Nihilistic Cringe | A Review of Stones to Abbigale by Onision

uh hi everybody how y'all doing it's another book review this time we're doing something a little different it's not just gonna be a quick five minute summary ash knock it off it's not going to be another five minute summary of the book and a quick shot of thoughts I wanted to go a little more in-depth into this one because it was it was something special it deserves a good 30 minute minimum long term review I am of course reviewing stones for Abigail by oniisan [Music] now a Nissan if you are not familiar is a rather infamous character on YouTube he's played by a guy named Greg something I do not watch his content myself because quite frankly he's a dick and a lot of his humor is best summed up as unfiltered cringe I wish I could show you examples of this unfortunately he also has a long history of abusing copyrights so frankly I'm already concerned just showing the cover of this book because he's not a good person you really only need to go back and look at his controversy one of many in which he was reviewing preteen girls most honest youtuber my ass and do forgive me if there is noise in the background I have two rambunctious kittens who refuse to be quiet while I work making noise fans of mine might recognize the tabs that I'm using here in the book 5 color codes the blue ones are marked every time the book has some sort of bad character moment to the green or for bad plot or world-building the pink are for bad lines orange this time around are for moments of pure cringe and the yellow is for anything else that I couldn't really classify otherwise in this case they're mostly bad writing mistakes typos and the like end of trust me there are a lot now to be fair I did not mark the book every single time I found something boring or annoying or anything like that much like the New Moon review I tried to focus just on the moments that I thought really needed to be pointed out or would have been worth referencing later on I didn't make a note of something if it was like a repeat of the if he just made the same mistake outside of typos so I could have used a lot more I get very in-depth with some of my literary analysis not sure if you could really call this literature but whatever now this is a self-published work quite quite obviously there's like no copyright material anywhere in here and for good reason because I don't think any single publisher would want to touch this it is I'm gonna be perfectly honest New Moon was the worst book I had ever read until about a week ago now it's just the worst professionally edited book I have ever read now despite what I said in my New Moon reveal yeah that the book was edited and frankly the copious amounts of mistakes and typos I found in this one kind of demonstrates what no moon code of pitting but I'm not here to just [ __ ] on a Nessie on entirely as much fun as that would be I don't think that it's really legitimate criticism if you just go for the bad points there are some good things about this book they're extremely scant but they do exist there are a few good lines that I mean they're not perfect but I kind of liked them I mean there's one where the main characters is kind of in a bad mood so he's hanging out in his room and he says I welcomed the silence like a warm blanket on a cold night okay that's actually good writing I think it's decent imagery it's relatable who doesn't love a warm blanket on a cold night it works unfortunately lines like that are very few and far between also an easy on this point kind of works for and against the book because in easy on right off the bat says that he's drawing from personal experience and drawing from personal experience can be an absolute lifesaver for a book because it has a chance to add that much realism to whatever you're writing there's a certain amount of life you can breathe into your characters into your world if you do in fact know what you're talking about I mean John Grisham's legal thrillers are a great example of that unfortunately oniisan while he does use a lot of personal experiences he doesn't use them well the book actually starts off with an author's note and he says this book is made up of events that occurred in my own life mixed with fiction from the made up life of James James is the character in the book James is essentially a better version of myself his home his school and his life all resembled my own at his age the people James analyzes and is surrounded by are not so unlike those I've known as well this this troubles me boney seein does not have the wherewithal to properly self analyze and that becomes screamingly obvious as you go through the book if I had to sum up stones for Abigail in as few words as possible I would say nihilistic cringe the this is not any kind of happy recollection of one's high school days actually have a note for this on my computer here the best plot synopsis I can give you for this is it's about a loser in high school who was written by a guy who was probably a loser in high school and never got over being a loser in high school so he rewrote his high school days in this deranged fantasy in order to make himself seem both downtrodden and cool which makes everyone involved come off as a big loser and I would know because I was also a loser in high school the difference was I got over it the entire world is a simplified version of high school reconstructed by someone who hated high school nothing feels real though I could believe that much of what happens in the book happened in real life it takes away from the authenticity of the book could have had it feels like anis iana was trying to recreate his high school days like it's not some sort of a cynical reexamination of it or anything like that it was like oh no that's not how it happened here this story is how badass I was here's a story about the time I beat up for jocks in a parking lot an event which does happen in the book mind you there are also several very forced political messages shoved in here like there will be things will be going along and all of a sudden hard right turn here's what guns are bad and it doesn't help anything you can absolutely write that kind of a message into a book lots of people have before but the way he goes about it we'll get into that a little bit I'm just gonna go through a quick plot synopsis and by quick I mean like probably 40 minutes breaking down the plot and the characters and why everything in this book is awful so you don't have to read it though to be fair I do recommend reading this but I recommend reading in in the same way that I'd recommend people watch the room it's just kind of fun to mock also I know I'm not the first to do this one so when you're done watching this review go over to strange Aeons channel and check out her review of this book because it's where I got the idea to do this I'm at least fair when i blatantly rip people off and then the off chance that strange answer self is watching this howdy love the glasses so i'm not gonna be going over every single point eventually that would get redundant but we are going to be hitting the major ones and this laughable thing pretending to be a plot so let's go right off the bat you're hit with this wall of text here the formatting in this book is atrocious now it doesn't become terribly obvious the first couple of pages because the dialogue is very rare but the the way that this book is formatted is you've got a big wall of text there there seems to be no linking theme or narrative between any of the paragraphs they're just one chunk of information it's kind of whatever the hell's going on and later on when the dialogue does become more prevalent it's kind of all shoved in together in one paragraph it is very ugly to read you've got to worry about flow for the reader because you you want to make the reading experience comfortable and it's more comfortable if dialogue is split up into separate lines instead of shoved into a single paragraph if you have an entire conversation in one single paragraph whole thing doesn't flow very well especially because the dialogue is