We Review a Self-Published E-Book About a Lady Clone War

A huge naked corpse-woman with six breasts and tentacles for legs is the chief antagonist of Shawn O'Toole's The Yississ War, which I'm prepared to go out on a flailing zombie limb here (confused metaphor and all) and call a modern masterpiece. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings had a baby, it died badly, and this is its reanimated remains.

I suppose it should technically be called Yississ' War, since Yississ is the name of that sextboobleted monstrosity, but that's probably too much possessiveness for a word already as unpronounceably sibilant as "Yississ." Either way, it's war. Or, as George Lucas exclaims at the beginning of the opening crawl for Revenge of the Sith, "War!" Of course, that was written for a multimillion-dollar franchise movie, not a self-published e-book that I downloaded for $0.00 on my Kindle, but quality-wise I'm not really aware of a meaningful difference.

Grammatically, there's no difference at all. Throughout The Yississ War, you see Lucas-style points of exclamation...everywhere! Some personal favorites:

"Leesa Green resumed her patrol...when snatched by tentacles and pulled up into a tree!"

"Concubine Sentinels guarded the corridors and chambers within the station...until snatched by tentacles and bitten in the neck!"

"A squad of Sentinels were on their way to the gymnasium...when caught in a sudden storm of plasma bolts!"

"Concubine Scouts were out in the forests across Telluria scouting...when maws dropped from above, snapped their heads off and swallowed the severed things whole!"

Gets me—and those poor warriors—every time (though you'd think they'd learn, after months of fighting, to look...up!). So many die this way. Tens of millions, in fact. But don't worry, they're clones (because that solves the problem of mass death). If this sounds like Star Wars again, the e-book's remarkable first paragraph introduces a notable difference:

The Many of One were a society of women cloned from one woman [emphasis mine] and endowed with her formative memories. As the Concubines of the Great Seen Unseen they were an order of nuns devoted to the will of the Unheard Whisper. As Virgin Soldiers they were the relentless Virgin Armies whose might made them a Galactic Power.

Presumably after reading this, an Amazon user named Debbie G—in the e-book's only (three-star) review—wrote: "Just couldn't get into it... [M]aybe if I could get past the beginning it would get better." Debbie G, I'm afraid the same can be said of you.

Anyway, yes, who run this world? Girls, girls. (I made the decision early on to picture all the clones as Beyoncés—though quite on their own the older ones began to resemble Sally Field.) It's a feminist dream come true. Well, almost: The human ruler of Telluria, who used to be the enemy of the Many of One but is now their ally in the war against Yississ, is, alas, a man. But O'Toole doesn't entirely undo his agenda here. King Adam, while pure of heart and undefeated in battle, is an idiot. The perfect Everyman, in other words, who is capable only of the most limited speech. Here's his contribution to battle strategy:

The man [this is how O'Toole commonly refers to Adam] asked the women [i.e. everyone else], "What just happened?"

Drusilla answered, "We just lost a third of our heavy bombers."

A lieutenant general (Olga) surmised, "The enemy harnessed and channeled the electromagnetism of the Everlasting Storm."

Adam wondered, "What?"

The Concubine explained, "It seems they've converted a relay system into a mystical conduit."

"What?"

Drusilla spoke to her lieutenants, "A ground assault without air support would most likely fail." The Virgin Soldiers in black cloaks nodded.

Drusilla and her lieutenants looked at Adam, as if awaiting his insight. Drusilla reminded him, "You have oft bested us. What do you suggest we do?"

The man warned, "This isn't going to be easy."

"Obviously. Adam of Telluria, what do you suggest?"

Drusilla, by the way, is the clone we grow to love most. Of course, Adam falls too. Her full name is Drusilla Purple the Wise of the Fortieth Harvest. If you're wondering about "Purple," so am I. Also unclear: the reason the Many of One are referred to as "Concubines." They're not even supposed to have sex. But not everything in The Yississ War makes perfect sense. For example, this sentence: "She watched as the man ran his fingers through the long, dark locks of the bald clone."

The "she" here is Yississ herself, spying on Adam and Drusilla, Eye of Sauron-like, from her fortress in the Bleak Mountains in the center of the Gentle Desert. Yississ has chosen Telluria as the base from which she intends to conquer the galaxy. She builds her army from the Many of One. Some she turns into "immortal" demons (Brenda Purple the Insightful, for instance, becomes Brendaxa the Insidious, before she dies very mortally); most she renders undead. Cyborgs and "polymorphs" round out her forces—they're the shadow creatures that do the snatching.

On the side of life are Drusilla and her harvest of Beyoncés—some 36 million Concubines—and King Adam's Army of Four (himself, a carnivorous plant who tries to eat him during sex, Conjure the half-goblin, and a sasquatch named Hairy). As I say, most perish, usually by the many thousands in the subclause of a single sentence. This pace of extermination is, as far as I can tell, unique in self-published fantasy.

Then everything crystallizes in a single, startling sentence: "Hours became days and days grew into weeks as vast numbers of mortal women pressed into the relentless fury of hideous monsters."

The Yississ War, it turns out, is what many women face when they wake up every day.