Jan 15
Good Show Sir Comments: The first rule of Girl Fight Club is: You’ll never hear the end of what happened at Girl Fight Club.
Published 2014
Good Show Sir Comments: The first rule of Girl Fight Club is: You’ll never hear the end of what happened at Girl Fight Club.
Published 2014
January 15th, 2016 at 1:33 pm
“But I’m telling you the fish was this big!”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your stinkin’ fish. That girl on the toilet behind me said you called me a beyotch!”
January 15th, 2016 at 1:45 pm
http://sfcrowsnest.org.uk/to-sail-a-darkling-sea-black-tide-rising-by-john-ringo-book-review/
Zombies, rebuilding civilization via amassing a fleet one ship at a time.
‘So, what’s the problem with this book? The women. In particular, Faith and Sophia, ‘Shewolf’ and ‘Seawolf’, the daughters of Steven Smith. They’re thirteen and fifteen, respectively and they are BADASS! I had a lot of difficulty suspending disbelief here. I tried. I tried really hard. I had more of a problem with Faith. As a caricature, she’s kind of funny, but the author’s love for her comes across as sycophantic at times. It made me uneasy. Faith is an idea, not a person. She does make for an entertaining read; I had images of ‘Lollipop Chainsaw‘ in my head; young girls swearing and swinging weapons around, barely bothered by the gore splashing back at them. There is a playlist for every action and Faith could fire and reload in time to the music, whilst dancing. Neither Faith nor Sophia get seriously injured, however. Even after being ‘dogpiled’ by zombies,they handle the death of comrades and the aftermath of the apocalypse with grit and determination. They gain the respect of every man, even those more than four times their age. They are inducted as marines, without training and given rank, command and medals. That their father let them carry on the way they did bothered me. He did respond to some of their antics with a combined father/commander talk, but then he turned around to smack down anyone who crossed his daughters’ paths. That their mother apparently had no say bothered me more.’
January 15th, 2016 at 2:11 pm
I can’t make out a thing on the cover at all. I’m guessing Baen…?
January 15th, 2016 at 2:12 pm
dark·ling
ˈdärkliNG
adjective literary
of or relating to growing darkness.
“the darkling sky”
So, it’s the sea that’s making everything go dark? It sounds like you’ve got your boat upside-down.
January 15th, 2016 at 2:37 pm
So you got a novel about girls fighting post-apocalyptic zombies and you paint two lady Gomer Pyles yakking at each other? That is cover artist malpractice.
January 15th, 2016 at 2:42 pm
Ladies, please! This is a respectable establishment! I shall have to call the manager!
January 15th, 2016 at 5:00 pm
@DSWBT— wrt “darkling sea”—I think maybe we need a “pretentious title” tag.
January 15th, 2016 at 5:13 pm
To skirt the shoals of bankruptcy
January 15th, 2016 at 6:04 pm
He’s half-remembered ‘On Dover Beach’, which is sad as so many real lines from that poem work as skiffy titles: ‘The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Human Misery’ sums up most Ringo books and ‘Ignorant Armies Clash By Night’ holds good for 90% of Baen’s output.
January 15th, 2016 at 7:55 pm
This is a zombie apocalypse novel, yes? And, judging by the title, there are boats, yes? So why do the women on the cover look like bickering army personnel?
Especially given that according to the above-quoted review, the main characters are a pair of teenage girls who somewhat seem to be anime characters come to life, or something of that ilk.
(no insult to anime characters intended)
January 15th, 2016 at 7:57 pm
It’s an alternate-universe ‘Onedin Line’ where Liverpool’s on a fault-line.
January 15th, 2016 at 10:46 pm
Faith: “Oh you’re so paranoid, Sophia. No one’s gonna notice our pretentious title is kinda ripped-off from an obscure Ben Bova novel.”
Sophia: “And you’re naive. There’s always one sad sack in the crowd…”
*Both break the fourth wall to look at me*
https://sciencefictionruminations.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/book-review-as-on-a-darkling-plain-ben-bova-1972/
January 16th, 2016 at 3:26 am
Fred: I think it just needs three simple changes to turn it into a sure hit:
1) call the zombies ‘the first order’.
2) call one of the girls ‘Rey’.
3) call the whole thing ‘Star Wars’.
January 16th, 2016 at 11:31 am
Good suggestion — and we’re sure to see publishers scramble to release “Episode 8” of ANYTHING in time for the next Star Wars movie.
January 16th, 2016 at 7:03 pm
GO TIE A LASS IN DARK L.A.
“Utter mess, surely the weakest fiction published.” — Amy A. Jok, In On Dings
Groin News Kite Best Smelly Author
George Paul
January 17th, 2016 at 2:32 am
I think the funniest thing about this cover is the way the girls just look annoyed, like one of them forgot to take out the garbage, not afraid or anything.
Girl on left: Look! All reality is fading out. Our battleship is vanishing beneath us. This is all your fault.
