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.