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Steez
Fast-paced intense crime thriller. Some call Gemma Steez an icon, others call her the Kim Kardashian of sports. She is the first female quarterback in pro football, and a celebrity with a line of trendy spas. One day, from her bad-girl past comes a walking nightmare called Red Candy with a plan to wreck her world, take her for millions then take her life for revenge. With Red Candy is her mercenary boy-toy Duane. Red Candy hires an actor to play a psycho stalker who gets too far into character. Add a ski town with secrets, a sociopathic tabloid TV star, a cult of celebrity-stalkers, and a brutal Mexican drug cartel out for payback. They all find out that Steez is no soft target.
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First published September 15, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 29, 2011
The action in this book is a lot of fun. Steez is the first book I've read from author Raymond Embrack and I am planning on checking out more!
Here is the book summary:Gemma Steez is the first female quarterback in pro football. Some call her the Kim Kardashian of sports. Some see a target. A walking nightmare called Red Candy has a plan to take Steez for millions then “bathe in her blood.” With her is an ex-mercenary and a psycho for hire. Add paparazzi TV, a cult of celebrity stalkers, a Mexican cartel out for payback, and a bad girl past that’s come back for her head. But Steez is no soft target. Steez is where style meets badass.
The character of Steez is interesting and dynamic although you don't really get a look at how she goes from a young and troubled girl to a celebrity football player. I still liked her.
The villains were the real stand outs in this story, Red Candy is a truly evil character and her ex-hitman boyfriend is a freak. Their relationship adds a lot to the stories' intensity. They hire a psycho to stalk Steez and pretty much terrorize her in the most brutal of ways but he doesn't live up to the level of messed-up that Red candy does so well. As for the rest of the secondary characters, I didn't get much of a feel for them. They felt like background noise.
What kept this from a 4 star rating was the confusing rhythm of the dialog between Steez and her assistant and boyfriend in the beginning. That and some descriptions of L.A. used when describing Steez's lifestyle were somewhat futuristic sounding and at first I started thinking this was set in the near future but this cleared up for me eventually.
All-in-all, I truly liked this story. It became a fast action romp and I couldn't put it down. I have a feeling Mr.Embrack's other books will appeal as well and I look forward to the next one.
Here is the book summary:Gemma Steez is the first female quarterback in pro football. Some call her the Kim Kardashian of sports. Some see a target. A walking nightmare called Red Candy has a plan to take Steez for millions then “bathe in her blood.” With her is an ex-mercenary and a psycho for hire. Add paparazzi TV, a cult of celebrity stalkers, a Mexican cartel out for payback, and a bad girl past that’s come back for her head. But Steez is no soft target. Steez is where style meets badass.
The character of Steez is interesting and dynamic although you don't really get a look at how she goes from a young and troubled girl to a celebrity football player. I still liked her.
The villains were the real stand outs in this story, Red Candy is a truly evil character and her ex-hitman boyfriend is a freak. Their relationship adds a lot to the stories' intensity. They hire a psycho to stalk Steez and pretty much terrorize her in the most brutal of ways but he doesn't live up to the level of messed-up that Red candy does so well. As for the rest of the secondary characters, I didn't get much of a feel for them. They felt like background noise.
What kept this from a 4 star rating was the confusing rhythm of the dialog between Steez and her assistant and boyfriend in the beginning. That and some descriptions of L.A. used when describing Steez's lifestyle were somewhat futuristic sounding and at first I started thinking this was set in the near future but this cleared up for me eventually.
All-in-all, I truly liked this story. It became a fast action romp and I couldn't put it down. I have a feeling Mr.Embrack's other books will appeal as well and I look forward to the next one.
December 26, 2011
A novel from The TAO High Priest of Badass
Think of Andy Warhol's worst predictions come true, think Boris Vian, think Raymond Queneau, think of a 21st century version of Tod Browning's Freaks, but this time on Hollywood Boulevard, where the freaks torture themselves to attract nickels from tourists, think of an L.A. where the only worthwhile ambition in life is to have your own cult, think of a Eugene Ionesco allowed to run free in all the absurdity of the TMZ type attention-seeking economy, where people no sooner do a thing than they figure out how to video themselves and upload it, think of how a badass Claude Levi Strauss would have turned his ethnographer's eye on the trending tribes of Los Angeles, and you may just come close to imagining Steez, the sort of novel that can be written by a man named Raymond Embrack.
Embrack's hero, former pro volleyballer and swimsuit model Gemma Steez (think Style and Ease) has been recruited by the 1FL new football league to be the first female quarterback in American pro football. When she is not playing 7-1/2 minutes per quarter, she is looking after her L.A. Business interests, including her Morning People/Night People spas, loyally aided by her faithful assistant Pepper Suzuki and responding to television and radio interviews about her sex life. Gemma Steez is hot, and in L.A. 'hot is hot'. She has become successful by mastering the game of how to trend in L.A., but then her life takes a turn for the worse. An enemy, named Red Candy, appears seemingly out of nowhere and decides to make Gemma's life hell.