Girl on right: Oh yeah, well back there in the control room you forgot to lock the world opacity settings. So there.
January 17th, 2016 at 8:20 am
‘Black Tide Rising’ for the win. Oh my.
http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781476781518/black-tide-rising-9781476781518_hr.jpg
‘And for a group of cheerleaders, it was about the end of their world. And about what happens when you get a group of physically fit young women really, really angry.’
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Black-Tide-Rising/Gary-Poole/Black-Tide-Rising/9781476781518
January 17th, 2016 at 9:59 am
“And about what happens when you get a group of publishers really, really desperate for revenue.”
January 17th, 2016 at 11:37 am
@fred: “. . . Explosive. . . . fans. . .will appreciate Ringo’s lively narrative and flavorful characters.” – Publisher’s Weekly
Now, I’m more a fan of submersible machines than explosives. I suppose I won’t be interested?
January 17th, 2016 at 1:28 pm
Theres [nothing worse than] a quote which has been taken out of context. Kudos to Baen for taking steps to prevent that from occurring.
January 17th, 2016 at 1:34 pm
Guns don’t kill darklings
Darklings kill darklings
Stop them or they will destroy our whole society
Guns don’t kill darklings
Darklings kill darklings
They’re the biggest threat to your masculinity
January 17th, 2016 at 5:53 pm
Q: What’s an “action junkie”?
A: Perhaps people who shoot up smack while watching action movies.
January 17th, 2016 at 6:02 pm
Spectreworld: The Next Generation.
January 20th, 2016 at 12:36 am
So is the line “to sail a darkling sea” actually *from* anything? Or is it a pseudoquote?
January 20th, 2016 at 5:45 am
@RachelJ—didn’t do any deep searching, but in the OED I don’t find “darkling sea” anywhere. OED does cite Arnold using the phrase “darkling forests,” but no sea in sight.
The most beautiful (and unpretentious) use of the word I found is Shakespeare (using it as an adverb) in MND: “O, wilt thou darkling leaue me?”
January 20th, 2016 at 2:22 pm
“My militia should be in command!”
“No, MY militia should be in command!”
“We’re more patriotic than you!”
“Don’t make me laugh! We’ve got lots bigger fallout shelters!”
“And that camouflage makes your thighs look fat!”
“Why, you…”
“Why, I oughtta…”
“Why, I oughtta…”
Ooo! Cat fight!
January 21st, 2016 at 4:06 pm
It was to have been the start of a series. Projected sequels included:
The Darkling Buds of May
The Ugly Darkling
Darkling Cyanide
Darkling Towards Jerusalem
My Darkling Clementine
Stop Yer Darkling, Jock
A Scanner Darkling
Darkling With Jelly
The Darkling That Came to Sarnath…
January 21st, 2016 at 5:19 pm
@Tat: To Keep the Ship A Darkling Chandler. 😉
@AR: You merely wanted to re-purpose that ‘Why, I oughtta…’ line. I’m on to you. 😉
January 21st, 2016 at 6:48 pm
Yoda called the junior Jedi ‘Younglings’, so maybe the Sith kindergarten trains Darklings.
January 23rd, 2016 at 11:28 am
@Tat: that’d be a laugh, Emo Kylo Ren, daycare provider.
January 23rd, 2016 at 2:56 pm
Dead Stuff, you’re right: My jokes are recycled 90% — for the environment, of course.
;-P
January 23rd, 2016 at 3:10 pm
@AR: I’m skeptical. The CO2 reduced is more than offset by the hot air. 8-P
December 1st, 2016 at 12:55 am
Thank goodness for Flashback Fridays and zombie threads! I look back at an older cover, and see I’m the last one to make a comment, and I leap to the natural conclusion ‘Everyone thought I was an utter git making a tired, unwanted attempt at a joke, and I killed the thread for everyone’ and I want to crawl into a hole and die.
BUT! Thanks to our collective inability to shush, all I need to do is wait. Soon enough, it’s some other sad sack’s chance to be the terminal post. 😛
April 30th, 2017 at 3:04 pm
Any day now.
May 1st, 2017 at 1:53 am
Make Way for Darklings!
May 1st, 2017 at 2:32 am
If it’s supposed to be darkling, why is everything so damn pink?
May 3rd, 2017 at 8:18 pm
UV damage from standing in a shop window for years on end, I guess.
May 4th, 2017 at 2:45 am
True. The original artwork is extremely orange. Not a whole lot more darkling.
December 9th, 2017 at 8:04 am
Ooh ooh. I get to be last commenter (for a while at least).
There is apparently a real novel called “A Darkling Sea”, which seems to get decent reviews.
@BC#25: the last 3 lines of Arnold’s poem Dover Beach are as follows:
“…
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Sounds appropriate.
December 11th, 2017 at 7:45 am
@L_L: Confused, alarms, fight, ignorance, armies… you’re right!
It’s the perfect definition of the entire ethos of BAEN!explosions
(All it needs is a mention of giant boobs and bad artwork.)