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The Land of the Moepek
New Fantasy Adventure Book for Kids 7-12 Years. The Adventures of the Teen The Land of the Moepek is a fantasy tale full of dangers and adventure. Three teenagers Billy who is seventeen, Thomas who is sixteen and Rebecca who is fifteen are from Britain and are the children of archaeologists. During a family vacation to Africa they meet Samirah and her two best friends Adam and Atikah. The six teenagers travel through the Pyramid of the Moepek and find their way to the underground city of the Moepek civilization using an ancient map. They not only encounter wild animals, dinosaurs, warriors, and assassins, but also realize they they are prisoners in the strange underground world. There is Naeduur who is the head warrior in charge of protecting the king and his royal family. Naeduur is furious at the six teens for entering into the Land of the Moepek. Naeduur would like nothing more than to destroy the teenagers. There is also Isabella. She is very powerful and can perform all kinds of magic. She will stop at nothing to destroy her enemies and those that get in her way. The Land of the Moepek is full of traitors and plots to destroy the entire royal family. Princess Assuenta with the help of the Teen Archaeologists must work to stop the assassination of her father the king and the destruction of her entire family. Not even her parents believe their daughter the princess. Princess Assuenta must find a way to make them believe or her father will die. The people of the Moepek are an extremely wealthy civilization with riches beyond the teens' imaginations. But all their wealth means nothing if they can't survive the gigantic flying dinosaurs and the gigantic gorilla creature that threatens them.
230 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 18, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 12, 2023
Long thought missing, the full text of The Adventures of the Teen Archeologists: (Book 1) The Land of the Moepek, by Larry Ellis and Denise Brown Ellis, has been found!
And it is glorious. I encourage everyone to read it. Ordinarily I would not direct anyone to a not-clearly-legal source for a book, but this is a special occasion. The book is long out of print, hopefully removed by the authors out of shame, with likely only a handful of printed copies in existence. Were it even possible to buy it, the money would go to AuthorHouse, imprint of the scuzzy, scammy, predatory Author Solutions group of vanity presses and worthless, extortion-priced self-publishing production and marketing "services", and they aren't exactly well known for things like "paying authors their royalties". (If either author were to identify a way to reimburse them directly, I would happily throw them some bones.) The only reason the book can now be read in its entirety is thanks to the tireless efforts of a listener of the beyond-excellent '372 Pages We'll Never Get Back' podcast, to whom the literary world now owes a debt of gratitude. You can now experience the Moepek madness for yourself at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/the-adven...
There are many bad books in the world. Many of them should be required reading for aspiring authors, as examples of what not to do. This is not even one of those. The Ellises's books, this one and Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes, are so incredibly, uniquely, hilariously dumb, it's unfathomable that even the most amateur writer would ever stumble witlessly into replicating their mistakes. It can't even be compared to the writing of a child or unhinged teen fanfiction; no, the special kind of dumb found here could only be produced by very stupid adults; Florida Man and Woman at that. These books are Dunning-Kruger in action, and they are marvelous. I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard and often as I did during the last several chapters in particular.
There's simply so much that is dumb within these pages that it's impossible to properly convey it in a review. The snippets from my original partial-text review below are the merest tip of the iceberg. It starts immediately with numerous characters that are clearly never going to be mentioned again, then progresses to the authors' passively and ignorantly racist conceptions of Africa, their inexcusable butchering of basic geography, and the countless poorly constructed names. Oh, the names . . . others have done the work of listing them all. I'll merely contribute my favourites: Cleopata, and the girl child Caligula.
The writing craft is beyond laughable, the story construction is baffling, the constant bitter sniping between brother and sister is incomparable, and the "sarcastically" count reaches 79 for the whole text, perhaps two instances of which are, in fact, sarcasm. Sharing with Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes propensities for slapping of faces, for characters thrown into trees, for beginning to sword fight, for people and objects disappearing in puffs of smoke . . . put it all together and you have a literally amazing book!
It was wonderful reading this after Antigua, but if you were to try just one, try Moepek.
