Chapter 2: The story is moving forwards again! A miracle!

Chapter 2.

Oh boy. This one’s a good one. The Seagull returns to Old-Bear’s village, bringing us back to where we were two chapters ago. It is apparently announced in advance by the booming of its sail.

Ok, sails can make a fair bit of noise if loose in a strong wind. Two minor nitpicks:

1)      A sail making noise isn’t very well trimmed. The entire point of keeping the sail taut is that as much energy as possible is captured from the wind pushing against it and converting it into forward motion. A sail flapping around is by definition losing energy.

2)      SAILS ARE NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO ANOUNCE YOUR SHIP’S PRESENCE BEFORE IT COMES INTO SIGHT ON THE OPEN FRIKKING OCEAN! I don’t care how loud it is, in any weather where you have not stowed the sail it is not going to be loud enough to carry beyond line of sight.

We get some more dialogue as Old-Bear and Longbow discuss whether he’ll leave now and why. All the dialogue in this story seems forced and unnatural, which is a real problem when, you know, you have four novels full of it. DE, you can do so much better than this. You have done so much better than this! Why did you put so little effort into this series?!? WHY?!?!?

Moving on… Longbow boards the Seagull, and we find out that Zelana and co. have ousted Sorgan from his cabin for the duration of the voyage. We also find out that Red-Beard has come along for the ride as well. Finally, we get an introduction to another of Eleria’s charming quirks: getting carried and repaying it in kisses. And I use the word charming quite wrongly. Also, ‘beloved’, take another shot.

Longbow uses… well, I’d call it his Mary Sue powers but actually it’s reasonable observation to notice that the Maags’ lips aren’t syncing up to what he’s hearing and deduces how the gods are getting around the language barrier. I only have one problem with this: it should have been Red-Beard, not Longbow, who spotted this. Why?

Well, Longbow has had little to no human contact for the last 20 years. Red-Beard is a socialite and peacemaker. If one of them has to notice that something is off about people it should be Red-Beard, while if something is off about their surroundings then Longbow should notice it.

Now one final thing. In this chapter we have Red-Beard and Longbow first meeting. It is specified as their first meeting. They are very formal because they don’t know each other. You’ll see why in about a year and a half when I get to Crystal Gorge, but suffice to say that if you do remember it then you’re doing better than the author.

Chapter 1: in which I return to life and wish I hadn't.

Chapter 1.

Ah, it’s good to be out of the cloning chamber and… I’m reviewing this? Still? Let me back in the chamber!!!

Drat, someone disabled my suicide pistol.

Ok. No escape.

This is chapter 1 of a new section, ‘The Land of Maag’, for those keeping score. These resets are a real annoyance, but no biggie. After all, Sir Terry Pratchett has managed for years without using chapters AT ALL, and you can’t exactly say that his work suffered for it. Call it a pet peeve.

We open the chapter with “Now Old-Bear was chief of the tribe, and though he seldom spoke, Longbow’s parents had told their son when he was but a child that Old-Bear was very wise.”

Hang on, did I miss something? Was there a chapter somewhere that I missed?

Nope.

Meh, it’s just an odd way to open a new section of the book. I would have to be a petty, nit-picking internet text reviewer to start on someone for something like that… *Cracks knuckles* so let us begin. Firstly, and most importantly, the very first word is a lie. It’s not ‘now’, it’s ‘then’. That’s right, we’re getting a new character introduced via their life story. I personally hate this narrative technique, as it really hurts immersion for the reader and it’s really quite lazy. I’ll give The Painted Man a pass on this as that book needs to introduce multiple characters, have all their backgrounds explained and their personalities nuanced, and to add to the difficulty of that they only meet up at the end. If it weren’t the first book in a series I would still consider it poor writing, but it was well executed and gave us a really solid understanding of the main characters for the rest of the series. Then came The Desert Spear and… BETRAYAL! Screw you Peter Brett! You derail your own characters! It could have been so good, and you ruined it!

I’ll get to that one day. PB is a talented writer, but he’s too constricted by his plans to let his characters evolve on their own.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, first word of the first sentence. This is gonna suck.

The sentence has a somewhat ambiguous structure. If it had started with “Now, Old-Bear” it would have made more sense as the start of a separate part of the narrative. Not a whole lot more, but now comma is not an uncommon start to ye olde retelling. Now without the comma implies that there was a before, which in this case there is not. I’m not going to go into the wanton abuse grammar suffers in this chapter any further so that this post doesn’t become longer than the rest of the blog combined, so let’s move on.

This chapter introduces Longbow (in fact it is a recounting of his life up to what we’re dubiously calling the present) and a couple of supporting characters. Their names in this blog will be the chief, Chief Stereotype, and the shaman, Dr Plotexposition. Yes, Dr Plotexposition’s real name is hyphenated. I may take a leaf out of Linkara’s book and kill this thing with fire after I’m finished reviewing it, but in the mean time take another shot. Now begins the start of the countdown to Mary Suedom for Longbow (male, so technically a Marty Stu).

1)      Made an orphan? Check.

2)      So hansom that all the girls in the village fall in love with him? Check.

3)      Has a one true love? Check.

4)      She’s the most beautiful girl in the world (not hyperbore)? Check.