I won't spoil the plot, or go into detail about how the two ladies, Gemma Steez and Red Candy, slug it out, or tell you how the story ends, except to say that much of the bad guy action involves two other unsavory characters, in addition to Red Candy, her psychopath sidekick Duane Seveille and an out-of-work actor cum rapist, Ryan Scorpio, who is taken on to stalk and terrify Gemma Steez. But after Scorpio has uploaded a couple of good stalking incidents to The Attention Jungle, Embrack's personal version of TMZ, Scorpio becomes hot himself. He decides to outsource his stalking business and pursue his 15 minutes of fame, by taking on other persona, such as that of Lee Harvey Ryan, in the attempt to trend even higher in The Attention Jungle. But, with his attention distracted, his lady and one of the stalkers he has franchised assume other personalities and undermine his actions against Gemma Steeet. The supreme achievement of The Attention Jungle is its survival minute, in which you get 10 bites in 60 seconds.
Embrack has started a group on Goodreads.com known as The Tao of Badass (the title may remind you of a book that was written to show geeks how to pick up girls). In Taoism there is an oft told tale, that of the Vinegar Tasters. Three men dip their fingers into a vat of vinegar and taste it. One man reacts with a sour expression, one reacts with a bitter expression and one reacts with a sweet expression. So far, that is how I have seen readers react to Embrack's Steez. Readers who seek a classical novel of rules, that will help them to be less degenerate may well react to Embrack's book with a sour expression. Other readers, who expect a classical novel of pain and suffering, and who look for how to seek redemption stoically, may look on Embrack's novel with a bitter expression. A third type of person, among whom I count myself, who think life is fundamentally good, but who often wonder what the hell is going on, will react with a wide smile to Embrack's sophisticated, wisecracking and wild depiction of a celebrity-crazed world shoving its head up its own ass in The Attention Jungle.
Think of Andy Warhol's worst predictions come true, think Boris Vian, think Raymond Queneau, think of a 21st century version of Tod Browning's Freaks, but this time on Hollywood Boulevard, where the freaks torture themselves to attract nickels from tourists, think of an L.A. where the only worthwhile ambition in life is to have your own cult, think of a Eugene Ionesco allowed to run free in all the absurdity of the TMZ type attention-seeking economy, where people no sooner do a thing than they figure out how to video themselves and upload it, think of how a badass Claude Levi Strauss would have turned his ethnographer's eye on the trending tribes of Los Angeles, and you may just come close to imagining Steez, the sort of novel that can be written by a man named Raymond Embrack.
Embrack's hero, former pro volleyballer and swimsuit model Gemma Steez (think Style and Ease) has been recruited by the 1FL new football league to be the first female quarterback in American pro football. When she is not playing 7-1/2 minutes per quarter, she is looking after her L.A. Business interests, including her Morning People/Night People spas, loyally aided by her faithful assistant Pepper Suzuki and responding to television and radio interviews about her sex life. Gemma Steez is hot, and in L.A. 'hot is hot'. She has become successful by mastering the game of how to trend in L.A., but then her life takes a turn for the worse. An enemy, named Red Candy, appears seemingly out of nowhere and decides to make Gemma's life hell.
I won't spoil the plot, or go into detail about how the two ladies, Gemma Steez and Red Candy, slug it out, or tell you how the story ends, except to say that much of the bad guy action involves two other unsavory characters, in addition to Red Candy, her psychopath sidekick Duane Seveille and an out-of-work actor cum rapist, Ryan Scorpio, who is taken on to stalk and terrify Gemma Steez. But after Scorpio has uploaded a couple of good stalking incidents to The Attention Jungle, Embrack's personal version of TMZ, Scorpio becomes hot himself. He decides to outsource his stalking business and pursue his 15 minutes of fame, by taking on other persona, such as that of Lee Harvey Ryan, in the attempt to trend even higher in The Attention Jungle. But, with his attention distracted, his lady and one of the stalkers he has franchised assume other personalities and undermine his actions against Gemma Steeet. The supreme achievement of The Attention Jungle is its survival minute, in which you get 10 bites in 60 seconds.
Embrack has started a group on Goodreads.com known as The Tao of Badass (the title may remind you of a book that was written to show geeks how to pick up girls). In Taoism there is an oft told tale, that of the Vinegar Tasters. Three men dip their fingers into a vat of vinegar and taste it. One man reacts with a sour expression, one reacts with a bitter expression and one reacts with a sweet expression. So far, that is how I have seen readers react to Embrack's Steez. Readers who seek a classical novel of rules, that will help them to be less degenerate may well react to Embrack's book with a sour expression. Other readers, who expect a classical novel of pain and suffering, and who look for how to seek redemption stoically, may look on Embrack's novel with a bitter expression. A third type of person, among whom I count myself, who think life is fundamentally good, but who often wonder what the hell is going on, will react with a wide smile to Embrack's sophisticated, wisecracking and wild depiction of a celebrity-crazed world shoving its head up its own ass in The Attention Jungle.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews