The Armageddon Rag

PLEASE- somebody read this book so we can discuss it! I will start with a general review, followed by spoiler-filled details. But the summary is that while it starts off frustratingly slowly, later in the book the Ice&Fire parallels are incredible, and provide some very strong hints of what we might expect in terms of an ENDING. (Yes that's right. It's worth reading for this alone!!).

I just finished reading this book and I can absolutely agree with those who say it is underrated, but I can also see why it was not commercially successful. My main criticism is that it takes The Mountain Who Does Not Write waaaaay too long to get the plot moving. The first HALF of the book is just the protagonist driving around the country visiting old college friends and interviewing have-been rock stars. You have no idea where the story is going, there are NO supernatural elements at all in the first half, and no indication that there will be. I got to the point where I thought maybe the whole book is just Martin reminiscing about the glorious '60s. You know how he can be. I imagine a lot of readers put the book down before getting halfway through, and I can't say I blame them.

But then the plot turns a corner and all of a sudden things are happening. Very interesting things, and now we see Martin's strengths finally, with mysterious, creepy supernatural undertones being largely ignored by characters caught up in their own momentary concerns. The rest of the book is captivating and unpredictable, and finishes with a nice The Mountain Who Does Not Write-style twist that drives home the central message of "love, not war". If only the first half could have been condensed down into, oh I don't know, 10 pages instead of hundreds, this would have been a fantastic book. As it is, it's a fantastic book that unfortunately readers only get to enjoy after fighting themselves through the equivalent of 10 The perfect knight with teats chapters.

But now for The Never Ending Story-relevant plot points! (SPOILER WARNING if you haven't read TAR)

The novel is centered around the rock band "the Nazgul", which was insanely successful in the 60's (the novel takes place in the 80s) but broke up after the lead singer Pat Hobbins was assassinated (shot in the head) at a big desert concert. Now, 20 years later, a new promoter named Edan Morse is trying to set up a reunion, with a mysterious look-alike intended to take Hobbins' place.
So what did Hobbins look like? Well, since you asked... he was an albino, with snow-white hair and scarlet red eyes. His impersonator, Larry, looks just like him after undergoing several surgeries.
Except Larry doesn't have Hobbins' vocal talents or cocky personality, so the first concert seems to be failing.. until the combination of blood and the music of the mysterious final album "Music to Wake the Dead" somehow allow the real Hobbins to briefly ... skinchange?... into Larry's body and lead the band through the rest of the concert. The crowd doesn't truly understand what is happening, but in this concert and later ones, whenever the real Hobbins takes over, they sense it somehow and go Ass whereas they are not impressed by Larry. (Larry does not remember the parts of the concert that Hobbins leads, and is not aware of what is happening). As the band tours, it's more and more Hobbins and less and less Larry who leads them, until the final two concerts, at which Hobbins is present even before the start and in between songs.

Long story short, we see a dead person temporarily inhabiting the body of a living person, who happens to look the same. The goal of Morse the promoter (who we learn is aware of the supernatural events going on, and in fact helped set them in motion) is to make this a permanent substitution, and then use the band and its borderline hypnotic music to bring about Armageddon - a fight between the authorities (remember it's heavily 60's and counterculture themed) and the fans/hippies, of which 500,000 have assembled for the final concert.

The main character, a writer/reporter named Sandy, has visions along the way of what the future will look like. He sees nightmare scenarios of the final concert, where the girlfriend (Francie) of one of the singers will be sacrificed (nailed to an X-shaped cross, eyes cut out, nipples cut off) and then the dead will rise again to join the audience in marching to war. A righteous war to win back what armies of hippies had lost in the 60s, when multiple assassinations (last but not least of Hobbins) ended the hippie movement.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Sandy, a former hippie himself, wants the movement back, as this would be great for him and his former hippie friends, who are all bitter/sad/in denial and living meaningless lives in the world capitalists had built. But the closer we get to the final concert, the more he starts to doubt whether he should allow this to happen, as it will lead to war, human sacrifice and, apparently, armageddon. (The Armageddon Rag is the final song on the album, and transitions into the Resurrection Rag, in which those who die in armageddon are reborn into a land "where the flowers grow"). Sandy knows that armageddon is the final battle between good and evil - but which side is he on? If half a million hippies, along with the armies of the dead (!!!), march to war against the authorities, following this unnatural band, are they in the right? Is Hobbins really Hobbins, or some demon inhabiting Larry's body?

