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Reposted from my shelfari.com account with a few tweaks.

By writing this review, I hope to begin healing the psychological scars dealt by this atrocious book. I also hope to provide a cautionary anecdote for anyone contemplating a purchase of this item.

This is easily the worst book I have ever read in a lifetime of reading, head and shoulders below even the most mawkish of sci-fi television spinoff fiction. The plot is painfully ludicrous, involving giant mutant panthers in an ancient ruin. This story is vaguely reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s Congo, except that Congo, for all its embarrassing faults and delusions of cinematic grandeur, is still much better than this abomination. The characters are one-dimensional singularities from which no plausible humanity can be evinced. The action is told, not shown, in a manner similar to that of an overexcited, mildly autistic 8-year-old describing combat between two Pokemon, except that, unlike our 8-year-old, Matthew Reilly manages to make his laborious description of implausible activity sound both dispassionate and disingenuous. The implausible pacing and tiresome plot twists ensure that Temple rivals The Da Vinci Code for sheer awfulness of execution and brazen condescension

I am concerned because this book is so bad that it might singlehandedly skew the entire scale of quality by which all books are judged. The resulting fallout from this phenomenon could make The Celestine Prophecy look like Foucault’s Pendulum by comparison. For this reason, I believe that, unless he is stopped, Matthew Reilly may ultimately become responsible for the eventual extinction of the human capacity for literary expression. Since the written word is the conduit by which much human understanding is communicated, it logically follows that the human species itself will inevitably decline into a state of bestial savagery. Motivated only by food, sex, sleep, and territoriality, these new subhumans will probably spend most of their time commenting at techcrunch.com.

Some people feel this has already happened. If so, regardless of whether Matthew Reilly caused a wholesale epidemic of mass stupidity or merely contributed to it (I smell a future series on “amazingly stupid yet universally well-respected books”), he is certainly not helping the situation. Like a back-alley ecstasy dealer, Mr. Reilly makes his living by stupefying large segments of the general population. This raises some disquieting social and political questions, and makes one question whether, in some cases, modern civilized nations ought to reinstate certain archaic censorship laws. Please, think of the children!

In summary, this book is a nightmarish abomination, and should be destroyed for the good of humanity. It is the literary equivalent of Nickelback, or New England Coffee. This book eschews the comparatively ambitious goal of mediocrity, opting instead to wallow in soul-destroying awfulness.

Avoid this book at all costs, by any means necessary.

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One look at our vending machines will tell you that office-dwelling drones like Your Humble Narrator are always seeking out exotic drinkable liquids. Especially if said liquids are reputed to be imbued with energizing or stupefying properties. Maybe it’s the condition of our imprisonment, which in this office typically involves non-ergonomic, castoff cubicles, brutally punishing chairs, and cthonic food from the grim eateries which dot the surrounding wasteland (these bleak offerings might make Franz Kafka shrug resignedly and reach for a fork, but personally they make me bemoan the lack of a 24-hour Korean restaurant in the immediate vicinity). Maybe it’s the psychological/economic bondage of a modern business environment, wherein failure is not an option and the creature comforts are best described as “hit-or-miss”. Maybe it’s the high frustration level, combined with lack of sleep (due to work-related worries) which can make us rage like fearsome goetic demons forced to watch Legally Blonde 2.

In any case, even if one just examines the elaborate cultural rituals associated with (for instance) shotgunning sugar-free Red Bull (I’ll try to post about this in the future) or popping down to the local sports bar for a bottom-shelf Long Island iced tea (referred to by us cognoscenti as an “ether and sour mix” because of its unusual psychotogenic properties which cannot be individually ascribed to any of its constituent boozes)… it’s clear that there’s some kind of collective drinks-based coping behavior which spans the nerd-steppenwolf demographic and, unpredictably, inches insidiously into the repertoire of fairly respectable Liberal Arts majors. My personal theory is that these behaviors start out as pathological compulsions, until they are copied by at least one other person, whereby they attain official meme-hood, which in turn makes the progenitor feel justified, so he/she repeats the action, and then the cycle self-perpetuates until the meme gets old, the participants die/get fired, or until the required ingredients become exhausted.

Take for example, the practice of dropping a teabag into a hot cup of coffee.

