- Joined
- Jan 23, 2022
Hey, so I'm back. And against better judgement, I read Apostles of Mercy.
Well, tried to read it. Honestly, this book is so poorly written and stupid I genuinely cannot be bothered to make a full summary of the plot. Mostly because there isn't any plot to speak of; it's just a bunch of random loosely connected scenes of things happening, and Cora just kinda standing around slack-jawed while said things eventually resolve themselves. You could replace Cora with a blind chihuahua and the plot would probably still play out exactly the same.
I'll just give you guys the highlights (mostly in chronological order). Spoilers ahead, in case anyone here was genuinely planning on reading it:
There's an approximately 2 year time skip from the end of the last book.
Cora is so traumatized by the death of her Iranian spy fuckbuddy at the end of the second book, that she has sworn off men and became a pillow princess (on the topic of princess, Cora's black girlfriend's description sounds an awful lot like Princess Weekes...) So alas, no sex/intimacy scenes with Ampersand. Heck, Ampersand barely shows up in the book. Also Ampersand lives in Japan now, because Japan thinks Ampersand's psychic space chicken alien race is "neat" and grants his entire race Japanese citizenship.
The baby eating Reptilians from the first book, the ones from the first book who are off-handedly implied to have caused the medieval black plague (that conveniently spared Jews) finally show up. Its confirmed in-story, the Reptilians did indeed invent the Black Plague and spread it to humans. Also the race still has that weird dogwhistle government code name that alludes to Jews: "Sloop John B." (the Hebrew shabbat folk song Dror Yikra is often sung to the tune of Sloop John B.)
The Reptilians live in multiple secret hidden underground cities, David Icke-style, while working on their new plan to eradicate the humansthe goyim : Super Ebola. The Reptilians claim they don't want to kill all humans on Earth, just the majority of humanity, in order to save the planet's biodiversity because something something global warming (don't worry, they'll leave at least 16 million humans alive. Like, they literally mention they want to keep a small number of humans alive). They plan to release the Super Ebola virus after they get around to wiping out all the non-Reptilian aliens hiding out on Earth. So plot wise, not anytime soon - since the first book implies there's thousands of hidden alien races currently operating on Earth. (Presumably races infinitely smarter & more competent than Ampersand's race of Giant Psychic Chickens).
A bunch of dumb stuff happens, & suddenly Cora is assigned the job of helping Sol (the Jewish CIA guy) track down Reptilians in their underground cities. Lindsay continues to imply that Sol had prior interaction/a rapport with Reptilians, but doesn't explain what kind of interaction. Lindsay assumes her audience has enough knowledge of antisemitic blood libel to put the pieces together (i.e. Jews are shapeshifting lizard people that eat babies). We also find out Sol survived 9/11 because he didn't go to work that day (because Lindsay can't help alluding to the conspiracy that no Jews died on 9/11).
Despite President Cheney averting the financial crisis via the powers of racism in the second book, the failing American economy is suddenly an in-universe problem. The new (?) financial crisis is triggered by America's new libertarian tea party candidate president Julian Todd, who was elected into office after Cheney. Due to everyone being terrified of evil aliens after learning of their existence in book 1, the new presidential administration/congress is spending way too much on space weapons/defense, and had to astronomically raise corporate and personal income taxes. You know, the sorta policies you'd expect from the very first libertarian presidential administration - drastic increases in both government spending & taxes
A strong thread in the series, & this book in particular, is that liberals (in universe) think its racist to want to defend Earth from evil space aliens (I.e. space aliens that wish to destroy humanity and colonize the Earth). Like, in between multiple chapters is random excerpts from talk shows of conservative politicians being grilled by MSM liberal talking heads who call them out the politicians their "racism" against aliens. This plot thread unintentionally reads like satire, because tankies are portrayed as being so invested in identity politics they'd rather risk planetary annihilation than be accused of xenophobia.
So anyway, more stupid stuff happens that I can't be bothered to explain; they go to the Philippines at one point because someone emailed Cora a photo of a Reptilian.