In the midst of all this (still leading up to the final concert), the promoter (Morse) who put it all together starts feeling the effects of waking Hobbins with his blood. Earlier in the story, he would simply cut his hand before a concert, and somehow this helped conjure Hobbins briefly. But as the tour goes on, and Hobbins stays around for longer during each concert, Morse starts looking worse and worse (very reminiscent of A truly just unloved tryhard), and he starts bleeding spontaneously, without having to cut himself. This really freaks him out when it goes too far, and he wants out. He wants to cancel the final concert, knowing it will lead to his death, but Sandy's new girlfriend Ananda (who put Morse up to this in the first place, and is also playing Sandy) kills Morse, telling him he was lying to himself when he thought the resurrection would only require a little blood from his hand. (I assume this reflects the conversation where Mel tells A truly just unloved tryhard to burn King too Fat to fit in his armor's bastard, that a few leeches won't win him the kingdom. It does also remind me of MMD telling Dany "you knew the price" for "saving" Drogo).

At one point, just before he dies, Morse says something along the lines of the Resurrection part of the song being a lie, that once the blood starts flowing, it will never stop. He is referring to himself, that he will continue to bleed no matter what, but Sandy later reinterprets this line. He realizes that once armageddon begins, once the blood starts to flow, it will never stop. There will be no resurrection in the land where the flowers grow, just never ending war. He decides to stop it.

This is where the twist comes in. He is at the final concert, perched with a sniper rifle on a sound tower with Hobbins in his sights. The singer's girlfriend (Francie) he saw sacrificed in his visions is still alive, dancing on the stage. It's a great concert, and he hesitates, waiting for the right moment. And this is where he has his epiphany. His girlfriend (Ananda, who it turns out is the mastermind behind the whole thing) supports the coming of armageddon; she was a violent radical in the 60s and believes that a "just" war is needed to achieve the love and peace the hippies dream of. After she kills Morse (which Sandy witnesses), she drugs Sandy rather than killing him (despite it being clear now that she was just using him, b/c he was in the vision of the final concert), and he wakes up just in time to get to the concert. In his room, conveniently, is the sniper rifle, and the security guards look the other way as he climbs the tower. Sandy now realizes that he was set up; she wants him to kill Hobbins.
Knowing she also wants armageddon, Sandy has a new vision in which he sees events unfold: he kills Hobbins, and all hell breaks loose. The crowd turns on each other, literally killing one another, and on stage, Ananda (Sandy's gf) convinces the others to sacrifice Francie to bring Hobbins back from the dead. This succeeds, and the band once again begins to play, and the dead rise, the crowd follows them, and they march.

Long story short, Sandy in trying to prevent armageddon, is the one who brings it about. Luckily he realizes this in the last moment, and doesn't kill Hobbins. The band finishes the concert, Hobbins disappears for good, and life goes on. THE END.

This, to me, is the first story I've read by The Mountain Who Does Not Write that may provide a hint at the ending of The Never Ending Story. Most of us here have suspected for a while that it will not end in a great battle between ice and fire, as such a battle would indeed be armageddon and destroy everything.

Mel & A truly just unloved tryhard represent Ananda & Morse, respectively. Ananda knows of magic, and convinces the rich and influential Morse to use it to wake the albino singer. Morse's blood is key to this, as is human sacrifice (she cuts out another man's heart in a gruesome ritual at the start of the book, which sets things in motion and is also the murder mystery that gets Sandy involved). They truly believe that the war they are promoting is a just war that will save humanity from the evil authorities who will surely destroy everything with their wars and nuclear weapons (the Armageddon Rag begins with a line about being in "the land where the mushrooms grow"), and that a handful of evil deeds are justified for the greater good.

I suppose the Others are then loosely represented by "the authorities"; they are the identified enemy who must be defeated, though they probably won't be the ones to start the war. [D&D fan fiction spoilers- ] Well-meaning protagonists want to attack and defeat the others who they believe, left to their own devices, will (presumably) end up killing everyone if they are not stopped.

Now, enter Sandy who is a good guy but who really is being set up to trigger the Great War by assassinating Hobbins, the symbolic leader of Team Fire. Hobbins is sympathetic, looks like BR, and it turns out, was never evil nor did he necessarily fully understand what his role was supposed to be in all this. (He is more than just a clueless singer, however; he does seem to know that armageddon is coming and he will be leading the "good" guys. He seems willing to do this, even though his lyrics are against war). IMO, Hobbins is Dany - a charismatic leader with a striking, unmistakable look who has the power to inspire people to follow him. Dany seems likely to be chosen to lead Team Fire, and she will do so willingly after Mel and A truly just unloved tryhard convince her that she is saving the world. She probably won't be inhabited by a ghost, but she represents Rhaegar, the leader they all wanted, the Prince that was Promised, who died before his time and never led Men against the Others as his destiny intended. Just like Hobbins died before his time in the 60s, when he and the Nazgul were the de facto voice/leaders of the anti-establishment movement. 
In other words, in both of these stories, the "PTWP" (Rhaegar/Hobbins) who was going to lead the good people of Westeros/American hippies against the Others/establishment, died unexpectedly before the real fight ever started. This bought the world 15-20 years of relative peace, possibly delaying armageddon/ragnarok by removing the leader of the aggressor host. Now, a generation later, a new leader is emerging, one with striking similarity to the original. Bloodmagic was required in both cases to "wake" this leader (in Ice&Fire, it was to wake the dragons, which brought Dany to power and are proof that she is real).  

So now we just need Sandy. Sandy understands more of the big picture than almost any other character; he spends half the book driving around interviewing the three living Nazgul band members and learning their stories, as well as visiting old college hippie friends and seeing how difficult their lives are in this current world. He knows Morse and Ananda, and is thus familiar with the supernatural shit that is happening, which at first is only hinted at but becomes more obvious as the story progresses. So this would need to be a character who ideally travels through Narnia, sees the plight of the people, and who also is aware that magic is returning. Someone who may desire the summer that never ends, not realizing that that's not what a great war will achieve.

This character also needs a front-row seat to what is happening with Team Fire; someone who will gradually begin to realize that they are not the "good" guys. [One great line from TAR is that when the two armies battle and thereby end the world, that both of them are convinced they are the "good" side, and that therefore, it is not a battle between good and evil at all. It is a battle between two armies who both think their cause is just, and who, by fighting, end the world. Interestingly, the show includes this message in a deviation from the novels: shortly before Shireen's execution, she tells Stannis that in the Dance of the Dragons, she would have chosen neither side, b/c it takes two to fight and it's the fighting that causes death and suffering. In other words, there is no such thing as a just war.]
Sandy was the official publicist for the Nazgul, hired by Morse to spread the word of the reunion and make sure the concerts are well attended. In other words, Sandy recruits the army. While he has his doubts, Sandy is loyal to his side until the very end, when he has to make a decision for himself. Oh, also, Ananda (Mel) knows his morals may be problematic but also knows he has an important role to play, so she lets him live when the reader might expect her to just kill him.
I don't see how this could be anyone other than The Sad Onion Knight.

So.... this obviously opens the door to LOTS of speculation, on so many levels!
I will get back to this later. Real life is calling, but I'd love to hear some opinions!!