it's not like broken up between quotation marks so that you know you just have a conversation between two people going back and forth you check any published book for that the problem is every single bit of dialogue almost starts with and then this character said and then that character said I know here says the Sen structure is boring and word choice is sloppy it doesn't feel like James is supposed to be seen as some pretentious hipster but that's exactly what it comes off as because of that there's an instant to snaked between what the narrator explains and how the reader interprets him as a character James is supposed to be this deep misunderstood man of his age surrounded by the the plebeians and the Nimrods of the world and no no he's just an obnoxious hipster and James is absolutely melodramatic for example everything in his room is painted white to the point where not only does it come off his force he almost straight-up admits that it's forced painting my room like this was a clear act of subtle self-inflicted psychological torture I was going through another phase from darkness to light and repeats seemed like a story of my life one of the early points that really gets hammered in is James's people watching he watches everyone around him kind of stays in the back and observes and I wouldn't mind that so much you can actually make a real character off of that if you use the right words but James constantly describes his classmates and the people around him as humans every once in a while that can be fine except it gets really weird it's like he constantly attempts to to call people around him just humans it's like why not people oh and I forgot to mention this at the very start special thanks to Lainey I believe that's his wife but I don't keep up with uneasy and drama so I don't know anyway it says special thanks Lanie thank you for editing first draft now I am not the perfect writer I am not the perfect editor I miss things all the time my own published book is not the best I left a few typos in unfortunately at one point in my crew God a guy jaws a gun twice without holster it or anything so I am NOT going to go after the editor here who is not a professional but there are all sorts of lines like this there was only 15 minutes left in the class if ever to give some sort of a basic English lesson all the mistakes in the book here we'd be here forever that being said I will grant James does at least have some characterization about him it's awkward and cringy and I don't like reading it but it is characterization it's better than Bella Swan who was effectively a blank slate James at least is a person he's just not a likable one anyway James goes to a crappy little school apparently they get no funding they hire the worst most unprofessional teachers that they could possibly find and there are routine fights as the sounds of flesh collided fist to cheek and chest quickly followed the howls from the surrounding students they would scream OH as if it were sincerely delightful to witness creatures like themselves suffer and fall apart before their eyes white why don't you call them people man it's so weird so James goes to art class and he shares that class with a be spelled with an i we also get to meet a few other characters in the book for some reason we get a thing about a character named Alex he's introduced by James recalling a time that Alex peed into a jar under his desk while in class this information means nothing goes nowhere doesn't contribute a single thing to the plot and Alex I don't think actually comes with me he might come up at one point later as a victim in a crime but if he does it doesn't lead to anything so I don't know why this is in here why would we need to know something as unique as the kid who peed into a jar what does that do I mean I guess it sets up the school as being like the worst in the country but unless you're doing for a satire he routinely goes over the top in some of these complaints and descriptions you'll see many more examples of that as I go along we also meet Jason the dumb jock who gets into a lot of fights and was responsible for the earlier fight but Abbey is the girl of James's dream and she is the important figure in this scene I wanted to inspire some acknowledgement of my existence from Abbey so I opened my mouth to greet her when my fingers brushed up against a freshly smeared gum under my desk ooh I showed it out on impulse it's actually kind of fun and easy and if you need someone to do do like an audible reading of your book I'm your man if you refuse to see the world around you for what it is you're just wasting your eyes hello Jaden Smith's Twitter account all the side characters into this book with the exception of a B and and Davis which I'll talk about him later but all these side characters exist purely to reinforce James's negative worldview his mom complains about work sucking all the kids in this book complained about school sucking and they worked to make it worse the teachers are [ __ ] the students are [ __ ] everyone's an [ __ ] of one stripe or another of Jason he was just another [ __ ] placed on this earth to live his life completely unexamined a pond that had no awareness of its own role let alone that it was just another tiny component within a massive unstoppably twisted game Jesus Christ anyway all the kids in the art class are paired up for a project a B is paired with Jason and James is paired with Alex the kid who peed on his owners desk and Abby doesn't like that so she requests to specifically work with James it's not a matter of I don't want to work with Jason which would be a perfectly understandable statement no she specifically points out James and says I want to work with that guy keep in mind these two don't really know each other I frankly I can't really describe the way Abby's introduced very well because it feels like it's coming from two different angles on one hand it feels like she's the girl in class that James has always had a crush on but never had the gall to work up to start a conversation with but at the same time she feels like the foreign exchange student who showed up the week before that James was instantly smitten with now either one of those would be perfectly acceptable using both doesn't make any sense Abby admits that she doesn't really know James very well so to pick him out specifically within everyone else in the class suggests that she's comfortable around him or she knows him in some degree but there's almost no interaction beforehand and instead were it's actually suggested that James has never talked to her before but apparently he's just so manly and impressive and funny and cool that Abby is like instantly drawn to him there there's a word for that anyway Abby is so impressed with her initial meeting with James that she slips him a little note and just says nice one and this is actually a cryptic clue which James later discovers is her phone number and my reaction reading that is who does that if either one of these characters had some sort of an affinity for puzzles or riddles or something like that that would actually be a good point it would make them look more rounded more interested in their own hobbies but that's not what we get this is a random code put in there for no particular reason why wasn't she more upfront about her art project partner got some next-level cringe going on here so in a way James calls out Jason the the jock in another class and this of course leads to a fight Jason beats up James and very badly and we get introduced to Matthew and then Matthew never does anything of significance for the rest of the book made eyes at one point the character introductions are terrible I don't think a single person is brought into the story organically or for any kind of purpose James is getting beaten up so Matthew a friend of his sister just grabs him and pulls him away and that's it he doesn't talk he doesn't like do anything else that if enemy doesn't tell Jason to back off he doesn't take James to the the nurse just he's the reason the fight stopped because the plot needed it to stop this kind of