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1.0 out of 5 stars
Possibly the worst book ever written, August 19, 2009
This review is from: Extraterrestrial Civilizations On Earth (Paperback)
This review is a bit long, so for those who don't have time to read, here's the final verdict: Avoid this book like the Black Plague. If you want to know why, read on.
Words scarcely begin to describe the poor quality of this book, both its content as well as its atrocious butchery of the English language. It borders on the unthinkable that anyone could have such disregard for their readers that they would foist something so poorly written and conceived on them. This book would be an embarrassment as a first rough draft of a manuscript let alone as a final draft allegedly ready for publishing. Let's discuss the quality of the writing first then touch on the subject matter content.
The work is co-authored although from the multiple, full-name references to one of the co-authors (Steve Omar) in almost every paragraph, and the complete lack of mention of the first author (Cecelia Frances Page) it appears Ms. Page did all or most of the actual writing. This makes the bad writing all that much more curious as Ms. Page lists in her bio that she: "...has a B.A. and M.A. in Education with a focus in English..." This educational claim is highly doubtful.
There is scarcely a sentence in the entire book that does not contain multiple errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I do not mean occasional, minor irregularities of the variety we all make when writing due to personal style. Ms. Page's mistakes are blatant, graphically ugly, and present in almost every line of text in the book. I pulled several paragraphs at random from the book and entered them into MS Word as text. Then I ran the grammar and style checker over them to get a Flesch-Kincaid readability score. Not a single paragraph rated even as high as a first grade level readability score. Let's be clear on this. The writing is below the expected proficiency level of a first grader's reading level. That's below the level of a 6 year old child.
The entire book reads just like these test paragraphs I checked. The manuscript could effortlessly have been brought up to at least the level of a modest grade school reader simply by running the spell and grammar checker of whatever word processing software Ms. Page used to write this book. It seems even that minimum level of consideration for her readers was more than the author was willing to extend. Is such abysmal writing the product of a person with a Bachelor's and Master's degree in education, specifically with a focus on English? I think not.
Here's a peek at what you can expect to find: The insertion of commas all over the place where they clearly do not belong. Forget the formal rules of punctuation, the author places commas in places you wouldn't even put a pause when speaking out loud. They are myriad and found in completely unnatural places. Then in places where they should be, commas are conspicuously absent. It's almost as though the author closed her eyes and stabbed her finger into the text. Where the finger landed, that's where she put another comma.
There are frequent run-on sentences that have no meaning. It is not uncommon to run across a sentence or two in a book that you don't fully grasp the first time you read it. So you read through it another time or two and then you get the meaning that was intended and you think to yourself, "Hmmm, that could have been written a tad more clearly." I'm not talking about those kinds of mistakes here. I'm talking about sentences that are missing required parts, such as a subject, an object, or sometimes verbs. Words are strung together that have absolutely no meaning of any kind. Read them however many times you like and you'll still have not a clue what the sentence was attempting to communicate. There are so many of these that you end up skipping over entire paragraphs because the content is simply incomprehensible.
The author also has the annoying habit of repeating the same statements over and over again, sometimes separated by only a page or two or even just a couple of paragraphs. It is done in such a way as to strongly suggest the author has completely forgotten those statements had already been made. It is not the kind of repetition used to reinforce or sink home a point of fact. These are sloppy, careless repetitions, and one often gets the idea that the author simply didn't have much to say to begin with, so the same statements get repeated, ad nauseum.
There are so many other blatant errors that it is almost necessary to see it for yourself before you will believe anyone purporting to be an author with degrees in education could have such poor English skills. Quite honestly, the book appears to have been written by someone who is functionally illiterate. If you get this book, the only purpose it will serve is as an example to your own young children of the complete range of mistakes it is possible to make when writing, because this author hits them all.
Enough on the quality of the writing and on to the subject and content.
The book's premise is that various extraterrestrial species have been visiting Earth over a period of perhaps millions of years. During these visits, they have helped to genetically spawn the human family and have produced the various races we see in existence today. Some of these extraterrestrials have been helpful and benevolent while others have enslaved and used humans as beasts of burden. The book also claims there are various and sundry ET groups alive and flourishing among us even now. Controversial claims, to be sure, but nothing too original. These are themes addressed by other authors like Erich Von Daniken, Zecharia Sitchin, Graham Hancock, Lloyd Pye, and Michael Heiser, to name just a few.
The claim for this book is that, "You will learn about specific evidence regarding extraterrestrial beings and UFO sightings and personal experiences about UFOs and extraterrestrial beings."
In fact, you are offered no evidence at all. What you are given is just a rambling on of statements about things marginally related to ET or to an ancient culture. There is no continuity of thought whatsoever, and it appears most of these statements are just ideas picked up from the internet and thrown together. It is quite common to have a sentence start off referring to one thing, then in mid sentence it switches to something else (usually entirely unrelated,) then it may or may not ramble back to the original topic or it might just blunder on to yet another subject, again, entirely unrelated. All this in the space of a single sentence. You will be hard pressed to find even a single paragraph that sticks to one idea from start to finish. Most ramble all over the board incoherently.
There is no theme present other than the over-arching idea that if a statement contains words relating to aliens, ancient cultures, or mentions the name of any researcher in either of these areas, it is fair game to toss it in. The most frequently used words in this book are, "Steve Omar says...," or, "Steve Omar once wrote..." Since Steve Omar is one of the co-authors of the present book, quoting him as an authoritative source of information is hardly a compelling argument. I have personally written many things, but just because I wrote or said something once upon a time doesn't automatically make it true. There are no citations of any kind, no footnotes, no references, no bibliography, zip, nilch, nada. We are expected to accept statements in this book purely on the basis that one of its co-authors may have said or written similar words previously.
On a rare few occasions, the author might write something like, "In the July 17, 1927 edition of the New York Times there was an article about a lost city discovered off the coast of..." On these few occasions when any such information was offered, I attempted to track down the alleged reference and was unable to find any such thing. As a word of advice to the author, when you have no substantive facts to support your alleged quotations, it's best to give the reader nothing (even though that's weak) rather than to make things up. You may believe no one will ever care enough to fact check your allegations, but some of us do care and some of us do check. File that little factoid away for future reference.
The vast majority of the text is nothing more than good, old-fashioned name-dropping. The author seems to be under the impression that the more names of people they throw into a paragraph (whether these people named have anything relevant to say about the thought being addressed at that moment doesn't seem to matter,) the greater will be the credence factor of the present book. Let me give you an example of the kind of thing I mean. I do not have the book in front of me at the moment so I will make up an example, but the style is quite typical of and true to the writing in the book. If you enjoy what you're about to read, buy the book and get 176 pages more of the same:
"Steve Omar once, said that he had read somewhere, once before, when Zecharia Sitchin was talking, about and expeditionary for research. And, this was confirmed by Steve Gossett who, was once working for MIND INTERNATIONAL as co-founder that he was shown, these same documents in Mexico by a shaman who had once been interviewed by Dr. Richard Albright. But in Norway the ancient gods, could only enslave people as Graham Hancock, discovered and wrote about even before, the very important work was published by Mary, Asher ten years earlier! Steve Omar, says this is the greatest, research for revelation in, the last hundred years!"
If you believe I might be exaggerating, get this book and see for yourself. The really tragic thing is, as ghastly as this short paragraph I just...
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