NNtG: Spinetinglers #04: Where Have All the Parents Gone?

It's time to return to the wonderfully all over the place world of Spinetinglers. And we have aliens in this one. Alien books have skewed mostly positive for the blog, so that at least has me intrigued. And then I hear that this is a book that utterly shits the bed with its ending. And I love me some trainwreck books. Well, the ones that don't utterly piss me off I guess. Let's get spaced out and wonder Where Have All the Parents Gone?

I really like this cover. Granted, not really scary unless you have a fear of the more South Park-looking alien designs, which I really don't. But if you want a cover that mixes the familiar with the freaky, you have a good mix here with the normal looking mother body and the alien head attached. It does a good job in selling the book's overall gimmick of being about aliens taking the place of the parents. So it does do what it needs to to be at the very least intriguing. 

Our protagonist, Mary, opens the books with a prologue about how much her mother gets on her case. Be it about her posture or getting her hair cut. She's been getting a lot of this for a while from both her parents so she wishes that they would both disappear before running up to her room in a huff. The next morning, after having a nightmare about some creature needing brains, Mary wakes up to the sound of the phone. It's her friend Pattie Chambers. She, she's a bit concerned. Her parents are nowhere to be found. Mary is confused, thinking that would be weird since her parents must totally be here. However, upon discovering that her parents are indeed NOT here, she begins to worry that she's the reason for this. That her wish of not wanting her parents around was one of those super literal wishes where it means that all parents disappear and not just hers. She seems to gain even more confirmation as there are more kids who are also missing their parents. The entire city of Broxton, Nevada has gone parentless. I already have a bad feeling I know what the twist is already, and we're only about 8 pages deep at this point. If I'm right that eugh. 

Mary also thinks about her nightmare. About the creature with the huge head and giant eyes staring at her, wanting her brains. The little kids think maybe there's some possibility that the creature could be invading thoughts. The kids have also noticed that the older teens have gone a bit wild. Now with no parents, they're street racing. A day goes by, still no parents. So Mary and Pattie gather the rest of the kids in town to discuss what they're going to do about this. Mary tries to suggest order and taking care of each other and the youngest kids. But one kid, George Tunnel, thinks that maybe this is a good thing. That without parents they're free to do whatever they want. Nothing really gets settled and they all head home, hoping for any answer as to the answer to the title of the book. But for now, there's still food at the local grocery where Tim Luland's father works and there's chaos in the street with all of the street racing. 

Pattie and Mary try to think about what's going on. Was this a kidnapping? Or what about their parents' jobs? Some have secret projects and work with chemicals, so maybe the chemicals just vaporized the parents? Pattie doesn't want to just think that this is immediate parent death and that they'll come back for sure. Then suddenly, they see someone outside. It's Pattie's father, Mr. Chambers. Only he's not quite right. His head is flat and the folds of skin are flopping around. And he doesn't seem to be able to communicate or react to things without freaking out. Turns out that he's in scarecrow mode and really needs a brain. They barricade themselves from Mr. Chambers, but then are visited by the creature from Mary's dream who gives them an electric shock. They wake up with Mr. Chambers gone. Mary begins to suspect that the creature took Mr. Chambers since he got away. I mean when you plan some full-scale abduction, you're bound to lose a couple brainless zombies.

Mary heads to the library to find a book on alien abductions, which she hopes will provide some answers. As she tries to get answers from the book, she sees the librarian, Mrs. Maron, now also sans-cranium. Not only her, but even more parents have returned, all with their brains removed. We're like 36 pages into this one and this might be a frontrunner for most breakneck a pace so far. We still have a bit to go. She runs into another kid, Harland Elkins, who has his mom back, though same sitch as everyone else. As they see the other brainless parents roam the streets, they wonder the obvious question of how the hell they're still even alive if, you know, there's a lot of free space up there. They meet up with Pattie and decide that they need to round up the parents before the alien gets to them first. You know, collect them first, then try to figure out what the hell you do with a brainless and seemingly violent and dangerous parent after. 

There aren't many kids who offer to help. Just Mary, Harland, Pattie and three other kids, Harry Padgett, Liz Hart and Annie Kemelman. Mary suspects that wherever the parents ended up must be out in the desert. A desert that's also got a minefield, which Harland suspiciously knows is ten miles away. Annie and Pattie watch the younger kids while the other four first head to the airport, where they find another of the aliens. They manage to evade it and make it deep into the desert as things get darker, save for the glowing aliens popping around, seemingly phasing inside of a strange looking hill. Mary and the others find a way into the hill, which is actually more of a cave. They find themselves inside a gigantic cavern room, which leads to a stalagmite hitting Mary, almost knocking her out. As everyone tries to recover, they soon see the alien spaceship, as well as plenty of the parents, brains intact, in a line. Mary notices that the parents with brains are moving sort of like robots. As if they're under some sort of trance and being controlled by electrical impulses. Like the zap she and Pattie got earlier. 

