From the depths of self-publishing hell comes the nadir of generic horrifically written fantasy: ANTIGUA

I learned of this little floating chunk of weapons-grade soulless-generic-"fantasy" Hell from the So Bad It's Horrible/Literature page on TV Tropes. It's full name is ANTIGUA: The Land of Fairies Wizards and Heroes (Part 1). Yeah. Check out this extract:

Denise Ellis wrote:

Suddenly, there were black clouds in the sky. Everyone heard a loud noise coming from the sky and they all knew that Voltar the Dragon was coming.

So they all got out their reinforced umbrellas...

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King Artor yelled out, "Daughters, Voltar comes!

"Grab the buckets! If we harvest enough sperm we can breed a dragon army like no other!" Also, the Department of Redundancy Department would like you to know that they wish to announce the coming of Voltar, who is coming.

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Get ready your weapons! The time has come for you to fulfill the prophecy!"

"By dying horribly!"

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Princess Sasha, Princess Trina, Princess Alexandra and Rebecca

The other three like to pick on Rebecca for not being royalty, but someday she'll make them pay.

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walked up ahead of the army and lined up together in a row. They looked like warriors!

Not very intelligent ones. Spread out to minimize casualties from his breath weapon, you dumb bints!

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Rebecca was not afraid! She took a deep breath and got her weapon ready for the task that lay ahead. She understood the prophecy now and had faith in herself and the Princesses.

...who had by now wet their royal smallclothes repeatedly, because they were scared shitless.

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They each pulled out their bows and prepared to kill the dragon.

Confident much?

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Fire came out of his nostrils and his mouth.

What was I saying about spreading out to avoid his FREAKING BREATH WEAPON?!

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Princess Alexandra handed each of the other girls one of the special arrows

Oh, never mind, he's just setting fire to a random pigeon.

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that they had gotten from the Queen of the Unicorns.

Unicorns being known for their fletching skills, thanks to their nimble long-fingered hands...oh, wait.

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All four of the girls pointed their bows up into the air and waited for Voltar to come nearer.

What's the rest of the bloody army doing while all this is going on? Picking their noses? Painting their nails? Might a large medieval army not contain some more experienced longbowmen capable of using bows with a much heavier draw than four (presumed) teenage girls, and therefore with a longer effective range, particularly when firing into the sky?

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Voltar let out such a loud noise that the ground shook! Then fire came right out of his nostrils.

"CAN I PLEASE BORROW A TABLECLOTH TO USE AS A HANKIE? NO?"

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The Wizard Thandor held his mighty wand up toward the sky

Thandor, this is neither the time nor the place.

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and yelled, "Mighty clouds of the sky, I call upon you to bring forth lightening to destroy the Dragon Voltar!"

Cloud 1: "What the fuck is 'lightening' and do we have any?"
Cloud 2: "Search me, dude."
Cloud 3: "I think he wants us to make the dragon less heavy."
Cloud 1: "Oh, right, I'll get onto it with my anti-gravity machine. OH WAIT, I DON'T HAVE ONE OF THOSE."

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Large lightening bolts came out of the clouds toward Voltar. One lightening bolt struck Voltar and wounded him, but it didn't kill him!

Damn tanks. Chain combo the spell for increased DPS, Thandor!

Yes, this thing was published. On paper. Self-published though, surprise surprise. The listed publisher - AuthorHouse - doesn't appear to be the same as her and her husband's own company, oddly, unless they're connected in some way, but a few seconds with Google reveals them to indeed be a vanity press self-publishing house.

You can read more of this riveting prose at the book's Amazon page using the 'look inside' feature. Could it be that these extracts misrepresent Denise Ellis' genius? Is it possible that if I were to get my hands on a copy of the book and read it all the way through, I'd change my mind? Not according to the majority of the reviewers:

Sunglow28 wrote:

Children's literature deserves what one might expect from any adult novel - a coherent plot, correct spelling and punctuation, intriguing sentence structure and factual information. This book has failed miserably on all fronts. It was so bad I actually found it laughable (the use of the word "lightening" instead of "lightning", a character takes a train from Britain to England).

SK wrote:

The premise isn't bad: A little Cornelia Funke or Garth Nix with Phillip Pullman and throw in Arthurian legend. However, the execution really needs help. Typos, poor grammar, awful sentence structure, the obscene use of exclamation points (which really is just talking down to a child in written form; do you talk baby-babble to an 8-year old?)...

Trisha Dehler wrote:

Not only is this book poorly edited, lacking mature character development and starving for originality, but the author wrote her own five star review. How insulting is that? Fortunately, I flipped through the book before giving it to my daughter. Had I given her this title for her birthday, I could have turned her off to reading for life - and to birthdays.

The best lulz of all sadly have been lost due to party-pooper Amazon mods. In addition to leaving herself a five-star review, the author apparently spammed adverts for her work across the Amazon forums, then BAWWWed at people who dared to criticize it. All her posts have been deleted, but some snippets can be gleaned from quotes and discussion (the book's forum is here):

Denise Ellis wrote:

I don't want an eighteen or nineteen year old to be interested in my childrens and young teens book. If an eighteen or nineteen year old isn't reading more mature books instead of reading children's and young teen books then I would think that there is something very wrong with them. Thank you.

Matthew Burke wrote:

Hello Denise the book sounds kind of intristing but could you do us all a favor and maybe stop pluging this book so much and please stop using all caps it is consedired rude online . . .

The author details given on the book's Amazon page threaten promise a sequel in 2008, which as far as I'm aware never materialized - it's not listed on Amazon. Neither, seemingly, did another book by the author and her hubby, also described in the author details:

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Available Winter 2007 The Adventures of the Teen Archeologists (Book 1) in: The Land of the Moepek In the Adventures of the Teen Archeologists (Book 1) The Land of the Moepek-

No, I didn't double-paste there or remove a paragraph break; the authors were apparently too lazy to proofread their own publicity material.

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Six teenagers embark on an adventure through the jungles of Africa in search of an ancient underground city that no archeologists or scientists could find!

Apparently archaeology isn't a science...oh, wait, they're archeologists. That must be something different.

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The teens are able to find the ancient city because they have something that archeologists don't have!

Acne?

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They have the actual map leading right to the city! They have to go through a pyramid full of booby-traps to get to the lost city! The Land of the Moepek is in itself an underground city full of riches and hidden dangers! There are gigantic flying dinosaurs, and a giant gorilla that has threatened and terriorized the hidden civilization for years!

IN! 2007! THERE! WILL! BE! EXCLAMATION! MARKS!

Also, the land of the Moepek sounds suspiciously like Skull Island, though I'm not sure King Kong ever 'terriorized' anyone, whatever that is. Turning them into a terrier?

To round off this cornucopia of crap, check out the alleged official website for Antigua, which looks like a 9-year-old's MySpace page crossed with randomly generated advert-spam.

Edit: More extracts from the book are available to read on Google Books (click on 'preview' on the left).

Good Lord, Keith, where do you FIND these things?!

Also, in the future, I shall threaten to terriorize anyone who displeases me. "You think you're so smart? Let's see how you feel after spending a week as a Maltese!"

Didn't this hit one of the fandom_wank satellite communities a few years back? The lack of commas and terrible writing seem awfully familiar.

*checks* Yup, it did. Some of the author's blather has been preserved in the comments there, too!

Denise Ellis on ad-spamming wrote:

I think all the posts are ridiculous and I just ignore them. I will always do whatever I want to advertise my books. I have that right whether you like it or not. I will never stop. If you want to waste your time putting up stupid posts like the one you just wrote, go ahead. I will never stop advertising my books. I have a legal right to do so and you and others will never be able to stop me! Amazon.com is not my only means of selling my books. I am the owner of my own company and my book is selling world wid[sic]

The spam itself wrote:

Anyone out there looking for another great adventure, fantasy book for teens? Have you tried ANTIGUA: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes? This book has it all! It has dragons, magic, wizards, gnomes, elves, kings, knights and more! This book is full of excitement and adventure! There are even talking animals such as gorillas and a talking cat who is funny and very sarcastic!

My talking cat is extremely sarcastic.

Rabid Badger wrote:

Good Lord, Keith, where do you FIND these things?!

This one I found on TV Tropes, as I mentioned at the beginning of the first post. It really is a doozy, though - since the So Bad It's Horrible pages were tidied up a bit, stuff has to be pretty stand-out horrendous to get in.

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*checks* Yup, it did. Some of the author's blather has been preserved in the comments there, too!

Link? Also, do they mention the other books (the Antigua sequel and the teen archaeologists one) at all? I'm guessing the author(s) threw a fit at all the bad commentary and never finished/released them, but it's odd that the Amazon 'editorial reviews' (I thought those were supposed to be written by someone at Amazon, not filled with cut-and-paste badly written publicity material produced by the author?) still mention sequels that never materialized.

Edit: here's the otf_wank entry on the book.

Edit2: More extracts from the book are available to read on Google Books (click on 'preview' on the left).

Further investigation reveals the insane depths the creator of this junk has gone to to try to get people to buy it.

A Google search on the title produces dozens of hits on spam pages advertising it, many with horrendous mid-90s flashing graphics, glittery adverts, MIDI sound effects, etc. There are also a few...disturbing bits and pieces. Take this excerpt, found here.

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In these hard economic times we have to cut costs wherever we can. You can get this book at a cheaper discounted price at AUTHORHOUSE.COM for less than $20.

No, wait, that's just moronic and desperate. (I wouldn't call a $15-20 book cheap, where da paperback?) This is the disturbing bit:

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INEXPENSIVE I LOVE YOU GIFT OR BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR GIRLS AGES 8-12 YEARS!

Paedophiles, take note!