The porthole was like a lightbulb, bathing the inside of the escape pod in brilliant yellow.
# 72: Deep Storm by Lincoln Child:Crane frowned. "It's your call to make, of course. But seventy-two hours ago, this 'simple mood disorder' took a hostage, then jammed a screwdriver into his own throat."
Corbett took a sip of his latte. "Waite clearly has some issues to grapple with."
Synopsis: Well it was this or another Dirk! Pitt!
Deep Storm is a really really top-secret government project taking place two miles under the surface of the ocean that the awesome Dr. Peter Crane is called aboard to troubleshoot. See, it turns out that it's making people on the deepwater station insane to be doing all that top secret research, and then they wander round and take women hostage with screwdrivers. But more importantly, they don't keep at their top secret research and that right there friends, that's the very definition of a problem.
Oh who gives a shit if the skirt with the screwdriver in her neck was harmed! SCIENCE IS IN DANGER.
So, I really really like Lincoln Child's novels with Douglas Preston featuring Agent Pendergast and his charmingly insane family, and I confess, I read Deep! Storm! in one night, because apparently these authors are like kryptonite to me. I will just stop whatever I'm doing and apparently devour a 400-page novel without moving from the bed. There's a reason I own only geriatric dogs: this is the dream of all geriatric dogs everywhere, to be curled up in bed with someone reading 400 pages at a stretch. Do you know how much napping can be done? It is outstanding.
Meanwhile, back on the doomed underwater research station...
Dr Awesome Crane, who takes pains to tell us multiple times about how he was debating between which of two prestigious research positions to take when he was called to storm and storm deep, runs about the research station attempting to troubleshoot all the crazy people while not having enough clearance to know about the top secret things they're doing. He'd love to puzzle it out with the doctor who's been on-board roughly nine times longer than him but she's a woman and she doesn't immediately drop and worship his huge throbbing brain so he decides to "put her in her place". Too bad she turns out to be as smart as he is. OOH SNAP.
You know what this means, right?
OH MY SPOILER PANTS ARE BACK FROM THE DRY CLEANERS, WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT?
That woman must be one of the villains! I mean, there are five main characters in the book, only one of whom is female, this pesky know-it-all-doctoring-woman, so you know, the odds are really good she's a villain. How do we know this? Because she's as smart as the hero and yet does not fly at him with her legs spread. VILLAINY! VILLAINY! Gosh-darn it! Girl police! Get her!
There is a supporting female character--and I say "a" here deliberately because in a cast of hundreds of walk-on dudes on a research station, there is one woman with a speaking part* and verily she is smart too and she is a computer geek and she figures out the steganography subplot long before anyone else, but then, during the crucial escape sequence, she loses her nerve, freaks out, cries and--wait for it--has to have Dr Awesome carry her bodily to safety while she blubbers round his shoulders.
Oh he totally wants to date her by the end of the book too, in possibly the creepiest way possible, where Dr Awesome simple decides that whatever his future holds, IT WILL HOLD THAT WOMAN. And then she smiles simperingly back at him.
Now, you're going to have to all excuse me if I sound cynical or fed up or bitter and hating, but there's just so many stories a person can read where the script goes, AND THE WOMEN WHO ARE SMART, THEY ARE EITHER EVIL OR THEY CRY. LIKE, A LOT. before you realize that's the basic plot of way too many books, telling women that if they're smart, their place in any narrative is to either be evil, or crying and in need of rescue.
What does that tell women about their own stories? What does it tell them about their place in it? Why can't we be heroes that don't have to date the dude who's in love with his own brain?
That bit, I admit, sent the book skywards. There was zero and I do mean ZERO chemistry between Dr Awesome and the steganography geek, and no hints of romance until at the end, after he's carried her to safety, he turns around and goes YUP, SHE'LL DO. I'LL TAKE HER TO GO.
Oh who doesn't want to be chosen to mate with Dr. Awesome and his big head?
And yes I know that these books are written as fantasies for men who like things to blow up but a) I like things to blow up too, and b) if this is really those men's fantasy, please, NO ONE DATE THOSE MEN.
I love seafaring drama. I really, really do. I just want to pick up a novel someday and just enjoy the style of the writing, the sentence construction, the word flow, the pacing, the tension, the construction of all of it, without having my cunt thrown back in my face like a big gaping flaw. Is that really so much to ask?
Ah fuck it.
400 pages of underwater derring-do. Don't read it. Go read Hammerjack or Relic instead.