*************************************
(Original review, based only on preview pages)
This book has been mostly wiped from existence. This was the correct course of action. After the critical response to the authors' hilariously bad self-published Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes (which I have on standby for a proper read and review in the near future), they still felt the need to take another crack at this business. I think co-author Denise Brown Ellis is the primary person responsible for Antigua and this particular train wreck, as the one of the pair who was at one time a vocal would-be defender of this pair of inarguably awful books. Her co-conspirator Larry Ellis may have continued to write and publish, but there seem to be multiple Larry Ellises conflated on the Goodreads author pages. Is this the same person who wrote the foreword to Black Fatherhood: Trials & Tribulations, Testimony & Triumph and/or who wrote Here's How To: Plug-Fishing for Salmon? In short, I don't really know if either Ellis honed their writing craft any further, and neither do I care.
I am unable to locate a copy of Moepek, but the Google Books preview still exists, so I have read and am basing this review on pages 5-21, 23-24, 26-28, and 49 only. Really, it's quite enough to fairly judge this work. Both Moepek and Antigua were self-published through AuthorHouse. They are from a time of legend before e-book publishing really took off with Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords and all of that. Nowadays, anyone can get their bad book out there at zero cost, but back then you had to lay out some cash with a vanity press to get your book out there, we're talking about a couple thousand bucks here most likely. Back then, it meant something to put out a terrible self-published book. It took (misplaced) confidence, (ill-advised) grit, and (delusional) faith in your product, along with a bag of cash that you'd never see again.
The Land of the Moepek is perhaps slightly better than Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes, if the dearth of exclamation points is any indication. Somehow the target audience for this book, per the blurb, is middle graders, while Antigua was intended for children ag 9-13 per Ms. Ellis. The writing level is more akin to early-reader chapter books, in my opinion,.
Here we go:
And it is glorious. I encourage everyone to read it. Ordinarily I would not direct anyone to a not-clearly-legal source for a book, but this is a special occasion. The book is long out of print, hopefully removed by the authors out of shame, with likely only a handful of printed copies in existence. Were it even possible to buy it, the money would go to AuthorHouse, imprint of the scuzzy, scammy, predatory Author Solutions group of vanity presses and worthless, extortion-priced self-publishing production and marketing "services", and they aren't exactly well known for things like "paying authors their royalties". (If either author were to identify a way to reimburse them directly, I would happily throw them some bones.) The only reason the book can now be read in its entirety is thanks to the tireless efforts of a listener of the beyond-excellent '372 Pages We'll Never Get Back' podcast, to whom the literary world now owes a debt of gratitude. You can now experience the Moepek madness for yourself at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/the-adven...
There are many bad books in the world. Many of them should be required reading for aspiring authors, as examples of what not to do. This is not even one of those. The Ellises's books, this one and Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes, are so incredibly, uniquely, hilariously dumb, it's unfathomable that even the most amateur writer would ever stumble witlessly into replicating their mistakes. It can't even be compared to the writing of a child or unhinged teen fanfiction; no, the special kind of dumb found here could only be produced by very stupid adults; Florida Man and Woman at that. These books are Dunning-Kruger in action, and they are marvelous. I can't remember the last time I laughed as hard and often as I did during the last several chapters in particular.
There's simply so much that is dumb within these pages that it's impossible to properly convey it in a review. The snippets from my original partial-text review below are the merest tip of the iceberg. It starts immediately with numerous characters that are clearly never going to be mentioned again, then progresses to the authors' passively and ignorantly racist conceptions of Africa, their inexcusable butchering of basic geography, and the countless poorly constructed names. Oh, the names . . . others have done the work of listing them all. I'll merely contribute my favourites: Cleopata, and the girl child Caligula.
The writing craft is beyond laughable, the story construction is baffling, the constant bitter sniping between brother and sister is incomparable, and the "sarcastically" count reaches 79 for the whole text, perhaps two instances of which are, in fact, sarcasm. Sharing with Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes propensities for slapping of faces, for characters thrown into trees, for beginning to sword fight, for people and objects disappearing in puffs of smoke . . . put it all together and you have a literally amazing book!
It was wonderful reading this after Antigua, but if you were to try just one, try Moepek.
*************************************
(Original review, based only on preview pages)
This book has been mostly wiped from existence. This was the correct course of action. After the critical response to the authors' hilariously bad self-published Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes (which I have on standby for a proper read and review in the near future), they still felt the need to take another crack at this business. I think co-author Denise Brown Ellis is the primary person responsible for Antigua and this particular train wreck, as the one of the pair who was at one time a vocal would-be defender of this pair of inarguably awful books. Her co-conspirator Larry Ellis may have continued to write and publish, but there seem to be multiple Larry Ellises conflated on the Goodreads author pages. Is this the same person who wrote the foreword to Black Fatherhood: Trials & Tribulations, Testimony & Triumph and/or who wrote Here's How To: Plug-Fishing for Salmon? In short, I don't really know if either Ellis honed their writing craft any further, and neither do I care.
I am unable to locate a copy of Moepek, but the Google Books preview still exists, so I have read and am basing this review on pages 5-21, 23-24, 26-28, and 49 only. Really, it's quite enough to fairly judge this work. Both Moepek and Antigua were self-published through AuthorHouse. They are from a time of legend before e-book publishing really took off with Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords and all of that. Nowadays, anyone can get their bad book out there at zero cost, but back then you had to lay out some cash with a vanity press to get your book out there, we're talking about a couple thousand bucks here most likely. Back then, it meant something to put out a terrible self-published book. It took (misplaced) confidence, (ill-advised) grit, and (delusional) faith in your product, along with a bag of cash that you'd never see again.
The Land of the Moepek is perhaps slightly better than Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes, if the dearth of exclamation points is any indication. Somehow the target audience for this book, per the blurb, is middle graders, while Antigua was intended for children ag 9-13 per Ms. Ellis. The writing level is more akin to early-reader chapter books, in my opinion,.
Here we go:
Rebecca looked at her mother and asked sarcastically, "Mom, when we return to England from Africa do we have to bring Thomas back with us?"So now we know that the authors don't actually know any teenagers but have heard that they are often sarcastic. Keep in mind, this is all from just the twenty pages available in preview. There is plenty of reason to think that the authors assume their readers are morons. It's written entirely in declarative sentences and is rife with repetition. Consider this passage, after the Turner family (Anthony, Elizabeth, and their three children Billy, Thomas and Rebecca; yes, they're white) have traveled from England to Nigeria on their private jet (archeology pays well, it seems) and go to the home of friends of the parents, Babatunde and Oluremi.
. . .
Thomas said sarcastically, "Rebecca you haven't done this much housework since you were born."
. . .
Thomas said sarcastically, "Mom told us to stay in the town square. This doens't look like the town square to me."
. . .
"I hate to admit this because I usually don't agree with anything she says, but Rebecca is right, " Thomas said sarcastically.
. . .
Rebecca said sarcastically, "Well it really doesn't matter if Thomas gets locked up on punishment."
. . .
"Well it looks like we're not the only ones who are going to be on punishment for the rest of our lives," Thomas said sarcastically.
. . .
Thomas asked sarcastically, "Hey, you already have backpacks for all of us?"
. . .
Thomas said sarcastically, "Alright. But let Rebecca go first. If any lions or tigers are out there they can eat her first."
. . .
"Yeah Rebecca," Thomas said sarcastically. "Their legs and necks are as skinny as yours are."
. . .
Thomas whispered sarcastically, "Go on Rebecca. Walk right on over there and play with baby lions in the presence of ferocious wild adult lions."
Oluremi yelled out to her daughter and father, "Samirah and Jabril the meal is ready."Thank you for explaining the family relationships six times in a row, much appreciated. The characters are idiots in their own right:
Babatunde said, "This is Samirah our daughter and Jabril. Jabril is my wife Oluremi's father."
Jabril said, "Hello, I'm Oluremi's father. Babatunde is my son-in-law. Welcome to our home. This is my granddaughter Samirah."
Next, they came across a rather funny looking creature. Samirah asked, "Rebecca I bet you don't know what that is?"Boy, you are sixteen years old. In what world does a centipede look like a scorpion? The teens idiotically see a series of animals, learn some preschool-level facts about them ("The group of lions is called a pride," Samirah whispered softly) and move on. It continues in its droning cadence made by simple sentences of similar length. Any potential action or excitement is murdered by the extremely enengaging writing.
Rebecca said, "Let me see." She walked over to where Samirah was. Samirah pointed down to the ground showed Rebecca the creature.
"I know what that is," Thomas said with confidence. "It's a scorpion."
"No Thomas it is not a scorpion," Samirah responded. "It's actually a centipede."
The teens continued their journey through the African jungle. Suddenly, hunters ran from behind several of the trees and bushes and started to chase after the teens. All of them were carrying spears. They were yelling and screaming at the teens as they ran after them.That is the most boring account of encounters with wild creatures imaginable. Keep in mind, this enormous snake had a whole adult human inside of it already when it wrapped itself around another man to constrict him. Wait! It gets even more boring!
