Bumping Geese 5: The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb

Last week I described Goosebumps as something I'm learning a lot about despite having zero passion for it. That might have sounded a bit harsh. It might make it sound like this has already become some kind of chore for me, rather than as the enjoyable part of the week that it is.

You see, while they are children's books, I really am just a big child. I follow every Spongebob social media page, I feel an immense pure joy whenever I re-watch the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers", I think puns and slapstick are the best comedy, and I obsess morbidly over every mistake I made when I was 8 until I am overcome with shame and regret. I'm big, grouchy, pretentious child, but still a child at heart, none the less.

And for the most part, the Goosebumps books I've read have been entirely worth the time I've spent on them. If, like me, you have an lively inner-child and you're interested in the Goosebumps books I've reviewed, I absolutely recommend reading them. They're only a few dollars as e-books and they only take a couple of hours to read.

And now we've got that cleared up, let's talk about this weeks Goosebumps and my especially mild enthusiasm for it.

Anybody else think those bandages look too loose?

'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' is a story about Gabe, an Egyptian American boy on a holiday with his parents visiting Egypt for the first time. I just want to pause here to remark that it's really refreshing for the characters to be both explicitly POC in this book, and for the main characters in a story about Egyptian mummies to actually be ethnically Egyptian, even if still American. Kudos, Mr Stine.

So, anyway, Gabe is visiting Egypt with his shitty parents who won't buy their child a drink even though he's thirsty and they're in the desert. But after a long day of depriving him of water just because they can, they receive a phone call and have to cut their holiday short. You see, Gabe's awful parents are using this holiday as a chance to do some kind of business for their refrigerator selling business, and a meeting they had planned in Alexandria has been bumped forward a week, meaning they need to cut short their time in Cairo. Gabe is understandly upset that his parents have decided to suck quite so hard, but then they have an idea.

Dump the kid with his uncle!

And his cousin he hates!

Parents of the year.

But Gabe does like his uncle, and it means he can stay in Cairo and do Cairo things, and his Uncle - Ben - is an archaeologist working in the pyramids, so maybe he'll get to go inside a pyramid if he stays with his uncle. So Gabe agrees and his parents rush off, no doubt thrilled to be rid of their child, who they clearly hate, because they are terrible.

And a little while later, Gabe's terrible uncle and cousin, who, if we're honest, also seem like they hate Gabe, arrive at Gabe's hotel to look after him. Uncle Ben arrives in a mummy costume just to scare Gabe, and Sari - Gabe's cousin and Ben's daughter - find it hilarious when Gabe, who has been alone in a hotel room in a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language, abandoned by his parents, after spending the day dehydrated, this it's fuckin' hilarious when he nearly shits himself at the sight of a stranger in a monster costume walking unannounced and uninvited into his room.

After dumping some extra trauma on Gabe, Uncle Ben tells him he will indeed take Gabe to the pyramids tomorrow and when tomorrow arrives, they do indeed go to the pyramids. Uncle Ben, as it happens, has discovered a new chamber in the pyramids. And by 'Uncle Ben has discovered' I mean the diggers and students working for him discovered it and he's taking the credit.

It's all very fascinating, but once they're there, Uncle Ben gets distracted talking to his colleagues, so Sari convinces Gabe to run off with her and explore the pyramid. They do, but Gabe falls behind when his shoelace comes untied and he stops to tie it up. Once again abandoned by his family, he wanders blindly in search of Sari and eventually finds her. Or rather, Sari climbs into an empty sarcophagus, waits for a frightened and lost Gabe to stumble into the room, then bursts out at him to frighten him.

So, let's get something out of the way about here. With the exception of poor Gabe, every fucking person in this book sucks. They are just the worst. Like, this book isn't anywhere near as bad as 'Monster Blood', but everyone is as terrible as the little shit that was the protagonist in ;Monster Blood'.

And no, I don't remember that bastard's name. He will forever be remembered as "The little shit from 'Monster Blood', the worst Goosebumps book."

Oh, you don't believe me? How bad could they be?

So, after Uncle Ben finds them --

Hold on. One more tangent. Uncle Ben? Is RL Stine trying to force me to make Spider-Man jokes?

Well I refuse.

You can't make me.

Nah-uh.

Anyway. So, after Uncle Ben finds Sari and Gabe wandering the pyramid and probably wrecking priceless history, the next day Uncle Ben leaves them alone in the hotel while he goes to visit some workers who have come down sick, or maybe gone into shock after some unspecified incident at the pyramid. Sari, who still sucks, convinces Gabe to leave the hotel, against Uncle Ben's instructions, to go visit the Cairo museum. This being a thing Gabe was looking forward to doing with really anybody who would take him because he is desperate for anybody in his family to love him and show him kindness, it doesn't take much to convince Gabe. And so off they go, and are promptly kidnapped by Ahmed, one of Uncle Ben's colleagues whom they met at the pyrmids. Ahmed pulls the old "Your father sent me to get you because he is busy, get into my car and I will take you to him" schtick and Gabe and Sari fall for it, until they realise they're being kidnapped.

Luckily, they escape, and are able to run back to the hotel. A short while later, Uncle Ben returns and they tell him about Ahmed and the kidnapping and Uncle Ben, source of great wisdom that he is, says "I shall go and confront him at the pyramids and you should come with me, children who were his victim!"