*No, the hostage chick just got to scream. And cry.**
**As did the woman climbing onto the escape pod, only she cried and gave in to the big bad villains, necessitating Dr. Awesome and another member of the dong-bearing class to save her.
Corbett took a sip of his latte. "Waite clearly has some issues to grapple with."
Synopsis: Well it was this or another Dirk! Pitt!
Deep Storm is a really really top-secret government project taking place two miles under the surface of the ocean that the awesome Dr. Peter Crane is called aboard to troubleshoot. See, it turns out that it's making people on the deepwater station insane to be doing all that top secret research, and then they wander round and take women hostage with screwdrivers. But more importantly, they don't keep at their top secret research and that right there friends, that's the very definition of a problem.
Oh who gives a shit if the skirt with the screwdriver in her neck was harmed! SCIENCE IS IN DANGER.
So, I really really like Lincoln Child's novels with Douglas Preston featuring Agent Pendergast and his charmingly insane family, and I confess, I read Deep! Storm! in one night, because apparently these authors are like kryptonite to me. I will just stop whatever I'm doing and apparently devour a 400-page novel without moving from the bed. There's a reason I own only geriatric dogs: this is the dream of all geriatric dogs everywhere, to be curled up in bed with someone reading 400 pages at a stretch. Do you know how much napping can be done? It is outstanding.
Meanwhile, back on the doomed underwater research station...
Dr Awesome Crane, who takes pains to tell us multiple times about how he was debating between which of two prestigious research positions to take when he was called to storm and storm deep, runs about the research station attempting to troubleshoot all the crazy people while not having enough clearance to know about the top secret things they're doing. He'd love to puzzle it out with the doctor who's been on-board roughly nine times longer than him but she's a woman and she doesn't immediately drop and worship his huge throbbing brain so he decides to "put her in her place". Too bad she turns out to be as smart as he is. OOH SNAP.
You know what this means, right?
OH MY SPOILER PANTS ARE BACK FROM THE DRY CLEANERS, WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT?
That woman must be one of the villains! I mean, there are five main characters in the book, only one of whom is female, this pesky know-it-all-doctoring-woman, so you know, the odds are really good she's a villain. How do we know this? Because she's as smart as the hero and yet does not fly at him with her legs spread. VILLAINY! VILLAINY! Gosh-darn it! Girl police! Get her!
There is a supporting female character--and I say "a" here deliberately because in a cast of hundreds of walk-on dudes on a research station, there is one woman with a speaking part* and verily she is smart too and she is a computer geek and she figures out the steganography subplot long before anyone else, but then, during the crucial escape sequence, she loses her nerve, freaks out, cries and--wait for it--has to have Dr Awesome carry her bodily to safety while she blubbers round his shoulders.
Oh he totally wants to date her by the end of the book too, in possibly the creepiest way possible, where Dr Awesome simple decides that whatever his future holds, IT WILL HOLD THAT WOMAN. And then she smiles simperingly back at him.
Now, you're going to have to all excuse me if I sound cynical or fed up or bitter and hating, but there's just so many stories a person can read where the script goes, AND THE WOMEN WHO ARE SMART, THEY ARE EITHER EVIL OR THEY CRY. LIKE, A LOT. before you realize that's the basic plot of way too many books, telling women that if they're smart, their place in any narrative is to either be evil, or crying and in need of rescue.
What does that tell women about their own stories? What does it tell them about their place in it? Why can't we be heroes that don't have to date the dude who's in love with his own brain?
That bit, I admit, sent the book skywards. There was zero and I do mean ZERO chemistry between Dr Awesome and the steganography geek, and no hints of romance until at the end, after he's carried her to safety, he turns around and goes YUP, SHE'LL DO. I'LL TAKE HER TO GO.
Oh who doesn't want to be chosen to mate with Dr. Awesome and his big head?
And yes I know that these books are written as fantasies for men who like things to blow up but a) I like things to blow up too, and b) if this is really those men's fantasy, please, NO ONE DATE THOSE MEN.
I love seafaring drama. I really, really do. I just want to pick up a novel someday and just enjoy the style of the writing, the sentence construction, the word flow, the pacing, the tension, the construction of all of it, without having my cunt thrown back in my face like a big gaping flaw. Is that really so much to ask?
Ah fuck it.
400 pages of underwater derring-do. Don't read it. Go read Hammerjack or Relic instead.
*No, the hostage chick just got to scream. And cry.**
**As did the woman climbing onto the escape pod, only she cried and gave in to the big bad villains, necessitating Dr. Awesome and another member of the dong-bearing class to save her.