While on a plane Cora's girlfriend randomly gets abducted by the Reptilians and taken to one of their secret underground bases, because the Reptilians were curious (no, seriously - this is the in-book explanation for her abduction). I guess they needed a lesbian to explain scissoring to them. After hanging out with Cora's gf for a bit, the Reptilian scientists are like "yeah nah, she sucks" and infect her Super Ebola as a test subject. Don't worry, Cora, Sol, Nikola, and Ampersand conveniently teleport over to the secret base, eviscerate a few of the baby eating Reptilians, than force the Reptilian scientist at glass shard-point to heal Cora's GF of Super Ebola. Cora's GF gets better. I forgot what happened after this, pretty sure they just threw their hands up in the air and decided to leave the Reptilians be for the time being.They were prolly worried about the Jewish space lasers
When they all make it back to America, the Libertarian Neo-Con President pardons Cora's thinly veiled Alex Jones-parody dad because he's a huge fan of his work. Cora says goodbye to Sol, and thanks him for helping her/calls him the only good CIA officer she knows the only good Jew she knows. If you squint (heh) you could argue said scene implies they were fucking off screen, on the down-low.
The tankie MSM invites Cora to accept a posthumous award being given to Kaveh. Because even two years after his death, they're still all just so blown away by how stunning and brave Kaveh was for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C. § 794). Cora, being the future ISIS-bride that she is, gives a long-winded speech about how post-9/11 national security agencies are big racist meanies that use the Patriot Act as an excuse to pick on poor 'lil innocent Muslim Americans like Kaveh. Because according to Lindsay, it was Islamophobic for the post-9/11 feds to monitor and prosecute Muslim Americans who leak top secret classified intelligence documents to hostile foreign entities. Cora's all "blah blah, Kaveh only committed crimes against the state to raise awareness of CIA human rights violations, blah blah Al Qaeda terrorists didn't do anything wrongit was actually the sneaky lizard Jews, blah blah...."
After the award ceremony, Ampersand tells Cora that his home planet's forces will prolly come to Earth soon and kill everyone. The book ends with the implication that there will be an all-out alien war on Earth at some point in the near-ish future, but Cora and Ampersand will be doing absolutely nothing to stop it because they're accelerations and plan to take advantage of the invasion chaos to enact their own day of the rope. I'm not even joking, the book literally ends with them planning to go full Turner Diaries, and take over America because *checks notes* its secretly controlled by evil militant Jew lizard people from out space - the true masterminds of 9/11 and most world conflicts
I guess its possible Lindsay could write another book about the invasion, but considering that Ampersand's race is weak to metal shovels, & the newNeo-Con Libertarian President just bankrupted America to stockpile nukes (not to mention, the cave dwelling baby eating Jewish Reptilians prolly have some space lasers) humanity will absolutely win said war.
Well, tried to read it. Honestly, this book is so poorly written and stupid I genuinely cannot be bothered to make a full summary of the plot. Mostly because there isn't any plot to speak of; it's just a bunch of random loosely connected scenes of things happening, and Cora just kinda standing around slack-jawed while said things eventually resolve themselves. You could replace Cora with a blind chihuahua and the plot would probably still play out exactly the same.
I'll just give you guys the highlights (mostly in chronological order). Spoilers ahead, in case anyone here was genuinely planning on reading it:
There's an approximately 2 year time skip from the end of the last book.
Cora is so traumatized by the death of her Iranian spy fuckbuddy at the end of the second book, that she has sworn off men and became a pillow princess (on the topic of princess, Cora's black girlfriend's description sounds an awful lot like Princess Weekes...) So alas, no sex/intimacy scenes with Ampersand. Heck, Ampersand barely shows up in the book. Also Ampersand lives in Japan now, because Japan thinks Ampersand's psychic space chicken alien race is "neat" and grants his entire race Japanese citizenship.
The baby eating Reptilians from the first book, the ones from the first book who are off-handedly implied to have caused the medieval black plague (that conveniently spared Jews) finally show up. Its confirmed in-story, the Reptilians did indeed invent the Black Plague and spread it to humans. Also the race still has that weird dogwhistle government code name that alludes to Jews: "Sloop John B." (the Hebrew shabbat folk song Dror Yikra is often sung to the tune of Sloop John B.)
