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Escalation
Two conflicted presidents, each driven by delusion and greed, dream of ruling the globe. To meet their goals, they resort to fraud, bribery, and corruption. Alexander Monroe - the president of the Democratic Organization, and Suleiman Assad - the president of the Free Islamic Forces, find themselves dragged into an inevitable war. Barney Chaplin the entertainer, the nerdy minister of education who opposes the idiotic war. He became Monroe's deputy and was sent to the front lines in the Fata Morgana desert to entertain his troops while risking his own life. The performance of President Monroe and the members of his government are examined by the government psychiatrist Professor Cheers, and everyone understands that it is better that someone supervises her as well... During the illusory war, well-known Hollywood actors who have passed their time are forced to function as deadly commandos and go beyond enemy lines.
298 pages, Paperback
About the author
Itzhak Begerano
11 booksMy name is Itzhak Begerano, an author from Israel.
This is about my first book called "Omnicide 2022".
I ask if you can present my book to visitors to your site as a NEWS RELEASE or promotional format.
I will tell you about myself, the book, and the links of the book.
I'm 68 years old, a resident of Israel, married + 4, I am retired and dedicate my time to writing.graduate of the College of Film and Television in the field of directing and screenwriting. My first book is Omnicide 2022 — Contemporary Political Satire. My next book published in 2021 is: evil Prototype (a psychological thriller in the style of The Silence of the Lambs)
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October 14, 2023I am one of the judges of team Space Girls for the SPSFC3 contest. This review is my personal opinion. Officially, it is still in the running for the contest, pending any official team announcements.
Status: Cut
Read: 28% (I ended here because it was the end of a chapter)
Once again, I did not read the blurb of the book and dived right in with zero idea what to expect. I soon realized this book is a satire comedy of an alternate future 800 years after our time where the world is governed by two opposing factions: a sort of democratically elected government that resembles far too much the US and an Arabic Muslim nation ruled with an iron fist by a warlord turned into oil Oligarch. Given the author lives in the Middle East, I thought the author's unique perspective would offer something different from most books.
In a way, the author certainly offers us uniqueness, just not in the way I expected. The book commences in some kind of Psychiatric hospital/Supermax prison called "The Mouse House" where the president of the democratic nation named Monro has arrived to rescue his Vicepresident Barney by replacing him and his bodyguards with identical looking doubles.
Since this book is intended to be satire, I didn't flinch too much by the odd first chapter. Given I have visited Al Capone's furbished prison cell in Philadelphia several years ago, I expected Barney to be enjoying some opulence. Everything hints Barney has schizophrenia. Since the 1st chapter is from his POV, it is possible the bodyguards laughing their hearts away smoking hash hookahs are just a figment of Barney's imagination.
Barney is then dragged around a lot in the early story with zero idea why. One chapter he sees Monro exchanging gifts with the Arab ruler Suleiman Aswad (who try to be cordial for the cameras but the two rulers really detest each other). And then in the following chapter, Monro invites Barney to yet another Supermax prison inhabited by retired Mossad agents and body doubles of aged-out Hollywood actors for no apparent reason. I guess Monro wants to become a movie producer? And then, Barney is brought back to the Mouse House to accompany Monro and visit a reknown terrorist wanted by Suleiman named Mike Satanic. As expected, Satanic's cell looks like a royal palace with a gigantic harem of concubines. It doesn't take long before Satanic escapes the mental hospital/prison and Monro declares war against Suleiman for giving the terrorist an important government position.
This is sort of where I left off the story after trying pretty hard to decipher what the book is about all along. To be honest, the only hints this book has any Sci-Fi elements at all is when some guy attaches a tv thingy to Monro's body that lets him watch porn films all day. The book mentions aliens exist, but it never specifies if they are outer space aliens or human illegal immigrants. I didn't quite understand why a book set almost 1000 years into the future still has present-day countries such as Germany or Mexico with zero name changes. I also didn't understand why a world set so far into the future is still dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels.
I liked the idea of having a satirical comedy set in the POV of an unreliable narrator who isn't entirely sure where he is or what he is doing. Comedy is a very difficult genre to write in and making the reader connect to it. Even if the book is written perfectly with fluid prose, there are no guarantees readers will connect the dots and enjoy it. So I do give the book props for giving it a shot because I liked some of the ideas, just not the execution.
Even though I didn't see regular word typos (but yes punctuation errors and plenty of name typos), I noticed the book suffers from very, very long sentences. I myself have this writing tic which I am trying to subdue whenever I can. Sometimes, I felt like I was out of breath just reading some of the passages of this book! I think there are some 40 word sentences in this book. If I had been an editor, I would have grabbed a gigantic red pen and strike out the monument of word salad spread all over the book. There's just so much excess description in the book that only distracts the reader. With a proper session of kill your darlings, the book would be much easier to read and at least 30% shorter. I would suspect if one went really unhinged cutting down the excess word count, the book could become only 60 pages long and still retain every important element of the plot. When it comes to satire, the best punch is whatever reaches the hook & release using the shortest amount of words.
Another issue I have with the book is that it doesn't have redeemable female characters. Every woman enters one of the following categories: mistress, concubine, airhead horny wife, half naked belly dancer, adult film actress, or a young woman that gets groped nonstop by an old guy named Shilton. Pretty much every scene with Shilton sees him groping women 24 hours a day. Nobody finds this behavior wrong in any way. From the looks of it, this behavior is not part of Barney's imagination either.
Here's an example of the text of what to expect: The stunned and embarrassed Chairman Shilton immediately stopped necking and petting with the Indian woman representative beside him, jumped from his seat and nervously hit his table. For context, this female representative was a diplomat from the United Nations.
Here's another zinger: Again, the broadcast stopped and was renewed once Shilton, elegantly dressed like a peacock, and holding a saxophone in his hands, appeared in the entrance to the UN building in front of a bank of television cameras, reporters, while winking at a woman near him. He caressed her, rested his saxophone on her breasts and legs and began playing. Again, he rubbed his body against hers, but he was forced to stop his caress to begin his speech.
Uhh... um... Yeahhhhh... Oh, here's another one.
His gray hair was spiked with dark highlights and thick gel. He held a beautiful woman in each hand, dressed to reveal a little and conceal less. He messed around with their bodies without a care in the world. The audience screamed and applauded Shilton with enthusiam until he raised his hands to silence them and sat down at his fancy table with the two women on it.
Criiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge! Shilton even refers to himself as a casanova, loved by women. Just so full of yikes vibes! I might need to scrub my eyes with detergent to unsee some of the really cringy passages scattered all over the book. The worst is that the worst gropers of the book are supposed to be a good guys. Like... I think I will root for the oligarch guy on this occasion. And so, while I am certain this book will have readers that will enjoy its quirky sense of humor, this book is a cut for the contest for me.
Status: Cut
Read: 28% (I ended here because it was the end of a chapter)
Once again, I did not read the blurb of the book and dived right in with zero idea what to expect. I soon realized this book is a satire comedy of an alternate future 800 years after our time where the world is governed by two opposing factions: a sort of democratically elected government that resembles far too much the US and an Arabic Muslim nation ruled with an iron fist by a warlord turned into oil Oligarch. Given the author lives in the Middle East, I thought the author's unique perspective would offer something different from most books.
In a way, the author certainly offers us uniqueness, just not in the way I expected. The book commences in some kind of Psychiatric hospital/Supermax prison called "The Mouse House" where the president of the democratic nation named Monro has arrived to rescue his Vicepresident Barney by replacing him and his bodyguards with identical looking doubles.
Since this book is intended to be satire, I didn't flinch too much by the odd first chapter. Given I have visited Al Capone's furbished prison cell in Philadelphia several years ago, I expected Barney to be enjoying some opulence. Everything hints Barney has schizophrenia. Since the 1st chapter is from his POV, it is possible the bodyguards laughing their hearts away smoking hash hookahs are just a figment of Barney's imagination.
Barney is then dragged around a lot in the early story with zero idea why. One chapter he sees Monro exchanging gifts with the Arab ruler Suleiman Aswad (who try to be cordial for the cameras but the two rulers really detest each other). And then in the following chapter, Monro invites Barney to yet another Supermax prison inhabited by retired Mossad agents and body doubles of aged-out Hollywood actors for no apparent reason. I guess Monro wants to become a movie producer? And then, Barney is brought back to the Mouse House to accompany Monro and visit a reknown terrorist wanted by Suleiman named Mike Satanic. As expected, Satanic's cell looks like a royal palace with a gigantic harem of concubines. It doesn't take long before Satanic escapes the mental hospital/prison and Monro declares war against Suleiman for giving the terrorist an important government position.
