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i_read_whatSo, the Courtship of Princess Leia, one of the more infamous books from the old Star Wars Expanded Unverse, is being rightfully torn a new one over at Das_Sporking. As a kid, I remember reading that book. My feelings were mixed. I remember not really enjoying the Han and Leia part of the story, though I don't think I was old enough to really pinpoint why, but I did actually enjoy the dynamic between Luke and Isolder. Possibly this is because I'm shallow and I enjoy things where new characters slowly grow to realize how awesome my favorite characters are. I also rather liked Isolder and Teneniel as characters in their own right. I'm not sure if I was too young to appreciate the moral issues with the Witches of Dathomir, or if I just brushed it aside.
But this isn't about the Courtship of Princess Leia. It's actually about a different book that Dave Wolverton wrote: the Golden Queen.
I remember reading the Golden Queen as a kid and mostly enjoying it, though I remember having some "WTF" reactions as well. However, I actually didn't remember that one of the characters involved was a talking bear. You wouldn't think I could forget that, but there you go.
Anyway, the book has been republished since then under a different name: David Farland. Same dude though. For the sake of full disclosure, the version I'm using for this is the later Farland-published edition. I don't know if there are any changes, and I doubt I remember the story well enough to catch any as I read along.
Well, anyway, enough blathering. Let's find out if Wolverton/Farland is better with his own characters than with poor Han and Leia.
So we start off in media res, with two characters, a man named Veriasse and a woman named Everynne. And I suddenly remember that, as a kid, I'd often have to reread paragraphs that featured Everynne because I'd misread her name as "Everyone" and then go "wait, what?"
There's a lot of talk of a particular smell:
Veriasse could taste the scent of vanquishers in the crisp mountain air. Beneath the sweaty odor of the horses, lying deep below the aroma of pine needles and leaf mold, he could barely detect the acrid scent of a dronon vanquisher's stomach acids. This was the third time he had caught that scent in as many days, but this time it was closer than in the past.
We get a few paragraphs about the smell, and then we get a reason why the smell gets so much focus:
Veriasse raised his hands. The olfactory nerves running up his wrists could detect the subtlest smells. He could taste a person's nervousness from across a room, detect the scent of an enemy across a valley. Now, he could smell a man's fear behind him, along with the acrid odor of a vanquisher.
I personally think having the ability to smell with your hands would really fucking suck. Even in a world with decent hygiene, which most fantasy realms are kind of dubious about.
Actually, wait, there are three people here. The third is a warrior named Calt, who has "sharp ears". I'm guessing, because I don't remember this dude at all, that he's going to bite it pretty soon. And indeed, he whistles "like a thrush" in three short calls, which is code for "Our enemy is upon us in force! I will engage!".
Yep, he's fucked.
Everynne gouged her stallion's flanks, and the horse jumped forward. In a heartbeat she was beside Veriasse, looking back down the trail in confusion, as if to wait for Calt.
"Flee!" Veriasse hissed, slapping her stallion's rump.
"Calt!" Everynne cried, trying to slow and turn her horse. Only her ineptitude as a rider kept her from rushing headlong back down the mountain.
"We can do nothing for him! He has chosen his fate!" Veriasse growled. He spurred his own mare, grabbed Everynne's reins as the horses surged forward, struggling to match pace.
...
Okay, so already there's something about their interaction that sets my teeth on edge. I can appreciate the context clues that this is a crisis and that they can't afford to wait and help Calt. And I understand that there probably isn't much time to talk about it. But there's something about how he slaps her horse (when she's apparently an inexperienced and inept rider no less) and grabs the reins that just bugs me.
I can however appreciate Veriasse's cold practicality as he hears the death cry of something inhuman and hopes to hear that Calt takes down a few more with him. Sadly, he does not.
Veriasse isn't completely heartless though:
Five days. They had known Calt only five days, and already he had sacrificed his life in Everynne's service. Yet of all the places the vanquishers could have attacked, this is where Veriasse least expected it, on a quiet mountain road in a backward place like Tihrglas. This should have been a pleasant ride through the woods, but instead Veriasse found himself hunkering down on his horse, thundering over a muddy road, numbed by cold and grief.
They cross a bridge, then:
He leapt from his horse, studied the bridge. It was constructed from heavy logs with planks laid over the top. He could see no easy way to topple it, so he fired his incendiary rifle into the planks. Stark white flames erupted for fifty meters across the bridge. The mare jumped and bucked beneath him in fright. She had never seen the chemical fire of an incendiary rifle.
So...that doesn't look like standard fantasy weaponry, I have to admit. Also that is probably a dick move, dude, if people actually need that bridge.
Everynne wants to stop for a rest, but Veriasse takes her reins and pulls her horse forward instead, he's encouraging: there's bound to be another settlement a little further up the road. He also calls her "my child", which gives us some idea of the relationship between them, and at least means he's an overbearing father/father-figure as opposed to an overbearing lover or husband. We'll see if that's actually better, I suppose.
He looks back to see the bridge burn, and the "giant form of a green-skinned vanquisher in battle armor" staring at the river in dismay.
-
We switch scenes here now to a local: a man named Gallen O'Day. He's probably a main character, on account of how we IMMEDIATELY segue into a flashback about how, at five years old, his father took him to get a kitten.
I like that. There's a stereotype that boys' beloved pets should be dogs. But why shouldn't boys like cats too?
Anyway, there's a LOT of detail in this flashback about the Widow Ryan (including the fact that many local children believe that she's a witch and claim the priest drowned her babies for being leprechauns. Egads.), and her house, which is apparently "grown from an ancient, gnarled pine tree".
Little Gallen is apparently not above rumors because he sees all the pots around, (the Widow's husband had been a tinker), and imagines them to be suitable vessels for boiling children.
Anyway, Gallen gets to look over the kittens, while the widow talks about her youth, and for some reason, we actually GET all the details. Look at this:
Gallen looked the kittens over, and he half listened as the widow told stories from her youth. Her father had been a merchant and once bought seven olive presses down in Ireland, thinking to retire. He'd taken the whole family with him, but a storm blew them into uncivilized lands where wild Owens roamed—hairy men who had lost their Christianity and now wore only brass rings piercing their nipples. The wild Owens ate her family, but held the widow prisoner on a rocky isle where they brought their dead along with gifts of food every full moon, leaving the corpses for her blessing. She'd have to feast for days before the food rotted, then she'd starve afterward for weeks. The island's soil was white with the bones of dead Owens. The widow survived for a summer in a haphazard shelter under a leaning slab of marble, teaching herself to swim until she could finally brave the vast waters.
There's two more paragraphs of the widow's biography, and she seems like an interesting lady, but do we need all this? Really? Gallen stops listening after the next two paragraphs to look at the kittens. He doesn't have the same appreciation that the narrative has to naked, nipple-pierced men, I suppose. He has trouble deciding on a kitten, and wishes that one would choose him instead. They're too busy playing though.
Gallen notices that one of the kittens, an orange one, is particularly playful, hissing at shadows and prancing around, hackles raised. When Gallen raises his finger, the kitten aims to pounce. But it also has fish breath, and there's a very cute calico that gets his attention as well. That's when the widow gives Gallen the advice which is supposed to be the whole point of this flashback. She tells him to take the orange kitten.
"Clere is a big town," she said, "with tough old tomcats living on the wharf, and hounds on every corner, and many a horse riding through that could crush a cat. But that orange tom can handle life in a dangerous town. Look at the way he practices the skills he'll need in life. He'll do well."
Gallen grabbed the orange kitten in his stubby fingers. The kitten nuzzled into his woollen jacket, and the Widow Ryan continued, "You can learn a lot from that kitten, child. There are many kinds of people in this world. Some live only in the present-moving through life from day to day without a thought for tomorrow or a backward glance. They live only one life. For these people, life is a dream.
"Another kind of person lives in the moment but has a long memory, too. These people often fester under the weight of old slights or bask in triumphs so time-worn that no one wants to hear of them. For these people, the walking dream is spiced with a past that they can't escape. "Then there is a third kind of person, a person like your cat. This person lives three lives. Such people don't just muck about in the past or drift through the present, they dream of tomorrows and prepare for the worst and struggle to make the world better.
"This orange kitten, he'll likely never get crushed by a wagon or be eaten by a dog, because he's faced all those dangers here." She pointed a crooked finger to her head.
That's very deep. I'm not sure why we needed the widows whole backstory to get it, but okay. We're told that the widow's advice came true. Within six months, the other kittens had all died: massacred by dogs, crushed under carts, or thrown into the ocean by mean boys. Egads. But Gallen's cat died of old age much much later, after "Gallen had learned all that the cat could teach."
So, Gallen lives three lives too: he imagines dangers and prepares to deal with them.
We get an example in a new flashback: Gallen at age seventeen, with a neighbor named Mack O'Mally, gets accosted by highwaymen wearing sacks to cover their heads. He's able to think very quickly, and turn the sacks around on them, so that they're blinded and easy pickings.
We're told that this is the beginning of the "legendary 'fantasist' Gallen O'Day", but it's not the end of his tale. The narrative takes a weird dip into first person for a second here, telling us that he supposed that if one were to tell it right, one would have to continue it a few years later...
Look, I'm on board with the whole "tale-telling as framing device" but this is a weird place to shoehorn it in. Especially as we saw no sign of it with Veriasse and Everynne.
Actually, though, this paragraph is pretty glorious. I'll share it:
In a sense, that was the beginning of the legendary "fantasist" Gallen O'Day, but that's a far cry from the end of his tale.
No, I suppose that if one were to tell it right-and it's a tale that demands to be told in whole-one would have to continue the story two years later. Gallen had been down south for a year building a name for himself. He had taken up a friendship with a black bear named Orick, and together the two worked as bodyguards for wealthy travelers. In those days, the family clans were strong, and it was hard for a merchant to make a living when the O'Briens hated the Hennesseys and the Hennesseys hated the Greens. An unarmed traveler could hardly ride a dozen miles without someone trying to bloody his nose. But there were worse things in the land.
So yeah, talking black bear. Not sure how the fuck I managed to forget that. But I would totally hire a dude with a bear friend as a bodyguard.
Anyway, Gallen is now rumored to have rid the countryside of two dozen "assorted highwaymen, cutthroats, and roadside bandits", and every highwayman in six counties have learned better than to accost "the dreamy-eyed lad with the long golden hair".
That's...definitely a description.
Anyway, Gallen's put a halt to his burgeoning career because he's heard that his father died, so he came home to Clere, to take care of his mother.
Which leads us to now. Woo.
I also love this paragraph:
So it was, that one night . . .
An autumn storm kept the rain rapping at the windows like an anxious neighbor as Gallen sat in Mahoney's alehouse with his friend Orick the bear, and as Gallen listened to the rain knocking the glass, he had the unsettling feeling that something was trying to get in, something as vast and dark as the storm.
I will forgive a lot for "with his friend Orick the bear". He's at an alehouse drinking with his friend Orick the bear. Who doesn't want to be in an alehouse drinking with their friend Orick the bear?! I don't even drink and I want to be in an alehouse drinking with my friend, Orick the bear!
Gallen's here to try to ply his trade as a bodyguard. He's not having much luck, despite the amount of people in the inn and the rumors of robbers in the wood. But a prosperous sheep farmer named Seamus O'Connor pops over to make conversation. So does "Father Heany", and both men get pretty detailed descriptions:
Seamus sat across from Gallen, leaned back in the old hickory chair, set his black boots on the table and sucked at his pipe, with his full stomach bulging up over his belt. He smiled, and at that moment Gallen thought Seamus looked like nothing more than a pleasant fat gut with a couple of limbs and a head attached. Father Heany came over in his severe black frock, all gaunt and starved looking, and sat down next to Seamus with his own pipe, sucking hard to nurse some damp tobacco into flame. Father Heany was such a tidy and proper man that folks in town often joked of him, "Why the man is so clean, if you took a bath with him, you could use him for soap."
Together, the two old men blew the pleasant smell of their tobacco all about until they were wreathed like a pair of old dragons in their own smoke.
So the conversation runs to Gallen's future plans. Gallen's considered and ruled out both fishing (women won't like the smell) and blacksmithing (he'd rather not work so close to a horse's rump) - the latter reason makes Orick the bear laugh. I want to make a bear laugh.
Father Heany suggests the priesthood and...
"A fine vocation," Orick cut in with his deep voice. The bear was sitting on the floor, paws on the table, licking out of a bowl. Some milk still stuck to his muzzle. "I've been thinking of joining myself, but Gallen here makes light of God and his servants."
A bear priest is an awesome idea, but I am utterly bewildered by this setting. It SEEMS to be some vaguely middle-aged version of Ireland, based on the mention of Christianity and the names. But NO ONE seems to be remotely puzzled by the existence of a talking bear. There's not even a "everyone was used to Orick by now, but yes, talking bears are abnormal" type of acknowledgement. Bears just talk here and consider vocations. Okay.
Galen, the father, and Orick get into an actually kind of interesting exchange about God here. Gallen points out that God created man in his image, but God is supposed to be perfect and man is only good. Gallen thinks God could have done better, noting that a day old fawn can jump a four foot fence, but a day old child can't.
Father Heany is amused, but Orick engages:
Orick lapped at the bowl of milk on the table, and the bear had a reflective look in his dark eyes. "You know, Gallen," Orick grumbled soberly, "God only gave man weaknesses to keep him humble. The Bible says 'man is just a little lower than the angels.' Surely you see that it's true. You may not live as long as a tortoise, but you'll live longer than me. Your mind is far quicker than any bear's. And with your houses and ships and dreams, your people are richer than us bears will ever be."
I'm not sure that really makes sense, given that Orick is clearly very intelligent. I can imagine that bears might not be able to build houses and ships, what with the lack of opposable thumbs, but Orick definitely seems able to dream.
Something about this discussion led me to look up Wolverton on wikipedia, and he appears to have been a Mormon, devout enough to go on missions and marry in a Temple. He apparently taught Stephenie Meyer at Brigham-Young, which is not relevant at the moment but notable nonetheless.
I bring this up, because there's something very...forced isn't exactly the word I want to use here...but staged about this exchange. Gallen is the doubter, with his faulty read of scripture, while Orick gently turns around his argument. I'm personally not sure that Orick actually answers the question to my taste, but there's a reason that I had trouble in my Catholic Sunday School.
Anyway, I'm willing to forgive this weird preachy side note because it's a bear doing the preaching.
I do love this:
Spoken like a true priest, Gallen thought. Few bears ever entered the priesthood, but Gallen wondered if perhaps Orick wasn't a natural for it.
FEW bears become priests. FEW. That means that there is a not zero number of bears in the priesthood in this universe. Amazing.
Gallen isn't really one for the priesthood. He's hoping to buy some property, lease it out, and work as an escort. The bodyguard type. But I dunno, the long golden hair and all, maybe he'd do well as the other type. At least it will be less of an issue when the highwaymen all flee Gallen's reputation, as Father Heany suggests.
Seamus, who had been silent up until then, offers Gallen work: two shillings to see that his drunk ass gets home tonight. Gallen bickers it up to three. There's another character mentioned suddenly, and I have a feeling she might become important:
Gallen held his eye a moment, nodded agreement. The only sound was the wind howling outside and the paddles in the butter churn. The scullery maid, a sweet sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie Flynn, normally churned fresh butter every dawn, but with the stormy night and so many travelers passing through town, she was trying to get a head start. She had dark red hair and darker eyes, a patina of perspiration on her brow. She caught Gallen looking at her and shot him a fetching smile.
Just guessing.
Seamus and Father Heany start talking about wives. Well, more in the theoretical sense, for Father Heany. But it soon becomes clear that this is an excuse to tease Gallen and Maggie for a few pages. They start speculating about Gallen's prospects with all the lovely girls in the area, ruling out each one for some reason. This leads them to Maggie, who is pretty, smart, and hardworking.
Friendly banter, but maybe a bit of a warning too:
"But . . ." Father Heany said with a sigh, "she's too young. The poor girl is only sixteen." He said it with such finality, Gallen knew it was more than a casual thought, it was a verdict. Father Heany was only repeating aloud in front of Gallen the things that others in town had decided in private.
"Too young?" Seamus argued. "Why, she's but two months away from her birthday!"
The priest held up his hands. "Sixteen—even an old sixteen—is marginal, very marginal. Marrying a girl so young borders on sin, and I'd never perform the ceremony!" he declared. "Now, if you ask me—and I'm sure the scriptures would back me up on it—eighteen is far more respectable! But if you make a woman wait until she's twenty, then it seems to me you're sinning the other way and ought to be roundly chastised for making the lady wait."
I'm on board with that, to be honest. Gallen's nineteen, so the age difference isn't too bad, but still. He can wait a bit.
...but um...maybe Maggie can't, because after Seamus goes to sit by the fire with Orick and Father Heany, Maggie sits down next to Gallen and nips his ear.
"Gallen O'Day," she whispered fiercely, "why don't you come up to my room? I'll let you play on my feather bolster, and you can undress me with your teeth."
AHEM. My word, young woman!
"What?" he whispered, feeling blood rush to his ears. "You've got to be joking! You could have a baby from that. You wouldn't want to get tied down with children so young."
"I'm old enough to cook and clean from sunrise to sunset for a bunch of dirty beggars who give me no consideration and don't know enough to take off their muddy boots before they flop onto a bed. Taking care of a husband and a couple of sweet young ones would be a holiday after this."
I kind of love Gallen's scandalized reaction here. "You could have a baby from that!" But I also think Maggie's response is proof that she's still a little too immature to do what she wants. Maggie asks if he's religious, because she's on board with getting a priest, but Gallen knows what she's really after:
"No, it's not that," Gallen assured her, yet marriage was exactly the problem. She was so young that no honorable man would propose to her, yet she couldn't bear the thought of working here for another two years. So, if she happened to turn up with a child in her belly, the whole town would just wink at it and hurry the wedding. It was an odd turn of events, Gallen thought, when the town would view a shameful wedding as somehow being more noble than an honorable proposal.
Gallen tells her that if he proposes now, it would hurt them in the long run. He apparently wants a political career, despite this never coming up either in his head or outloud during the career talk. Tumbling with Maggie would bring shame on them both. He begs her to give herself time to grow up.
She wants to know if this is a promise or a brush off. He calls her a sweet girl and begs her to be patient with him. Translation: brush off.
That, of course, is when a stranger arrives!
