The Beast 2

Special edition time, guys!

Taken from Santa Monica City Court Records, case titled "Jonathan Golden vs. R.L. Stine," Jan. 19, 2015.

Judge: I'm calling the court to order! This case is for Jonathan Golden calling for the "death by roller coaster" of... wait, you realize that the death penalty isn't used in the state of California, right?

Jonathan: I do now, Your Honor.

Judge: You also realize that "death by roller coaster," most likely falls under "cruel and unusual punishment" and is thus a prohibited form of execution?

Jonathan: Have you ever read The Beast, by R.L. Stine, Your Honor?

Judge: No...

Jonathan: Have you ever read The Beast 2, also by R.L. Stine, Your Honor?

Judge: Once again, I can't say that I have–

Jonathan: Well, then I'll be the judge of just how cruel it is, Your Honor.

Judge: I hope you realize that this trial is something of a joke, son. Apparently, you held the district attorney at gunpoint and then, when he refused to allow this strange and altogether wasteful trial even under the threat of death, you broke down and started crying, insisting that you had proof on "an mpeg4." I'm not sure if you know what an mpg4 is, but apparently the D.A. was so moved by your pathetic tears that he accepted $300 in cash from you in order to make this trial happen.

Jonathan: Yes, Your Honor, that is how I remember it.

Judge: So why should R.L. Stine be prosecuted, then?

Jonathan: Well, Your Honor, a while ago I reviewed a book by R.L Stine. I recently read the sequel, and it was bad, Your Honor. The first book sucked, but this book decides to both barely acknowledge that its predecessor existed and completely duplicate the events, until it splits off into its own ridiculous time travel story.  Let me tell you this story, Your Honor–

This book starts with our two lovable past protagonists, James and Ashley, riding the Beast.  Again. I recommend reading the first post if you haven't. I don't know how in-depth I went with the first post, but the narration is filled with little joke-comments that James makes. They're very rarely funny. For instance, he spends three paragraphs talking about his new favorite candy, "Karamel Kreemies." It's so much worse than it looks. Anyway, it's been a year since the events of the first book, and the duo is back to Paramount's Kings Island for more thrill-riding action. James decides to go grab the aforementioned candy, and Ashley waits in the line to ride the coaster again. They manage to snag the front-row seats, and just like last book, Ashley goes missing.

James runs around the park looking for her, again. He stays after it closes and dodges guards. But it's all nothing compared to what comes next. Ready? James sees two guards coming, so he ducks behind a trashcan. One of the guards leaps toward the trashcan and says "Lookee what I found"... and he picks up a silver dollar. Getting run over by a roller coaster is too good for you, R.L. Stine. You found it necessary to repeat the same bad cliffhanger chapter ending in the sequel. There are no words to express my rage.

Luckily, James does get chased by guards, and runs into P.D. Walter, the ghost from before. They have a nice little chat before the guards come back and grab James. On the way to the main office, a ghostly skull manifests and scares them while James escapes. P.D. leads him back to The Beast, which he rides. Here's where things get bizarre. James wakes up in a little pod, which a mustached man pulls him out of. He is then forced to change into skin-tight silver clothing. OK, so far, so molestation. He then drags James past a fish with the face of a person (I don't know either) and shoves him into a cage, where he's forced to play the part of a child of the future along with many other kidnapped children, led by Captain Time, the man who brought them there. After a pretty painful show, James finds Ashley and they learn that Captain Time brought the two back in time with his time machine. OK, that makes absolutely no sense, but it's OK, because I would go insane if I dwelled on it too much.

Jonathan: So, what do you think, Judge? Can we send him to the big house?

Judge: You don't know how trials work, do you?

Jonathan: Seconded, Your Honor.

Judge: I'll admit, this sounds pretty terrible. Perhaps you're exaggerating a bit, though.

Jonathan: With all due respect, sir, I know my books. I worked at Paradise Press during another special edition post.

Judge: Alright, stop, this is getting too meta for my liking. Just go on with the story.

This book tends to make sudden leaps through time, filling in the reader on what happened during the hours we were not with the protagonists. Skip through Ashley showing James the ropes and them putting on new shows, because it's night time now. James wakes Ashley up, and the two of them sneak to the time machine. They mess with some dials and knobs, one of which rapidly ages them. Soon enough, they lose their driving abilities and begin drastically changing their views on racial equality. They change it back, and then are dragged out of the car by Captain Time. It turns out that they alerted him to their meddling by turning a wheel in the time machine, because "that wheel sets off the alarm." So basically, when you get down to the basics, the fundamentals, if you will, what I'm hearing is "fuck logic."

Captain Time completely forgives them, so I guess he's not such a bad guy after all. And then, the first sentence in literally the chapter right after that happens is "the next morning Ashley and I escaped." Cool, I'm glad to hear it, I guess the book's over. But it leaps forward to after they escaped and then sketches out how they climbed up a window they just noticed. That's just bad writing, honestly.

Judge: Order! I will not have senseless insults in my court.

Jonathan: Objection, Your Honor. I have proof, in the form of a jpeg6, that R.L. Stine can't write.

Judge: Just learn what you're talking about, please.

Jonathan: Here it is: 

•"'I know what I saw!'
'Then what did you see?'
'I don’t know! But I’ll be seeing it in my dreams!'" Pure poetry.

•"Captain Time might be a genius. But he was an evil genius, I decided."

Jonathan: I'm too lazy to look for more, Your Honor. But back to the story...

James and Ashley ride the ferris wheel to spot the Beast, which they do. Except it's actually an old farmhouse, they had just both mistaken the old farmhouse as a roller coaster. Obviously, guys, what else could have happened, are you convinced yet? So the pair wanders around the fair for a while before getting caught again. Then the book fast forwards three days, which really isn't OK. The cousins watch Captain Time at work at his time machine, and he summons a pterodactyl. I wish that I was joking, that I was pulling some sick prank, but no. A pterodactyl. The twins save Captain Time for some reason, and then decide to escape.

James "figures out" that their 1990's clothes are the key to returning, because it will make a "time warp." OK, I guess I'll buy that. They change into their old clothes and get to the time machine. It doesn't work, so James decides that the only way to return now is by chewing his Karamel Kreemies from earlier, because, I'm quoting here, it will create "a time warp." Of course, it's so simple, it will create a time warp guys, a goddam time warp, guys, don't you understand? This book is so bad, it's quite literally beyond comprehension. But it works, and they make it back in time to where they have just enough time to go on The Beast again, a hint at a sequel that, if there's a god, will never be. I guess the rest of the future kids are screwed.

R.L. Stine: Can I go yet? This seems like kind of a joke, and–

Judge: I sentence you to a lifetime of no more writing. That sucked.

Jonathan: Gnarly.

Insight into the Complex Minds of Characters:
I've done enough.

Beautiful Imagery:
"She slithered over the sill in her silvery suit."

Hip References:
90's clothes, Karamel Kreemies.

Sexual Harassment, Much? Yes:
"'Hey, girlie,' he called out. 'For a penny I’ll let you step on me.' Ashley stared down at him in disgust. 'I don’t have a penny,' she told him. The dwarf grinned. 'I’ll let you do it for free. Go ahead. It won’t hurt me. Step on my chest.'" Jesus.

Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending (here's to you, Troy):
Ch. 18/19: "There's The Beast! Now we can go home!" Just kidding it's a barn.

Conclusion: This book manages to far outshine its predecessor in terms of being awful. Nothing in this book makes sense, the storytelling is lazy and the only remotely entertaining character, P.D. Walter, is only in the book for, like, two chapters. It's such a stupid book.

The Beast

As many of you may know, it is currently three days after Thanksgiving, two days after Black Friday. I spent both these days playing video games, ignoring the family surrounding me. And I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful for many things, actually, though I may not show it. Aforementioned video games, for one, and Scott Pilgrim comics. American Horror Story, Ninja Sex Party, and M.D. Spenser. And now, R.L. Stine. Sort of. I'm not sure if I ever explicitly stated this, but I'm never going to review Goosebumps books. There's already a hilarious blogger that synopsizes those over at bloggerbeware.com. I can't believe I haven't mentioned him yet, he was my inspiration, but I guess that's what Thanksgiving's all about, right? Anyway, I found a book with no affiliation to Goosebumps but that was written by R.L. Stine: The Beast. I'm not grateful for this.

This book... I haven't read a Goosebumps book in ages, but from what I've heard, they all suffer from M.D. Spenser's biggest flaw: wasting pages and pages on nothing. Not only is this book no exception, I'd say it's a shining archetype. And you'll see why.

The novel begins as our serious-looking protagonist James is riding the legendary roller coaster, The Beast, with his pretty blonde cousin, Ashley. They both love it, and even though it's almost closing time, Ashley convinces James to go on one more time. They get in line behind a couple of teenage boys who tell the kids that the roller coaster is haunted. They even back their claim with "It was on the news... on TV." Local news, maybe. And then there's some fight that occurs when Ashley calls James a "nervous nut" or something, I don't know. And it wouldn't be children's horror without tons of cliffhangers, like at the end of chapter two, when James feels an icy grip on the back of his neck and it turned out to be Ashley... grabbing his neck. I miss Q.L. Pearce.

When the ride comes to a stop, James opens his eyes to discover that Ashley's gone. She's actually gone, it takes a chapter to find her. By the time he does, the park's closed. James wants to go home, but Ashley bets him that there really is a ghost haunting The Beast, so he agrees to stay overnight. They start to walk to the coaster when, at the end of the chapter, Ashley pulls James behind a shrub. It seems like it's too late, that the guard nearby already saw them, and as he walks toward them he literally says "Hey––caught you..."

To his buddy, another guard whom he was greeting. Fuck you, R.L. Stine. Because it's so foggy, the guards couldn't see the two kids. The two of them then sneak off and James trips, catching the guards' attention. Dammit, they pulled a Jurassic Park 3. The pair runs to The Beast, ditching the guard. I'm gonna vent about this book for a sec: R.L. Stine does that thing where he writes a sentence followed by another sentence filled entirely with synonyms to the previous sentences's verb. For example: "Both knees throbbed with pain as I started to run. Stumbling, staggering forward." This is fine, but he does it a little too often. But whatever, not important. Moving on.

Speaking of, The Beast suddenly starts moving. The cars I mean, not the platform. The kids spot an old man leaning over the controls. He calls them over, and they actually walk over to talk to him. Two kids gonna die tonight. He tells them that his name is P.D. Walters, and that he tests The Beast every night, a completely legitimate-sounding job not fit for a ghost. He then tells them that he had worked at King's Island amusement park for sixty years,  back when it was called Firelight Park, a beautiful park lit with torches, before it was destroyed by a tornado. Not a ghost.

All of a sudden, the guards show up. The kids jump in the roller coaster and P.D. Walters sends it forward. Great, now they've escaped the guards indefinitely! Actually, when the kids pull back in to the platform, they're in Firelight Park in the early 1930's. They sneak in through a gap in the fence, and everything's so old-fashioned it's like they walked right into a Disney princess story. That's... does that count as a reference? Regardless, the cousins go straight to an ice-cream stand and ask for frozen yogurt. I was surprised, but learned not to be as these two never get less stupid.

A quick example: they don't even attempt to change their clothes until they're roughly three-quarters of the way through the book. I mean, showing ankles was borderline pornographic back then, so Ashley's semi-modern clothes must be downright scandalous. Which is why two guards start chasing them, again. They go back in time halfway through the book. Not much happened in that time, and even less happens in the second half. It's painful. First they escape the guards. Then they hide backstage in the freakshow, where, in the only scary moment of the book, the circus freaks begin messing with the children. Then they run from guards again and meet Paul, a kid who helps out the cousins. He leads them to a used clothing drop, where they change. Paul loves the amusement park and sneaks in constantly. I wonder if he's P.D. Walters. No, it couldn't be, that would be too easy.

Please, Paul, do the world a service and progress the plot, I'm begging you. It almost seems like R.L Stine will let the book go somewhere when the gang searches for "P.D." and The Beast for a little while, but then they buy hotdogs. Then they go on lots of rides. Finally, they find a newspaper with the same date that the park was destroyed. With the threat of death, the characters decide to do something, anything at all. They begin trying to warn the people that they're from the future and there will be a tornado soon that will kill most of them. This happens for too long, until finally they say P.D. Walter's whole name and Paul tells them that he's P.D. Walters. OH MY GOD WHAT???????!? It only took fifteen pages until the end of the book for them to realize. The group is then chased by more guards for some reason. I don't know, maybe the park just has a general lack of excitement. The kids escape through the fence and finally find the beast in the forest where they arrived. Oh, wow, who would have thought the roller coaster wouldn't fucking move.

James and Ashley jump in the coaster while P.D. Walters pulls the lever. Two guards grab him and two other guards jump behind James and Ashley. But when they arrive in their time, the guards are skeletons, whose bones crumble to dust. There are so many logic flaws with that, that the guards just died of old age, that I could write an essay on it. It's truly the stupidest thing to happen in all of anything. Just please, do me a favor and think about it for a while.

Guards grab James and Ashley, calling their mom. As they wait at the front gate, they notice a plaque for all the victims of the tornado. P.D. Walters is right on there, which prompts foreshadowing for the most dreaded sequel since The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Insight into the Complex Minds of Characters:
"Why was I going to spend the night in a foggy park, hanging out, hiding, waiting for a ghost to ride The Beast? Because of a ten-dollar bet? I guess I was doing it so Ashley wouldn’t call me a jerk again. I mean, that’s a pretty good reason— isn’t it?" No.
Or
"His hand was warm and dry. It didn’t feel like a ghost hand."

Beautiful Imagery:
"Her face was as round as a balloon, and she had at least twelve chins."

Hip References:
Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Abbott and Castello, reasonably-priced food, fashion.

Memorable Cliffhanger Chapter Ending (a Little Nod to Blogger Beware):
James puts on his clothes to discover Ashley and Paul are gone! Just kidding, they're right outside the tent.

Conclusion: Wow, R.L. Stine is so much like M.D. Spenser it's scary. Also, the book sucks.