John Shirley is at it again with his third book in the Borderlands series. Borderlands: Gunsight has Brick on the cover, but don’t let that fool you: Brick isn’t more than a periphery character in this book. No, this book continues where Borderlands: Unconquered left off – with Mordecai shacked up with Daphne Kuller, AKA Kuller the Killer. And that’s not all it has in common with the second book – it’s just as terribly written as that one, and just as boring. And oh yeah – Shirley still has not learned how to use semicolons. Can someone please take away that guy’s computer already?
Author: John Shirley
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release Date: October 1, 2013
Borderlands: Gunsight takes place sometime before the events of the game Borderlands 2 – Handsome Jack is mentioned in the book, but he hasn’t started making life a living hell for the Vault Hunters yet. No, in this story – which is being told to a bunch of scavenging orphans by Marcus, of course – Mordecai is getting sick of Daphne, who wants to, as he puts it, “nest “ (because that’s what women do, he explains to Bloodwing). He rushes off in a huff and Daphne follows him, getting herself captured in the process by some unbelievable jerkbag named Jasper, who runs – you guessed it – Gunsight.
Jasper kidnaps Daphne because he wants to hire Mordecai to get through the insane fortifications of Tumessa and kill Reamus and oh my god why am I even still talking about this book. Seriously, everything about this book is just awful. Jasper has Daphne in a room above a giant, cannibal Psycho named Bigjaws, and Reamus has been conducting experiments on humans with Eridium and turning them into giant slugs, and how bored are you right now just reading about this plot?
I guess the bottom line is that I don’t know why I keep reading these books. I love Borderlands and Borderlands 2: the world is amazing, the gameplay is insanely fun, and I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve clocked in both. (I’ve even been playing the Headhunters packs, which are seriously like half an hour and not really even worth $2.99, but I’m so starving to be on Pandora that I’ll play anything.) While I sit here, not-quite-patiently waiting for Borderlands 3 (which may be a much longer wait than I anticipated), I do things like read the Borderlands books to pass the time. And I’m at a point where they’re just so terrible that I don’t think I can handle them anymore.
Don’t buy this book. I mean it. I got this book to review and I could barely get through it. I love Pandora, and all of these characters, but John Shirley is just ruining the series with these books. He did it for the BioShock series, too – I mean, how can you screw these up? The entire setting is written for you already! You just have to learn how to use semicolons and not be terrible. I think I’m going to take some of my fanfiction and call up Simon and Schuster.
Review Disclosure: A review copy of Borderlands: Gunsight was provided by Gallery Books for the purposes of this review.