The Reptilians live in multiple secret hidden underground cities, David Icke-style, while working on their new plan to eradicate the humans
A bunch of dumb stuff happens, & suddenly Cora is assigned the job of helping Sol (the Jewish CIA guy) track down Reptilians in their underground cities. Lindsay continues to imply that Sol had prior interaction/a rapport with Reptilians, but doesn't explain what kind of interaction. Lindsay assumes her audience has enough knowledge of antisemitic blood libel to put the pieces together (i.e. Jews are shapeshifting lizard people that eat babies). We also find out Sol survived 9/11 because he didn't go to work that day (because Lindsay can't help alluding to the conspiracy that no Jews died on 9/11).
Despite President Cheney averting the financial crisis via the powers of racism in the second book, the failing American economy is suddenly an in-universe problem. The new (?) financial crisis is triggered by America's new libertarian tea party candidate president Julian Todd, who was elected into office after Cheney. Due to everyone being terrified of evil aliens after learning of their existence in book 1, the new presidential administration/congress is spending way too much on space weapons/defense, and had to astronomically raise corporate and personal income taxes. You know, the sorta policies you'd expect from the very first libertarian presidential administration - drastic increases in both government spending & taxes
A strong thread in the series, & this book in particular, is that liberals (in universe) think its racist to want to defend Earth from evil space aliens (I.e. space aliens that wish to destroy humanity and colonize the Earth). Like, in between multiple chapters is random excerpts from talk shows of conservative politicians being grilled by MSM liberal talking heads who call them out the politicians their "racism" against aliens. This plot thread unintentionally reads like satire, because tankies are portrayed as being so invested in identity politics they'd rather risk planetary annihilation than be accused of xenophobia.
So anyway, more stupid stuff happens that I can't be bothered to explain; they go to the Philippines at one point because someone emailed Cora a photo of a Reptilian.
While on a plane Cora's girlfriend randomly gets abducted by the Reptilians and taken to one of their secret underground bases, because the Reptilians were curious (no, seriously - this is the in-book explanation for her abduction). I guess they needed a lesbian to explain scissoring to them. After hanging out with Cora's gf for a bit, the Reptilian scientists are like "yeah nah, she sucks" and infect her Super Ebola as a test subject. Don't worry, Cora, Sol, Nikola, and Ampersand conveniently teleport over to the secret base, eviscerate a few of the baby eating Reptilians, than force the Reptilian scientist at glass shard-point to heal Cora's GF of Super Ebola. Cora's GF gets better. I forgot what happened after this, pretty sure they just threw their hands up in the air and decided to leave the Reptilians be for the time being.
When they all make it back to America, the Libertarian Neo-Con President pardons Cora's thinly veiled Alex Jones-parody dad because he's a huge fan of his work. Cora says goodbye to Sol, and thanks him for helping her/calls him the only good CIA officer she knows
The tankie MSM invites Cora to accept a posthumous award being given to Kaveh. Because even two years after his death, they're still all just so blown away by how stunning and brave Kaveh was for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U.S.C. § 794). Cora, being the future ISIS-bride that she is, gives a long-winded speech about how post-9/11 national security agencies are big racist meanies that use the Patriot Act as an excuse to pick on poor 'lil innocent Muslim Americans like Kaveh. Because according to Lindsay, it was Islamophobic for the post-9/11 feds to monitor and prosecute Muslim Americans who leak top secret classified intelligence documents to hostile foreign entities. Cora's all "blah blah, Kaveh only committed crimes against the state to raise awareness of CIA human rights violations, blah blah Al Qaeda terrorists didn't do anything wrong
After the award ceremony, Ampersand tells Cora that his home planet's forces will prolly come to Earth soon and kill everyone. The book ends with the implication that there will be an all-out alien war on Earth at some point in the near-ish future, but Cora and Ampersand will be doing absolutely nothing to stop it because they're accelerations and plan to take advantage of the invasion chaos to enact their own day of the rope. I'm not even joking, the book literally ends with them planning to go full Turner Diaries, and take over America because *checks notes* its secretly controlled by evil militant Jew lizard people from out space - the true masterminds of 9/11 and most world conflicts
I guess its possible Lindsay could write another book about the invasion, but considering that Ampersand's race is weak to metal shovels, & the new
TLDR, lefties eat their own, as is tradition.
