Some of you will remember the badly written books by John Ringo a couple of years ago, covered by a little blog on Livejournal that used the words “OH JOHN RINGO NO” each time a horrible passage was transcribed onto the site. The same site has since covered a bit of Piers Anthony, an author with a terrifically bad reputation whom I’ve had the fortune of never reading.
I always knew he was a skeevy motherfucker, but I never thought his writing would be this bad, though I’m sure Angie Gallant’s read a few of them.
Some of you folks may recall that a while ago I mentioned that the curious thing about Piers Anthony, to me, is that while people often dump on Anthony for being weird, skeevy, disturbing, and that sort of thing, nobody doing so ever mentions the stuff that I find to be really disturbing. (And remember, when we say “Piers Anthony” we’re talking about the guy who wrote protoplasmic sex scenes and a story with a dude boinking a mentally retarded woman who was hooked up to a milking machine.) This is odd as hell, because I remember glancing at the book when it first came out, doing a massive double-take on reading that passage, and thinking, “Holy dogshit, this’ll get him run out of town on a rail.” Curiously, that never happened.
I’m referring to TATHAM MOUND, in which Piers Anthony’s hero boinks a ten-year-old girl, using honey for lube.
Thereafter he had the favors of many maidens, some quite young. In the Castile tribe a girl was not supposed to indulge in sexual activity until she was married, which could be some winters after she was fully developed. Here she was free to do it the moment her breasts formed, or even somewhat before, if she felt inclined. Already he had learned enough to know that age was not the criterion; the will of the maiden was. A man could not force a woman, unless he was married to her; he could only do what she wished. Among them was one who seemed to be hardly ten winters old, and her body was not yet developed. She had no prior experience. But she desired the favor of the handsome visitor, and he was obliged to render it. She alone came to him purely for love; she was smitten with him, and afraid he would depart before she grew old enough to attract him, so she came now. It was his first conquest of a genuinely inexperienced girl, and he had the wit to proceed with caution, so that she would not be hurt. In fact, he moved so slowly that she grabbed his penis impatiently and crammed it into her cleft, which was overflowing with honey. In her naïveté she had used too much. Honey squeezed out and got all over everything, but it did make the penetration easier. He was afraid that it was hurting her even so, but she seemed not to care. Everything was clumsy. Evidently he succeeded in initiating her appropriately, despite his misgivings, for the following evening Mouse Pelt returned, and expressed her pleasure with him in a most thoroughgoing manner. What a difference experience made!
AUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. OH PIERS ANTHONY NO.
How does this stuff even get published?