Next page!

5)      Special power (Never misses with his bow. Ever. I am so getting back to that later)? Check.

6)      Everyone is in awe of him? Check.

7)      True love is murdered by villain on day of the wedding? Check.

Next page!

8)      Dedicates life to vengeance, thus becoming a tragic loner? Check.

Other.

9)      Being a tragic loner never has any bearing on the story beyond the scene he’s introduced, and he is routinely quite sociable? Check.

10)   Angst? Only when we need to be reminded how tragic he is.

11)   Can beat the beings that created the gods at their own games with little to no effort? Yup, check that too.

12)   Opinions are always viewed as right by the narrative? Big check.

I have read self-insert fanfics that avert Mary Sue better than this. You can make a strong hero with a tragic past WITHOUT going this route. The Painted Man does it really well, with all of its characters… until The Desert Spear comes along.

I hate that book. It can burn alongside this garbage.

Anyway, long story short Longbow begins his lifetime of vengeance… and does it wrong. I mean, he doesn’t once say the words “That’s it, Misty-Water. To avenge you, I shall become a bat!”

He kills every servant of the Vlagh that comes into the western domain (an area close on the size of the western coast of the USA by my reckoning), then gets recruited by Zelana to help her gather outlander armies to fight off the invasion. The one half-decent thing this chapter might have done was at least give us some epic Sue-on-Sue battle of wills between Longbow and Eleria, but nope. I suppose that the plot continuum wouldn’t have been able to hold as irresistible plot met immovable plot, so maybe this was for the best.

Chapter 3: in which we discover that pirates don't think of the economy.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 opens with a confirmation that yes, the people of Drall are at a stone-age technology level. This is a plot-relevant reiteration that helps cement an element of the world into the reader’s mind, and is thus an important part of the world-building process. One interesting thing is that no-one is even remotely suspicious of A) someone knowing their names in a country that has never been discovered, that they had no intention of going to, and that by rights shouldn’t speak the same language; B) that person was not just expecting them but waiting for them; and C) that a stone age society is offering gold as payment, implying that they know gold is the basis of your economy. Indeed, Ham-Hand is more concerned by the prospect of working for a woman than by the above weirdness. I guess Viking pirates hire for brawn, not brains.

They head up the coast and arrive at a village, and the captain shows why he gets the big bucks with 2 good ideas:

1) Weigh anchor for the night and approach in the morning, so that their arrival cannot be misinterpreted as a surprise attack.

2) Tell the crew to be on their very best behavior. This is important, considering how pirate Vikings must feel after a few months at sea. Of course, the reason is because they’ll be outnumbered and causing a ruckus might jeopardize their chance of being paid rather than, you know, from being halfway decent human beings… of course, if they were decent human beings then the little talk wouldn’t be necessary.

Anyway, we are introduced to another of our future viewpoint characters at this point: a red-bearded native called, and you’ll never guess this in a million years… Red-beard! This actually raises an interesting question: What did they call him before he grew his beard? Seriously, there’s no mention of a birth name or a family name, he’s just Red-beard. Secondly, if red hair is rare enough to warrant naming someone over, where did the red-hair gene come from? Let’s be generous and say that the tribe has 300 adults (heck, even that many is a lot considering that they get all their food from hunting and gathering). Where would the anomalous red-hair come from? An outside tribe? It’s never mentioned, even though in a few books we get a fairly detailed life history of Red-beard. If red hair isn’t that uncommon, then isn’t it like calling someone ‘Blondie’ or ‘Goldielocks’ or… ok, but it’s still a stupid name! And this from the man who called a main character Kífffrlinï!

Anyway, Red-beard is rowing the chief White-braid (I give up) to speak with the captain. We then move on to the captain meeting with Zelana in her cave a way off from the village. I realize that it may seem like the narrative jumps like crazy with my retelling, but in fact the opposite is true. I’m just giving you a basic framework so you can follow why any of the plot holes is actually, you know, a plot hole.

Now the captain meets Zelana, the most beautiful woman he has ever met. Get used to that sentence. She opens with complaining about how long he took to get there, he calls her on knowing they were coming, and we get “the beloved knows everything.” Take a shot. I hate Eleria.

Apparently Hook-Beak is too busy staring to push the subject any further, even though if someone was spying on me and had just been proclaimed to know EVERYTHING you can bet I would start asking questions rather than getting distracted by the sexy.

Zelana suddenly endears herself to me greatly by kicking the plot into overdrive, leaving Hook-Beak to get caught up in her wake. This is the first time in 96 pages that there’s been any sense of energy, so this is a big thing. Hook-Beak asks how much he’s being paid for a bit of mercenary work, and the energy goes away as the plot stalls for another page of people stating the obvious. Also we are introduced to the running gag of Eleria intentionally mucking up peoples’ names, which is so funny it will obviously never get old… *Grabs suicide pistol*

###Emergency review subroutine loaded.

###Activating cloning vat. Estimated time until clone completion: 3 weeks.

###Resuming review.

Scene: Sorgan Hook-Beak is taken by Eleria to view offered payment gold.

Alert: Thermodynamics violated.

Alert: Gold shown exceeds total mined gold of human population of earth by year 2013.

Alert: Influx of this much gold into Maag economy will create total collapse and cause social regression that is likely to spread to neighboring nations, and is likely to cause a state of total war between Maags and Trogites.

Hypothisis: Total war between these two powers is goddess Zelana’s true goal, eliminating both technologically advanced nations as a threat to her own.

Query: Why is human Sorgan Hook-Beak incapable of suspicion in the presence of gold? Brain scans of test subjects reveal no shutdown of logical reasoning centers due to elements proximity.

Chapter end: A deal is struck, and Maag pirate Sorgan Hook-Beak is now transporting Goddess Zelana and cohorts for recruitment of additional pirate crews for PMC contract.

Logic error: Hook-Beak cannot take much gold as it will weigh down his ship, and speed is a factor. However, ship has not unloaded haul from Trogite merchant ship robbed 2 chapters ago, and is likely already at capacity. How can they be considering taking more?

###End review.

Chapter 2: Yeah, not much to make fun of here.

Chapter 2.                                                                                  

We start with the introduction of ‘Kaldo Tree-Top’, who is apparently very tall. His line for the series is “Land ho!”, informing us that our protagonists have found their way to Drall. Now in all honesty, this chapter isn’t really that bad. There are no massive plot holes, the story progresses, that sort of thing. However, there is one thing that starts getting on my nerves from the get-go: CharacterShilling. Now it’s a fine line to walk between introducing a new character’s reputation in a conversation and Character Shilling, but when you have a page dedicated to variations on the theme of ‘He runs fast’, I’d be inclined to put it in the latter camp. Other than that we get some world building and the characters make their way up the coast. They come upon a village, are informed that they are expected (but receive no answers as to how this is possible, after which they drop the issue and it is never raised again) and have to head further up the coast to meet with Zelana. We also get an early bird cameo from Longbow, easily the biggest Mary Sue character in this entire Suetopia of a series, but more on him later. A lot more.

And that’s pretty much it. The chapter is short and progresses the story by one notch, but isn’t terrible and contains little for me to mock.

Chapter 1: The Seafarers

Chapter 1

Ok, I have to start out by saying that this isn’t chapter 5. It’s the seafarers, chapter 1. You see these books are divided into different sections to help us keep track of the viewpoint character, which is actually not a bad idea for a story like this where perspective jumps around a bunch. The problem is that every time we reach a new section the chapter count starts over. This part is extremely annoying and makes keeping track of things harder without adding to the story or feeling in any way necessary. Protip for aspiring writers: If it makes your book needlessly more complicated and doesn’t add to the story then don’t put it in.

I’ll put my hand up and admit that my own book contains a timekeeping system which takes a bit of getting your head around, but at least that adds to the setting and is part of the worldbuilding. This? It’s needlessly annoying, and I have no idea why you would bother numbering the chapters at all if you were simply going to reset the count every 60 or so pages.

Right, now that’s out of the way.

This next section of the book is called the seafarers, and follows the charmingly sociopathic pirate/Vikings we were introduced to at the end of the last chapter. Our viewpoint character this chapter is Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak, the lad with firm economic advice about not killing people for kicks if you can still make a buck off of them. I’m going to take a bit of a risk here and post a quote, in spite of the whole ‘no part of this publication can be reprinted’ thing. It’s for a good cause, and if anyone really gets upset let me know and I’ll take it down.

‘Though he would deny it with his dying breath, if the truth were to be known, it was sheer coincidence that led to the discovery of the Land of Dhrall by Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak and the crew of his ship, the Seagull.’

Why was this quoteworthy? Well apart from demonstrating a fondness for commas beyond even my own obsession with them, it generates another plot hole when compared with the series finale. In fact the plot hole comes from the same problem as the preface, so take another shot. There are so many of these that I am convinced that the finale is an ass-pull ending that was never planned at this stage of the undertaking. This is a major problem, and here’s why:

Most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.

The beginning of the story is where you establish your characters and setting, along with setting in motion whatever plot or conflict is going to drive the series. The beginning can be fast such as in the hobbit, or slow as is the case in the lord of the rings. A strong beginning is vital for getting your readers invested and engaged, and a half-baked beginning can kill an otherwise good book by losing the interest of prospective readers.

The middle of the story is, naturally, everything that happens between beginning and end. Character development, plot progression… almost everything that makes a story enjoyable is going to happen in this section of the series, which is as it should be as this is what makes up the vast majority of the series. Of the three, having only a vague idea of the middle of a book is probably the least damaging as it allows the plot and characters to develop more organically.

Then we come to the end, the culmination of our series. A weak ending can potentially damage a franchise more than several lackluster chapters in the middle of a story, as demonstrated with the fan outcry at the ending of mass effect 3. While knowing exactly how a story will end when you start writing it isn’t vital, having some idea of what is going to happen is a good idea. A good ending will tie up the main plot and preferably deal with the majority of any loose ends still remaining, though with more complex stories one or two threads will inevitable be missed by all but the most methodical and talented.

What you most certainly do not want is an ending that concludes none of your plot threads, comes completely out of left field, and creates a bunch of plot holes. Rest assured, if you stick with me then you’ll see an ending that ticks all of these boxes and more besides.