character could have been replaced by any teacher or any extraneous student or frankly Jason could have just gotten bored and left that's the kind of writing we're dealing with your folks so anyway because James at one point push Jason ignoring the fact that he got his the the [ __ ] beaten out of him James is suspended I mean Jason is as well but whatever but while James is leaving school he sees Abby and her boyfriend Seth in the parking lot having an argument Abby demands that Seth leave her alone Seth decides to go [ __ ] himself he gets in his car and leaves and then James and Abby walk they have a nice little chat about how tragic both of their lives are so James and Abby walk home and and they they start chatting and apparently it's really cute and James decides that yes he does really like this girl in fact he likes Abby so much that he writes her an email talking about how how sad her eyes look how how hurt she must be even with my brief presence in your life I picked up on so much suffering and almost feel powerless to create any change there are so many wounds so many scars so much I only know enough about to fear I am trying to understand Abby you have more pain in your life than I can imagine I hear it in your voice I see it in your eyes and in the way you move I just want to see you smile without there being an ocean wall of tears behind your eyes you've known this woman for a couple of hours I cannot speak for the women out there but I imagine receiving an email anything like this would be off-putting to say the least but as a guy this dialogue this this conversation oniisan is having with himself is is so one-sided and so cringy that like I said I was kind of a loser in high school and I want to beat this guy up he has no social awareness James has no clue how he comes across and that actually reinforces itself in what is almost a genuine moment of self introspection when he realizes oh [ __ ] I must have [ __ ] something up because Abby's didn't show up to school the next day but the whole thing was actually a red herring because Abby wanted to see him behind the church cuz you know that's where all the cool kids hangout and I just gotta say real quick I I really this sentence rather this passage right here sums up James's perception of himself so succinctly as I approached the church there was a strong forceful wind blowing behind me that made it feel as if I was being pushed to her by nature itself I felt like a fool for thinking that I'm far too unimportant for any significant force to consciously influence my life I'm really awesome also pity me it's such a self-defeating [ __ ] anyway Abbie just wanted to meet with James to say I'm not a broken project for you to try to repair I am a strong independent woman and I don't need no man I know that last parts actually not true she very much does need a man she needs this man as James is the only one in school who could understand she's not broken she's okay I guess even though she does complain that her mother abandoned her which forced her to live with a father who doesn't even care if she lives keep in mind I'm on page 40 as I'm reading this none of this relationship has earned everything is rushed and the characters have no chemistry these two are slowly not slowly they are quickly working towards a relationship that has not been earned for something like this for for a romance to properly work you need to build towards that you need to have the characters actually talk to each other and interact with each other and spend more than toe scenes together especially if their dialogue is as badly written as this but life moves on and James is introduced to his mother's boyfriend a man who is so important that she's been going out with him for several months and James has no idea who he is and yet his mother is talking about the whole family to the other sides of the mountain to be with this guy and James meets him by saying so who is this gentleman which up to this point is so out of character for James we we don't see him doing anything remotely like this prior this does lead to a an interesting moment on the next page though an amusing line admittedly but it does go against everything that Ernie CN stands for James has a sister that he doesn't really get along with and she decides to just kind of attack him by saying my sister interrupted aren't you seeing that messed up emo chick James looking over at my sister with a blank face I said aren't you seeing every guy at school Lisa which i think is funny that's a clever retort the problem is isn't that slut-shaming isn't that something that Annie Seon is very much against or I don't know maybe he's cool with it I can't say his self insert character certainly doesn't have a problem with it so in a way James is considered for a TA position in in his history class not sure why he's shown no significance in in any of these classes and all the character all the teachers seem to hate him but he's he's pulled in as a TA for that to happen though he would have to drop his art class so he makes a deal with the guidance counselor miss Robertson and oh I have a lot of talk about her later on she warns him to not get involved with with Abby because she's bad we're not giving any detail on why Edie's bad but you better believe she's bad the reason for it is so dumb we get more dialog between James and Abby and James comes across as a sweaty neckbeard guy who uses the term milady on ironically my face was beaming from feeling her warmth around me I replied you be the one reason I look forward to Jim I'm just gonna take a small side here to say I really really hate the way he presents the dialog by always stating he said this she said that it's so tiring to read but we get gym class and that is where James and Abby talk a bit more and more importantly we meet mr. Mack the gym teacher and the only teacher in this entire school that James actually likes and apparently mr. Mac likes dodgeball and despite having a little experience at dodgeball it turns out that James is a total badass I very quickly found out I was quite good at the game better than I thought at least I kind of used Abby as my motivation to do well I imagine it was some kind of evolutionary thing a man trying to impress his mate with physical performances to demonstrate his superiority over the other members of the tribe anyway the book goes on Abby and James decide to become a real couple but oh no we've got the the big climactic scene where they go to school and it's it's under attack by a school shooter James rides the bus into school and as soon as the the doors open they hear a couple of pops and they realize what's going on so the driver shuts the door and drives away good move bus driver that's exactly what you should do James then demands to get off the bus because Abby is still somewhere in school and her life is in danger and the bus driver just lets him go but James decides to roller-skate into the school and then stops because the floors are too sticky with blood so he takes his roller skates off and charges around through the hallways noticing all the dead bodies until he finally comes across the shooter himself it turns out it's actually Seth Abbie's ex from earlier what does James do at this pivotal moment when set is pointing his gun at one of the teachers well James of course stands there and does nothing because Jason runs in and then throws Seth to the ground disarms them and beats the crap out of him and literally punches Seth into a coma James does nothing this is important James does nothing to help the situation or stop the shooting in any way he does eventually find Abby and comforts her and you know that's all fine and good he does nothing in the grand scheme of things all the shooting so that would be a a big climax to wrap up the whole story with that right no [ __ ] we are 60 pages into the book we are 1/3 through this thing this is not a climax yet this is largely irrelevant I have a number of problems with how the school shooting is is handled largely because it is first and foremost pushed for an anti-gun message now I am not about to get political that's not what my channel is about but the whole message is is so fabricated and so forced again takes away from any sense of authenticity especially when you consider this would be one of the worst shootings in human history and that tops out a few actual battles in like Wars because Seth kills 52 students and wounds another four now when you're writing a a big scene like this you've got to be careful because again this shooting was not earned we're not that attached to the characters yet and the characters don't do anything to really change or or adapt Jason's a little cooler because he stopped a mass shooting in progress so that's awesome but he's an [ __ ] because he's feels up girls later and and loses all of his cool points more importantly James this shooting does not do anything to affect him he kind of uses the tragedy to get a little closer with a B which is scummy but in a larger scheme just just looking at the big picture this moment does not affect him now you can use something like this early on in a story while this would be better save for a climax where James has to consider his survival versus the survival of his girlfriend the one good thing in his life if this school shooting was like the actual climax it could have been good it could have been useful but it's not you can use a big scene like this early on to establish who a person is Michael Grant's gone for example does this extremely well when the main character a 14-year old named Sam has to charge into a burning building to save a kid's life and that was that scene in that book was great because it showed character it showed that Sam stood out from the other kids that were gathered around the building worried oh my god what are we gonna do Sam at that point is a man of action he is a hero and that establishes who he was for much of the rest of the series by the way go read gone very good books this school shooting doesn't do anything for James as a character and it doesn't do anything for the plot until like the last 15 pages the book and by then it's it's basically a footnote this entire thing was an attempt to push an anti-gun message and it's so sloppily done this is the literary equivalent of screaming in an open mall because you want attention and then there's the terrible way the scene is described I haven't gone into detail about the actual descriptions that this book offers calling them minimalistic is doing the book a favor you get almost no idea of what anything looks like so you have to substitute it with your own personal experience and that doesn't do much to bring the world to life think about how realistic Hogwarts felt as as you were reading through those pages how well JK Rowling explained everything around you as as Harry was led into the Great Hall for the first time to sit down with a sorting hat how the hallways around him were described that is grade-a writing actually I didn't realize this at the time but as I was reading this I unconsciously substituted my elementary school for the setting of this book because I had nothing to build off of so throughout the the shooting I wanted very much what kind of gun Seth was was using I'm hardly a gun expert but I do know a few basics an easy on clearly doesn't know anything because we don't get any idea of what kind of gun he's even using until several chapters later from this as Seth points the gun at at the teacher before Jason jumps him we get the line upon hearing her verbal condemnation without hesitation Seth with his gun toward her like a sword being unsheathed time again felt like you had had dramatically slowed us as we can arm struggled to set his aim now when I first read that I pictured that and don't worry these are airsoft guns when he said that I figured he had holstered his gun and had just unsheath it and dramatically aimed it off-screen we discovered later on that he was actually using an m16 a military-grade automatic rifle which normal civilians actually can't own it could have been an ar-15 that would have been more commercial standard thing something something kind of like this again airsoft gun so whipping it out like a sword doesn't really work this doesn't right I don't have enough room to really do this for him to unsheathed this like a sword I guess he's using it one-handed which is really unwieldy cuz well I don't know how much you can see that shaking but I can barely hold this up and I haven't been firing an automatic weapon for several minutes so take that into consideration the problem with that is Onishi ons anti-gun rhetoric is pouring through and it's obvious he doesn't know what he's talking about I'm sorry to get semi political in this is just it's garbage writing and I want to go into detail about it so he doesn't know what he's talking about because he doesn't understand to even get an m16 you've got to have a class-3 license or prior military experience which tells me that Seth's father best-case-scenario says father has one of these and was irresponsible enough to leave it as his gun out of a safe or somewheres where Seth could access it and Seth was never properly taught gun safety or respect for them which is a tremendous problem but instead oniisan chose the m16 because it's a large military gun it sounds scary in it evokes a particular image that he wanted to invoke without regards for any kind of logic or narrative cohesion he's using a big scary gun because he doesn't like them if you're ever gonna write about something you don't like which the guy has every right to do it helps if you have the slightest idea of what you're talking about anyway hate guns love guns whatever do what you want just understand the facts anyway after the shooting some bureaucrat from the President of the United States office comes by and talks to the kids and promises up the president is a willing to stop by the school and talk to all the students individually and key word there individually anyway he goes on a very long anti-gun rant and the whole assembly that he's a guest for culminates in mr. Mack the gym teacher being shown via I guess a Skype call and he's in the hospital with plenty of wounds from the from the shooting that's exactly the kind of thing you want to show a bunch of recently traumatized students he's banished to hell he's lying in a bed hooked up to all sorts of devices it's it's not gonna permanently star the kids and then mr. Mack goes on a an anti-gun rant while he discusses his actions in the in the fight apparently he managed to punch Seth in the throat or something like that the whole thing is genuinely uninteresting mr. Mack is probably the most likable character of this entire book but compared to what he has to compete against that's not an accomplishment oh I forgot about this actually Seth also planted a bunch of explosives around the the building none of them went off but the explosives are also very mishandled because at one point they're described as described as being like napalm which no that's not how explosives work it's true that Seth could have made a bomb in his house you can actually make small low yield explosives out of the materials in your kitchen and Seth I I guess agura the Anarchist Cookbook or something you would have been able to conjure something up it would not have been as powerful as napalm which napalm is an incendiary which means that it burns it doesn't really explode it doesn't have the same pressure wave that a standard bomb would have and for the records this was just so we're clear it's not the the flames of the bomb that kills people it's the pressure wave that the bomb pushes out something like c4 I think pushes out at about 24,000 feet per second napalm would just do some damage to the building depending upon whatever it's made of we don't know because it's not described so apparently James and Abbie talked and they decided that Abby should move in with James because remember the rest of his family is going to the other side of the mountains to live with James's mom's boyfriend whatever his name was but James didn't want to leave because that would mean leaving addy so they both have the whole house to themselves which I guess James's mom is okay with because she's gonna be she's still gonna be paying for everything so like that includes the power and the Internet and the food and the property taxes and everything else such an unnecessary cost especially if the town is really as crappy as its described to be so I don't see any mother just despite you know early teenage love I don't see any mother really doing that when financial hardships are clearly part of the subtext of the characters but anyway they decided that it would be a good idea to go talk to Abby's father about her officially moving out and we get this very interesting scene because he starts screaming at her keep in mind he's had like no interaction with her since the shooting but he starts screaming at her calling her ungrateful Brad does do you think I raised you to show your respect for me is this how I raised you bah bah bah and he starts throwing a bunch of rocks and beer bottles at her and as this is happening a cop just happens to walk up on the street apparently while walking his dog like his his canine partner and just stands there he just happens to be in the area which is remarkably lucky and just stands there while all this verbal abuse is going on and the blatant assault with the rocks and the beer bottles the cop doesn't do anything until the dead actually takes a beer bottle and clocks James in the face it's like what could have been images this is supposed to set the cap just doesn't care is like Oh yeah you can you can abuse your daughter all you want but if you touch the main character you're in trouble buddy this is such a [ __ ] ego trip and I really love the way that the cop is described because he six his dog on the dad and then just kind of hangs back while the dog chews on the dad's arm It was as if he the cop really ash It was as if he enjoyed seeing people who commit unprovoked violence suffer an even greater opposing force as everyone knew it was over the moment the dog latched now keep in mind that conflicts with the very next page to describe the cop when James says I knew it would be gullible of me to assume he had never seen anything like this in fact it was probably a daily occurrence everyone gets numb to routine no matter how dramatic or strange this officer had to look like he had seen this day come and go a hundred times before so is he a desensitized cop or is he an [ __ ] who gets off on violence I guess we'll never know but that's the last we ever see of Abby's father but the whole thing is is just more trauma linking James and Abby together they're they're both such sensitive broken people that they're the only ones who can understand each other's pain oh this world is so cruel I'm gonna clip all your nails as soon as this is done but the next chapter the president actually makes good on his promise to stop by and talk to the kids the thing that's interesting is that despite the fact that there were several several explosive devices found around in this shitty little podunk town where a school shooting the worst school shooting in the country's history mind you has ever occurred the president walks in with minimal security detail and is apparently going classroom the classroom to visits the visits of kids the most that we see traveling with him as far as security or for members of Secret Service they don't like do anything they don't sweep anything they don't check the kids again in a school where a shooting just happened see what should have been done is all the kids would have should have been led to the gym where Secret Service would have been able to sweep the immediate area confirmed that was all safe and then they could do basic screening on the kids as they're walking in like just metal detectors would would probably be enough but no I guess one of the most protected people on the entire planet can just Breeze in and out of whatever classroom he wants to and oh my god the president one of the kids decides to try to be funny by asking why are you such a d-bag and the the president responds with now you may feel I am what you said a d-bag but you should know to address me as president d-bag that's right he's he's the cool president now the president asks if anyone has any questions everyone in class raises their hand and the president looks directly at James and says James Patrick the boy who nearly saved the day what is your question how does he know anything about James and yet because he's the main character of course the President of the United States one of the most important people on the planet knows who he is by name I've read up on this school and the recent events quite a bit how are your feet healing up James stepped on glass but that doesn't make him John McClain and he's not even given a name it's just the president it's if you wanted it to be timeless and not attach it to President Obama who was president when this book was published that's fine but at least give him something's like President Johnson would be basic but it's something this president has no identity very much like so many other things in this book James's question of course it's not if it had been something akin to what are we gonna do to prevent further school shootings I would get it because that would go along with the message that has been pushed thus far it would be thematically relevant and it's something that would suggest that the shooting actually had some effect on James as a character instead he asks I just wanted to know how you feel about the things people call you in the news and around the world it's such a softball question you've got the President of the United States willing to answer any question and you waste it on that the president's answer isn't much better by the way he just says I cannot and do not want to control what people say about me all I can really fully control is what I myself am saying and doing he goes on for like an entire paragraph like that and then everybody clapped but despite the promise to speak to each kid individually the president then just leaves he promises a bunch of changes and he'll approve a budget shift that will help fund significant renovations and an effective security program that will promote a safer environment for everyone at the school I didn't know that the President of the United States dealt with issues on such a small level I thought that that would be a County issue maybe a state issue it's not a federal issue and this is a very minor point but throughout the entirety of the president's visit inicio never uses the term Secret Service he just says us SS which of course is short for a United States Secret Service the problem is when you're writing something like that you've got to explain things at least initially for all the uninitiated readers what if this tries to go to a a foreign audience and they have no idea what the Secret Service is what if a a younger person tries reading something like this because they hid themselves and they want to hate reading they might not know what the u.s. SS is Abby moves in some kid on ironically uses the term [ __ ] I got some typos a bunch of typos Oh God so there's this scene when Abby decides that she wants to come out about some past trauma that she has experienced and this is this is an example this is a great scene to demonstrate that this is all some bizarre personal fantasy for an easy on a be decides to have a conversation with James but she wants to have it in the bathroom while she's taking a shower not exactly the most conducive environment for a lengthy heartfelt confession or any kind of admission of past sins or anything like that this is a this is an excuse for Abby to dramatically throw her towel off and reveal all the self-inflicted scars that she has over her body I'm not gonna say anything against self harming it's it's terrible no one should do it unfortunately a lot of people do it because it is the only way they know to regain and kind of control their life and and it sucks I I wish people didn't do it unfortunately a lot of bad things out there I'm not even gonna make an emo joke about that it's it's it sucks and if an easy on wanted to use this as a moment to flesh out the characters or talk about how kids in high school maybe women in particular don't feel safe going to school it could actually be something good it could have been meaningful it could have been deep it could have been important but that's not what this is Abby takes all her clothes off so that James has something to light and then they have sex and oh you thought the sex scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey were unimpressive but oniisan does not give the topic the the seriousness that it really deserves and if he doesn't want to write the about that then that's fine if he just wants to make a quick glance over it because that's not what his story's about that's fine the problem is he's setting up these characters this this one broken character as this damaged unfortunate weak woman who is there for James to fix she's not a strong character she's not really independent quite the opposite actually she's so dependent on James for comfort that for a long while I was worried that she was the victim of sexual abuse growing up the speed at which she attaches to James and how ready she is to do all these things for him seem to suggest prior sexual abuse but none of that matters this is all part of the new Zeon's personal fantasy that's that's what he wants in in a woman and sometimes yeah sometimes that happens sometimes guys are shitty and they they imagine power failures like power fantasies like that button ecn does not talk about any of Abby's trauma or past experiences he doesn't confront the issue he covers it up James just hisses Abbie's scars and doesn't talk to her like the adult she needs I believe that James is the kind of character that everyone on our slash nice guys see themselves as they're not there to support the women in the lives they're there until bravely slay the dragons and demons and knaves bothering poor milady apologies to sorrow TV he does that voice much better than I can the whole thing just annoys me because this could have been a really good scene and it's just there for personal spank material I would also like to point out how creepy it is for a man in his 30s to describe two teenagers having sex and I'm not sure that either of them is over 18 then again giving his history with underage girls I don't think an ACN would see a problem with this okay enough of that moving on we get more saccharine garbage these two just love each other so very very much Abby writes James a letter saying okay I am damaged but it's not like you think because she got raped I'm not gonna go into another rant about this because I'd be repeating the same points that I did just now but there's a good bit of advice that I got a while back when in roaster writing and it was if you can use anything other than rape don't use rape rape is is one of those really sensitive topics that Denise Ian's not prepared to talk about and it shows because it's it's just another stepping stone in his romancing Abby via trauma but again it's not given the respect that it deserves but it is the reason that miss Robertson hates Abby so much the guidance counselor because apparently Seth when he was dating at previously found out that she had gotten pregnant from her rape and proceeded to punch her repeatedly in the stomach miss Robertson apparently despised her because she thought she had gone and gotten an abortion and that is emissions tie-in for being pro-choice and that's the topic I am NOT getting into but Abby says that James is the light of her life and all that stuff so in response James walks into the middle of her class and vigorously makes out with her right there in the middle of the room with everyone watching which I could imagine would be a little upsetting maybe embarrassing or off-putting for normal people but neither of these characters are normal so Abby just rolls with it and nobody gets in trouble this is a this is a very realistic book I am enjoying this book we then get another sex scene between James and Abbey and James describes himself in such a way that he could only be the greatest lover of all time genius in bed ladies and gentlemen James Patrick sex anyway more boring happens some of the security updates happen and we're introduced to the security guards like everything else in this book it's bad sir can you remove all metal items a man dressed as a security guard said to me why didn't you described him as a security guard why does it have to be a man dressed as a security guard is he imitating a security guard is this part of some bizarre cosplay for me English scenes in the school and turns out that Jason apparently groped a B during class the teacher did nothing to stop it because all the teachers in this book are remarkably unprofessional so James does the only thing that he knows how to do now you remember the note from earlier in the book where conflicts between man or best resolve the bloodying of their fists and how that was a bad thing well James decides that the only way to confront Jason about assaulting his girlfriend is to beat the crap out of him now I don't have a problem with that frankly I'm cool with it it is hypocritical though of James it's-it's to go and complain about something like that and it's not like this is really care for growth if he had started from one position and just evolved over the course of the book perfectly fine totally encouraged except he has nothing to support this new mindset he just nothing slowly changed him to that he didn't get any alternating world views or wise words from an elder or anything like that it's just dude does my girlfriend switch change my mind so we've got four guys standing around in the parking lot including Jason and James decides to walk up and apparently takes an outer shirt wraps it around Jason's neck and flips Jason over his shoulder that is actually a lot harder to do than you think before anyone can recover James also kicks one of the jocks in the balls and punches another in the throat he then stomps on one of the jocks balls before he could recover that's not how men fight and I just gotta say I love the way that James starts off this fight because he says that he approaches a now turned away Jason I'm not sure an ACN has ever read a book before we then get more detail as Jason and James fight one-on-one going back and forth with James ultimately winning because he can just turn on badass mode whenever he wants he's this poor downtrodden guy that life just likes to [ __ ] on but wolf you make him mad he'll hurt ya that fight leads to basically nothing nothing becomes of it Abby's really proud of her man for standing up for her though and then James Abby and Davis go hang out for a little while they go to a park and I just rather enjoyed this this bit here Davis found a paperboard sheet stapled to a tree it was asking for everyone who saw it to sign it so the person who posted it could come back and take it to their local politicians to have their favorite drugs legalized Davis found a petition sheet that was it that's all you had to say you don't want to keep going on with your descriptions you want to shorten it so that the reader doesn't get bored very your sentences you have too many descriptions that go on for too long these sentences some of them just don't [ __ ] end uh but that leads us to the bridge scene where some guy apparently jumps off a bridge and Davis in an attempt to save his life runs out into the middle of a highway and then he gets hit by a car and he dies and it's so tragic now I have avoided talking about Davis because Davis is unique within this world Davis is this super happy-go-lucky weirdo that James hangs out with for some reason James is the center of Davis's world frankly for the longest time I was working under the assumption that Davis was gay Davis gets irrationally angry when James and Abby's start hanging out more and I was so sure it was because Davis was secretly in the closet and was jealous because he no longer felt like he could come out and confess his love for James uh nope that's turns out that's not the case but this dies and