The inn door swung open, and a sheet of rain whipped into the room. At first Gallen thought the wind had finally succeeded in blowing the door open, but after a moment, in walked a stranger in traveling clothes—a tall fellow in riding boots and a brown wool greatcloak with a hood. He wore two swords strapped over his cloak—one oddly straight saber with a strange finger guard on its hilt, and another equally long curved blade. By wearing the swords over the cloak in such a downpour, the stranger risked that his blades would rust but kept his swords handy.
Only a man who made a living with his weapons ever wore them so.
That is definitely an entrance. Gallen notes his body language, and the way he doesn't lower the hood: he doesn't want his face seen, but he's scanning the crowd. He's not alone either:
At last, he stepped aside from the door so that a slender waif of a woman could enter the room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, erect, head held high with her hood still covering her face. Gallen saw by his tense posture that the man was her servant, her guard. She wore a bright blue traveling robe trimmed with golden rabbits and foxes. Under her arm she carried a small harp case made of rosewood. She hesitated for a moment, then started forward and her hood fell back.
She was the most beautiful woman Gallen had ever seen. Not the most voluptuous or seductive—just the most perfect. She held herself with a regal air and looked to be about twenty. Her hair was as dark as a starless night. The line of her jaw was strong and firm. Her skin was creamy in complexion and her face looked worn, tired, but her dark blue eyes were alive and brilliant. Gallen recalled the words to an old song: "Her eyes kindle a fire for a lonely man to warm himself by."
Maggie boxed Gallen's jaw playfully and said, "Gallen O'Day, if your tongue hangs out any farther, all you will have to do is wag it to clean the mud off your boots."
Maggie's a surprisingly good sport about Gallen ogling another woman after giving her the brush-off.
Anyway, enter Veriasse and Everynne from an outside perspective.
Maggie welcomes them and Veriasse immediately asks about the Stargate:
The tall man spoke with an odd speech impediment, loud enough so that the entire room could hear, "It is said that there is a place near here, art ancient arch with strange symbols carved on it—Geata na Chruinne. Do you know of it?"
It really DOES sound like the Stargate. This book was originally written in 1994 though, so it seems like more of a coincidence than a ripoff. Stargate the movie came out the same year, and the idea of the Stargate going anywhere else other than not-Ancient Egypt wouldn't be introduced until Stargate SG-1 in 1997. I think the earliest example that I've encountered of the physical gates to other planets idea is C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle, written in the seventies, though I wouldn't doubt that there are probably earlier examples of the same kind of idea.
It WOULD explain how we can have a place that sounds so much like fantasy Ireland, with Christianity, could also have talking bears. It's a transplanted settlement!
Anyway, Maggie tells them everyone knows of the place, but no one will take them at night. She suggests some boys can take them in the morning. When the stranger says he wants a seasoned soldier, Maggie volunteers Gallen (with his nodded consent). She boasts about his ability, calling him the best there's ever been.
Aw.
We get a better description of Veriasse here:
As the stranger got close, Gallen could see that the tall man had vivid blue eyes, tawny hair going silver. He regarded Gallen with a istant expression.
Without flinching an eye, the stranger drew his sword and swung at Gallen's head. Gallen leapt from his chair and grabbed the stranger's wrist, pinching the nerves between the radius and the ulna, then twisting. It was a painful grip, Gallen knew, and made the victim's fingers spasm open. The stranger's sword stroke went wide, then the sword itself clattered to the table. Gallen twisted the man's wrist painfully in a come-along so that the stranger soon found himself at arm's length, standing on his tiptoes.
Veriasse compliments him. Everynne doesn't want him to come though. She thinks he's too small. And this is an interesting exchange:
Size is an illusion," Gallen said, catching her eyes. "A man is what he thinks."
"And I think that if a foe who outweighed you by a hundred pounds swung a sword at you, you would never be able to parry his blows."
Gallen listened to her words with difficulty, realized that like the man, she too spoke oddly, as if she had a mouthful of syrup. Yet her accent wasn't as thick. He said, "I've been strengthening my wrists since I was six years old, knowing that I'd have to parry blows from bigger men. I believe a man can become anything he puts his mind to. And I assert that by thought, I have made myself bigger than I seem."
We see Everynne's argument come up a lot for female characters. It's interesting to see it directed at a male character instead. But Veriasse backs him up, noting that Gallen's grip is better than his own. Everynne is convinced.
Gallen tells them he has a job tonight, but he can pick them up at dawn.
Wolverton can't really seem to refer to Veriasse consistently. Obviously Gallen doesn't know his name, but he's varyingly "the stranger" or "the guard", but at one point, he's "the old man". Veriasse is described as older, sure, but "old man" has very different connotations.
Anyway, he tells the townsfolk that lightning struck the bridge nearby after they crossed. Everyone's pretty dismayed, and we're told that, by law, both the folk from this town and from "Baile Sean" will have to come together to repair it.
Gallen decides that he has to introduce himself to his new, hot employer:
He stood and said in a loud voice, "My lady?" The two stopped in their tracks, and the woman glanced over her shoulder at him. Gallen continued, "When you walked in the room just now, and your hood fell back to expose your face, it was as if the morning sun had just climbed over the mountains after a dreary night of rain. We're curious folks hereabout, and I think I speak for many when I ask: may I beg to know your name?" The little speech came out sounding so sweet that Gallen could almost taste the honey dripping from his tongue, and he stood with his heart pounding, waiting for the woman's reply.
She smiled down at him and seemed to think for a moment. Her guard waited cautiously just above her on the stairs, but he did not look back. After a few seconds she said, "No."
So that's going well. Gallen is embarrassed, but really dude. Really?
That said, Maggie seems like a piece of work, really:
Maggie quickly made up two plates and readied them to take upstairs, then came back to Gallen and set the plates on his table a moment and said, "Oh, you poor abused child! To think that she'd mistreat you so." She leaned over and kissed him heavily on the mouth.
Gallen suspected that she was both hurt and angry. He also reminded himself that, wisely, he'd made her no promises. He held her gently as she kissed him, then she slapped his face, grabbed her trays, and danced off, smiling at him over her back.
...I begin to see why Gallen's hesitant to commit. I can understand being angry that your sort-of boyfriend turned you down and promptly falls head over heels for another girl, but this is not normal behavior.
Anyway, Gallen ends up taking Seamus back home. At some point, he runs into Orick and another bear eating from the rubbish bin. Gallen offers to have Maggie fix him a plate instead of Orick mucking about in the slop. Maggie's already promised Orick some leftovers though, so he's cool. The other bear says nothing, but I've noticed that Wolverton seems to have a bit of a difficulty dealing with multiple characters in a scene. Too often, the dialogue seems to narrow down to just two characters present, and it seems like everyone else disappears for a while.
Back at the inn, "the Lady Everynne" is pacing. It seems like Veriasse actually is her father. I am making this determination by the way he calls her his daughter and she calls him father. But honestly, they don't read like father and daughter to me, and I'm not sure why. It's only been one chapter, and they haven't actually had that much interaction.
Anyway, she asks if Veriasse can still "taste their scent" and Veriasse sticks his hands out the window. He can: there's a vanquisher "no closer than twenty kilometers away".
They talk. Everynne suggests, without really believing it, that the vanquisher could be here for another reason. But no. We get a bit more backstory and setting info here:
"Don't fool yourself," Veriasse said at last. "Tlitkani has sent her warriors to kill us. With only one gate to watch, this world is the perfect spot for an ambush." He said it as one who knows. Tlitkani had enslaved Veriasse for four years, had forced him to become her advisor. Veriasse was gifted at reading personalities, at studying motives and moods. He could anticipate an adversary's actions so well that many thought him a psychic. No one understood Tlitkani better than Veriasse did.
I guess if everyone got full multi-page flashbacks, we'd never get anything done.
Anyway, they wonder about Tlitkani's motives, and if the servants are trying to lull them into a false sense of security. Veriasse asks about Gallen O'Day in a way that kind of sounds like HE wants to bang him:
Veriasse said nothing for a moment, then asked, "And what of our guide, this Gallen O'Day? Shall we convert him to our cause? He reacts quickly, and he is marvelously strong."
Everynne's opposed though. She knows they need "an army of men like Gallen O'Day" but he couldn't possibly know about her people's worlds and weapons. They can't fight vanquishers with just knives, and Veriasse has no weapons to spare. She thinks taking Gallen along would be the same as murdering him.
Veriasse thinks Gallen would want to follow, and he thinks that she must let him: even if it means that he dies. But Everynne wants to angst about it more. Fair enough.
MORE information:
Everynne shivered, moved away from the window quickly and lay on the bed. Veriasse’s heavy, uneven breathing came to her, and she listened to it as she drifted off. Veriasse—with his unwavering devotion, his strong back—seemed somehow more than human. Certainly, by the standards of this world, he would not be judged human at all. Her teacher, her friend. He had guarded Everynne’s mother for six thousand years. And during the course of Everynne’s short life, he had been a solid presence, always at her side. Sometimes she tried to distance herself from him, think of him only as a warrior, the only one of her guardians to survive this journey. But she could tell that he was weary to the bone, worn through. She could not ask that he continue fighting alone.
Okay, so, not LITERALLY her father. That probably explains it.
The chapter closes out with two paragraphs that I find weirdly off-putting:
With a pang that tore at her heart, Everynne realized what she must do. She needed another guardian, someone to fight beside Veriasse. She knew that men like Gallen O’Day could not resist her. Something in them responded to something in her. It was biological, inevitable. When she had first walked into the inn. She could tell from Gallen’s eyes that he believed he had fallen in love. Given an hour in her presence, he would be sure of that love, and within a few days he would become ensnared. Another slave.
