Never Judge a Book by its Cover. Seriously, this one looked sweet.

Reading Philip Palmer's Redclaw (evidently a tenuous reference to Tennyson's 'In Memoriam') is like listening to an eight-year-old boy with severe ADHD describing his favorite video game: you know it makes sense to him, and it might even be based on a really great premise, but he's clearly getting it all mixed up with two other games, the cartoons he watched that morning, a movie he saw on TV in the middle of the night three weeks ago because he'd eaten an entire box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs and couldn't sleep, something one of his friends told him at school that day, and a whole bunch of stuff he just made up on the spot. He started off telling you about something where dinosaurs fight each other but, by the time he's finished, the subject has shifted more times than you can count and he's telling you about giant spiders battling Dracula with lasers in space.

Redclaw is what 'Axe Cop' would be if 'Axe Cop' had no illustrations, were intended as a legitimate piece of adult literature, and were written by a grown man instead of a five year old. Throw in a few tablespoons of gratuitous and unnecessary sex scenes, a pinch of heavy-handed political and moral commentary, about eight cups (give or take) of awkward, needless cursing, and then roll it all in cryptic, unexplained acronyms and you've got yourself one o' thum thur science fik-shun books.

On the plus side, the number of holes in the plot, discrepancies in the technology, and the excessively high character turnover made for an extremely varied reading experience. Loose ends dangle, untied, all about the narrative, creating an ominous suspense that never quite goes away. Armor that can withstand laser blasts, rocket explosions, and being partially digested by dinosaurs is later torn apart like tissue paper by semi-intelligent grass. Characters whose personalities can only be described as one-dimensional because a smaller dimension hasn't been discovered yet have sudden mood swings that transform them into completely different (one-dimensional) characters in all but name. People you never knew existed suddenly appear and develop complex back-stories with the turn of a page, only to be mindlessly slaughtered before you reach the next one. It's rather more like reading a hundred two-page short stories than a single, cohesive novel.

Really, it's a miracle that someone was even able to glean coherent sentences from Philip Palmer's writing, let alone publish it more than once. It is so mindbogglingly unfair that Palmer is allowed even a modicum of success while others struggle that some authors have chosen to see it as final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

Read this book if you must—don't say I didn't warn you—but please, oh please, don't purchase it. Maybe—just maybe—if we stop giving this man our money, he'll give up and go home. So if you find yourself drawn to this monstrosity, this Ruiner of Worlds—irresistibly urged to part its vile pages—be a hero and get it from the library.

For the children.