"In here," Billy yelled out as he led the teens into a small cave hidden in the jungle. What they didn't know was that the cave was full of bats. The bats started to fly around in the cave in a fury and then flew out of the cave. The bats were more frightened than the teens were. The African hunters ran up to where the cave was located. Suddenly, the hunters stopped dead in their tracks. They were terrified. The teens saw a gigantic snake crawling over the cave and heading for the hunters. . . . One of the hunters lost his balance and fell. The snake slithered right up to the man that had fallen and swallowed him whole. The snake went after another hunter. The hunter was so terrified that he just stood in place. He was too scared to move. He tried to run away but his legs were frozen in place. The snake slithered right up to the man. The snake wrapped its long body completely around the man so that no one could see him. Then the snake squeezed the man very tightly until he couldn't breathe anymore. The remaining hunters ran off into the jungle and hid from the snake.
The teens slowly left the cave and started to walk through the jungle to get as far away from the hunters and the snake as they could and to continue searching for the Pyramid of the Moepeks. Suddenly they walked right up to a strange pyramid. It was the Pyramid of the Moepeks. They finally made it.Wow, what a quest! Surely, though, unlocking the pyramid's secrets will be more difficult?
Rebecca asked, "Samirah, is this it? Is this the pyramid where we can find the lost Civilizataion of the Moepek?"
"Yes Rebecca. This is the pyramid that the map was referring to. It is the Pyramid of the Moepeks. We have made it. We are here."
Thomas walked over to one of the walls and admired the beautiful ancient hieroglyphic writing. He leaned up against the wall and then suddenly the wall mysteriously opened up and a secret passageway deep into the pyramid was revealed.Or maybe not.
November 17, 2023
Here's the first book I read as the episodes of the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast about it came out. I'll definitely continue doing that, and contributing to the Patreon, because I loved seeing the incredulous commentary come through on Discord. It's a fun group to be a part of.
As for this book itself? It was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. As someone in the Discord chat mentioned, the Ellises take all the tropes of "lost world/civilization" and just dump them all into the same story. Things happen suddenly a lot, whether tagged as "suddenly" or just happening with literally no establishing context. People yell a lot. Teens act like early elementary-school-aged children. Archaeologists, teen or otherwise, do no actual archaeology. A wicked sorceress is wicked for a while, then . A king is a total jerk, until he isn't. Duels break out constantly, and nearly always end with people getting punched in the face. Attacks by gigantic animals!
So there's a lot going on. Much of it doesn't make any sense. It got a little boring when I tried to read more than a chapter or so at a time, because I got used to being "suddenly"-ed all the time, so spreading out my reading in between podcast episodes worked out well. I wouldn't recommend this book in any context but the one I read it in, unless you're like Marc, who seems to have developed a refined palate for this kind of thing.
As for this book itself? It was a lot more enjoyable than I expected. As someone in the Discord chat mentioned, the Ellises take all the tropes of "lost world/civilization" and just dump them all into the same story. Things happen suddenly a lot, whether tagged as "suddenly" or just happening with literally no establishing context. People yell a lot. Teens act like early elementary-school-aged children. Archaeologists, teen or otherwise, do no actual archaeology. A wicked sorceress is wicked for a while, then . A king is a total jerk, until he isn't. Duels break out constantly, and nearly always end with people getting punched in the face. Attacks by gigantic animals!
So there's a lot going on. Much of it doesn't make any sense. It got a little boring when I tried to read more than a chapter or so at a time, because I got used to being "suddenly"-ed all the time, so spreading out my reading in between podcast episodes worked out well. I wouldn't recommend this book in any context but the one I read it in, unless you're like Marc, who seems to have developed a refined palate for this kind of thing.
November 6, 2023
Read along with the podcast 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back.
This wasn't a book; this was an endurance test.
This wasn't a book; this was an endurance test.
October 7, 2023
Sublimely stupid.
October 18, 2024
After grinding my way through the first few long chapter, the way too short back end and trying to remember a cast of far far too many characters for 142 pages book I’ve come to the realization that, yes this is Botha creative masterpiece and also a dumpster fire of a novel. I mean dinosaurs, skinny ape monsters, an ice age dawn of the dinosaurs like underground world, raiders, sword fights, magic, treasure hunting, romance, imprisonment, and an odd level of growing understanding and trust all in such a short span is kind of incredible. Say that though, I think if the authors came back and made a revision of this down the line with a lot slower pacing and care than this could easily be a wild but manageable and somewhat enduring storyline of maybe even two to three longer 200-300 word count individuals books. But being that this is nearly lost to time with the exception of kindly shared pdf docs, I don’t sadly see that ever actually becoming a reality.