Yet there was nothing Everynne could do to dissuade the unyielding devotion of men like Gallen and Veriasse. So Veriasse sat at her feet, waiting to die. Everynne hated her lot in life. But it was her fate. For she had been born a queen among the Tharrin.
Oh brother.
So there are things I like and things I don't like about this chapter and the book so far.
Gallen's clearly our everyman lead. He's reasonably likeable. And while I mock/kvetch about him falling in love with another woman just after brushing Maggie off, the fact of the matter is that he ISN'T in a relationship with Maggie and while there might be a mutual attraction, that's not the same as a relationship.
He doesn't owe her fidelity. I could wish he'd give her more sensitivity.
That does get into what I don't like, and what I already think will be a problem going forward. The writing of the women is just awful so far. I like Maggie's forwardness and forthrightness, but she's written bizarrely. That slap-kiss thing was not something a real woman would do. Kiss to stake a claim/show him what he's missing? Maybe. Slap him for the rejection/humiliation, okay. BOTH?
Everynne's a bit better, so far. It probably helps that, as a viewpoint character, we can see the why of her behavior a bit better. She has a purpose, that we don't know yet, but she has doubts too. But at least we're given something of a reason for her coldness toward Gallen: she doesn't want another innocent person to die. Still, I feel like she's getting dragged around a lot so far.
I don't know what to think of this whole "it's biological and inevitable for a man to fall in love with me" schtick though. I'm not sure if this is just supposed to be a measure of how beautiful she is, or if there's more to it, like Veriasse's weird smelling hands. Either way, the whole "impossibly irresistable woman" storyline element very rarely works for me. But well, we'll see where it goes.
But this isn't about the Courtship of Princess Leia. It's actually about a different book that Dave Wolverton wrote: the Golden Queen.
I remember reading the Golden Queen as a kid and mostly enjoying it, though I remember having some "WTF" reactions as well. However, I actually didn't remember that one of the characters involved was a talking bear. You wouldn't think I could forget that, but there you go.
Anyway, the book has been republished since then under a different name: David Farland. Same dude though. For the sake of full disclosure, the version I'm using for this is the later Farland-published edition. I don't know if there are any changes, and I doubt I remember the story well enough to catch any as I read along.
Well, anyway, enough blathering. Let's find out if Wolverton/Farland is better with his own characters than with poor Han and Leia.
So we start off in media res, with two characters, a man named Veriasse and a woman named Everynne. And I suddenly remember that, as a kid, I'd often have to reread paragraphs that featured Everynne because I'd misread her name as "Everyone" and then go "wait, what?"
There's a lot of talk of a particular smell:
Veriasse could taste the scent of vanquishers in the crisp mountain air. Beneath the sweaty odor of the horses, lying deep below the aroma of pine needles and leaf mold, he could barely detect the acrid scent of a dronon vanquisher's stomach acids. This was the third time he had caught that scent in as many days, but this time it was closer than in the past.
We get a few paragraphs about the smell, and then we get a reason why the smell gets so much focus:
Veriasse raised his hands. The olfactory nerves running up his wrists could detect the subtlest smells. He could taste a person's nervousness from across a room, detect the scent of an enemy across a valley. Now, he could smell a man's fear behind him, along with the acrid odor of a vanquisher.
I personally think having the ability to smell with your hands would really fucking suck. Even in a world with decent hygiene, which most fantasy realms are kind of dubious about.
Actually, wait, there are three people here. The third is a warrior named Calt, who has "sharp ears". I'm guessing, because I don't remember this dude at all, that he's going to bite it pretty soon. And indeed, he whistles "like a thrush" in three short calls, which is code for "Our enemy is upon us in force! I will engage!".
Yep, he's fucked.
Everynne gouged her stallion's flanks, and the horse jumped forward. In a heartbeat she was beside Veriasse, looking back down the trail in confusion, as if to wait for Calt.
"Flee!" Veriasse hissed, slapping her stallion's rump.
"Calt!" Everynne cried, trying to slow and turn her horse. Only her ineptitude as a rider kept her from rushing headlong back down the mountain.
"We can do nothing for him! He has chosen his fate!" Veriasse growled. He spurred his own mare, grabbed Everynne's reins as the horses surged forward, struggling to match pace.
...
Okay, so already there's something about their interaction that sets my teeth on edge. I can appreciate the context clues that this is a crisis and that they can't afford to wait and help Calt. And I understand that there probably isn't much time to talk about it. But there's something about how he slaps her horse (when she's apparently an inexperienced and inept rider no less) and grabs the reins that just bugs me.
I can however appreciate Veriasse's cold practicality as he hears the death cry of something inhuman and hopes to hear that Calt takes down a few more with him. Sadly, he does not.
Veriasse isn't completely heartless though:
Five days. They had known Calt only five days, and already he had sacrificed his life in Everynne's service. Yet of all the places the vanquishers could have attacked, this is where Veriasse least expected it, on a quiet mountain road in a backward place like Tihrglas. This should have been a pleasant ride through the woods, but instead Veriasse found himself hunkering down on his horse, thundering over a muddy road, numbed by cold and grief.
They cross a bridge, then:
He leapt from his horse, studied the bridge. It was constructed from heavy logs with planks laid over the top. He could see no easy way to topple it, so he fired his incendiary rifle into the planks. Stark white flames erupted for fifty meters across the bridge. The mare jumped and bucked beneath him in fright. She had never seen the chemical fire of an incendiary rifle.
So...that doesn't look like standard fantasy weaponry, I have to admit. Also that is probably a dick move, dude, if people actually need that bridge.
Everynne wants to stop for a rest, but Veriasse takes her reins and pulls her horse forward instead, he's encouraging: there's bound to be another settlement a little further up the road. He also calls her "my child", which gives us some idea of the relationship between them, and at least means he's an overbearing father/father-figure as opposed to an overbearing lover or husband. We'll see if that's actually better, I suppose.
He looks back to see the bridge burn, and the "giant form of a green-skinned vanquisher in battle armor" staring at the river in dismay.
-
We switch scenes here now to a local: a man named Gallen O'Day. He's probably a main character, on account of how we IMMEDIATELY segue into a flashback about how, at five years old, his father took him to get a kitten.
I like that. There's a stereotype that boys' beloved pets should be dogs. But why shouldn't boys like cats too?
Anyway, there's a LOT of detail in this flashback about the Widow Ryan (including the fact that many local children believe that she's a witch and claim the priest drowned her babies for being leprechauns. Egads.), and her house, which is apparently "grown from an ancient, gnarled pine tree".
Little Gallen is apparently not above rumors because he sees all the pots around, (the Widow's husband had been a tinker), and imagines them to be suitable vessels for boiling children.
Anyway, Gallen gets to look over the kittens, while the widow talks about her youth, and for some reason, we actually GET all the details. Look at this:
Gallen looked the kittens over, and he half listened as the widow told stories from her youth. Her father had been a merchant and once bought seven olive presses down in Ireland, thinking to retire. He'd taken the whole family with him, but a storm blew them into uncivilized lands where wild Owens roamed—hairy men who had lost their Christianity and now wore only brass rings piercing their nipples. The wild Owens ate her family, but held the widow prisoner on a rocky isle where they brought their dead along with gifts of food every full moon, leaving the corpses for her blessing. She'd have to feast for days before the food rotted, then she'd starve afterward for weeks. The island's soil was white with the bones of dead Owens. The widow survived for a summer in a haphazard shelter under a leaning slab of marble, teaching herself to swim until she could finally brave the vast waters.
There's two more paragraphs of the widow's biography, and she seems like an interesting lady, but do we need all this? Really? Gallen stops listening after the next two paragraphs to look at the kittens. He doesn't have the same appreciation that the narrative has to naked, nipple-pierced men, I suppose. He has trouble deciding on a kitten, and wishes that one would choose him instead. They're too busy playing though.
Gallen notices that one of the kittens, an orange one, is particularly playful, hissing at shadows and prancing around, hackles raised. When Gallen raises his finger, the kitten aims to pounce. But it also has fish breath, and there's a very cute calico that gets his attention as well. That's when the widow gives Gallen the advice which is supposed to be the whole point of this flashback. She tells him to take the orange kitten.
"Clere is a big town," she said, "with tough old tomcats living on the wharf, and hounds on every corner, and many a horse riding through that could crush a cat. But that orange tom can handle life in a dangerous town. Look at the way he practices the skills he'll need in life. He'll do well."
Gallen grabbed the orange kitten in his stubby fingers. The kitten nuzzled into his woollen jacket, and the Widow Ryan continued, "You can learn a lot from that kitten, child. There are many kinds of people in this world. Some live only in the present-moving through life from day to day without a thought for tomorrow or a backward glance. They live only one life. For these people, life is a dream.
"Another kind of person lives in the moment but has a long memory, too. These people often fester under the weight of old slights or bask in triumphs so time-worn that no one wants to hear of them. For these people, the walking dream is spiced with a past that they can't escape. "Then there is a third kind of person, a person like your cat. This person lives three lives. Such people don't just muck about in the past or drift through the present, they dream of tomorrows and prepare for the worst and struggle to make the world better.
"This orange kitten, he'll likely never get crushed by a wagon or be eaten by a dog, because he's faced all those dangers here." She pointed a crooked finger to her head.
