Wait, that's not a stereotype. Is it? Never mind.

So Paul decides to go exploring, and we find something else to make fun of him for. He's curious past the point of stupidity. He once tried dry cat-food, and walked around with his eyes closed to experience blindness. Has no bully taken advantage of this? I would have. I would have come up with some preposterously ridiculous saying like "curiosity killed the dumbass™" and laughed while he tried hopelessly to figure out what was so funny. So Paul decides to pick mushrooms on this mountain, but then he hears a sound of footsteps behind him and oh my god it's a-

Cow. It was just a cow. So, after Paul gets verbally acquainted with the cow (just another stripe on the target that is Paul's life), he decides not to be stupid anymore. He follows this cow to its cow-habitat, and cautiously goes to feed the savage beast. As he slowly and carefully approaches it, risking his life to save the cow's, the cow licks the length of his arm and takes the grass. It's simple survival of the fittest, people, the smartest animal always ends up with the food.

So then, Paul feels a hand on his shoulder, a scary hairy hand, and decides to hightail it back. After informing his father and grandma of his daring exploits, he was surprised to have them laugh in his face, which is strange because I'm pretty sure on one else was. They tell him that it's just old Italio, nicknamed La Barba, or "The Beard," because he's really hairy.

That night, his father openly ridicules his son at the dinner table with the rest of the family! What kind of dad is this? He's making fun of his son, in Italian, to a bunch of his family, in front of him. They ate lots of pasta and drank lots of coffee, and Paul met his cousin, Anthony. Paul and Anthony are told the legend of the Orco by the adults, a terrifying and hairy monster who eats children and can only be stopped by having a wedding ring thrown at it.

As legitimate as this story seems, Paul had very little trouble sleeping at night. The next day, he calls his mom, who makes him promise not to go in the mountains anymore. He promises, but in the most intense chapter cliffhanger in the book, it turns out that he was crossing his fingers the whole time.  I smell treachery afoot.

The next day, Paul and Anthony, the cousin who is both tough and tuff, go out to the market. There, Paul is greeted and kissed by an old lady, a passage which is included for no reason whatsoever but gets its own chapter. Moving on. Anthony brings Paul to the graveyard, and the two of them chased each other into Italio, who told them that he had never seen Paul before in his life, and that he did not touch Paul's shoulder that one day in the mountain with, like, a cow or something.

The two decide to keep this to themselves, since poor Paul already learned the hard way that you don't get praise for sounding idiotic. The cousins saw each other again on a huge family picnic, where they snuck off to disprove the existence of the Orco. They find a cabin in the woods and decide to do the rational thing and break in. Now maybe it was seeing the movie Cabin in the Woods, but breaking and entering in an isolated forest doesn't sound excessively well thought out. No, wait, I was wrong. They brought a wedding ring. Now they can face anything.

So the cousins lift each other up to see through the window, but are scared by a lingering cat and decide to enter by breaking down the front door. They explored the nearly empty cabin until the cat started freaking out, and Anthony escapes out the window while Paul wished he had the famous life-changing encounter with Jenny Craig sooner. The Orco comes in, and just before it eats Paul up, he throws the wedding ring. It doesn't work. Then, Anthony comes and saves him with smoke bombs because why not. They run all the way back to the house, and tell their new story to the adults.

The dad gets royally pissed that Paul misplaced the wedding ring and the three of them go back to find it. Now in the cabin that they ripped apart is Giannini, a man who lives in a desolate cabin in the woods because he hates modern technology and is planning on writing a book about his burning hatred but doesn't have time because he lives in constant fear of a giant child-eating monster. Jeez, it's like something straight out of The Godfather. But Giannini has not seen the ring, and says that the curse is real, and that the Orco is going to get them. They return home, and everybody silently despises them for losing the grandma's ring. They are forbidden from seeing each other, and they have to forfeit allowance to pay for the ring.

They eventually meet up again though, don't worry. They decide to sneak away and wait for the Orco on a mountain, and then they get caught in an avalanche. When Paul comes to, the Orco grabs his arm and lifts him into the air. Luckily, Anthony hits Orco with a snowball, but his matches are wet, so he can't use the smoke bomb. In a stroke of ridiculously lazy and terrible writing, the Orco is beaten by the flash from Paul's camera, and then stumbles off a cliff, but not before Anthony grabbed his pouch. I think that the fact that the hairy, gigantic beast was carrying a satchel, or "man-purse," was more disturbing than the fact that it existed at all.

The two return home, give Grandma her wedding ring, and they all live happily ever after, friendly jostling each other while walking towards a sunset.

Insight into the Complex Minds of Characters:
"Paul looked around, but there didn't seem to be anyone tending the cows. He wondered what you would call someone who sat around and watched cows all day. A cow-herd?" I wonder what you would call someone who actually forces the reader to endure such thoughts.

Beautiful Imagery:
"In Italian, Paul became 'Paulo.' They pronounced it POW (like a superhero punching a bad guy) and LOW (like the score you'd get on a quiz you didn't study for). POW-low."

Hip References:
Free-range cows. Who herds animals anymore?

Conclusions: Horrible. This book was not scary in the least, I don't know what M.D. Spenser was thinking when he thought trolls would be the least bit frightening, and if he wanted to implement some foreign culture, he could have always just had a little diversity by, I don't know, making a main character not white. I could respect it if he wanted to try some fantasy instead, but it wasn't good in any genre. No matter what you call it, crap will always taste like crap. There was no redeeming value in anything, it was like a long and boring car ride that you just wish would end or have your car spectacularly explode or something. But, alas, no. It was just horrible. Well, see you next time with The Mystic's Spell.

P.S. I'll be continuing this series every week, but if anybody has any other recommendations (preferably bad ones, but not this bad. Make them readable.), then please don't hesitate to comment, and there will be a gnarly review in no time.