This is sort of where I left off the story after trying pretty hard to decipher what the book is about all along. To be honest, the only hints this book has any Sci-Fi elements at all is when some guy attaches a tv thingy to Monro's body that lets him watch porn films all day. The book mentions aliens exist, but it never specifies if they are outer space aliens or human illegal immigrants. I didn't quite understand why a book set almost 1000 years into the future still has present-day countries such as Germany or Mexico with zero name changes. I also didn't understand why a world set so far into the future is still dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels.
I liked the idea of having a satirical comedy set in the POV of an unreliable narrator who isn't entirely sure where he is or what he is doing. Comedy is a very difficult genre to write in and making the reader connect to it. Even if the book is written perfectly with fluid prose, there are no guarantees readers will connect the dots and enjoy it. So I do give the book props for giving it a shot because I liked some of the ideas, just not the execution.
Even though I didn't see regular word typos (but yes punctuation errors and plenty of name typos), I noticed the book suffers from very, very long sentences. I myself have this writing tic which I am trying to subdue whenever I can. Sometimes, I felt like I was out of breath just reading some of the passages of this book! I think there are some 40 word sentences in this book. If I had been an editor, I would have grabbed a gigantic red pen and strike out the monument of word salad spread all over the book. There's just so much excess description in the book that only distracts the reader. With a proper session of kill your darlings, the book would be much easier to read and at least 30% shorter. I would suspect if one went really unhinged cutting down the excess word count, the book could become only 60 pages long and still retain every important element of the plot. When it comes to satire, the best punch is whatever reaches the hook & release using the shortest amount of words.
Another issue I have with the book is that it doesn't have redeemable female characters. Every woman enters one of the following categories: mistress, concubine, airhead horny wife, half naked belly dancer, adult film actress, or a young woman that gets groped nonstop by an old guy named Shilton. Pretty much every scene with Shilton sees him groping women 24 hours a day. Nobody finds this behavior wrong in any way. From the looks of it, this behavior is not part of Barney's imagination either.
Here's an example of the text of what to expect: The stunned and embarrassed Chairman Shilton immediately stopped necking and petting with the Indian woman representative beside him, jumped from his seat and nervously hit his table. For context, this female representative was a diplomat from the United Nations.
Here's another zinger: Again, the broadcast stopped and was renewed once Shilton, elegantly dressed like a peacock, and holding a saxophone in his hands, appeared in the entrance to the UN building in front of a bank of television cameras, reporters, while winking at a woman near him. He caressed her, rested his saxophone on her breasts and legs and began playing. Again, he rubbed his body against hers, but he was forced to stop his caress to begin his speech.
Uhh... um... Yeahhhhh... Oh, here's another one.
His gray hair was spiked with dark highlights and thick gel. He held a beautiful woman in each hand, dressed to reveal a little and conceal less. He messed around with their bodies without a care in the world. The audience screamed and applauded Shilton with enthusiam until he raised his hands to silence them and sat down at his fancy table with the two women on it.
Criiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge! Shilton even refers to himself as a casanova, loved by women. Just so full of yikes vibes! I might need to scrub my eyes with detergent to unsee some of the really cringy passages scattered all over the book. The worst is that the worst gropers of the book are supposed to be a good guys. Like... I think I will root for the oligarch guy on this occasion. And so, while I am certain this book will have readers that will enjoy its quirky sense of humor, this book is a cut for the contest for me.
dnf
October 24, 2023Disclaimer. Reading as a judge for SPSFC3. This is my opinion only, other Judges opinions may well vary.
Whilst I'm usually a fan of political satire Escalation just wasn't my "cup of tea" as they say. I did try my hardest to reach 30% but the sentence structure, grammer and prose had me bailing quite early. (has this book been translated into English by any chance?)
I also wasn't impressed with the way women were portrayed in the part I did read. If they weren't seen as sexual objects then any woman showing any sign of intelligence they seemingly appeared to be the enemy. Red flags for me.
Unfortunately I won't be putting this book forward.
Whilst I'm usually a fan of political satire Escalation just wasn't my "cup of tea" as they say. I did try my hardest to reach 30% but the sentence structure, grammer and prose had me bailing quite early. (has this book been translated into English by any chance?)
I also wasn't impressed with the way women were portrayed in the part I did read. If they weren't seen as sexual objects then any woman showing any sign of intelligence they seemingly appeared to be the enemy. Red flags for me.
Unfortunately I won't be putting this book forward.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews