Many people in the literary world are probably familiar with German author Mildred Achduloober. She is considered one of the worst writers of all time and is famous for works such as "Snorky Lumpkin," "Yada Yada" and "Philpot’s Philosophy." She is noted for her eccentric and meaningless purple prose, laughable dialogue and metaphors and her inability to handle any type of criticism. Achduloober had delusions of grandeur (she believed she would win the Nobel Prize for literature) and denounced her critics as "bastard donkey-headed mites" and "clay crabs of corruption." She had a lot of celebrity admirers including Mark Twain who famously called her the "queen and empress of the hogwash guild" and during the 1930s, a literary group at Oxford known as the Inklings, consisting of prominent masters of the written word, Aldous Huxley, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis held contests in which they would read her works out loud without bursting into laughter.
Without a doubt, Ferndock Fensterman is the Mildred Achduloober of our time. His novel tells the tale of a teenage girl who gains superhuman powers after being exposed to an alien ball of energy. The author wants us to believe she's a superhero but throughout the book her actions tell an entirely different story. The author wants us to believe Yomama is a good Catholic (or Christian, whatever) girl yet she swears like a stupid old man, dresses whorish and suggestively, marries a man just so she can have sex with him, never attends mass or partakes of communion and tells people to "drop dead" and "go to hell." She goes on a European vacation while billions of lives are in danger, destroys the world's ecosystem, worsens climate change, rains gold and silver from outer space (which in real life would cause hyperinflation and destroy the world's economy), interferes with due process, stalls vehicles to prevent a lawyer from doing her job, wrecks the Arctic while giving scientists a few days to leave, and steals Syracuse from the Mohicans. Yet no one even tries to stop her or opposes or dislikes her. Theresa is a stupid, selfish, narcissistic, haughty, arrogant, reckless, egotistical brat and a Mary Sue in the truest form. The only time she ever gets angry is when people dare to oppose or criticize her or poke her fragile ego. Contrary to what the author wants us to believe, that is not a character flaw. The book is clearly not a page-turner, it is extremely boring and full of padding and filler. UGH! The cover art is horrible! The author obviously doesn't know where to place eyes and breasts correctly and knows nothing about military uniforms.
And the person I blame for unleashing this monstrosity on the unsuspecting public is none other than Jeff Bezos, Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace because they proved that anything can be published with no gatekeepers or fact checkers. Somehow, they can't just send a book back to its author and tell him "you need to fix this, or we won't publish." I personally don't know why the author decided to post a snippet of this book on Writing Forums thinking people were going to praise it, and then got upset when they gave him constructive criticism. Seriously! Does he not know what critique forums are for?
I would recommend this book to creative writing courses as an example of how not to write a novel and why any aspiring author (especially one who embarks on the unpredictable voyage of self-publishing) should always accept constructive criticism from others. I would also recommend it to Inkling-type literary groups who love to mock bad works of literature. I personally would love to watch Mike Nelson and his buddies rip this piece of trash apart on '458 Pages We'll Never Get Back.'
I deeply regret using one star to publish this review.
Review Update: Well, I see the author has lashed out at me for daring to criticize his book and called my review a "masterpiece of deception." He claimed he counted 23 "blatant falsehoods" in my review but he didn't point out what those "blatant falsehoods" were, nor did he provide one shred of evidence refuting anything in my review. I stand by everything I said 100%
Please, Ferndock. Your book is never going to be a classic. You need to give this up and move on with your life. Just give it up!
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If I had a little leg, I'd show a little leg.
Is this a reference to something?