Jan 20, 2008

Blue Pencil #2: A Deerhunter meets T-Rex

After the nail-biting intensity of G.E.E.N.I.E in a Bottle, I felt I needed something a bit lighter from the world of vanity publication. Hmm ... How about A Deerhunter meets T-Rex, by Rex Downie, Jr.? Sounds pretty good to me:

The Piper Comanche bored along at 160 knots over the Canadian bush, over the Little Current River, it’s destination Okogi up toward James Bay. But it hit instead a cosmic flight plan that changed it landing point to a sandy beach on a lake that existed ten thousand years before. The pilot was slain by the tusk of a Mammoth, and the passenger Harry Spragg then slew the Mammoth.


Well, this synopsis certainly is specific. Most synopses would leave the reader wondering, "exactly how fast was that plane going?" or "yes, the pilot was killed, but which part of the mammoth killed him?" None of that here.
Spragg then endured the great wrenching force of paradox and lived with people native to the lake area for two years, entering into combat with Sabre Toothed Tigers, Mammoths, the vorple T-Rex and a few Velociraptors thrown in to boot.

I'm not sure whether this is an introduction to the story or a description of what happens in it. I am interested in whether a vorple T-Rex goes "snicker-snack," however.

What is the Achilles heel of the T-Rex? How are Velociraptors like deer? The answers to these questions lie within, and, moreover, if you wish to escape these times for a new world in a primeval wilderness, with some excitement thrown in to boot, this book is for you.

How is a velociraptor like a deer? Neither one can whistle!

I don't know about you, but I'd find escaping these times for a new world in a primeval wilderness pretty exciting, but this book throws even more excitement in! What kind of excitement, I wonder?

I know, let's look at an excerpt!

CHAPTER SIX

The last battle; our Hero fights hand to hand.

Wow, Chapter Six and he's already on the last battle? These are truly savage times!
Harry sensed as the months passed after the Trex hunt that Yarthu had something on his mind, but his pre-occupation with Bluebird engaged him wholly, for she wanted to know his language and they spent hours exchanging word and ideas, that often left him exhausted.
I don't know about you, but talking rarely leaves me exhausted. I'm pretty sure there's more going on here with "Bluebird."

Harry's not much of a friend if he knows his friend has had something on his mind for months but he can't separate himself from some babe for five minutes to talk it over. Bros before hos, man!
He had scrawled out an alphabet with charcoal on hide and thought she'd grasped the huge chasm that lay between spoken and written word. They went together to the village nightly fires and feasts, and gradually Harry regained enough strength to go on hunts, but he couldn't pull a heavy bow and felt for awhile that his shoulder was so damaged that he was permanently injured.
Now, don't get me wrong: There's nothing I like better than time travel stories involving prehistoric times that somehow place humans and dinosaurs in the same era, but where's the battle we were promised?

Oh, here we go:
They moved on, crouching, waiting, moving, crouching, butting the spears in, as the soft grunts drew closer on either hand.
(If I was there, I'd have done more crouching. Crouching is key.)
After the third move, soft coughs came from front and rear, and Yarthu said "They charge now".
"Ahem. Ahem!" The sabre-tooth cleared its throat, informing the humans that it was about to attack. It hated Yarthu for his poor punctuation.
This warning gave Harry the eye to see a shift of color and shadow not ten feet distant in the bush to his right, and he swung the spear point right just as the massive head and outstretched paws loomed above him, and he raised the spear point into the throat just below the gaping maw, released his grip and rolled away from the beast as it flew over him, its' left paw tearing into his left shoulder.
Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

Wait, the warning gave him the eye to see? Clearly there is a supernatural aspect to the story that I'm not picking up on from this excerpt.

No comments: