Hello, Geeks!
So, a while ago, Care sent the Weekly Geeks team a very original idea, and I've been toying with it ever since. The words you're reading right now do not fit in with Care's idea, as I understood it. She wanted no explanation, just one word, and "Go!"
I thought about it, but couldn't resist adding a little more to it.
Ready?
Set....
Go!
Just kidding. Here's your assignment:
1. Go to Creativity Tools' random word generator.
2. Get yourself a random word. Write it down. Then click "new word" to get yourself two more random words, and write them down, too. You should have three words written down.
3. Now find the random sentence generator and get yourself a sentence, write it down underneath the three words. If you don't like that sentence it's okay to click "new sentence" until you get one you like.
4. Use the Random Phrase Generator to generate a phrase. Write it down. You may not need this, but keep it handy, just in case. Again, it's okay to go through a couple of phrases before settling on one that works for you.
5. Now, using the three words from Step 2 and the sentence from Step 3, write one of the following, (but don't tell us which!):
(a) A book review (if you have an obscure book that many of us won't recognize by the title, this would be a great time to do it--or you could omit or replace the title [see -d- below] just for this week)
(b) A scene from a book (you'll need to replace some of the words and a phrase with the random ones).
(c) A scene you make up completely from scratch
(d) A review of a fake book, using the Random Phrase from Step 4 as your book title
6. Send me an email at Worducopia/at/gmail/dot/com, with the subject heading Random Post, letting me know if your review or scene was from a real or fake book and what your random words, sentence, and phrase were.
7. As always, go visit other Weekly Geeks. Try to guess which Geeks have posted fake reviews or scenes, and which used actual books. No fair Googling the phrase as a hint. In the Round-up on Friday, I'll post which were real and which were fake, and you can see how you did.
The Circumferential Dragon by award-winning Xu Hua is a futuristic novel, starting in China, but taking the reader around the globe with its protagonist's adventures. Chinese intelligence officer, Changying Liu, had been acting as a double-agent, selling Chinese military secrets to the American government, thereby ensuring that the Chinese plans were seriously compromised. When the Prime Minister, Juan Quingzhao, was made aware of this atrocity, Liu was immediately put in a black-ops cell, where she would be forced to reveal all she knew about the American intelligence.
The cell was divided into fourteen sections, each having one prisoner of war, strapped to a machine. Dr. Hong headed this unit, as he tortured people into revealing what he wanted to know. The prisoners were given a drink, laced with a kind-of drug that put them in a catatonic state. When they returned to consciousness, Dr. Hong questioned them, in their semi-delusional state. More often that not, he got the information he needed, to elevate China's position in the War, increasing their bargaining power.
What Dr. Hong had not counted on was Liu's resilience to such treatments. When she drifted between catatonia and consciousness, the machine despaired, as it showed her vital stats fluctuating between two extremes. Dr. Hong was bewildered. He had never seen anything like this before. At least, not so consistently.
After further discussions with the Chinese ruling party, a decision was made to sneak Liu out of her holding cell, and put her in a 'military' taxi, while she was still catatonic. The idea was that she would try and contact the Americans, and hopefully lead them straight to their enemies. They implanted a device in her neck, which she would be oblivious to, and which would only be activated remotely. Hence, regular scans would not be able to discover this device.
As the story progresses, we see Liu running from the Chinese, and then, when the Americans become suspicious of her due to the device implanted without her knowledge, she absconds to a faraway island, hoping to escape from the fate that awaits her. On the hit list of both, the Chinese and American intelligence, and subsequently, on the radar of most countries world-wide, Liu has to struggle, find various disguises, undergo plastic surgery, forge identity papers, and always keep on the move.
However, as the War gets uglier and nastier, she manages to pull one of the greatest feats to get a hero's welcome home, and there is a happily ever after........
This book is a fast-paced action-packed read, which is gripping and exciting. The reader cannot help but be disgusted by the torture mechanisms used during War, and the horror of War itself. It's incredible how every choice made, inadvertently or otherwise, can lead to serious consequences, and a single mistake can be fatal, eliminating all the past successes.
As the book progressed, though, I thought that the story was getting predictable, and I could see the ending coming about three-quarters of the way in. I'd definitely recommend it though, if, for nothing else, the description of Dr. Hong's cell.
Oh, and no prizes for guessing who the Circumferential Dragon is.
So, can you guess if this a real review or not? What are the random words generated? How about the random sentence?