That's very deep. I'm not sure why we needed the widows whole backstory to get it, but okay. We're told that the widow's advice came true. Within six months, the other kittens had all died: massacred by dogs, crushed under carts, or thrown into the ocean by mean boys. Egads. But Gallen's cat died of old age much much later, after "Gallen had learned all that the cat could teach."
So, Gallen lives three lives too: he imagines dangers and prepares to deal with them.
We get an example in a new flashback: Gallen at age seventeen, with a neighbor named Mack O'Mally, gets accosted by highwaymen wearing sacks to cover their heads. He's able to think very quickly, and turn the sacks around on them, so that they're blinded and easy pickings.
We're told that this is the beginning of the "legendary 'fantasist' Gallen O'Day", but it's not the end of his tale. The narrative takes a weird dip into first person for a second here, telling us that he supposed that if one were to tell it right, one would have to continue it a few years later...
Look, I'm on board with the whole "tale-telling as framing device" but this is a weird place to shoehorn it in. Especially as we saw no sign of it with Veriasse and Everynne.
Actually, though, this paragraph is pretty glorious. I'll share it:
In a sense, that was the beginning of the legendary "fantasist" Gallen O'Day, but that's a far cry from the end of his tale.
No, I suppose that if one were to tell it right-and it's a tale that demands to be told in whole-one would have to continue the story two years later. Gallen had been down south for a year building a name for himself. He had taken up a friendship with a black bear named Orick, and together the two worked as bodyguards for wealthy travelers. In those days, the family clans were strong, and it was hard for a merchant to make a living when the O'Briens hated the Hennesseys and the Hennesseys hated the Greens. An unarmed traveler could hardly ride a dozen miles without someone trying to bloody his nose. But there were worse things in the land.
So yeah, talking black bear. Not sure how the fuck I managed to forget that. But I would totally hire a dude with a bear friend as a bodyguard.
Anyway, Gallen is now rumored to have rid the countryside of two dozen "assorted highwaymen, cutthroats, and roadside bandits", and every highwayman in six counties have learned better than to accost "the dreamy-eyed lad with the long golden hair".
That's...definitely a description.
Anyway, Gallen's put a halt to his burgeoning career because he's heard that his father died, so he came home to Clere, to take care of his mother.
Which leads us to now. Woo.
I also love this paragraph:
So it was, that one night . . .
An autumn storm kept the rain rapping at the windows like an anxious neighbor as Gallen sat in Mahoney's alehouse with his friend Orick the bear, and as Gallen listened to the rain knocking the glass, he had the unsettling feeling that something was trying to get in, something as vast and dark as the storm.
I will forgive a lot for "with his friend Orick the bear". He's at an alehouse drinking with his friend Orick the bear. Who doesn't want to be in an alehouse drinking with their friend Orick the bear?! I don't even drink and I want to be in an alehouse drinking with my friend, Orick the bear!
Gallen's here to try to ply his trade as a bodyguard. He's not having much luck, despite the amount of people in the inn and the rumors of robbers in the wood. But a prosperous sheep farmer named Seamus O'Connor pops over to make conversation. So does "Father Heany", and both men get pretty detailed descriptions:
Seamus sat across from Gallen, leaned back in the old hickory chair, set his black boots on the table and sucked at his pipe, with his full stomach bulging up over his belt. He smiled, and at that moment Gallen thought Seamus looked like nothing more than a pleasant fat gut with a couple of limbs and a head attached. Father Heany came over in his severe black frock, all gaunt and starved looking, and sat down next to Seamus with his own pipe, sucking hard to nurse some damp tobacco into flame. Father Heany was such a tidy and proper man that folks in town often joked of him, "Why the man is so clean, if you took a bath with him, you could use him for soap."
Together, the two old men blew the pleasant smell of their tobacco all about until they were wreathed like a pair of old dragons in their own smoke.
So the conversation runs to Gallen's future plans. Gallen's considered and ruled out both fishing (women won't like the smell) and blacksmithing (he'd rather not work so close to a horse's rump) - the latter reason makes Orick the bear laugh. I want to make a bear laugh.
Father Heany suggests the priesthood and...
"A fine vocation," Orick cut in with his deep voice. The bear was sitting on the floor, paws on the table, licking out of a bowl. Some milk still stuck to his muzzle. "I've been thinking of joining myself, but Gallen here makes light of God and his servants."
A bear priest is an awesome idea, but I am utterly bewildered by this setting. It SEEMS to be some vaguely middle-aged version of Ireland, based on the mention of Christianity and the names. But NO ONE seems to be remotely puzzled by the existence of a talking bear. There's not even a "everyone was used to Orick by now, but yes, talking bears are abnormal" type of acknowledgement. Bears just talk here and consider vocations. Okay.
Galen, the father, and Orick get into an actually kind of interesting exchange about God here. Gallen points out that God created man in his image, but God is supposed to be perfect and man is only good. Gallen thinks God could have done better, noting that a day old fawn can jump a four foot fence, but a day old child can't.
Father Heany is amused, but Orick engages:
Orick lapped at the bowl of milk on the table, and the bear had a reflective look in his dark eyes. "You know, Gallen," Orick grumbled soberly, "God only gave man weaknesses to keep him humble. The Bible says 'man is just a little lower than the angels.' Surely you see that it's true. You may not live as long as a tortoise, but you'll live longer than me. Your mind is far quicker than any bear's. And with your houses and ships and dreams, your people are richer than us bears will ever be."
I'm not sure that really makes sense, given that Orick is clearly very intelligent. I can imagine that bears might not be able to build houses and ships, what with the lack of opposable thumbs, but Orick definitely seems able to dream.
Something about this discussion led me to look up Wolverton on wikipedia, and he appears to have been a Mormon, devout enough to go on missions and marry in a Temple. He apparently taught Stephenie Meyer at Brigham-Young, which is not relevant at the moment but notable nonetheless.
I bring this up, because there's something very...forced isn't exactly the word I want to use here...but staged about this exchange. Gallen is the doubter, with his faulty read of scripture, while Orick gently turns around his argument. I'm personally not sure that Orick actually answers the question to my taste, but there's a reason that I had trouble in my Catholic Sunday School.
Anyway, I'm willing to forgive this weird preachy side note because it's a bear doing the preaching.
I do love this:
Spoken like a true priest, Gallen thought. Few bears ever entered the priesthood, but Gallen wondered if perhaps Orick wasn't a natural for it.
FEW bears become priests. FEW. That means that there is a not zero number of bears in the priesthood in this universe. Amazing.
Gallen isn't really one for the priesthood. He's hoping to buy some property, lease it out, and work as an escort. The bodyguard type. But I dunno, the long golden hair and all, maybe he'd do well as the other type. At least it will be less of an issue when the highwaymen all flee Gallen's reputation, as Father Heany suggests.
Seamus, who had been silent up until then, offers Gallen work: two shillings to see that his drunk ass gets home tonight. Gallen bickers it up to three. There's another character mentioned suddenly, and I have a feeling she might become important:
Gallen held his eye a moment, nodded agreement. The only sound was the wind howling outside and the paddles in the butter churn. The scullery maid, a sweet sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie Flynn, normally churned fresh butter every dawn, but with the stormy night and so many travelers passing through town, she was trying to get a head start. She had dark red hair and darker eyes, a patina of perspiration on her brow. She caught Gallen looking at her and shot him a fetching smile.
Just guessing.
Seamus and Father Heany start talking about wives. Well, more in the theoretical sense, for Father Heany. But it soon becomes clear that this is an excuse to tease Gallen and Maggie for a few pages. They start speculating about Gallen's prospects with all the lovely girls in the area, ruling out each one for some reason. This leads them to Maggie, who is pretty, smart, and hardworking.
Friendly banter, but maybe a bit of a warning too:
"But . . ." Father Heany said with a sigh, "she's too young. The poor girl is only sixteen." He said it with such finality, Gallen knew it was more than a casual thought, it was a verdict. Father Heany was only repeating aloud in front of Gallen the things that others in town had decided in private.
"Too young?" Seamus argued. "Why, she's but two months away from her birthday!"
The priest held up his hands. "Sixteen—even an old sixteen—is marginal, very marginal. Marrying a girl so young borders on sin, and I'd never perform the ceremony!" he declared. "Now, if you ask me—and I'm sure the scriptures would back me up on it—eighteen is far more respectable! But if you make a woman wait until she's twenty, then it seems to me you're sinning the other way and ought to be roundly chastised for making the lady wait."
I'm on board with that, to be honest. Gallen's nineteen, so the age difference isn't too bad, but still. He can wait a bit.
...but um...maybe Maggie can't, because after Seamus goes to sit by the fire with Orick and Father Heany, Maggie sits down next to Gallen and nips his ear.
"Gallen O'Day," she whispered fiercely, "why don't you come up to my room? I'll let you play on my feather bolster, and you can undress me with your teeth."
AHEM. My word, young woman!
"What?" he whispered, feeling blood rush to his ears. "You've got to be joking! You could have a baby from that. You wouldn't want to get tied down with children so young."
"I'm old enough to cook and clean from sunrise to sunset for a bunch of dirty beggars who give me no consideration and don't know enough to take off their muddy boots before they flop onto a bed. Taking care of a husband and a couple of sweet young ones would be a holiday after this."