and unlike the school shooting this actually does have an effect on James because he he gets so sad and so angry at himself for for just being there not because he didn't do enough to save Davis but because if if Davis had never met him Dave's would still be alive he wouldn't have been in the car at that moment when the guy jumped off the bridge but no actually I wanted to take a moment to to go back and talk about some of Davis's lines and a good many of them are marked by these cringe notes that I have here if you've seen any of NAC ons videos you understand that he has a very I'll be nice and call it an unconventional sense of humor he has such lines such as when they're walking out of a store all the way out Davis wasn't done yet so we turned to everyone in the store and screamed hi-ho was silver lady mammy poppy sickle his antics made no sense yet still caused me to laugh even harder than I had before come on Davis I screamed as I headed to the parking lot okie dokie captain derp he screamed back Davis's lines are remarkably unfunny like there is the scene when James was gonna go beat up Jason and his cronies and Davis screamed oh my god you're going to beat their booties Davis does whatever you can to try to cheer James up and at one point screams I love you so much I wish you were my boyfriend which again was part of the reason why I thought Davis was actually gay but he has another line on the same page so what's up buddy how can I turn that frown upside puppy poo poo it is that's not even a joke it's not even a thought it's just that feels like a joke that an easy on forgot to delete like he just put that in his filler and never came back to fix it that is right there the some of Davis's characters so when he dies you don't care cuz you're not losing anything comedy is a great way to get you attached to a character that was one of the reasons why the flash from Justice League Unlimited was one of my favorite characters he was a funny charismatic guy Davis is not Davis is so cringy and so unreadable that even though we've got this big funeral scene with Davis's mother crying out that oh no her baby is dead I can't feel any sympathy because Davis is not a good character Davis isn't even a marginally entertaining character he's annoying and cringy and awkward and I say this because I know an easy on at one point criticized strange Aeons for mocking Davis's death I'm not commenting anything on any friend that oniisan may have at one point known this is a comment on the character in the book Davis as the character in the book is awful I have nothing of an ACN's friend I'm not commenting on that I shouldn't have to say this but Ernie Seon is incapable of receiving criticism so I wanted to get this out anyway the whole funeral scene happens and that's it's that just goes on eventually James's history teacher and miss Robertson approached him and suggests that James become or James run or school president and I'm left here wondering why because James has not demonstrated any leadership skills or social skills it's just why did they want him to be the school present because he's the main character that's a lousy reason they they don't give any reason why they want him to do it they just say we wanted you to run for school president and this whole TA business was just about figuring out if you're right if you're the right person for the job what what did he do in the TA position cuz we got almost no scenes of that and a few scenes we do get don't go into detail about what he's doing as a TA but then it gets even worse because the idea of school president in this in this school is moronic because apparently the school presidents in this school have actual power and they misuse it they have repeatedly in the past become a complete pain to deal with we think you're different and we think you could actually do something good for the entire school instead of just causing a headache for the facility if they're really that bad there's no reason the faculty would have no ability to take that power away from them we're not gonna let the students have another election where they have only an idiot and a [ __ ] to choose between one very professional good way to talk about your students - I don't think that's going to change with James being involved and three don't you know it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich nearly every election since the beginning of time has been between some douche and some turd but James turns it down because he doesn't want it and then we get several pages of nothingness until miss Robertson approaches and this is where the book finally does something with a school shooting it had been a complete non sequitur within the plot up until this point but eventually miss Robertson approaches Abbey with two police officers in tow they pull Abbey - MS Robertson's office for an interrogation and this is Miss Robertson at her most unprofessional the cops clear her as apparently they've already cleared her beforehand because apparently Abby wrote some letters to Seth saying that she wishes that everyone would disappear thoughts that every single student in high school have thought but miss Robertson disliked Abby so much that she wanted it to mean that she was encouraging Seth to shoot up the school miss Robertson yells at Abby blaming her for the school shooting from her office where other students can hear her and this leads to rumors going around school Abby eventually gets attacked some student throws paint on her though the whole thing eventually leads to miss Robertson being fired but there's one thing I want to touch on before that Abby admits to James what happened and says she wrote this letter wishing that everyone would disappear she was in a bad place she was cutting herself and it's understandable that she would want a bit of isolation however rather than obviously understanding the situation or or relating to it we're using the slightest bit of empathy James his immediate response is to stand up in the middle of her her talking instantly like a muscle response I stood up turning her remaining words into a silent panic and I walked into the bathroom slamming the door behind me your girlfriend just confessed something deeply hurtful that she feels an untold amount of guilt about and your initial response despite everything you've said about her being the love of your life about her being the one source of happiness about the support she gave you when Davis died and about you promising to listen to her and support her for all the good she's done despite all that James pushes her aside and and ignores her hurt nothing I mean he steps back out a few minutes later and goes to support her eventually but you'd think that that's the kind of thing you would instantly recognized oh I should support my emotionally fragile girlfriend she's hurt right now and she doesn't need me melodramatically acting out and throwing a tantrum like a child but no this is just more trauma reinforced relationship James realizes his mistake and it comes out to comfort Abby and then the two of them are happy and then the school gets set on fire miss Robertson apparently got fired for her little outburst at Addie when the when the two of them complained and in response she set the building on fire so yay school gets let out in in what I can only describe as the most generous school administration ever the students don't need to finish up the semester they'll just get passing grades and start school next year in the fall cuz I can't go to the building it's burned down cuz you know that's a great life lesson for the kids life is too hard so here have an easy a remember if your roommate commits suicide in college you get three A's for the rest of the semester true story when I was in high school we had so many snow days one year that we actually had to make them up by staying I think it was 30 minutes late each day in school absolutely terrible I would have loved to have an administration like this that was just so clumsily ignoring the rules there are standards they are legally required to meet and I guess these guys just shrug it off why even bother James realizing something a small smirk across his lips well I guess this means I won't be running for presidents oh that's that's an ending especially considering that James had already confessed he had no interest in running for school presidents so I don't think that was a question this was absolutely mind bogglingly awful the characters don't work the setting is boring and nondescript the plot is all over the place there's no real direction for the plot it just goes wherever it wants to there's no growth there's no development there's no death there's very little meaning behind anything there there's like minimal themes the pacing is atrocious seems dragged out or they exist for no reason the dialogue is crazy as hell and yet at the same time I don't regret buying this cuz I enjoy making fun of stupid books it's I'm a masochist what do you what do you I don't know the people on the internet like it when I hurt myself with bad reading now before I completely wrap this up I wanted to go over a few more notes that I didn't touch on here and also go over the characters let's starting with James James Patrick is an idealized version of an AC on himself he pretty much admits that on the very first page so right off the bat when AC on comes out and says hi everyone this is a Gary Stu he is me he is perfect love him and although the term gears do like Mary Sue gets tossed around a lot I genuinely genuinely believe that because James never has to really struggle that much despite all the the fights he gets into and the difficulties he has with his family and all that he never birds anything he just gets the girl all the problems just get resolved the the bad things that happen around them don't impact them the school shooting was largely meaningless to James he doesn't grow he doesn't learn he can turn on instant badass mode when he needs to I think that characters should suffer a little bit as the book or the series goes on I don't think James really does not in a not in a real way more like the kind of whining entitled teenager way how school is so hard and and I don't have any friends and things like that it's like [ __ ] fur that's what everyone says you're not special there's nothing that makes them standout uh James is an outsider and he talks about it regularly almost as if he finds comfort in it so he's an intentional loner who hosts pity parties for himself he's not an appealing character Abby doesn't feel like she existed before the book started James had a crush on her from the start and has apparently felt this way for a while however Abby never showed any real sign of noticing James until the book started once it did she immediately notices him she just feels unnaturally drawn to James who at the start is a kid she doesn't know she constantly flip-flops between being the strong woman that she wants to be and the damaged broken girl that she clearly is and you could almost make a real character that someone struggling with past trauma and and make a really good story out of that but she never has any direction and never really addresses any of the problem rather the problems she goes through are never addressed properly they all exist just so James can come up give her a hug and then have sex with her because that's his reward for being nice you're nice to a girl so the instantly owe you sex that's that's apparently how it works that's the lesson oniisan is giving his audience I think I've said enough about Davis he is a nice Aeons terrible humor wrapped up in a cringy crunchy exterior there's really not much else I can say like everyone everyone else well with the exception of mr. Mack I guess who's I guess he's okay but doesn't really do anything there's miss Robertson who exists as a straw man for the pro-life movement and again not taking any chances on that but she's clearly a straw man she hates Abby to an unreasonable degree and there is not a single drop of professionalism anywhere in this woman's body there's mr. Hanson the history teacher who goes from hating everybody - kind of liking James I'm not sure why maybe because James was the TA for mr. Hanson but they go they get like no meaningful interactions to show any kind of growth James sneaks out of his TA class to go make out with a be vigorously and and mr. Hanson gives him the verbal equivalent of a high five the book as a whole feels like it was written by a teenager who attended a single brief political rally once in their lives just a note on the astonishingly unprofessional teacher's this book is written to be a a serious book it is supposed to be like kind of a drama but the teachers are so unreasonably unfair and unprofessional that it doesn't it can't be read as a drama not a good one anyway if this were a satire then you know like something out of South Park then it could work the teachers are so unreasonably unprofessional that this could only their their their characters could only work as jokes much like mr. garrison but it's not you're supposed to take it seriously an example of the kind of pacing that this book has there are two paragraph when Davis gets hit by the car there are two paragraphs between when Davis gets interrupted trying to talk to the guy who jumped and when he gets hit by the car this kind of pacing does not get a clear image of what the author intends the reader is then forced to make up their own mind about what's happening but then it turns out that that answer is wrong and they have to go back and reconsider everything they're just read I thought the way that it was written I thought Davis I was like was holding the guy in the street it's like trying to cover oh hold on buddy we'll get you to the hospital or something like that and then I realized oh no the guy is dead I'm holding a corpse part of that is because anisia doesn't understand how to write or set a scene but it's also because Davis gets cut off by using an ellipses when he should be using a - that's how you signify that something's been interrupted as opposed to someone trailing off mid-sentence a scene is very poorly thought-out and very difficult a very difficult kind of passage to read this could have been extremely heart-wrenching dramatic moment as James watches his best friend die but instead I'm more annoyed at bad formatting at pros everyone in this town is extremely cynical James Abbey and Davis are the only exception but not completely something like that could have been a good setting for pushing a message something about cynicism or nihilism the problem is and this again is terrible at getting that message it's almost like the author was trying to instill a sense of nihilism in the reader or to save face from you know how bad his high school days were one one early point as far as selling books you can write a book for whatever reason you want as far as I care and if Greg wants to write this book who has the right to stop him nobody frankly there is a question that one should consider as far as selling a book though and that is why does this story need to be told why should this exist and I don't think there is a real reason a lot of this book feels like it was written out of anger like the author was frustrated and wanted to vent that could be a perfectly good writing style and frankly can evoke a lot of emotion but that's not the direction the book actually takes the reader this book frankly does not have a real reason to exist at least not out for sale it's cringy it's badly written nothing about it works total cancer out of 5 it's the lowest rating I've ever given anything this book was terrible but I did enjoy it because I enjoy going through awful books like this and figuratively tearing them apart cuz it's just enjoyable for me and understand must have known that I felt like this because he was generous enough to write two other books

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 1,618,473

Keywords: Book, Review, Stones to Abbigale, James, Onision, Nihilism, Cringe, High School, Romance, Drama, Politics, Abbi, Davis

Id: _GLag3Q0sAM

Length: 80min 33sec (4833 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2019