With no other option, Mary decides to sneak into the ship, pretending to be under control. And if it doesn't work, then run like hell. She sees the room where the brains are extracted. A strange looking chair with what looks to be a giant hair dryer above it. Sure enough, it absorbs the brain of a man sitting at the machine. Mary makes a run for it, only to see that the aliens have already grabbed Harland, Liz and Harry. She sees as one of the aliens tells them what's going on. The adult aliens are after the brains of the adult humans, while the adolescent aliens want the kid brains. Mary makes a run for it to find help, but not before seeing that her mom is also brain drained. She returns to Pattie and Annie to tell them what's going on, when Harland arrives, having also suspiciously escaped in time. He tells them that he managed to escape, but now knows the truth. That the aliens have been studying the humans of Broxton for years and know how smart many of them are, Mary especially. He tells everyone that it's back to the desert as he knows what to do. They have to make it to the nearest town, Warm Springs, which Harland and Harry both managed to get to, conveniently having a map to make sure they avoid the mines. Only, shocker! Harland took them right back to the spaceship because this was actually one of the aliens disguised as Harland. 

So, the kids seem to be completely screwed. But Mary manages to get back into the spaceship and destroy the brain removal machine. Turns out they only had one brain removal machine which seems like a poorly thought out idea, but given they need the brains and all I guess it makes sense for them to be a bit dumb? The aliens aren't licked as they'll just remove the brains the old fashioned way, yankin' em out. Mary runs into the real Harland and the others as the aliens finally tell them that they need the brains of humans because they contain important information that would benefit their planet. I mean, what's a little brain theft? Why are you earthlings making this so awkward? But now that the kids are mixed up in this, they need to contact their home planet first for further instructions. Mary and the others are taken by an alien named Notwal who tells them that they've had a hard time keeping the brainless parents captured since despite the brain, they still have the instinct to return to their families. I mean, they took the brain, not the heart. But as they get answers from the home planet, the aliens are forced to return back to their planet as it's just conveniently under attack. Man, you spend years planning a human brain heist and it seems like everything just comes along to fuck up your day.

The aliens leave, but now all of the parents are still around without their brains. So they're brought back and pretty much corralled to keep them from attacking since they have no brain but are still a bit feral. Suddenly one of the aliens shows up and tells Mary that there's a way to restore the brains of the parents. And that's by reeducating them. Teaching them everything from the ground up to restore their brains once and for all. It seems to do the trick and after about a day of heavy book learnin', the parents have regained their brains and their memories, though it'll take some time for them to fully relearn everything they forgot. 

Mary heads to bed. And the alien is there saying that he wants her brains. When she wakes up, everyone is gone again. Wait. That's how we end this? Just re-hashing the first few paragraphs of chapter one? We end not just on a reset but a shockingly lazy reset? I thought this was just going to be a "it was all a dream" ending, but shit that would have been something good. Yep, that is indeed a bed full of fecal matter.

It takes a lot to dumbfound me with these books. Like it takes something really bad to gobsmack me with these. After so many, you kind of just go through the motions. So leave it to this book to perhaps land with the ultimate case of blue balls. I mean, before the ending (if you even want to call THAT an ending), there is a really neat sci-fi story here. A good sense of horror with the brainless parents and the details of how their heads are flat and the skin and hair just slump. It's great imagery. And you get a solid character in Mary who starts the book foolishly wishing for her parents to be gone, and ultimately gets what she wished for and then some. And she has enough of an arc that you want to see her succeed. I even like that they set up Harland as a bit of a red herring until we get the reveal that it was another alien who captured Harland and took his memories. It's a case of a story being very well structured for like 98% of it. And if it had stuck the landing, I think it would have been one of the better Spinetinglers books. 

But, alas. That ending. I hate these twist endings BTW. The ones where we just reset everything, right down to the pages just being copies of the previous pages. It feels super lazy. And at least in cases like, say, Dear Diary, I'm Dead or Escape from Shudder Mansion, there's at least logic behind what's going on. Why there could be the possibility of time sort of looping like it does. Here? There's absolutely nothing that makes sense as to why we just go back to square one. My only guess is that the aliens must have had a really quick invasion and just came back for the parents again, which I guess means this is just an endless cycle until the aliens inevitably win? Which if that was the intent of George Edward Stanley, then I'd think it was clever if the ending was structured better to feel like that was the case. I think he had no twist in mind. He needed a twist for the story, hit a wall somehow worse than Stine would, and just threw in the worst possible result. Stine has often stated he often thinks of the twist first, which sometimes works, a lot of times doesn't, but you can at least tell he had an idea most of the time. Here, it's a case when that doesn't happen and how it can just blow a book to smithereens. 

So ultimately, it sucks to give this one a low rating. It's so close to a good book with some solid sci-fi horror, but just doesn't know how to send the reader out with a bang. Instead perhaps the most pathetic whimper we've ever gotten. A book can live and die by its twist and this is a case of what happens when a gets tripped before it makes it to the finish line. Like, I may have rolled my eyes at the twist of The Substitute Creature, but at least it WAS a twist. This somehow didn't even give us that level of disappointment, but an even worse level. New weakest Spinetinglers that I've read so far and it really, really sucks because if there was a way to close this book, it could have been a contender. This whole situation leaves me feeling like my brain's been sucked out. Where Have All the Parents Gone? gets a D.