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Post by kooshmeister on Dec 21, 2019 18:50:50 GMT
Cower before the staggering might of the beaver apocalypse! Rodent Mutation arrived today and by God I'm gonna read it and tell y'all about it! And ignore the price quoted on the cover. I paid $154.99 for this damn thing. Oh, well, if it ends up sucking the sweat off of flea-infested donkey balls, it'll be my own fault. Nobody forced me to pay that much for a crummy book about giant killer beavers. I'll settle down to peruse it this evening and report back to you guys later.
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Post by kooshmeister on Dec 21, 2019 22:00:46 GMT
Barry Colrayn is a sanitation inspector ("sanitary inspector" is the term Fanthorpe uses, but this makes Colrayn sound like an inspector who just has really good personal hygiene - which nevertheless I'm certain Mr. Colrayn does!) with the thankless job of ensuring that big companies adhere to laws against illegally dumping toxic waste into the environment. You'd think not pouring your sludge into rivers would be a no-brainer, but apparently not. He takes his job very seriously, and is unforgiving in his leveling of fines and punishments against companies that break the law. Consequently, he isn't very popular with the people he inspects. The almighty job creators (i.e. self-enrichers) don't like this pencil-pushing little civil servant nosing around and hurting their bottom line by daring to insist they properly do their jobs.
Think the relationship Donald Sutherland's character has with the restaurants he inspects in Invasion of the Body Snatchers; they break the rules and have unsanitary kitchens but it's his fault when they get caught so they vandalize his car. Because that's a completely rational reaction to being called out on a rat problem you refuse to solve. Colrayn is lucky in that his car hasn't been vandalized. Yet.
One company on Colrayn's inspection route in particular is a frequent offender. Jasper Leroy Inc. and its eponymous owner really, really don't like obeying the law and will find any means they can to avoid following the rules and properly dispose of their waste byproducts, because proper disposal costs money Mr. Leroy doesn't want to spend and it's easier to just dump it in the river. He needs that thousand or so for his fiftieth Rolls-Royce! Despite all his efforts, Colrayn has never been able to persuade the corporation to do the right thing, and so deep are Mr. Leroy's pockets that any fines he levels at them amount to a slap on the wrist, and he honestly doesn't think that this latest visit will be any different, but, hey, a job's a job. Leroy is brusque with the inspector, agreeing to meet with him but making a point of being impolite bordering on hostile. The meeting doesn't go well.
Meanwhile, it seems mother nature may soon have the last laugh. Although initially it was merely oil that Leroy Inc. dumped, now radioactive elements are finding their way into the river and contaminating the ecosystem. Exactly what Leroy Inc. does that means they have radioactive materials to dump in the first place, I'm not sure. Colrayn's assessment of the company existing solely to enrich its owner and namesake's "already overstuffed" bank account, while venomous, isn't really helpful at explaining to the reader what Leroy Inc. does. Maybe we'll learn a little more later.
Anyway, although the "radio-activity" (because hyphens equal power!) kills all the fish in the river, the native beavers and rats thrive on it, growing bigger and bigger and bigger. And with this increased size comes an increased appetite. And with all the fish they normally eat dead, the huge rodents will have to turn to... something else. Or perhaps... someone else! Mwahahaha!
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Post by humgoo on Dec 27, 2019 15:42:10 GMT
I paid $154.99 for this damn thing. It's good to be rich. I hope I can do something like that once in my life (on second thoughts, I probably wouldn't even if I could:D)! The cover is quite irresistible, though. Still looking forward to reading the second part of your review!
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Post by kooshmeister on Dec 28, 2019 20:10:09 GMT
Rich? Ha! I'm poor as dirt. I just have relatives who are very generous at Christmastime and occasionally do art commissions for $30 a pop.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 28, 2019 20:12:59 GMT
Rich? Ha! I'm poor as dirt. I just have relatives who are very generous at Christmastime and occasionally do art commissions for $30 a pop. Luxury!
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Post by humgoo on Dec 29, 2019 6:43:53 GMT
It's good to have rich and occasionally generous relatives then. At least you've used the money for wholesome purposes. Just think of all those evil ways to spend $154.99 -- the very thought makes me shudder. Am still waiting for the remaining part of your review!
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 9, 2020 2:22:30 GMT
Fear not, I'll get to it. I've just been experiencing some family problems. A lot of people in the hospital all at once. My mother is coming home from the hospital tomorrow but my father is still bedridden. Let's just say I'm not in the mood to recap the adventures of Barry Colrayn just now. So far, 2020 sucks monkey nuts.
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Post by Swampirella on Jan 9, 2020 3:09:04 GMT
Fear not, I'll get to it. I've just been experiencing some family problems. A lot of people in the hospital all at once. My mother is coming home from the hospital tomorrow but my father is still bedridden. Let's just say I'm not in the mood to recap the adventures of Barry Colrayn just now. So far, 2020 sucks monkey nuts. Sorry to hear that, I hope things start to look up for you and your family.
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 9, 2020 12:41:37 GMT
Thanks. Things have improved a lot since then and I'm hoping to eventually return to summarizing Rodent Mutation for everyone's enjoyment.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 4, 2020 8:57:26 GMT
Okay, I fully intend to get back to this over the weekend. Stay tuned!
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 7, 2020 10:34:06 GMT
Colrayn returns to his office and tells his secretary, Ms. Johnson, that he's going to take Leroy down no matter what. Fight the good fight, Barney! Yes, Barney. If you want proof that Fanthorpe churned this thing in a huge hurry, look no further than the fact characters get different names occasionally. Meanwhile, the Irish O'Jordon family is experience problems. The cherubic Ricky O'Jordon has gone missing! Patriarch Paddy O'Jordon returned home to find his son missing and his wife Lucy in quite a state. And so a search party is launched for the little booger. The police drag the river but find no body. The sergeant in charge of the search discusses the Benjamin Bathurst incident with one of his constables. The constable mentions how it's a pity Sherlock Holmes wasn't around back then, as surely he would've solved the case! Wait... Sherlock Holmes is real in Rodent Mutation's universe?! That, or this is the stupidest officer on the sergeant's force. Anyway, local weirdo Seth Barton comes along. He's a beachcomber who doesn't bathe very much, and it's made apparent very quickly that nobody likes him very much. Hmm. Perhaps the police will suspect him of kidnapping Ricky? That's typically how these things go. Anyway, he's found an huge animal footprint some 18 inches across and shows it to the two officers. For some reason, he thinks it's connected to Ricky's disappearance. Why? I mean, we know this book is about giant killer beavers and they did probably eat poor little Ricky, but what makes Seth think so? Anyway, the constable cries out that it is "The footprint of Satan!" Seth isn't the only eccentric in this story. We cut to the home of Edward Sinclair, self-described "special agent and private investigator," who is playing Mozart for an audience consistently exclusively of himself on his expensive grand piano. It turns out he's an old schoolmate of Colrayn's. When the sanitation inspector phones him, he immediately recognizes him as "the chap who scooped up all the science prizes" in school. It seems Barney Colrayn is a chronic overachiever. Anyway, Colrayn wants his old friend to investigate that jerk Jasper Leroy for him. Perhaps he can find evidence against the businessman that he can't. The topic of the missing O'Jordon boy comes up. Colrayn isn't sure, but he thinks the missing kid is connected to Leroy's shenanigans, and so Sinclair (alternately referred to as "Eddie" and "Eddy") is soon driving over in his customized saloon which features a modified engine and is aiding the sergeant and the constable in combing the riverbanks for clues. The constable is still going on about the "mark of Satan" ("You said a mouthful, pal!" quips Sinclair). Sinclair takes a plaster cast of the footprint, then uses "the Sinclair Portable Geiger Counter" (he invented his own Geiger counter?!) and discovers that the print is intensely radioactive. Dun-dun- dun! Could this be the evidence Colrayn needs? It's interesting how quickly the story is moving along. The authorities are already totally on board with the "giant rodent ate the kid" theory (or at least they're not dismissing the evidence), and Colrayn already suspects his arch-nemesis Leroy's involvement. We're only three chapters in! This slim little book moves are a pace I haven't seen since Slimer. The monsters have yet to appear, though. Perhaps they'll turn up in chapter four.
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droogie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 100
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Post by droogie on Mar 7, 2020 18:13:18 GMT
Monsters? They are not monsters! They are just cute harmless little beavers.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 12, 2020 7:29:25 GMT
So it turns out that I was wrong about Colrayn's first name being Barry. It was always Barney. But Fanthorpe does go back and forth between calling Edward Sinclair "Eddie" and "Eddy." Oh well. Anyway, Colrayn and Sinclair return to the latter's house. When the topic of Jasper Leroy comes up, Sinclair becomes convinced that the wealthy businessman is somehow responsible for the radioactive river, and so he phones him up. See, in addition to his many other accomplishments, he'd once served on the Monopolies Commission, which investigated Leroy Inc.'s business practices, so even though he's never met Leroy, he knows him well enough by reputation.
He gets Leroy's valet who politely tells him to go screw and hangs up. Not one to be defeated so easily, he calls back. This being in the days before caller ID, the valet answers and this time Sinclair reads him the riot act. He doesn't have time to deal with petty servants, and if the guy doesn't get Leroy for him, he'll just keep bothering them. The horrifying prospect of a phone that never stops ringing sends the valet scurrying and soon enough Sinclair and Leroy are talking. The conversation doesn't go well, but it does at least end with the tycoon inviting Sinclair over to his house. Colrayn tags along. I feel like Sinclair has kinda usurped the role of hero from him, heh.
They arrive at the mansion, where they have to run the gauntlet of Leroy's footman and valet, who are both snobs who, I kid you not, actually turn their noses up at the visitors. Jasper Leroy comes down and demands that they make their case quick and get out. Sinclair doesn't mince words. He explains that although they've never met, he served on the Monopolies Commission, and so he knows of Leroy. Worse, having served on that commission, he can phone up a few old friends for favors. Unless, of course, Leroy cooperates. Sinclair plunks down the plaster cast of the footprint and lays down his theory that the radioactive pollutants Jasper Leroy Inc. has been pumping into the river since "the war" (I assume they mean World War II) have mutated the local rodent population, which have begun turning to humans for food. He threatens to make life very difficult for Leroy unless he fesses up.
Meanwhile, the local vicar Reverend Septimus Brown and his wife are hosting a church sewing competition in their backyard. Reverend Brown and the missus go inside for something when suddenly they hear screams and come running out. Brown sees something like am ambulatory haystack, before realizing it is in fact a giant beaver! His wife calls the cops. Despite initially dismissing it as a prank, the sergeant from before can tell that the woman is terrified, so he sends some men over to the Brown residence and also manages to get ahold of Colrayn and Sinclair. Leaving Leroy for the time being, they rush over to join the authorities at the vicar's place.
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Post by kooshmeister on Mar 13, 2020 7:15:00 GMT
So our heroes arrive at the Brown residence and discover their quarry is gone. As for the Browns and their guests, to paraphrase a YouTube video I saw recently, nobody was hurt but a lot of people were surprised. We also learn that the constable is named Richards. Yay for minor supporting characters getting names! Anyway, our heroes wonder where the giant beaver got to as backup arrives in the form of a detachment of Territorials, commanded by a captain. After their introduction, they're pretty consistently referred to both in dialogue and descriptions as Terriers.
On my first go-through, I missed the one time they were identified as being Territorials, which as I understand it means they're soldiers, and when the "Terrier Captain," as Fanthorpe calls their C.O., kept being called that, my first thought was that the cops had brought in dogs, i.e., terriers. I ignored the capitalization because Fanthorpe capitalizes the oddest things in this book, but halfway through the chapter and there was no mention of dogs, and I thought, hold up, if they're police dogs, why terriers? Why not larger dogs?
I realized something was up and thumbed back to when the captain and his men first showed up. Fanthorpe, as noted, has a brisk, speedy writing style that bulldozes through the plot's events like nobody's business and he often glosses over some important details. He never forgets them. They're there. It's just that he spares maybe one or two sentences for them before charging ahead at lightspeed. The end result is I'm doing a ton of flipping back and forth. So I missed when the Territorials actually appeared and were named that. Before this, the sergeant does tell the constable, Richards, to call for assistance from "Terriers," but it wasn't until I saw "Territorials" that I understood what they were talking about.
I'd first encountered the term Territorial for a soldier in The Lost World. Malone says he can shoot "about average Territorial standard." It was All Quiet on the Western Front, though, that finally clued me in to the fact it's a type of soldier. When Kantorek gets drafted, he winds up as a territorial. How common is this designation for soldiers in the UK? And is Terrier a common nickname for them, or is Fanthorpe just being old-fashioned?
Anyway, the Terrier captain proves to be surprisingly openminded for a military man in a sci-fi horror story. Not only does he buy the existence of giant killer beavers, he also swallows what Sinclair springs on everyone next. See, something about the footprint found on the riverbank has been bothering him. There was just the one. There were no others. Likewise, here in Reverend Brown's backyard, there's only two footprints visible, roughly where the vicar claims the thing had been standing. And according to him and other witnesses, the mammoth beaver was just suddenly there. Nobody saw it actually emerge from the forest and approach. And the fact it vanished so quickly is also puzzling. Sinclair's theory for this basically sends Rodent Mutation off the deep end into crazy town.
He concludes that the giant beavers who left the prints they found on the riverbank and here at the Reverend's house teleported in and out using psychic powers (!).
So. There you have it. Unless Sinclair is proven wrong, Rodent Mutation is about giant killer radioactive beavers with ESP who can teleport.
Remarkably, none of the other men present so much as questions this wackadoodle theory. In fact, the captain, it turns out, knows all about the theories of ESP. In fact he's the one who elaborates and clarifies for Colrayn, the sergeant and the others what it is Sinclair is getting at. I'm astonished at the sudden turn that the novel has taken. This is just completely out of nowhere. But it's the kind of amazing wackiness I want from these books. First we had a drug-addicted shapeshifting shark in Slimer, now Rodent Mutation has given us psychic teleporting mutant beavers.
This dire new development has everyone wondering how they'll even find the things, much less kill them (although I'd still like to point out that they haven't demonstrably killed anyone; nobody at the Browns' get-together was even injured and the O'Jordon boy is still just missing, even though I'll concede he's most likely dead). Realizing they need scientific answers, the gang decides to pay a visit to a zoologist named Septimus Harbottle, who we'll meet next time.
EDIT: I looked it up, and apparently the UK reserve forces were in fact called the Territorial Army from 1921-2020, but I can't find any information on "Terriers" being a nickname for them outside of this book. Anyone?
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 13, 2020 13:07:42 GMT
I looked it up, and apparently the UK reserve forces were in fact called the Territorial Army from 1921-2020, but I can't find any information on "Terriers" being a nickname for them outside of this book. Anyone? Yes, the TA were nicknamed "Terriers" since their earliest days. There is some Pathe newsreel here from 1939 that uses the nickname in the opening title ("Up The Terriers") - www.britishpathe.com/video/up-the-terriers-aka-territorial-army-recruitingThey were officially renamed "Army Reserve" in 2011.
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