Holy Crap! The World is Ending!: How a Trip to the Bookstore Led to Sex with an Alien and the Destruction of Earth by Anna-Marie Abell

Holy Crap! The World is Ending!: How a Trip to the Bookstore Led to Sex with an Alien and the Destruction of Earth by Anna-Marie Abell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Alien Abduction Press in exchange for an honest review.

I could easily imagine Simon Pegg making this into a movie, though back around 2005 or so, before he made 2013's 'The World's End' since you can only make so many end of the world type films. This has a kind of 'Shaun of the Dead' kind of vibe. Without zombies. And with a little more dumb jokes. But still - serious situation mixed with humor is what I'm going for here.

I saw something recently that talked about the humor of Mel Brooks that turned up in his films - the kind of humor that was rapid fire, and if a joke fell flat, it didn't matter because 12 more are on the way. Well, that's kind of what a reader faces in this book.

Though there was a moment when everything kind of turned on me. I knew there was a serious edge to things, but the constant 'funny chapter headings' and pictures of cows in space somewhat blocked the serious nature for a longish time. That is until, well I only mention this because there are those that need to know this type of thing before they decide to read the book or not, so I'll put it behind a spoiler tag. (view spoiler)[I was having fun with the humor and all up to the point when rape and death occurred. (hide spoiler)]

Just looking at the title reminds how this book started, which I mention so I can very briefly note what the book is about. 'How a Trip to the bookstore . . .' The lead character, a woman named Autumn, is on the way to her 'pig out' with her friend (they, apparently, starve themselves for something like two days then eat massive quantities of food) when the podcast she was listening to lead her to decide to stop by the bookstore to look up books. Whereupon she meets two other relatively main characters in this book. Devon, the person who works there and has very tall hair, and Rigel, the 7 foot blonde haired blue eyed Greek god looking fella who was browsing a book in the New Age section when Autumn stumbled in.

You can tell the book is 'wacky' and 'different' by the fact that Autumn keeps stumbling around like she does at the opening, knocking things over, hearing voices, drooling over well built men, etc. Oh, and having literal out of body experiences.

So, that's what the book is about, boiled down - a woman stumbling around doing weird stuff, and drooling over very tall people. Well, mostly drooling over Rigel. Finding out things like aliens exist, and the world is about to end. You know, normal stuff.

Rating: 3.58

August 3 2017



View all my reviews

Hurricane Dan by Bret Williams

Hurricane Dan
by Bret Williams
Pages 199 pages
Date: September 15 2013
Publisher: Author

Review
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0
Read: January 17 2014

While reading I was thinking of what I'd say in a review.  I was thinking of noting that it was a solid little book, roughly 4 star work that didn't reach 5 star territory because I didn't really like the main character.   That was up to about 60% of the book read. Where upon the book almost fell apart.    Ah well.  Despite certain issues, mostly due to the action that started after they made it to the safe zone, including the sudden unexpected sex (and certain issues involving swords), it was still able to pull me along.  

If we could give 1/2 stars, I would quickly and with easy conscious give the book a rating of 3 1/2. Since I can't,  and because I was able to like despite main character,  I give it a rating of 4 stars. (2016 eta - hmms. I have it as 3.0 on GoodReads. The weirdness you see years after the fact.)

RIZEN by Kirk Anderson

RIZEN
by Kirk Anderson
Pages: 44
Date: November 27 2012
Publisher: Galleon Publishing

Review
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0
Read: January 11 2014

My heart is still racing.  Shesh.

Ok, to start with, this is a short story collection, 4 stories by the same author in the same story universe.  None of the characters reoccur.  Also, it is in reverse chronological order. Which I noticed in an introduction before the stories.  Which I am glad I noticed, because I decided to read them in chronological order.  I have to say, if I had read them in the order the author had presented them, I probably would have rated the book roughly the book average rating on GoodReads of 3 something stars. Instead, by reading it in chronological order, the tension mounted from today's world, into the zombie apocalypse world.  I've no idea why the author thought the book should be read the other way around.

I recommend two things: 1) read in chronological order (the free ebook I got has a link to each of the four stories in the front of the book); 2) read the first chronological story (which is placed at the end of the book). The book is free.  It won't take too long to read that short story, and if you aren't captured, then you didn't really lose much. Except a few moments of your time.

Zoe, Undead by J.R. Knoll

Zoe, Undead
by J.R. Knoll
Pages: 228
Published Date: August 19 2012
Publisher: Author

Review
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Read: November 18 2013

This may be one of the most interesting zombie books I've read.  Well written. Pulled me along from start to finish.

I only noticed one error and one cringe moment.   There's a scene when the Colonel is talking to Zoe and the Sergeant.   During the conversation, one of the paragraphs begins with something like 'the Sergeant continued'.  I looked it over a couple of times, and no, it was the Colonel who continued talking.

The cringe moment was when the Doctor said Zoe, with Asperger syndrome,  'had the mind of a child and will always have the mind of a child'.   I don't believe the doctor who said it was stated as being an expert in autism,  and Asperger itself had it's status change in 2013, so I gave/give a pass to the comment.