I kind of love Gallen's scandalized reaction here. "You could have a baby from that!" But I also think Maggie's response is proof that she's still a little too immature to do what she wants. Maggie asks if he's religious, because she's on board with getting a priest, but Gallen knows what she's really after:
"No, it's not that," Gallen assured her, yet marriage was exactly the problem. She was so young that no honorable man would propose to her, yet she couldn't bear the thought of working here for another two years. So, if she happened to turn up with a child in her belly, the whole town would just wink at it and hurry the wedding. It was an odd turn of events, Gallen thought, when the town would view a shameful wedding as somehow being more noble than an honorable proposal.
Gallen tells her that if he proposes now, it would hurt them in the long run. He apparently wants a political career, despite this never coming up either in his head or outloud during the career talk. Tumbling with Maggie would bring shame on them both. He begs her to give herself time to grow up.
She wants to know if this is a promise or a brush off. He calls her a sweet girl and begs her to be patient with him. Translation: brush off.
That, of course, is when a stranger arrives!
The inn door swung open, and a sheet of rain whipped into the room. At first Gallen thought the wind had finally succeeded in blowing the door open, but after a moment, in walked a stranger in traveling clothes—a tall fellow in riding boots and a brown wool greatcloak with a hood. He wore two swords strapped over his cloak—one oddly straight saber with a strange finger guard on its hilt, and another equally long curved blade. By wearing the swords over the cloak in such a downpour, the stranger risked that his blades would rust but kept his swords handy.
Only a man who made a living with his weapons ever wore them so.
That is definitely an entrance. Gallen notes his body language, and the way he doesn't lower the hood: he doesn't want his face seen, but he's scanning the crowd. He's not alone either:
At last, he stepped aside from the door so that a slender waif of a woman could enter the room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, erect, head held high with her hood still covering her face. Gallen saw by his tense posture that the man was her servant, her guard. She wore a bright blue traveling robe trimmed with golden rabbits and foxes. Under her arm she carried a small harp case made of rosewood. She hesitated for a moment, then started forward and her hood fell back.
She was the most beautiful woman Gallen had ever seen. Not the most voluptuous or seductive—just the most perfect. She held herself with a regal air and looked to be about twenty. Her hair was as dark as a starless night. The line of her jaw was strong and firm. Her skin was creamy in complexion and her face looked worn, tired, but her dark blue eyes were alive and brilliant. Gallen recalled the words to an old song: "Her eyes kindle a fire for a lonely man to warm himself by."
Maggie boxed Gallen's jaw playfully and said, "Gallen O'Day, if your tongue hangs out any farther, all you will have to do is wag it to clean the mud off your boots."
Maggie's a surprisingly good sport about Gallen ogling another woman after giving her the brush-off.
Anyway, enter Veriasse and Everynne from an outside perspective.
Maggie welcomes them and Veriasse immediately asks about the Stargate:
The tall man spoke with an odd speech impediment, loud enough so that the entire room could hear, "It is said that there is a place near here, art ancient arch with strange symbols carved on it—Geata na Chruinne. Do you know of it?"
It really DOES sound like the Stargate. This book was originally written in 1994 though, so it seems like more of a coincidence than a ripoff. Stargate the movie came out the same year, and the idea of the Stargate going anywhere else other than not-Ancient Egypt wouldn't be introduced until Stargate SG-1 in 1997. I think the earliest example that I've encountered of the physical gates to other planets idea is C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle, written in the seventies, though I wouldn't doubt that there are probably earlier examples of the same kind of idea.
It WOULD explain how we can have a place that sounds so much like fantasy Ireland, with Christianity, could also have talking bears. It's a transplanted settlement!
Anyway, Maggie tells them everyone knows of the place, but no one will take them at night. She suggests some boys can take them in the morning. When the stranger says he wants a seasoned soldier, Maggie volunteers Gallen (with his nodded consent). She boasts about his ability, calling him the best there's ever been.
Aw.
We get a better description of Veriasse here:
As the stranger got close, Gallen could see that the tall man had vivid blue eyes, tawny hair going silver. He regarded Gallen with a istant expression.
Without flinching an eye, the stranger drew his sword and swung at Gallen's head. Gallen leapt from his chair and grabbed the stranger's wrist, pinching the nerves between the radius and the ulna, then twisting. It was a painful grip, Gallen knew, and made the victim's fingers spasm open. The stranger's sword stroke went wide, then the sword itself clattered to the table. Gallen twisted the man's wrist painfully in a come-along so that the stranger soon found himself at arm's length, standing on his tiptoes.
Veriasse compliments him. Everynne doesn't want him to come though. She thinks he's too small. And this is an interesting exchange:
Size is an illusion," Gallen said, catching her eyes. "A man is what he thinks."
"And I think that if a foe who outweighed you by a hundred pounds swung a sword at you, you would never be able to parry his blows."
Gallen listened to her words with difficulty, realized that like the man, she too spoke oddly, as if she had a mouthful of syrup. Yet her accent wasn't as thick. He said, "I've been strengthening my wrists since I was six years old, knowing that I'd have to parry blows from bigger men. I believe a man can become anything he puts his mind to. And I assert that by thought, I have made myself bigger than I seem."
We see Everynne's argument come up a lot for female characters. It's interesting to see it directed at a male character instead. But Veriasse backs him up, noting that Gallen's grip is better than his own. Everynne is convinced.
Gallen tells them he has a job tonight, but he can pick them up at dawn.
Wolverton can't really seem to refer to Veriasse consistently. Obviously Gallen doesn't know his name, but he's varyingly "the stranger" or "the guard", but at one point, he's "the old man". Veriasse is described as older, sure, but "old man" has very different connotations.
Anyway, he tells the townsfolk that lightning struck the bridge nearby after they crossed. Everyone's pretty dismayed, and we're told that, by law, both the folk from this town and from "Baile Sean" will have to come together to repair it.
Gallen decides that he has to introduce himself to his new, hot employer:
He stood and said in a loud voice, "My lady?" The two stopped in their tracks, and the woman glanced over her shoulder at him. Gallen continued, "When you walked in the room just now, and your hood fell back to expose your face, it was as if the morning sun had just climbed over the mountains after a dreary night of rain. We're curious folks hereabout, and I think I speak for many when I ask: may I beg to know your name?" The little speech came out sounding so sweet that Gallen could almost taste the honey dripping from his tongue, and he stood with his heart pounding, waiting for the woman's reply.
She smiled down at him and seemed to think for a moment. Her guard waited cautiously just above her on the stairs, but he did not look back. After a few seconds she said, "No."
So that's going well. Gallen is embarrassed, but really dude. Really?
That said, Maggie seems like a piece of work, really:
Maggie quickly made up two plates and readied them to take upstairs, then came back to Gallen and set the plates on his table a moment and said, "Oh, you poor abused child! To think that she'd mistreat you so." She leaned over and kissed him heavily on the mouth.
Gallen suspected that she was both hurt and angry. He also reminded himself that, wisely, he'd made her no promises. He held her gently as she kissed him, then she slapped his face, grabbed her trays, and danced off, smiling at him over her back.
...I begin to see why Gallen's hesitant to commit. I can understand being angry that your sort-of boyfriend turned you down and promptly falls head over heels for another girl, but this is not normal behavior.
Anyway, Gallen ends up taking Seamus back home. At some point, he runs into Orick and another bear eating from the rubbish bin. Gallen offers to have Maggie fix him a plate instead of Orick mucking about in the slop. Maggie's already promised Orick some leftovers though, so he's cool. The other bear says nothing, but I've noticed that Wolverton seems to have a bit of a difficulty dealing with multiple characters in a scene. Too often, the dialogue seems to narrow down to just two characters present, and it seems like everyone else disappears for a while.
Back at the inn, "the Lady Everynne" is pacing. It seems like Veriasse actually is her father. I am making this determination by the way he calls her his daughter and she calls him father. But honestly, they don't read like father and daughter to me, and I'm not sure why. It's only been one chapter, and they haven't actually had that much interaction.
Anyway, she asks if Veriasse can still "taste their scent" and Veriasse sticks his hands out the window. He can: there's a vanquisher "no closer than twenty kilometers away".
They talk. Everynne suggests, without really believing it, that the vanquisher could be here for another reason. But no. We get a bit more backstory and setting info here:
"Don't fool yourself," Veriasse said at last. "Tlitkani has sent her warriors to kill us. With only one gate to watch, this world is the perfect spot for an ambush." He said it as one who knows. Tlitkani had enslaved Veriasse for four years, had forced him to become her advisor. Veriasse was gifted at reading personalities, at studying motives and moods. He could anticipate an adversary's actions so well that many thought him a psychic. No one understood Tlitkani better than Veriasse did.
I guess if everyone got full multi-page flashbacks, we'd never get anything done.
Anyway, they wonder about Tlitkani's motives, and if the servants are trying to lull them into a false sense of security. Veriasse asks about Gallen O'Day in a way that kind of sounds like HE wants to bang him:
Veriasse said nothing for a moment, then asked, "And what of our guide, this Gallen O'Day? Shall we convert him to our cause? He reacts quickly, and he is marvelously strong."
Everynne's opposed though. She knows they need "an army of men like Gallen O'Day" but he couldn't possibly know about her people's worlds and weapons. They can't fight vanquishers with just knives, and Veriasse has no weapons to spare. She thinks taking Gallen along would be the same as murdering him.
Veriasse thinks Gallen would want to follow, and he thinks that she must let him: even if it means that he dies. But Everynne wants to angst about it more. Fair enough.