Ok, major tangent already and we’re only a single sentence in. So let’s take a look at the second sentence. Yes, we’re in for the long haul on this one. It’s basically telling us how awesome Sorgan Hook-Beak is as a sailor, as it’s easier to do this than actually show him being a good sea-captain. Oh, but merely being good isn’t enough for our main character: He’s the best there has ever been. So of the random ships Zelana could have stumbled upon, the first one contains the greatest sea-captain ever. Take a shot, and restock your alcohol because EVERY ONE of our main characters is going to be the best that has ever lived in their respective fields… one of which I will be taking particular issue with as I, an internet reviewer, can out-do him in his field of mastery without even raising a sweat. But more on that later.

We now get some exposition on the land of Maag and the history of Sorgan Hook-Beak. Several pages later we read what we just read last chapter from another point of view (take a shot) and the chapter ends with us catching up to where last chapter left off, his ship and crew getting swept away by a divinely mandated tide and to the land of Drall.

Chapter 4: In which we meet our "Heroes"

Chapter 4

Zelana starts us off by drifting westward over the sea on the wind. Fair enough, it’s an effective way to travel from A to B and it’s not like it’s laborious. She’s heading west because she knows that there was a continent over there before she got obsessed with the pink dolphins, once again bringing up the plot hole that they seem to live forever as apparently there’s a real risk that continental drift had already moved it away since she retreated to her grotto. I should also take this moment to apologize, as apparently pink dolphins are a real phenomenon in the form of albinism. Given that there’s an entire race of them I’m not sure if it counts, but whatever. This book could benefit from having less plot holes, so we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The sea is always referred to as ‘Mother Sea’, which irks me… but that’s just my personal preference. Also, since the sea in this setting is actually sentient the term is not entirely without merit. How did the sea become sentient? Never explained, but apparently both the planet and its moon are also sentient, as are: lightning; a manicure sun; the winds (I think. Brief mention in a later book, and I could be misremembering). I want you to dwell on that for a moment. The air has thoughts and feelings in this world. You’re breathing in a sentient entity. That is all kinds of horrifying.

It also occurs to me that Zelana is arguably the worst goddess ever. She seems to be such a fifth wheel in the whole running the universe thing, what with the fact that she went into a cave and wrote poetry for a few millennia and everything seemed to go along fine without her. Likewise, her brother got sent to the moon for a similar amount of time with likewise no ill effects to his domain. I don’t know, it seems like their presence isn’t really necessary either within the context of the story world, or that of the narrative. In all honesty, I feel that the story would have benefited if, instead of a goddess floating over the ocean to go find outlanders to bring against her enemies, we were following a lone tribesman braving the terrors of the open oceans in a desperate bid to find someone, anyone, who could help save his tribe from the horrors of the Vlagh. I don’t know, maybe I don’t find immortal and all-powerful protagonists that interesting.

Anyway, Zelana demonstrates her hit-and-miss knowledge of the world by not knowing what a ship is (Despite her fellow gods knowing about how savage and warlike the outlanders are, or even knowing about metalworking. Maybe she just didn’t ask them for any information on the people she was going to try and meet… which considering the urgency of her mission and the fact that using her fellow gods’ experience could save her valuable time seems to me to be a bit stupid). She lands on the water and tiptoes towards the longboat. Screw you physics, I’m a goddess! On the bright side, we’ve got a ship full of Viking warriors about to be introduced to the story, and that has to be an improvement… right?

Ok, one quick thing. Zelana quote ‘adjusted her hearing’ unquote to understand the Vikings. Except that we established that the understanding of languages comes from telepathy and has nothing to do with hearing, and we established this about 2-3 pages ago. They weren’t even trying.

In a surprisingly well executed exposition dump we learn that the longboat is called the Seagull, the first mate is known as Ox, the Vikings are known as the ‘Maags’, and their favorite prey are a race known as the ‘Trogites’.  I wouldn’t say that the dialogue here is flowing, but I’ve seen a lot worse in my time and it gets the job done quickly, cleanly, and without feeling too forced.

Take another shot, the Maags are referred to as ‘Man-Creatures’. Seriously David, what have you got against the word ‘humans’? Zelana knows what humans are, why do we need the stupid hyphenated speech-on-paper-thing? Anyway, goddess-called-Zelana sits on big-water-thing-known-to-some-as-mother-sea-but-to-others-as-the-ocean-and-this-joke-is-going-on-too-long and thinks, somehow avoiding hurting herself while doing so. She concludes that the Maags are not in fact fishermen, what with their weapons and the fact that they were talking about hunting down other ships. She also deduces that they are in fact out to steal gold from the Trogites, for reasons that she cannot fathom. I can’t actually fault her on this, as throughout the books the concept of money is never broached or explained to any of the Dhrall characters, leaving them to wonder about this obsession with gold the outlanders have. More on that later.

It is now that we are introduced to one of our interchangeable outlander main cast, Sorgan Hook-Beak. His defining qualities are that he’s in charge and he’s greedy, with the generic persona of a lovable rogue of the pirate persuasion. We’re mixing and matching cultures at this point, just roll with it. We are also introduced to the other Maags, most of whom we never hear about again. However, there are two that we will see regularly introduced here: Kryda Ham-Hand and Rabbit. Ham-Hand and Ox never receive any real characterization beyond dumb muscle and that Ox has terrible hayfever, though this never gets forshadowed and is only mentioned when it becomes important to the plot in book 3. These two are basically interchangeable. Rabbit is one of the few members of this entire series with an IQ as high as room temperature, and as a result will be our ‘smart guy’ from now on. Be prepared to find yourself dazzled by his intellect. He is genuinely a skilled metalworker, which will prove consistently useful throughout the four books.

They attack a Trogite vessel, who’s inhabitants bail out rather than show resistance. I personally feel that this is a poor way to demonstrate how badass these guys are, as all it really shows is that their reputation is bad enough that a bunch of unarmed merchants will jump ship rather than get slaughtered. Ox suggests burning the vessel after they’ve finished looting it. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen! Oh, and remember that this is out in the middle of the ocean, so burning the ship would effectively condemn all those men to swimming until they were too tired and drowned. Sorgan vetoes the suggestion on the grounds that if they get their ship back they can be robbed again at a later date. Whatever you say about that, at least it’s better than his first mate’s ‘burn everything’ mentality.

Long story short, Zelana abducts them by asking the sea to create a strong current to the land of Dhrall, pulling their ship along for the ride. 

Chapter 3: The least dramatic council of the gods in recorded history.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 opens with Zelana swimming out of her grotto, once again showing that there’s no surface exit. We then get to find out how the gods get around in this world: they glide on the winds. Well, technically that’s not fair. The female gods glide silently on the winds, while the male gods ride around on tame ‘thunderbolts’ (which I assume is lightning). Come on, be honest: if you could tame lightning and ride it around as a form of transportation you totally would. One interesting factor is that apparently the gods can levitate up and down under their own power but are unable to fly at a reasonable velocity without assistance.

Our next scene takes place in the cave home of Zelana’s older but the same age brother (They’re gods, they don’t have to explain it) Dahlaine. Now Dahlaine has recently discovered that the civilizations beyond their little continent have found metal and learned to shape it, something that is a new concept around here. Now judging from the dialogue this is the first time the gods have even HEARD of metal (just metal. Not even ‘Iron’ or ‘Copper’ or anything like that. Just generic ‘metal’), which strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s my modern sensibilities shining through but I would expect that GODS who’ve had thousands of years to get bored and poke around have never so much as heard of metal before a bunch of apes got digging.

We also find out that his dreamer is called Ashad, and he was raised by bears in the same way as Eleria was effectively raised by dolphins. By the way, you can safely forget any dreamer apart from Eleria. They never do anything interesting that we see firsthand, and get SFA dialogue.

Anyhow, we get a quick recap of the events of last chapter. Look, I may only be an amateur author compared to David but it seems to me that recapping the last chapter for about a three pages, on the third chapter of the first book, might not be the best way to get the story rolling. I like a slow start, but seriously! We just read that a few pages ago! The dialogue tends to repeat itself a bit as well, which is irksome.  

Now we get another glimpse of Zelana’s wonderful personality: She’s what TvTropes would probably list as a deadpan snarker.  This character trait is normally very endearing to me, but in this instance the sarcasm is somewhat unjustified. Also, every member of the cast displays this trait, so the novelty will be wearing off very quickly.

Now we get our introduction to Zelana’s older sister, Aracia. Her primary character traits are vanity that verges on narcissism and a lack of general grounding in reality. She lives in a large temple/palace which is populated with lazy, sycophantic priests who spend all day telling her how awesome she is. Now according to the book the temple is made of carved stone blocks sheathed in pale marble, which is pretty… I’m just not sure how they managed that without any form of metal tools. I mean it’s obviously possible for the basic construction as the mayans managed to make their pyramids at a similar tech level, but I was always under the impression that marble required more advanced tools to work effectively. Ok, I admit that’s nitpicky.

Hmmm… Aracia is introduced as wearing a golden crown and sitting in a golden throne. Once again I could be wrong but I thought that kind of metalworking was beyond stone age technology. Oh well, she’s a god so I should probably let it slide.

Some of you may have noticed that I’m repeatedly getting hung up on the technology inconsistencies. This is intentional, because one of the entire themes of the series is technology levels… which are then arbitrarily ignored, seemingly at random.

Anyway… we get a scene of Zelana rocking up to the middle of the church practically naked, solely to cause offense. In essence, to troll her sister and the priests. We then get the family hierarchy explained to us in some dialogue which is supposed to show Aracia as inflexible and stuck up but actually shows Zelana as rude and obnoxious. So Zelana drags Aracia away and off to the family meeting, and on the way we glean a couple of things from their conversation. Firstly, Aracia knows very little about the world she’s a god on, up to and including that the planet is round. Secondly, gods can breathe in space. Thirdly, the young brother Veltan was once banished to the moon. Fourthly, Veltan is obsessively trying to catalogue every possible shade of the colour blue. Well, if you’ve got eternity I suppose you’ve got to kill time somehow.

New scene! Our goddesses enter… an empty cave! It looks like Dahlaine hasn’t managed to round up Verltan yet. On the bright side we get to see Dahlaine’s pet sun, which is another pretty cool demonstration of the kind of thing you can do when physics are more guidelines than actual rules. Aracia demonstrates a lack of understanding of the world again, this time being ignorant of how stalactites form. You know, if I were on a world where one of the oldest and most powerful beings in existence was this ignorant of stuff that it’s pretty much her job to know… I think I’d be very worried.

And now the boys arrive, riding on their thunderbolts. Naturally Aracia comments on how childish the showing off is without even a hint of irony… the book doesn’t mention if she’s still wearing her crown at this point. This is followed by some condescension about their maturity by Zelana… you know, the lady who’s spent the last few thousand years shirking her duties to sit in a pink grotto and compose poetry.

Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me… they’re recapping again! Fortunately it gets interrupted quickly by a reveal that was already spoiled by the back cover, and the last chapter, and earlier this chapter. I mean, there’s forshadowing and then there’s hammering the point home with an oversized mallet! The dreamers are… the other gods! *Du du du!*

Now apparently this is a very bad thing, on par with crossing the streams… though exactly why is never explained. Something to do with too much power being active at once or something is the best we get. Dahlaine reveals that he did this so they could help defend against the Vlagh’s invasion. Zelana summarizes the incredibly obvious plan and gets complemented on her intelligence by her brethren, and we get a recap of what was just discussed.

Now Dahlaine points out that their population of stone age hunter gatherer tribes aren’t really suited for resisting a bug invasion, and suggests they bring in the more advanced societies on other continents to fight the war for them. Aracia comments on how they’re barbarians who’re no better than the creatures of the wasteland, and the gods should not get them involved. Dahlaine says that they can manipulate them to their own ends… which ironically is the most classic god suggestion we’ve seen so far (most pre-christian pantheons were considered to play games with the fates of men).

It turns out that Verltan is the one god that takes any interest in the world around him and has actually looked into the world beyond his house. He tells his family how to make the language barrier redundant and simultaneously make the entire scene with Eleria learning to speak human COMPLETELY REDUNDANT: use a low-level telepathic field to translate.

Ok, we’re winding up the chapter now with one more mystery: Dahlaine somehow knows that the outlanders like gold, in spite of saying earlier that he doesn’t understand their language and implying that he doesn’t understand their cultures. Now this will come up again… repeatedly. However, that rant can wait.

Chapter 2: Padding? Already?!?

Chapter 2

I want to open this week with a discussion on padding. Padding is the practice of increasing your word count by adding portions of your book which don’t contribute to the story, and that exist solely for that purpose. It can be argued that no scene involving the main characters or recurring secondary characters qualifies as padding, as by their nature they increase the reader’s knowledge of said characters and thus fill the purpose of rounding them out. For instance, a scene of the main characters in a dungeon-crawl based novel crashing in a tavern, hanging out with each other and getting drunk is probably not going to progress the main plot or any of the side plots, with the possible exception of the romance sideplot. However, since it shows us how the characters act in a situation outside of the norm it helps make them more three-dimensional.

Even scenes that simply take place in new locations help us get a feel for the world the author has created, arguably giving a scene value by world-building. In some instances the author gets carried away with this (LOTR is guilty of this), giving us a lot of scenes that can be cut without adversely affecting the story, but that doesn’t make them filler as they still have the purpose of expanding the fantasy world.

The Elder Gods second chapter opens with what could charitably be called a ‘get-to-know-you’ scene, Once again in the grotto where Zelana has made her home. We don’t get much of a description beyond ‘the ceiling is made of rose quartz and it can only be accessed by water’, but it’s a cave so you can’t expect anything too interesting. Sure Zelana has lived there for literally eons, but apparently she’s been happily composing poetry and music all that time and so has kept herself entertained. Yes, that’s how she has spent all that time she was hiding from her duties as the guardian of the west… I think. It’s never really explained if the gods and goddesses HAVE any duties or purpose, they just… are.

Anyway, next page we find out that apparently Eleria is apparently a very fast learner and has gotten the habit of kissing dolphins until they do what she wants. Pardon me for a moment, I need to go and pistol-whip myself into a coma.

Ouch… Anyway, we find out that Eleria has picked up godspeak in addition to the language of the dolphins, though unlike some cosmologies this language is just used to communicate and holds no special power. As a result, events in a few chapters will make this development, SPOILERS!!! COMPLETELY POINTLESS!!!

Oh, and we get my favorite line so far: “A wave of emotion swept over Zelana, and she felt her own eyes clouding over.” To be fair my eyes are clouding over as well, a cerebral hemorrhage will do that. WHAT EMOTION?!? CONTEXT, USE IT!!!

Sorry, I failed my sanity check. Give me a moment to get my meds.

I am perfectly fine now, and most definitely not a robot created to review in the Irate Reader’s place. We are introduced to an obvious plot device in the form of a large magic pearl. It is given to Eleria by the incarnation of mother sea in the form of a giant whale. We get a dream sequence that shows the start of the world, which does not progress the plot. However, the dream also does not provide character development. It also does not provide new setting information.

The dream has no purpose. Therefore my reading it had no purpose. Therefore I have no purpose.

Self destruct initiated.

Aaand that’ll teach me for buying a discount review bot. Sorry folks, I overdosed on the meds and slipped into a bit of a coma so the emergency review bot took over. Looks like I’m going to have to do some repairs, so I’ll quickly sum up: This chapter could have had the important parts placed compressed into a single paragraph at the start of the next chapter without hurting the story. Honestly, it could have been cut and the only real effect would have been to reduce the wordcount on the book. The character attributes it develops are never mentioned again, the dream’s little exposition is stuff that has already been told to us and is primarily to demonstrate that Eleria is a dreamer, which was outright told to us last chapter. The plot point of the magic pearl has an equivalent for each of the dreamers, but feels completely unnecessary in the context of the story. Oh, there’s a tiny bit of clumsy foreshadowing which anyone who can count up to eight has already worked out by this point. Untwist: The dreamers are the next shift of gods! Which of course makes the need for the magic pearl even more confusing. Oh well, let’s go out with the filler song, just to keep my word count up:

(To be sung off key, with no discernible tune. I have no illusions about my musical ability.)

Filler!

Wonderful filler!

Beautiful filler!

Makes writing a thriller

That much chiller!

Filler!

It’s a killer!

Filler!

Thank you very much.

Chapter 1: It begins

Chapter 1 opens with one of our ‘protagonists’, Zelana of the west, retreating to her grotto in order to avoid the ‘man-creatures’ of her domain. Don’t like the hyphenated description? Suck it up, there are about a million more coming. Seriously, it’s as if Blizzard decided when making starcraft that instead of zerglings, hydralisks and ultralisks we had ‘small-stabby-multilegged-rip-you-apart-creatures’, ‘larger-spine-shooting-slithering-creatures’ and ‘big-rip-you-apart-creatures’. Ok, I’m pre-empting it a bit here, but that seriously annoys me. Make up a damned name for the Vlagh’s various minions!

Anyway, away from that rant: Zelana complains about how the protohumans seem to think she lives only to serve them. Fair enough, I’d be annoyed too. However… think for a moment. How do they get this idea? And anyway, isn’t this sort of thing kind of the entire reason you’re here?!? Ok, final thing for this paragraph: The humans are apparently repulsive. Sorry to break it to you honey, you look human and nowhere in the books does it even hint that your form is mutable.

Anyway, Zelana goes to her hidden grotto for a few eons hanging out with pink dolphins. Interestingly it makes note of her learning their language, even though in a few chapters we’ll find out that knowing the language is completely irrelevant to this character. We find out that she’s a musician… which to the best of my knowledge will not be used after about half way through book 1, but charitably we could call that fleshing out the character. That charity will be wasted, as this character will be a complete fifth wheel for every book other than this one, but oh well.

Now we get a basic introduction to the other gods, and the locations of each of their domains. She is in charge of the west. Dahlaine, her older brother (Even though all the gods are the same age. Just roll with it) holds dominion over the north. Forget about him, he’s a non-character for the most part. Her younger brother (See above) has the south. He’s one of the best rounded and most relatable characters in this series, with interesting eccentricities such as a love of the colour blue and an interesting history including being banished to the moon. Oh, and in charge of the east is Aracia. She’ll get some lines in the fourth book, we can look at her then. Oh, final thing: the gods in this world are solar powered.

Now we get a fairly pointless scene where she finds a cave roofed with pink quartz. She moves in, and we get introduced to the pet name that we will soon be sick of: Beloved. I hate that nickname, and no less than two characters end up with it… but that’s my personal preference.

Now Dahlaine rocks up for some pointless padding where we find out exactly how negligent and arrogant Zelana is, plus a bit on how humans are so smelly and messy compared to the wise dolphins. Oh, and if the wasteland critters chow down on the humans it’s no skin off her nose. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Dahlaine points out that, you know, she has one point in existing and she’s kind of ignoring it. So she goes meh. Then Dahlaine says “I bring a gift” and she stops sulking and goes “yay! Gimmegimmegimme”! So it becomes a guessing game that throws up a continuity issue: apparently she hasn’t left her cave for a dozen eons, back before tools and fire, yet she knows what a puppy and kitten are in the context of a pet. Tools and fire predate domestic animals, David. Also, she hasn’t interacted with the world in millennia, how does she know that kittens purring is supposed to be relaxing?

Anyway, the gift turns out to be a baby. Now I want to be clear: the goddess has no maternal instinct. She has no need for any of the biological imperatives of humans. She has never raised a child. This is a disaster waiting to happen. Oh, and we find ourselves exposed to the first inkling of the ‘humour’ of this book. Basically, about half of the jokes in this series are someone saying something obvious, then someone else sarcastically telling them that they’re amazing. I’d suggest making it a drinking game, but killing off my readers with severe alcohol poisoning would be bad. Anyway, we get told that the child is in fact one of the dreamers, and find out that Zelana apparently hates men. This will never come up again or be a factor in any interaction for the rest of the series.

Now we get several pointless pages of Zelana trying to find out how to take care of a baby. Imagine every sitcom ever where a guy has had to take care of a baby and you’ve pretty much got it. One thing that does come up is that the dolphins are basically immortal, as the same dolphin matron that found the cave for Zelana is now giving her childrearing advice… several EONS later. I honestly believe that this was not intentional, but for all I know dolphins in this world are ageless. Who’da thunk it?

The kid gets raised by dolphins, and named Eleria. She is the only dreamer who’ll get more than a few sentences of dialogue for the rest of the series, and is going to be that annoying child goddess I told you about. She kisses dolphins and people into submission, and is generally a sickly sweet little brat who always gets her own way and NEEDS TO DIE IN AN ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

And there we have chapter 1. Mainly pointless padding that characterizes a fifth wheel, a little bit of awkward exposition, and the introduction of my second least favorite character in the series. We’ll meet my least favorite in a few chapters. To be honest there’s nothing wrong with starting off slowly, but I feel that about three quarters of the chapter could easily be cut with no loss to the story. The humour wasn’t impressive, but since it’s the first time that joke has been used in the story I suppose it’s funny enough to lighten the mood.

Preface: A chapter-sized plothole

Preface:

Glancing at the initial pages we discover that the book is copyrighted to David and Leigh Eddings, who assert their right to be acknowledged as the authors. Fair enough. They also specify that no part of the publication may be reproduced on the interwebs, so unfortunately there will be no quotes or excerpts for the entire review L.

We also uncover that there is no listed editor. While this isn’t actually that unusual, I suspect that no-one actually went through and checked this book out. From a publisher’s point of view this does actually make some sense, as hiring someone to go through a book and check for plotholes is expensive, there were two people working on this already, and they had already produced a lot of books in this genre that had a solid fan base. There was no reason to expect this one to be any different.

Now we begin. The preface is framed as an in-universe work written after the events of the series. This would be entirely fine, but… well, the reason it doesn’t make sense is a spoiler but suffice to say that later events make this highly improbable. To be entirely fair, it’s probable that David and Leigh didn’t know exactly what was going to happen four books from now and thus didn’t realize their mistake. In fact, it’s a minor nitpick that’s only a plothole if you’ve already read the entire series… but it’s the fricking annotation to the word ‘Preface’, before the story has technically begun! It takes a special type of fail to have the (probably unnecessary) annotation to  the first word in your book open up a plothole which, at the end of all this, you will see is massive.

Anyway, now we get some exposition on the general background of the setting. Condensed, it’s that most of our story will be taking place on the continent of Dhrall, where we have eight gods who take 25 thousand year shifts to watch over the place in groups of four. Oh, and the land and sea are sentient beings. We also find out that in spite of no less than eight gods and two sentient forces hanging out we still get evolution, which is all well and good. The style of writing drags a bit… well, to the point that by the time you’ve learned this much we’re on page 3, but it does fit with the framing device so that’s forgivable.

Now we are introduced to the antagonist, which is known as That-Called-the-Vlagh. However, for this review I’m going to refer to it as Vlagh from now on. Basically, Vlagh is the hive-queen of an army of zerg-style minions, primarily derived from stinging insects and snakes. It has some form of genetic engineering ability that allows it to customize its offspring in a way that is never really explained. Its goal is to… yup, you guessed it, it wants to take over the world (Of Course!). To be fair, it actually has a decent reason for wanting to do this, namely to get more food and thus be able to have more children/servants, which in turn expands its hive mind. All well and good.

Finally, we get our plot device: the dreamers. Basically, these guys are kids that are walking Deus Ex Machina. I do not like them, primarily because only one ever gets any form of characterization at all and she basically becomes yet another of D.E.’s child goddesses, which are a pet peeve of mine. However, I can understand the appeal to an author of having a preexisting ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card for when a series of events have served their purpose and you just want to move on with the story. Lazy writing? Maybe, but if it gets the story moving instead of letting it get bogged down then it’s a forgivable flaw. Oh, and they can tell the future in inconsistent and illogical ways, and get new powers as the plot demands.

And it’s over. It dragged, but otherwise it set up the plot and introduced the setting well enough. Tune in next week for chapter 1.

It begins.

Hello. I am the Irate Reader.

You and I are about to go on a journey. A journey into literary hell. No, this is not another review of Twilight (which I honestly haven’t read), or of the Inheritance Cycle (which I actually don’t mind), or of anything else that every man and his dog has gone and ripped to shreds. No, this little abomination of a series managed to stay outside of the public eye for the most part, and was quite rightly forgotten.

So why am I bringing it up from its grave? Simple. This series is spectacularly awful, and as it hasn't been ripped to shreds by every reviewer ever I might be able to make a couple of comments that haven’t been heard everywhere before. In addition to that, this book lacks the excuse that the other two series I mentioned can get away with: they have new authors, this series was written by a fairly well known author.

David Eddings.

Yes, David sadly passed away in January of the year 2007. Yes, he did a lot of good work in his time. I am a fan of several of his earlier works. That is what makes this series even worse: we know that the author can do better. So here we are, going through this chapter by chapter to examine exactly why this series is so bad.

Now unlike the excellent web series ‘Mark Reads: Twilight’ I am not going in blind. I have read the series several times before, primarily to try and work out exactly what went wrong and why. I think I have found this elusive element and am going to share it with you, chapter by chapter. You will share my pain on this test of mental endurance. Buckle up, we’re in for a rough ride.