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Jan 15

On this week's episode of Scream Queens ...Click for full image

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

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 8.22 out of 10)
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40 Responses to “To Sail a Darkling Sea”

  1. B. Chiclitz Says:

    “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!”

  2. fred Says:

    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.’

  3. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    I can’t make out a thing on the cover at all. I’m guessing Baen…?

  4. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    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.

  5. Bibliomancer Says:

    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.

  6. THX 1138 Says:

    Ladies, please! This is a respectable establishment! I shall have to call the manager!

  7. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @DSWBT— wrt “darkling sea”—I think maybe we need a “pretentious title” tag.

  8. Ray P Says:

    To skirt the shoals of bankruptcy

  9. Tat Wood Says:

    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.

  10. Anna T. Says:

    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)

  11. Tat Wood Says:

    It’s an alternate-universe ‘Onedin Line’ where Liverpool’s on a fault-line.

  12. Perry Armstrong Says:

    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/

  13. Vyrmis Says:

    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’.

  14. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Good suggestion — and we’re sure to see publishers scramble to release “Episode 8” of ANYTHING in time for the next Star Wars movie.

  15. anon Says:

    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

  16. HappyBookworm Says:

    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.

  17. fred Says:

    ‘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

  18. A.R.Yngve Says:

    “And about what happens when you get a group of publishers really, really desperate for revenue.”

  19. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @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?

  20. Revellion Says:

    Theres [nothing worse than] a quote which has been taken out of context. Kudos to Baen for taking steps to prevent that from occurring.

  21. Revellion Says:

    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

  22. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Q: What’s an “action junkie”?
    A: Perhaps people who shoot up smack while watching action movies.

  23. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    Spectreworld: The Next Generation.

  24. RachelJ Says:

    So is the line “to sail a darkling sea” actually *from* anything? Or is it a pseudoquote?

  25. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @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?”

  26. A.R.Yngve Says:

    “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!

  27. Tat Wood Says:

    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…

  28. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @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. 😉

  29. Tat Wood Says:

    Yoda called the junior Jedi ‘Younglings’, so maybe the Sith kindergarten trains Darklings.

  30. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @Tat: that’d be a laugh, Emo Kylo Ren, daycare provider.

  31. A.R.Yngve Says:

    Dead Stuff, you’re right: My jokes are recycled 90% — for the environment, of course.
    ;-P

  32. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    @AR: I’m skeptical. The CO2 reduced is more than offset by the hot air. 8-P

  33. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    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. 😛

  34. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    Any day now.

  35. Raoul Says:

    Make Way for Darklings!

  36. GSS ex-noob Says:

    If it’s supposed to be darkling, why is everything so damn pink?

  37. A.R.Yngve Says:

    UV damage from standing in a shop window for years on end, I guess.

  38. GSS ex-noob Says:

    True. The original artwork is extremely orange. Not a whole lot more darkling.

  39. Longtime_Lurker Says:

    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.

  40. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @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.)

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