MORE information:
Everynne shivered, moved away from the window quickly and lay on the bed. Veriasse’s heavy, uneven breathing came to her, and she listened to it as she drifted off. Veriasse—with his unwavering devotion, his strong back—seemed somehow more than human. Certainly, by the standards of this world, he would not be judged human at all. Her teacher, her friend. He had guarded Everynne’s mother for six thousand years. And during the course of Everynne’s short life, he had been a solid presence, always at her side. Sometimes she tried to distance herself from him, think of him only as a warrior, the only one of her guardians to survive this journey. But she could tell that he was weary to the bone, worn through. She could not ask that he continue fighting alone.
Okay, so, not LITERALLY her father. That probably explains it.
The chapter closes out with two paragraphs that I find weirdly off-putting:
With a pang that tore at her heart, Everynne realized what she must do. She needed another guardian, someone to fight beside Veriasse. She knew that men like Gallen O’Day could not resist her. Something in them responded to something in her. It was biological, inevitable. When she had first walked into the inn. She could tell from Gallen’s eyes that he believed he had fallen in love. Given an hour in her presence, he would be sure of that love, and within a few days he would become ensnared. Another slave.
Yet there was nothing Everynne could do to dissuade the unyielding devotion of men like Gallen and Veriasse. So Veriasse sat at her feet, waiting to die. Everynne hated her lot in life. But it was her fate. For she had been born a queen among the Tharrin.
Oh brother.
So there are things I like and things I don't like about this chapter and the book so far.
Gallen's clearly our everyman lead. He's reasonably likeable. And while I mock/kvetch about him falling in love with another woman just after brushing Maggie off, the fact of the matter is that he ISN'T in a relationship with Maggie and while there might be a mutual attraction, that's not the same as a relationship.
He doesn't owe her fidelity. I could wish he'd give her more sensitivity.
That does get into what I don't like, and what I already think will be a problem going forward. The writing of the women is just awful so far. I like Maggie's forwardness and forthrightness, but she's written bizarrely. That slap-kiss thing was not something a real woman would do. Kiss to stake a claim/show him what he's missing? Maybe. Slap him for the rejection/humiliation, okay. BOTH?
Everynne's a bit better, so far. It probably helps that, as a viewpoint character, we can see the why of her behavior a bit better. She has a purpose, that we don't know yet, but she has doubts too. But at least we're given something of a reason for her coldness toward Gallen: she doesn't want another innocent person to die. Still, I feel like she's getting dragged around a lot so far.
I don't know what to think of this whole "it's biological and inevitable for a man to fall in love with me" schtick though. I'm not sure if this is just supposed to be a measure of how beautiful she is, or if there's more to it, like Veriasse's weird smelling hands. Either way, the whole "impossibly irresistable woman" storyline element very rarely works for me. But well, we'll see where it goes.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-26 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-26 05:13 pm (UTC)There is, however, a talking bear at least?
no subject
Date: 2022-10-26 05:28 pm (UTC)For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-26 06:34 pm (UTC)Indeed. I don't know what the hell Wolverton was thinking with that book, and I don't really want to know.
/So we start off in media res, with two characters, a man named Veriasse and a woman named Everynne. And I suddenly remember that, as a kid, I'd often have to reread paragraphs that featured Everynne because I'd misread her name as "Everyone" and then go "wait, what?"/
Smart move there, Wolverton. I'll just call her "Everyone" anyway. Also interesting to note that these people get fancy fantasy names. I've got a suspicion it's because they're just more special than the common folk.
Also, hi there, Star Wars people.
/Veriasse could taste the scent of vanquishers in the crisp mountain air./
"Vanquishers". Not the most inspired name, but not all that bad either. And yay for aliens in the Scottish highlands! This book is certainly A Thing, although I really don't know what.
/Veriasse raised his hands. The olfactory nerves running up his wrists could detect the subtlest smells. He could taste a person's nervousness from across a room, detect the scent of an enemy across a valley. Now, he could smell a man's fear behind him, along with the acrid odor of a vanquisher./
Ugh. I'd think smelling things with your hands would quite suck, too. Although I must say it's new.
/he whistles "like a thrush" in three short calls/
How do the Star Wars people know thrushes? It makes sense for Scottish people from 1850 to know of thrushes (I see that the MistleThrush lives throughout Scotland, for example), but not really from people from a galaxy far, far away. (Yes, they're probably not literally from that universe, but I'll keep calling them that.) Except if they've stayed there for a while, which doesn't seem the case. So, I'll go for omniscient narration.
/Okay, so already there's something about their interaction that sets my teeth on edge. I can appreciate the context clues that this is a crisis and that they can't afford to wait and help Calt. And I understand that there probably isn't much time to talk about it. But there's something about how he slaps her horse (when she's apparently an inexperienced and inept rider no less) and grabs the reins that just bugs me./
Me too. It smacks way too much of "smarter, older man tells younger, dumber woman what to do". And I quite hate that.
/He could see no easy way to topple it, so he fired his incendiary rifle into the planks. Stark white flames erupted for fifty meters across the bridge. /
Star Wars tech ahoy! And how does this thing work? It just fires flammable chemicals? It somehow sounds as if someone must have invented this during World War I. O_O
/He looks back to see the bridge burn, and the "giant form of a green-skinned vanquisher in battle armor" staring at the river in dismay./
Yup. Evil aliens and Star Wars people in 1850's Scotland. I hope it works out.
/We switch scenes here now to a local: a man named Gallen O'Day. He's probably a main character, on account of how we IMMEDIATELY segue into a flashback about how, at five years old, his father took him to get a kitten./
Real smooth, Wolverton. Might as well have started with the flashback.
/I like that. There's a stereotype that boys' beloved pets should be dogs. But why shouldn't boys like cats too?/
EXACTLY. This boy likes cats, too.
A picture of my own cat. She's really in love with me.
/including the fact that many local children believe that she's a witch and claim the priest drowned her babies for being leprechauns. Egads./
What purpose does that serve, besides shock value?
/and her house, which is apparently "grown from an ancient, gnarled pine tree"./
Grown how? I'm reminded of Inheritance's elves, who also grow their houses from a forest that's inexplicably 95% pine trees (at 35° north latitude), and in their case, it's really gross.
/Her father had been a merchant and once bought seven olive presses down in Ireland, thinking to retire./
The fuck? How would he have made olives grow up in Scotland?? I don't think he could have made a greenhouse, so, barring magic, I really don't know what he wanted to do.
And this quite confirms the book is set in Scotland, as the only place north of Ireland, close by enough, and fitting the description, is Scotland.
/ He'd taken the whole family with him, but a storm blew them into uncivilized lands where wild Owens roamed—hairy men who had lost their Christianity and now wore only brass rings piercing their nipples./
Where the heck would those lands be?? This is the 1850's!
And the description of the Owens reminds me uncomfortably of stereotypes that depict the Celtic peoples who lived there as "uncivilised barbarians", and Wolverton plays it straight with zero sensitivity. I should be surprised, but I'm not.
/The wild Owens ate her family, but held the widow prisoner on a rocky isle where they brought their dead along with gifts of food every full moon, leaving the corpses for her blessing. She'd have to feast for days before the food rotted, then she'd starve afterward for weeks. The island's soil was white with the bones of dead Owens. The widow survived for a summer in a haphazard shelter under a leaning slab of marble, teaching herself to swim until she could finally brave the vast waters./
Was all of this seriously necessary? It reads like a typical "I was captured by primitive/cannibalistic "natives"/"Indians"/"Eskimos"/"Africans"/"barbarians"" story from the late 19th/early-to-mid 20th century.
Awwww, cute kittens. That's a nice touch.
/*the philosophy stuff*/
Hmmm. I'd like to think of myself as the third kind of person, and in a way you could say that I indeed live different lives, which is tied up with the concept of a "persona" (basically that you cast yourself in different roles, depending on the social situation and such). In my case, you'd have my "normal" life, and another life where I really admire some animals (birds, for example) and want to connect to them. And I also look to the future.
/We get an example in a new flashback: Gallen at age seventeen, with a neighbor named Mack O'Mally, gets accosted by highwaymen wearing sacks to cover their heads. He's able to think very quickly, and turn the sacks around on them, so that they're blinded and easy pickings./
Well done, Gallen!
/No, I suppose that if one were to tell it right-and it's a tale that demands to be told in whole-one would have to continue the story two years later./
I'm pegging Gallen's birthday at 1831, then. Also, hi there, anonymous narrator!
/He had taken up a friendship with a black bear named Orick,/
It's a lir! Okay, it does sound really awesome.
Although, how would there be bears living in Scotland in 1850? I've checked, and bears went extinct on Great Britain around 500 CE, so I don't know where they'd come from... Then again, other things are evidently different, too, so I can accept this. It's got me wondering whether there'd be snakes on Ireland, too.
/I will forgive a lot for "with his friend Orick the bear". He's at an alehouse drinking with his friend Orick the bear. Who doesn't want to be in an alehouse drinking with their friend Orick the bear?! I don't even drink and I want to be in an alehouse drinking with my friend, Orick the bear!/
Me too! I don't drink either, but I'd still do so if I could be with my friend, Orick the bear! He really makes things much better, doesn't he?
/and blacksmithing (he'd rather not work so close to a horse's rump) - the latter reason makes Orick the bear laugh. I want to make a bear laugh./
This is quite good, and quite funny, actually.
