Male Wish Fulfillment Review: Survival Island by Rohn Rittenhouse (2015, Dog Ear Publishing)

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. By itself, that phrase is an idiomatic expression meaning that what's inside often looks different from what's outside. But after a lifetime spent working around books in both libraries and book stores, I'm here to tell you that, actually, not only can you judge a book by its cover, but it is within your best interests to do so as often as possible.

For instance, just looking at the front cover of this particular novel, you may get the impression it's an adventure story, maybe with some light horror elements thrown in, possibly playing on the popularity of "reality" television shows like Naked and Afraid or Survivor. You'd be correct, so the next step is to use the rest of the cover to determine whether or not you should read it. Here, presented as it appears on the back cover blurb with no embellishments or enhancements of my own, is Survival Island's story pitch:

Survival Island is the story of three people surviving separate tragedies and ending up together on an uncharted island under unusual circumstances.

OK actually I lied. I'm totally going to comment on this, but so far, so good. It's a Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family Robinson sort of tale. I'm intrigued. Do go on, Mr. Rittenhouse.

Recent widower Mike Paskall, trying to put some meaning back into his life, has his boat sunk on the island's reefs during a storm.

Wait, he what? "Has his boat sunk" sounds like he planned it deliberately. I'm skeptical this is the case, but already the author has thrown up a huge flag here: murderously passive voice. But maybe he didn't write the back cover copy. Maybe that was the work of an intern and doesn't reflect his abilities. Let's read on.

His life is saved by Tana, a native girl, who has been cast out of her village because their god refused her as a human sacrifice.

OK, see, this is starting to get interesting again. Native islanders, human sacrifice, and a god unwilling to accept a young girl as tribute? Continue, Mr. Rittenhouse.

Michelle Fouquet is on her way home from college when her plane is struck by debris from a falling Russian satellite.

Damn Russians. They ruin everything. Putting aside the odds of anything at all being hit by falling space debris, let's just accept for the sake of argument that sure, something happens, and this woman's plane crashes. It's not like this could possibly happen anywhere near where Mike Paskall's boat sank, so--

She wakes up in a native village, where a juju fondles her naked body, preparing her for a human sacrifice to a flesh-eating tree.

Oh, right. Because of course she does. Naturally. Well, she's about to have a bad day then, right?

Mike and Tana rescue her, and the three live together near the top of the only mountain on the island.

Well, maybe not.

Both girls know and strangely approve of Mike's making love to the other.

OK, time the fuck out. WHAT?!

Then a brutal village-to-village search for Michelle sparks a war among the natives.

Because I'm sure the natives are all like, "Who's this twat waffle who thinks he can just bone two women, both of whom are totally down with him banging the other one and not at all jealous? We need to catch him, saw off his tweeter, and get back to fondling naked bodies."

With radio equipment salvaged from the life raft Michelle was in after the plane crashed, Mike starts sending out SOS signals.

Right. This guy's got an entire mountain top and two willing young women all to himself. The only SOS he's sending out for involves an air-drop of condoms so a baby doesn't spoil all the fun.

A ship finally does home in on the faint transmission, but as it approaches the lagoon below their camp, so do the natives.

For fuck's sake, just give away the whole story, why don't you? I mean, gosh, there's a rescue ship that shows up...do you think they get rescued? I dunno, I better read all 181 pages to find out.

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If it's not already obvious, this isn't any sort of professional publication. Dog's Ear Publishing is a vanity press, which means this guy had to pay a good chunk of money to get his manuscript into print. The whole point of the vanity press market is to take otherwise nonpunishable slush (and a few thousand dollars) so that someone can say, "Yeah, I wrote a book." If you've looked at e-publishing in the last few years, it's pretty much the same thing, only much, much worse because Amazon has such low standards for entry and no requirement that you give them money to host your slap-dash ego-driven drivel.

The rules for publishing on Amazon basically boil down to, "No underage sex, and no stories where people related by blood do the nasty." If you can avoid both of those, you too can have your own book published.

Rohn Rittenhouse couldn't even do that, as Tana, the aforementioned native girl who saves Mike's life, is a girl. But despite Mike agonizing over how wrong it would be to deflower this girl given how young she is, all it takes is a few looks at her bare boobies and he's ready to tear the petals off that daisy (no pun intended). This is a 32-year old Englishman who stands six-foot-four and weighs two hundred pounds. Tana's maybe fifteen if he squints and pretends. Sure, by his cultural standards he has no business banging her, but who's to say what her cultural standards say about playing 'hide the salami' with a weirdly-dressed man who doesn't speak your language?

Just...come on, dude. The Lolita thing only works when it's done well, and this is, like, medium rare at best.

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The entire book is just one laughably amateur display of telling over showing after another, repeated over the course of 180 pages. Rohn Rittenhouse thinks this is exactly what should happen if you get shipwrecked on an uncharted island, so that's what happens. Rohn writes female characters the way every incel in the world thinks about female characters: they just need to give a guy a chance to show how good it can be for them if they put out, and everything will fall into place. These female characters have no agency or desires except to fulfill Rohn Rittenhouse's Mike Paskall's bizarre fantastical notions of what survivors of plane crashes and shipwrecks endure.

According to Survival Island, what they endure is basically constant boning, and conversations about how they all love one another because...well, what choice do we have, cut off from the rest of civilization as we are?

Gilligan's Island was a sitcom about a larger group of people stranded under similar circumstances, and even it managed to be more realistic over the course of an entire multi-season run than this absurdity. You'd think an island with a native population into practicing human sacrifice and feeding people to carnivorous trees would have something to offer, but I'll refer you to the sentence above about how both women "strangely approve" of sharing their guy with one another.

I can't even give this a rating. I've read fan fiction that blows Survival Island out of the water. I've seen grade school stage plays with more character depth. I've seen porn with better plots. This isn't even amateurish. An amateur is someone who performs their task unpaid--Survival Island is actually worse than that because Rittenhouse had to pay someone else to do the work. I mean, sure, 10/10 on the 'job creation' front there Rohn, but minus several million across literally every other category.

Seeing nonsense like this out in the world is what makes people who have no business even touching a keyboard suffer the delusion that they too have a book inside of them. "If he can do it, then why can't I?" goes the thinking. Fortunately in most cases, there's a gatekeeper whose job it is to ensure those who can't, don't. Vanity publishing, on the other hand, is bribing the gatekeeper to let you in anyway with the promise you won't cause too much trouble.

Rohn Rittenhouse wrote Survival Island because he wanted to tell a story. I read it specifically so I can tell you a better one: the story of a forty-year-old American who read Survival Island and lived to pass on two important messages. First, you really don't need to read it. Second, I just saved you $14.95.

You're welcome. Hit that upvote button so I won't have suffered through this linguistic travesty for nothing.