And off they go.

Fortunately, this time Uncle Ben gives his children some beepers that will allow him to find them if they get lost. They each also have a torch all their own. And into the spooky pyramid they go.

And then Gabe notices his shoes are untied and stops to tie them up. He calls for Uncle Ben and Sari to wait for him, but the two are too busy arguing over something and so they don't hear and abandon him in the dark again.

Don't get me wrong. I feel for Gabe. I like Gabe. He has all my sympathy... But get some Velcro shoes, kid. Laces suck and you should have learned by now that they're a fool's game.

Oh wait. Gabe is 12 and can't buy his own shoes. His parents need to do that, and because they hate him, of course they would only buy him shoes with laces.

Yes. Yes I do believe if somebody ever buys you a pair of shoes with laces instead of Velcro, they hate you. They hate you as much as Gabe's parents hate him.

Sorry. I don't make the rules.

All right. So where were we? Oh yeah. Gabe is lost again. He goes running around looking for Sari and Ben. He doesn't use his beeper because he is sure Sari will make fun of him for being lost and scared again. Then the tunnel he's in just fuckin' collapses under him and he falls into a chamber full of mummies, mummy-making-tools, and a tar pit. Oh, and scorpions. And the scorpions just start going to town on Gabe's feet. They hate his shoes with laces, too... Or they just hate Gabe. Why not? Everybody else does.

Luckily, Gabe isn't there long before somebody finds him. Just before he falls face first into the scorpion nest, Sari finds him and grabs him, stopping him mid-fall. Unfortunately, it is Sari, so she's a total bitch about it, and also she's now lost and separated from Ben. And then just because the universe wants Gabe to suffer, both he and Sari are found by Ahmed, whom you may remember from a few paragraphs ago when he tried to kidnap them. Only now Ahmed is new and improved Ahmed With A Knife edition Ahmed.

Ahmed reveals that he tried to kidnap them to force Ben to leave his pyramid explorations. He also frightened the workers who fell ill, also to stop the exploration. Ahmed, you see, is the descendent of ancient Egyptian priestess Khala, who put a curse on all who would violate her tomb/mummy chamber. But this is one of those not-so-impressive curses where a direct descendant of the priestess has to be in the area, and know about the curse, and know about the violation, and agree to carry it out by murdering the culprits and mummifying them.

And, look, I don't want to tread on anybody's beliefs, but this is one weak arse curse and Ahmed is just a serial killer. Dude just wants to murder some archaeologists and any priestesses or ancient curses seem peripherally involved at best.

Before Ahmed can begin the murders, though, Uncle Ben shows up to rescue the kids and absolutely fails. Gabe, Ben, and Sari try to escape, but still fail. Ahmed gets tired of their shenanagins and decides that instead of the mummification plan, he's just going to push them into a boiling tar pit.

But at the last moment, standing on the edge of the tar pit, seconds from a painful death, Gabe reaches into his pocket and remembers his lucky charm. His special talisman he has carried this whole time. A treasure he picked up at a garage sale. A mummified hand called The Summoner, told to have the legendary power of, well, summoning. And what does it summon?

Mummies, apparently. Because Gabe holds the mummified hand up like he's calling on the power of Greyskull and Ahmed freaks out and then all the mummies in the room - victims of Ahmed and his ancestors - come to life and try to throw Ahmed in the tar pit. But only monsters are allowed to die in  a Goosebumps book, and Ahmed is a human, so after doing him a spook, the mummies let him go and Ahmed runs off. The mummies go back to sleep, Gabe and his family go back to the hotel and...

And nothing. Gabe's parents come back to Cairo and the book ends without a twist.

And so ends what is, by far, the least moist Goosebumps book in the series so far.

Really, everything in this book is so dry and sandy that it's like the four previous books stole all the moist out of this one.

And how is this decidedly un-moist book?

It's okay. Not the best. Not the worst. A solid "Sure" on the scale of "Pfft" to "Aww yeah!".

One of the things that is really interesting about this task of mine to read all the Goosebumps is that I get to see, one book at a time, how RL Stine has evolved as an author. All authors change, grow, and usually improve with time. Even though 'Stay Out of The Basement' is still the best book in the series so far, on the whole, the quality has been on an upwards climb and that is especially clear in this book because, as of 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb' RL Stine has learned what a joke is.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I cannot stress hard enough to you how awkwardly, deeply, and amazingly not-funny RL Stine is. I genuinely don't think, that in 1992, when he started writing Goosebumps, he knew what a joke was. Characters would make jokes, and I'd know they were jokes because RL Stine would call them that in the narration, but they were not funny. They were not anything remotely resembling a joke. It was like he was taking his wildest, most desperate guesses at what counts for humour and screaming "IS THIS IT? HAVE I DISCOVERED THE FUNNY!?"

And no, Mr Stine, you had not.

Until now.

In 'The Curse of The Mummy's Tomb', RL Stine discovered puns.

And, fortunately for RL Stine, and for me, I am a giant grumpy pretentious child and I fucking love puns.

All right. I think that's it. This blog is feeling a little long, today, and I have stuff to do. I did have a Marxist take for this one, but I don't want to take up too much of your time and we've had a lot of tangents already. If enough people ask for it (drop a comment down below) I'll come back to it, otherwise, well, for this look back on a little story about mummies...

That's a wrap!