/A bear priest is an awesome idea,/
I really hope Orick becomes a priest later on.
/It SEEMS to be some vaguely middle-aged version of Ireland, based on the mention of Christianity and the names./
I'd argue that it's Scotland, based on the mention of Ireland as a seperate place. As qua time, I'd go for around 1850, not for a specific reason, but more for the whole aesthetic. And 1850 also seems like a good time period to put vaguely modern stories in, especially around Scotland, as at that time, it's close enough for readers to relate more fully, but the area hasn't really been reached by the Industrial Revolution yet, and it's also far enough back in time to lend a mysterious feel.
If you'd really want to capitalise on that, it could be possible to shift the story to the Hebrides, as they're even further out, and because they're rather thinly populated. Setting a story even into the 1900's could work that way, then.
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-26 08:07 pm (UTC)(Dal Riata was around in the 6th-7th centuries as I recall, which would fit with the presence of Orick, but not much else. It's probably easiest for us to assume this is an alternate universe. Or, like in Stargate, someone kidnapped some ancient Scottish settlement and put them on another planet, and the "Ireland" isn't the literal one.)
Your cat is lovely!
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-26 08:12 pm (UTC)Knew you would like pictures!
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-26 10:14 pm (UTC)(How did you upload her? I've only been able to use third party picture sites like flickr when I want to upload images!)
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 04:30 am (UTC)Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 05:04 am (UTC)Mostly my cat. <3
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 11:57 am (UTC)I can also see lots of books in the background, so you should be busy for a looong while.
Uuugh. Here's one from the Axis Trilogy:
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 04:19 pm (UTC)The Cheysuli family tree is pretty spoiler-ridden, so I won't post it yet, but it's hilarious because it already looks like a DNA strand, and it doesn't even include every bit of incest.
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 04:40 pm (UTC)*shakes head* Roberson, Roberson, Roberson...
Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 06:07 pm (UTC)Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2022-10-27 06:24 pm (UTC)Re: For real this time: Part 1
Date: 2024-08-24 09:59 pm (UTC)So much comment
Date: 2022-10-26 07:45 pm (UTC)And? Having a long life, being really smart, and having houses and ships doesn't necessarily make your life better. I'd argue that living a life without thinking about the future, with much deeper emotions, and a greater depth of experience could also be worth it, short though the life might be. So living as a bear might not be intrinsically better or worse than living as human, just different.
/He apparently taught Stephenie Meyer at Brigham-Young, which is not relevant at the moment but notable nonetheless./
*cracks up* He taught SMeyer? I think he also taught her "How to Be a Suethor 101".
/FEW bears become priests. FEW. That means that there is a not zero number of bears in the priesthood in this universe. Amazing./
Absolutely. I may not be religious myself, but I would attend a service led by a bear.
/She had dark red hair and darker eyes, a patina of perspiration on her brow./
Love the phrase "patina of perspiration" coming from a rural boy in 1850.
/I'm on board with that, to be honest. Gallen's nineteen, so the age difference isn't too bad, but still. He can wait a bit./
Good on him for holding off!
/I'll let you play on my feather bolster, and you can undress me with your teeth."/
Um, Maggie? Are you sure about this?
/"You could have a baby from that!"/
Sounds like "a baby" is some kind of STD. O_O
/He apparently wants a political career,/
Good luck getting much political influence at this time and place. Then again, if you don't try, things won't change either. So, good choice, Gallen!
/That, of course, is when a stranger arrives!/
Hi there, Variessa and Princess Everyone! (I know they aren't called that, but I don't want to bother to look up their real names)
/one oddly straight saber with a strange finger guard on its hilt, and another equally long curved blade./
Awww. No lightsabers?
/She was the most beautiful woman Gallen had ever seen. Not the most voluptuous or seductive—just the most perfect./
"Do I dazzle you?"
/Geata na Chruinne/
This apparently means "Gate of the World" in Irish. Not in Scottish Gaelic, which should be spoken here, as the whole thing evokes Scotland more than Ireland.
/It really DOES sound like the Stargate. This book was originally written in 1994 though, so it seems like more of a coincidence than a ripoff. Stargate the movie came out the same year, and the idea of the Stargate going anywhere else other than not-Ancient Egypt wouldn't be introduced until Stargate SG-1 in 1997. I think the earliest example that I've encountered of the physical gates to other planets idea is C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle, written in the seventies, though I wouldn't doubt that there are probably earlier examples of the same kind of idea./
This really reminds me of the Axis Trilogy, which I mentioned earlier. It's also an inexplicable blend of fantasy and science fiction.
Qua fantasy, it's not really inspired. There's three main races: the Acharites (baseline humans), Icarii (angelic Sue-race), and the Avar (generic forest-dwelling race). The main religion of the Acharites is the Way of the Axe and the Plough, which is a naked rip-off of Christianity, and it's also eeeeeevil. Beyond that, it's a mish-mash of stuff thrown together (for example, there's people named Rivkah and Faraday, apparently from the same culture). And the plot is also generic: the great hero defeats his two eeeeevil half-brothers and saves the land, while aided by two Love Interests (because why not).
The science-fiction part mostly comes into play in the second trilogy, and it's... weird. The premise is that the stars alive, and their collective will forms the Star Dance, which battles against the eeeevil TimeKeeper Demons. Tens of thousands of years before the beginning of the series, the Demons attacked Earth (qua level of technological development, I'd place it between 2050 and 2100). The Earth itself was ravaged, but some people managed to dismantle him, and put the pieces on spacecraft. In the end, those craft crashed through the FUCKING WARDS that block Tencendor from the rest of the universe, and so they created the Star Gate, a portal to the universe.
That's pretty wild, too.
/Without flinching an eye, the stranger drew his sword and swung at Gallen's head. Gallen leapt from his chair and grabbed the stranger's wrist, pinching the nerves between the radius and the ulna, then twisting. It was a painful grip, Gallen knew, and made the victim's fingers spasm open. The stranger's sword stroke went wide, then the sword itself clattered to the table. Gallen twisted the man's wrist painfully in a come-along so that the stranger soon found himself at arm's length, standing on his tiptoes./
Lovely welcome. And again, Gallen shouldn't know the words "radius" and "ulna".
/Baile Sean/
This apparently means "Old Town" in Irish, again not in Scottish Gaelic.
/...I begin to see why Gallen's hesitant to commit. I can understand being angry that your sort-of boyfriend turned you down and promptly falls head over heels for another girl, but this is not normal behavior./
Indeed. How I understand it, Maggie kissed him to show that she's got power over him too. Which I really don't like with what comes after.
/The other bear says nothing, but I've noticed that Wolverton seems to have a bit of a difficulty dealing with multiple characters in a scene. Too often, the dialogue seems to narrow down to just two characters present, and it seems like everyone else disappears for a while./
Great. At least he doesn't have the problem of dropping dialogue tags when multiple people speak.
/He can: there's a vanquisher "no closer than twenty kilometers away"./
Interesting that he uses "kilometres". Also, do those "vanquishers" smell that bad if Variessa can smell them from such a distance?
/Tlitkani had enslaved Veriasse for four years, had forced him to become her advisor./
Uuuugh. I really hope Wolverton handles this well, but I can't really trust him, not with COPL.
/Certainly, by the standards of this world, he would not be judged human at all. Her teacher, her friend. He had guarded Everynne’s mother for six thousand years./
This is actually mysterious. You get a cookie, Wolverton.
/With a pang that tore at her heart, Everynne realized what she must do. She needed another guardian, someone to fight beside Veriasse. She knew that men like Gallen O’Day could not resist her. Something in them responded to something in her. It was biological, inevitable. When she had first walked into the inn. She could tell from Gallen’s eyes that he believed he had fallen in love. Given an hour in her presence, he would be sure of that love, and within a few days he would become ensnared. Another slave./
Lovely. What is it with Wolverton and slavery? At least he doesn't pretend it's good in this book.
/For she had been born a queen among the Tharrin./
As if we couldn't have seen that coming from the beginning.
Not too bad for a first chapter, overall, though it feels a bit confused, and the conflicting settings feel really weird.
I'd be honestly content to read about how Orick becomes a priest, for example.
Re: So much comment
Date: 2022-10-26 08:09 pm (UTC)Re: So much comment
Date: 2022-10-26 08:12 pm (UTC)Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 07:56 pm (UTC)= Multi-Facets.
Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 08:08 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 08:12 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 08:14 pm (UTC)It will take forever to review her books, by the way, as the series has 11 books.
Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 09:57 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 08:12 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-26 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-27 12:11 am (UTC)= Multi-Facets.
Re: Oh, yikes. O_O
Date: 2022-10-27 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-28 07:18 am (UTC)Something about this discussion led me to look up Wolverton on wikipedia, and he appears to have been a Mormon, devout enough to go on missions and marry in a Temple. He apparently taught Stephenie Meyer at Brigham-Young, which is not relevant at the moment but notable nonetheless.
I wonder if he taught her how to write stories.
Anyway, this looks better than the Courtship so far, with a decent prologue.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-28 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-28 11:14 pm (UTC)Which makes me thankful Roberson's world is not too advanced. Duncan and early Finn would have a couple of those each.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-28 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-24 10:04 pm (UTC)And the tribe who "lost their Christianity" became savage cannibals? No unfortunate implications there, nope. None at all.
The talking bear was the most interesting part. Let's learn some more about the talking bears.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-25 02:53 am (UTC)