October 13, 2023
DNF
I tried. I really did. I could only force myself through one chapter. This wasn't "so bad, it's good," this is just the worst piece of crap I've ever had the displeasure of reading - and I read BOTH Forrest Gump books and RP1. To those who voted for this on Patreon, I have nothing but contempt. I hated every damn word of this that I read. If the two pain in the ass dipshits had all of their bickering dialogue removed, the chapter would have been drastically reduced in length. I couldn't stand the time jumps without section breaks or the wall of text, stream of consciousness paragraphs blurted out by all of the characters. I hate, hate, hate this. Even the 372 Pages discussion about it isn't enjoyable or entertaining. Whoever made this book disappear from the face of the earth so that a PDF from someone on Discord is the only copy available, God bless you, you've done the Lord's work.
I tried. I really did. I could only force myself through one chapter. This wasn't "so bad, it's good," this is just the worst piece of crap I've ever had the displeasure of reading - and I read BOTH Forrest Gump books and RP1. To those who voted for this on Patreon, I have nothing but contempt. I hated every damn word of this that I read. If the two pain in the ass dipshits had all of their bickering dialogue removed, the chapter would have been drastically reduced in length. I couldn't stand the time jumps without section breaks or the wall of text, stream of consciousness paragraphs blurted out by all of the characters. I hate, hate, hate this. Even the 372 Pages discussion about it isn't enjoyable or entertaining. Whoever made this book disappear from the face of the earth so that a PDF from someone on Discord is the only copy available, God bless you, you've done the Lord's work.
November 11, 2023
Read this for the book club podcast 372 Pages We'll Never get back. The book was laughably bad, but the podcast made it a fun experience.
Read
December 15, 2023I don't even know what to say, that 372 Pages hasn't already said better.
November 22, 2023
I finished reading this book and then three flying dinosaurs appeared and carried me off to the island where the dinosaurs live.
372 pages you’ll never get back.
372 pages you’ll never get back.
November 17, 2023
I have no idea how to even rate something like this. I would never have read it not for the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast. First and foremost, it's terrible. Absolutely terrible. But it's so thoroughly terrible in such a naive way that it ends up being sort of charming, in the same way that something like The Eye of Argon is charming. So, 1 star for the book's actual merits, and five for how hard I laughed reading it, averaged to three.
August 6, 2025
I finally finished the boring trudge through this nightmare.
I'll give it this: It was better than Antigua, but that doesn't actually say anything. At least there was the tiniest bit of a plot, but it was otherwise more of the same endless listing of characters we never see again, pointless and circular conversations, and just random shit happening out of nowhere....
Looking at you, random flying dinosaur attacks that no one seems to think about 5 minutes after they happen.
Thank god there are no more books by the Ellises.
I'll give it this: It was better than Antigua, but that doesn't actually say anything. At least there was the tiniest bit of a plot, but it was otherwise more of the same endless listing of characters we never see again, pointless and circular conversations, and just random shit happening out of nowhere....
Looking at you, random flying dinosaur attacks that no one seems to think about 5 minutes after they happen.
Thank god there are no more books by the Ellises.
December 2, 2023
(This was another 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back selection and a shared read with Donald.)
So. What can one say about The Land of the Moepek, really? It is utterly bananas and hilarious—just read the blurb for a tiny taste of the writing style.
If you're the right kind of reader, this book (and the podcast episodes devoted to it) will be a source of amazing entertainment. If you're not, you'll be convinced we're all nuts, my friend. (Sorry, that was more a reference to the authors' other novel, Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes—also covered by 372 Pages and also highly recommended.)
I'm giving it 5 stars out of appreciation for the joy it gave.
So. What can one say about The Land of the Moepek, really? It is utterly bananas and hilarious—just read the blurb for a tiny taste of the writing style.
If you're the right kind of reader, this book (and the podcast episodes devoted to it) will be a source of amazing entertainment. If you're not, you'll be convinced we're all nuts, my friend. (Sorry, that was more a reference to the authors' other novel, Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes—also covered by 372 Pages and also highly recommended.)
I'm giving it 5 stars out of appreciation for the joy it gave.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews