"Tempest Phish, a man that luck forgot, goes through a harrowing transformation to become Earth's next Christ. That's right Tempest is the next Christ, as in Jesus Christ. Only for some strange reason Heaven wants him dead. In the blink of an eye Tempest's world is chock full of angels, devils and other creatures that didn't exist yesterday."

With such an alluring summary, as I was reading 1/4 of the way through it seemed to be an interesting fictional serious story, somewhat of what I expected.
However, getting a third to half way into the book my hopes were spoiled ...my opinion changed I found myself smiling at the blatant, tongue in cheek puns and had to continue on!

It's such a fun, cheesy novel or as the cover says" a "must have" for any true heretic".

(If your easily offended by strong language and/or puns upon religion then this book is not for you. But if your like me and like the unusual things, you have to read this book!)

I'm not sure if I'm going to Bookring this yet, so for now it's marked as personal collection.

Thanks to Moem for allowing me to snitch this logo from her bookshelf!

The BookRing has been formed and is now closed. It's soon to begin! The tentative travel path is as follows:

*Kaija, Michigan - rec'd 15 April, sent 5 May
*Mellion108, Michigan - rec'd 16 May, sent 25 June
*Morpha, Oregon - rec'd 1 July
*Fanclub, Hawaii - rec'd 30 Sept
*Carpediva, California - skipped
*Zmrzlina, Massachusetts - rec'd 11 Nov 04, sent 5 Jan 05
*Mytilusgirl, England - rec'd 17 March 05
*Futurecat, New Zealand - rec'd 29 March 05, sent 14 April 05
*Meshe, Georgia - skipped
*Ilios, Florida - skipped
*Maurean, Florida - Rec'd 25 April 05, sent 07 May 05
*Phantomreader42, Georgia - rec'd 16 May, sent 11 July
*(Home to me)received 21 July 2005

A reminder to read and release to the next in line, as quickly as possible. I'd prefer if you did not keep the book longer than 3 weeks.
Always verify the postal address before mailing, and if possible please use delivery confirmation.
Thanks for joining and Enjoy!!! :)

Release planned for Saturday, April 03, 2004 at Sent to another BCer in Muskegon, Michigan USA.

Off to visit with Kaija...Enjoy :)

(The pic in this journal entry is of Brampton City Hall)

Alright, this came in today, ... I have another ring that came in the other day, so I'll hurry through that.. (won't take long at all).. Thanks for the postcard!

It was very cute.. Unfortunately the end just dragged on and on.. The humor is very unusual, which I always appreciate.. The sarcasm is abundant.. another thing I like in books.. I'd have to say, out of both parts of the book, my favorite character would have to be Penny Dreadful.. Gotta love her! This one part just made me laugh.. and I felt like I HAD to remember it..

Hi, this could be Penny Dreadful,
"And most likely I'm maybe not here.
Or possibly I just don't feel like talking,
Even though I could be conveniently near.

So if you have a thought tickling your brain,
Cross your fingers and knock on wood.
You may leave your two cents worth after the beep,
But it probably won't do you any good."

I didn't really get into the character of Death in the second part.. just a bit to.. I'm not even sure... just didn't feel right.. But, in the first one, I thought Death was very well drawn out..for what it was..

Okay, now, on to the next one!

Released on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 at Mailed to a fellow Bookcrosser in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.

sent to mellion108...I did get delivery confirmation.. I'll put the number on here when I have it in front of me..

Thanks so much for sharing this LadyGothic, and thanks to Kaija for sending it my way.

I got this in the mail yesterday and can't wait to start it. Unfortunately, I have 4 rings/rays and 1 book club book to read sitting here next to me (they all arrived at once!). I'll try to get through this one as quickly as possible and to send it on its way. I recently started a new job that has seriously diminished my reading time. Please be patient with me, but I don't mind gentle reminders if I've held on to it for too long!

I sincerely apologize for having this book for so long. The even worse news is that I tried 3 different times to read it and couldn't get into it. It seemed to be trying too hard to be something along the lines of "Dogma." Perhaps if I could read more of it, I might appreciate the story more.

However, since I've already had it over a month, I'm going to let this little book fly. I have Morpha's address and will try to get the book in the mail over the next couple of days. Thanks again for sharing this one, LadyGothic!

Caught in the mail today. Looks bizarre! I hope it's funny enough to hold my attention. If I can't get into it in a couple of tries, I'll just pass it on. Conversely, I might take a peek, and not be able to put it down until I read all the way through. I usually am reading 4-10 books at once, I take breaks from the more difficult ones with some "brain candy", which I can often get through in one or two days. I prioritize the rings, rays, and TBR's that someone wants, but I read out of order sometimes, and other things as, well.

I have misplaced the book and can't find it. No worries, I will replace it as soon as get paid (end of August). The ring must continue!

Okay, i just ordered it from Amazon. Will journal again when I get the book.

Lost the book, then ordered another to continue the ring, then found the original book, so sent it on to TokTok.

I plan to make another journal entry when I finish reading the book, so far, my feelings are mixed.

Received in the mail yesterday. This is up 2nd in my TBR pile! :)

I finally finished the other copy of Between Chapters yesterday. The writing styles and moods of the two parts of the book are very different even though they are in more or less chronological order.
I give Book 23 A Definitive Sin a 6. Even though Stevan's writing style was relatively easy to read there were many extraneous characters and events that don't seem to tie into anything, and I did not like the characters and was not very entertained reading about them. Book 23 does give some support to Book 26, but there were many events that I was unable to understand. Then again, it's been some time since I read Chapter 23.

Chapter 26 however, deserves a 9. I loved the Surreality, and most of all, I loved the character Penny Dreadful. I found Chapter 26 Stupid Planet to be quite funny. Here's an example:

"Somewhere in the endless oblivion, a cosmic telephone rang...
RING! RING!
'You have reached Death's voice-mail... Leave a message after the scream, or I'll kill you...' declared a prerecorded answering machine in a deep, scary tone
SCREAM!"

In this portion of the book, everything that happens ties in, every scene is neccessary. All the absurdity and silliness are wonderful and there is even a seemingly simple story plot that turns out to be rather complex.

I think it's cool that the Antichrist is Jesus' little brother, and that the Antichrist feels guilt for his destruction of the Earth. The two fried-egg beings Innocent and Guilty are hilarious, continually bickering like two small children. And last but not least, the Stupid Planet is fabulous and fumnny. I think it was really invented by two guys that I work with.

I had a good time with most of chapter 26.

Enjoy, Fanclub!

This is just an entry to clarify that *I* have the book, not morpha. Her latest journal entry was placed after I received it in the mail. :)

Thanks Ladies! Poor Morpha had such a strife episode involving this book upon a misplaced book adventure but was incredible in replacing and communicating to me throughout, unfortunately I was offline at the time and could not respond, Morpha is a gem :)
Happy reads!

Recently I have received several books that were published by small, unknown companies. I wish that I could say these books inspired me to believe that the small publishers can compete with the better known ones. However, this book follows the sad trend that I have found. The writing may be good, but the book suffers from incredibly poor editing. It just became incredibly difficult for me to read, and I had to stop. I think the premise sounds interesting, but I will never know if these writers are talented or not. Thank you LG for sharing this book. I will pass it on to carpediva as soon as I have an address.

**Update 10/18/04: Never received answer from carpediva, so I am mailing on to zmrzlina.

Received today and read the first few chapters whilst in queue at the post office. Love this footnote

The word hate is so strong that it is generally only ever used to describe colors, television shows and other minor annoyances.

I'll post again when I've finished it. Taking it to bed and hope to get through most of it before the wine takes effect :-)

Another bookring that has stalled too long in my hands. I am sending this along and perhaps I'll take it out at the library, (one of my 43Things goals is to use the library more) and post a review later. Off to the next person on the list.

Arrived yesterday. I began this last night and hope to finish within the next couple of days.

Thanks!

Arrived safely in New Zealand this morning. I opened the parcel and had absolutely no idea what it was - I didn't remember the title at all. But now, skimming through the journal entries, I recall why I wanted to join this bookring - it was LadyGothic's description of it as a "must read for any true heretic" that sounded like fun. Just started reading another book, but this will be next in the TBR pile.

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Firstly, can I tender my apologies for forgetting to journal Between Chapters promptly.

Secondly, how surprised am I that it took this book six days to travel (paper rate, no less!) to New Zealand; is this some sort of record?! ;o)

Between Chapters was a wonderful, irreverent read and I look forward to more from the authors. Unfortunately, it appears that no proof readers were involved in the publishing process of this book, which was a shame.

Thank you LadyGothic for ringing this superbly entertaining book!

I'm so happy to see this obscure book travel so safely and quickly, my faith in BookCrossing via mail is renewed ;)

I'm so envious of its travels though.

Thank you everyone so far, I look forward to soon having my 1st bookring home arrival!



(Photo: Gage Park, Downtown Brampton)

Cute idea, shame about the execution.

The great thing about bookrings is that you get to try new authors, and sometimes you discover someone really great, the kind of writing that makes you want to run out and buy every one of their books. Of course, the downside is that sometimes you end up reading something at the other end of the scale, which unfortunately this was for me. If it wasn't for the fact that it had travelled so far to reach me, I think I would have stopped reading after the first couple of chapters. As it was, I felt a moral obligation to give it the benefit of the doubt, and struggled on to the end.

Neither of the two books in this volume is well-written, but the first, by Nicholas Cvjetkovich is slightly better (although mediocre at best, and let down by an incoherent plot). Stevan's contribution, while having a marginal advantage plot-wise, is so riddled with malapropisms and over-use of a thesaurus (unfortunately without accompanying use of a dictionary) that I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the utter incompetence of it all. And as for the numerous grammatical and punctuation errors in both books... I note that they each have an "editor" listed on their title pages - if I was the editor of one of these books, I'd be ashamed to put my name to it! I found the humour in both books to be very heavy-handed, and heavily sign-posted (as were the allusions, all spelt out in full in case we'd missed how clever the authors were being) - in fact, the only gleam of humour I could find was the odd giggle at a fortuitous typo. As I read, I kept hearing Twist from Spaced saying "I can really see what you tried to do" - it just seems so appropriate (apologies to those of you who don't follow British TV and have no idea what I'm going on about).

Incidentally, after finishing this book, I decided to do a bit of internet research to find out just who these authors are, and discovered that Nicholas Cvjetkovich is a wrestler, billing himself as The Original Sinn - I'm sure it highlights all my prejudices against the sport when I tell you that my first thought was "ah, that explains it".

Anyway, sorry if I've offended any of you who enjoyed the book - just goes to show you that we all have different tastes (and wouldn't the world be boring if we all liked the same things!). But if you want to see how this kind of thing can be really well done, I'd recommend trying Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - a much better example of the genre!

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Meshe has just PMed me and asked to be skipped, so I'm just waiting to hear back from Ilios, who's next on the list.

Ilios wants to be skipped too, so I've PMed Maurean...

Posted to Maurean yesterday.

Perfect timing, as I *just* finished my previous read! Will starton this one this evening, and journal again when I'm through.

Thanks for sharing this, LadyGothic, can't wait to dive into it!

hmmm....what to say?

Well, it certainly was a "different" take on a familiar theme. Having recently had the opportunity to read Good Omens by Pratchett/Gaiman (and Job by Heinlein, and On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony...) I have perhaps had TOO much to compare it to, and so may not appriciate it as others might.

I think FutureCat said it better than I could;

"Neither of the two books in this volume is well-written, but the first, by Nicholas Cvjetkovich is slightly better (although mediocre at best, and let down by an incoherent plot). Stevan's contribution, while having a marginal advantage plot-wise, is so riddled with malapropisms and over-use of a thesaurus (unfortunately without accompanying use of a dictionary) that I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the utter incompetence of it all."

I, too, think maybe the editing of both books (which in both cases, left much to be desired) played a hand in preventing me from getting drawn into the story.

Still, I appriciate having been given the opportunity to read it for myself, and I will mail it on its way to Georgia on my next PO run, where I hope Phantomreader42 enjoys it!

*mailed 5/7

Got this today. It looks fun and irreverent. I'll get on it quickly, and then send it back to LadyGothic.
*nibble nibble*

Okay, maybe "quickly" wasn't the right word. :)

This book was a lot of fun. It reminds me a bit of Good Omens. I did notice the problem fanclub had with the editing, but I liked the stories well enough to get past that.

The footnotes were some of the best little tidbits. One of my favorites was about Jonah Meiniliber, who carries a small rock in his left jacket pocket for an occasion where he who is without sin has to cast a first stone. And some have a good insight in them, like It's much easier to live when you're so concerned with nothing that you can ignore absolutely everything. I've heard of plenty of people like that.

The first half, A Definitive Sin, is set on our world, near the end, with scheming devils, a vain God, angels bent on vengance, and the new Christ at the top of Heaven's hit list. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are actually trying to stop the nefarious plot, but have their own problems. Armageddon gone mad.

Stupid Planet is even odder. Most of it takes place after Armageddon, in a twisted, surreal universe ruled by the Anti-Christ (by default, as his Father disappeared). AC has plans to recreate Life, and avoid the mistakes his Father made. His best friend, Love (nephew of Satan) has a few wrenches to throw in the works. Everyone in the Surreality is fundamentally odd, especially Life's Deadly Obstacles (Closed-Mindedness is a flying pig, Prejudice a 2-headed zebra). But even they are nothing compared to Innocent and Guilty, two perpetually frying, talking, arguing eggs. Life, as might be expected, doesn't go according to plan. But since when has life gone according to anyone's plan?

I liked both stories, but I didn't think they were really connected, and the attempt to connect them confused everything. Tempest Phish was changed too much in each book to be the same character. Still, it was an enjoyable, irreverent, and thought-provoking trip through Life and Afterlife. Thanks for offering it as a bookring, and expect it back as soon as I can manage.

Horrah! The first bookring to make it home! :)
Thank you so much for participating and taking good care of my book!

Doanted to charity

http://www.diabetes.ca