This loathsome act is a true last-ditch effort. The participants are so jaded in their exhaustion, this is the final frontier, the nadir, the Last Judgment. Whether our nights are spent boozing it up or writing code until the wee hours, the effect is astonishingly similar. Once-human organisms are now reduced to soulless husks, caricatures of our former selves. In this degraded condition, we crave stimulus, which, at this advanced stage, can only be brought about by a handful of questionable exercise stimulants, washed down with an overpriced canister of phenylalanine-rich chemical ooze.

Such was our Monday mindset when, today, my staunch acolyte and I devised a new and gruesome sacrament. By steeping a teabag in a cup of infernally steaming coffee, our desire was to harness the clarity and energy of the strong black tea, tempered with the anxiety and panic of the coffee. The result was a murky liquid, which looked a lot like that black stuff which engulfed James Brolin toward the end of The Amityville Horror. Perhaps most singular was the aftertaste, a bitter, lingering tang of tannins. It is testament to my own slow, sad deterioration that I found the mixture to be not wholly unpleasant. Perhaps most disturbing is the understanding that I might voluntarily drink this again.

Below is a transcript of our findings:
(02:13:57 PM) me: dude this actually isn’t as awful as I thought it would be
(02:14:16 PM) XXXXX: its almost good
(02:14:25 PM) me: for real
(02:14:32 PM) me: I already feel more jacked up
(02:15:08 PM) XXXXX: then we should call it jack bauer’s tea bag
(02:15:28 PM) me: hahahahahah
(02:15:58 PM) me: I was going to suggest we could call it “Nightside of Eden” – I like yours better
(02:16:27 PM) XXXXX: well yours is for sure more poetic
(02:17:34 PM) me: “chai-flavored roundhouse kick to the taint”
(02:18:07 PM) XXXXX: thats it!
(02:18:16 PM) XXXXX: thats the taste in my mouth exactly!
(02:18:32 PM) me: “the sweat from Charles Bronson’s brow”
(02:18:57 PM) me: “Paul Schaeffer’s smarm in a cup”
(02:18:57 PM) XXXXX: strained through kurt russels pubes
(02:19:02 PM) me: hahahah

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Being, in suitable Measure, a humble Broadside in the Baroque Fashion, the Aim, inasmuch as mere Persons be possessed of a Will to divine Truths, and these Truths doth shew the Purpose and Designes of such a benevolent Creator, who, though a Deity endowed with Caprice, hath made Humankind in His Image, and there-by disencumb’red His Creation of a notably oppressive Weight; that is to say, the tragic Burden of Ignorance, and there-by shewed to mortal Persons, (not much unlike thy humble Scrivener, may it please the Reader), the Whys and Hows of this World; including forthwith certain Understandings of Natural Philosophy, which, through the Mercy (and possibly Oversight) of the Lord our God, divers Peoples, (both antiently and contemporaneous with our Modern Times and Days), hath educated their Selves by way of divers Disciplines and Reasonings, these being demonstrably unattainable by the lower Orders of Beastes, by Which is implied, but not to these Specimens limited, nor specifickally iterated, as the common Aurochs, the fearsome River-Horse of Africa, divers Sheepes, or Rattes, &c., &c., and seeing thusly, (if my Esteemed Reader permit me such Embellisshment) that the Milk of human Reason is accordingly, through a veritable and ostensible (though mysterious) Trans-Substantiation, congeal’d there-by into the Cheese of Civilization, by the Means and Devices previously elucidated, by Nature founding a mighty Precedent, by which Learned Persons may discourse, on the very Nature of the Thinge at Hand; to wit, a golden Shafte, the approximatte Breadth and Girth of a Man’s Rod (this being, an Euphemisme, much in Fashion, of Late employ’d in the Description or Ridicule of a Man’s generative Organ), assumedly Hollow’d, and carried by certaine fashionable Ladies of High Breeding, who, being some-what Inured to the Censure of the Mobb, may carrie about their Personages, for Use in conducting a fresh Jet of liquid Urine, from a Lady’s divine Holiest of Holies, to any number of Targets, Destinations, or Bodies of Water intended for Same, a Device or Engine known to the Vulgar as the “Shenis“.

Argument:

Previous Writings hath taken scant Account for the Merits of said Innovation, having elected to lambaste and be-labor the Shenis with some Scorn not entirely undeserv’d, and so discount the great Benefites, which can be enumerated at some length by thinking Persons.

These Criticisms, though frivolous in the Eyes of this humble Author, bear some Merit in their Repetition;

• The Shenis, following Use, in the Manner above described, contains various and sundry bodily Humors and Fluides which, if not cleansed with Water, Acqua Fortis, or Vitriol, may linger with-in the golden Shafte, (and also the Receptacle designated for Catchment); and certain Doctores of Physick, Natural Philosophers, Churchmen, Charlatans, Apothecaries, Wise-Women, Bone-setters, Seers, Wizardes, and Herbalists happen to advance the Radickal Claim that, as accumulated Detritus of this Nature may breed Swarmes of divers Diseases and Discomforts, including Locust-Crotch, Ague, and The Itch, so close Handling of a Shafte long Impregnated with Effluvia may confer said Ailments on the noble Bearer Herself, much to the Dismay of the Lady and her Companions.
• The Shenis, being an extaordinary gilded Phallus, in Length not smaller than twelve Inches, is a Sight so extra-ordinary as to attract undue Oversight and Scrutiny from Persons of Quality, and these Gentlefolk, though devoted in Spirit to Modernity, may quail at the Acceptance of the common Use of such an Artifact which, by Comparison with various and sundry Dildoes, &c., &c., formerly in Possession of the Borgia Popes, or the Emperor Caligula, rival these Objects for sheer, unmitigated Decadence, Tackinesse, and conspicuous Excess. (In Sooth, dear Reader, thy humble Author admits the Truth of this, yet holds Unconvinc’d that this Item be a Faulte).

These Arguments, and divers Others, may certes be applied contra the Shenis, as many a contrary Opinion or Idea seemeth, while the Moon shines, to be well-reason’d or inviolable. The Esteemed Reader should, however, accept a Caution: that the Sun, as He rises and rudely violates the Brains of the recently Awakened (and typically Hung-Over) like a buggering Miscreant, also dispels Arguments which, upon secondary Inspection, are reveal’d to be Naught but the Excremental Discharge of ethereal, ephemeral Dreams, such as Those dream’d by One much devoted to the Pracktice of daily imbibing certaine Inexpensive Pharmacopoeic preparations.

This Author proposes a strong Counter-Argument, which, though not Infallible, (as only the Work of the Creator may be beyond Reproach), may serve to Illuminate a particular Pointe, as ruthlessly as does the Sun to the Retinas of the intemperate Drunkard, there-by rendering him a gormless Wrack of his former Self, and which, by outweighing other divers worthy Criticisms of the Shenis by reason of the greater Merit, should mote it necessary for the Publick to embrace the Shenis, and all Things Shenile:

Namely, that the Shenis is a suitable Accoutrement for Ladies of Distinction, who happen to be in the Habit of conducting the Exploration of divers low Taverns, slatternly Boozeries, certaine disreputable and ill-favor’d Stores of Convenience, and Dwelling-Places or Work-Places of sluttish or boorish Persons, for the Reason that, in such Circumstances as typically befall a Man, where-in he is forced, by his own bewilderingly wretched Drunkenness, or a Sense of sheer Meanness, or by a noble and gentlemanly Lust for unholy and awful Vengeance, to unfurl his mighty Member from behind his Codpiece, Sporran, Greaves &c., &c., and thence let forth a voluble Column of Pisse, for the Purpose of instilling Ignominy and Fury in the hearts of his Enemies- or possibly just from drunken Perversity, targeting some Object which would not benefite from such Bespatterment, id est: a Trashe-canne, or some-such other Item which requires Handling and subsequent Dis-posal by a deservedly furious Peasant or impertinent, surly Wage-Slave.

Long have Females, and Women particularly, labored under the Notion, that utilizing an Adversary’s Trashe-canne, for an amusing makeshift Privy, while in a State of vindictive Drunkenness, is an impossible Methodology. With divers technologickal Engines, such as the Shenis, can we now ensure that the Womanly Sector of our Populace is as equally forearmed, for this dire Contingency. Concomitant with the Advent of the Shenis, this Author augurs a Rise in the regard of the Female gender, and increased Respect paid to Ladies Hither and Yon.

In summation- Fine Ladies who indulge in Purchases of this or similar “Engines for the Guidance of Urine” shall make known a dire, yet silent, Ultimatum; “Your Respect, if you please, Knave, else your eventual Trip to the Dumpster shall be a dribbly and foul Journey indeed.” Victims of such unspeakably gruesome Treatment, upon their subsequent Bemoistening, may reflect on their Habits and Ways of conducting their Business, and possibly improve Same.

If these Rogues change not their Manners, repeated Shenisings may, at Least, alter their Tune.

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