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i_read_what2022-12-29 08:36 pm
kalinara) wrote in i_read_what2022-12-29 08:36 pm
The Golden Queen - Chapter 8
Hi everyone! I've had a great holiday, and I hope you did too, if you celebrate. If not, I hope you had a great week anyway.
So let's get back to the Golden Queen. Ugh.
I don't know why I've soured on the book all of a sudden. I think it, as I've said last chapter, Maggie plot really feels mean-spirited? Or something. But it's really sent my enjoyment of the book into a nosedive. Let's see if it will look up this chapter.
So we rejoin Gallen. He's canvassing the city, methodically stopping at shops, studying merchandise and pumping proprietors for information:
The locals called the place Toohkansay, and Gallen learned about the various housing quarters, the manufacturing sectors, and the business districts. Some of these places denied access to the public, and this left gaping holes in his mental map of the city. For example, with only a few questions he learned where Lord Karthenor's two hundred aberlains worked night and day in some mystic enterprise that a businessman said would "improve mankind," but when Gallen went to the place, he found only a small clinic where men and women waited for some mysterious ministrations to be performed on them.
The inhabitants are small white men and women with enormous eyes and ears, called the Woodari. Apparently their guild is so powerful that they don't even fear the dronon.
This bit...I don't know, I feel like it illustrates my unhappiness with this part of the book:
Gallen asked so many questions of one little Woodari named Fargeth that the little man said, "Your vast ignorance amuses me, but I have work to do.You are so full of questions, why do you not go to the pidc?"
"The pidc?" Gallen asked. "What is that?"
"It is a place where all the questions you can ask in a lifetime will be answered in moments."
"Where is it?" Gallen asked. "What do they charge for their service?"
Fargeth laughed. "Knowledge carries its own price. Gain it to your dismay."
Gallen's not a bad character. He's competent and mostly amusing. And to be honest, when it comes to personality, I like him much more than Maggie, who has been one-note and kind of awful. But it's hard not to focus on the difference with the way his part of the story reads from Maggie's. He's searching for her, yes, but it's still presented as this fairly light adventure where he gets to be competent and amusing.
She's enslaved, with her brain being re-written. That's not even getting into the weird sexless sexual assault aspect as they force pleasure on her and plot for a man to seduce her. It's weird how much that bothers me. I'm not a huge fan of rape as a plot device anyway, but this is somehow more aggravating and I don't really know why.
I'd invented the tag "rape (symbolic)" to refer to events that are magic/sci-fi but written like a rape scene and with similar connotations. I've used it for the last chapter, but in a weird way, I think this is the reverse. We're dealing with, in some respects, an actual rape (through the forced pleasure at any rate), but it's written in a way that removes the sexualized elements entirely.
Is this an interesting approach to horror? Maybe, and maybe I wouldn't mind it as much if it weren't so singularly focused on the one female character with any kind of agency. But my gut reaction is more like "look, if you want to write a rape scene, then just fucking write a rape scene."
I don't know that my reaction is rational at this point. I do know I really don't like this. But let's move on.
Gallen ends up coming across the creator from last chapter. He's making a child. Which is weird. Gallen thinks about how in his past two days here in the city, this old alien is the only person he liked.
...and maybe this is part of the problem. We're given lip service to the idea that Gallen is frantically searching for Maggie. But two days of searching were summarized in three paragraphs or so. There is no attempt to portray Gallen's worry or fear on any kind of commiserate level that fits the horror happening to Maggie.
I think I've hit on a way to explain my dissatisfaction now. I'm thinking about western animation shows. Cartoons. Things like Avatar: the Last Airbender, the newer Voltron, Clone Wars or even older shows like Gargoyles, the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, even old He-Man and She-Ra or Thundercats cartoons.
I think specifically about them because these are adventure shows meant for children (as opposed to anime, which is generally broader in genre/scope). These shows tend to be fairly light-hearted, though they can definitely touch on darker themes. Characters get hurt. Sometimes, very rarely, they might even get killed. Captivity and torture can happen. But those topics are generally taken seriously within the show. And the characters who aren't suffering directly, are still allowed to be worried and anxious and react to the suspense and unhappy events. And even if there are one or two lighter moments to release tension, mostly, the tone is consistent throughout.
We've had a long section about what Maggie's going through, but Gallen's part is far more about establishing and reacting to this cool world than it is about finding her. Look at this. I already excerpted the first part, but I'm repeating it in context.
The locals called the place Toohkansay, and Gallen learned about the various housing quarters, the manufacturing sectors, and the business districts. Some of these places denied access to the public, and this left gaping holes in his mental map of the city. For example, with only a few questions he learned where Lord Karthenor's two hundred aberlains worked night and day in some mystic enterprise that a businessman said would "improve mankind," but when Gallen went to the place, he found only a small clinic where men and women waited for some mysterious ministrations to be performed on them.
Gallen surveyed the area around the clinic-studied Toohkansay's exits, found each window and skylight, hunted for likely places to hide.
Most of the city's inhabitants fit within certain categories: those who wore silver bands on their heads either could not or would not speak to Gallen. The merchants with their lavish robes soon became easy to spot. In a dark cafe near one manufacturing district, Gallen sat at a table filled with the small white men and women with enormous eyes and ears. His questions elicited raucous laughter from them, yet they answered good-naturedly. They called themselves the Woodari. Their ancestors had been created to work on a distant planet where the sun was dark. Here on Fale, they worked as miners and built ships to carry cargo from one world to another. The Woodari starfarers claimed that their guild was so powerful that they did not fear the dronon.
This is the structure of the first page of the chapter. It then goes into the Fargeth bit. Where is the emotion? Where is the worry?
It's not that Gallen is just brushing her off. We see that he is doing things! A lot of things! I imagine that he feels something here. He hasn't been established as a sociopath after all. But where is it?
The chapter hasn't even mentioned Maggie's NAME.
Where is the tonal consistency?
Anyway, enough bitching. Gallen brings up Maggie's predicament, and the creator immediately says he'll take him where he needs to go. Because why should Gallen have to expend effort for more than a few paragraphs.
And in fact, we do see what a pidc is, and it's again a nice bit of world-building:
The creator set Gallen in a white chair, showed Gallen how to strap a silver band to his temples, and whispered, "Good luck, my friend. For most people, this is all they ever learn in life, and a session here becomes the end of knowledge. If you were from Motak, you would know that filling your mind with trivia is only the beginning of study. Right action will lead to greater light."
The toadman left, and Gallen held the silver strip a moment. He placed it on his head as if it were a crown. A gray mist seemed to form before Gallen's eyes. The room went dark, and in the distance he could see a bright pinpoint of light. A voice within the light said, "I am the teacher. Open yourself to knowledge. What do you wish to know?"
It is, essentially, the same thing happening to Maggie. But you know, without all the horror and violation. Because Gallen is a man? Because his suffering isn't as interesting? I don't know. I do think that Maggie could have had an adventure where she's lost in the city, and ends up in one of these places and gifted with knowledge in a way that isn't so horrible or traumatizing.
OR Gallen could actually be suffering in some kind of commiserate way: emotionally for her, if not physically, so that we could explore the horror of this setting beneath it's pleasant exterior.
I mean, look, Wolverton even says it here:
"Teach me," Gallen said. And if Maggie's education was rough and painful, Gallen's was sweet and filled with light. It began with a knowledge of mathematics that coursed into him evenly—beginning with the basics of number theory, moving up through advanced spatial geometry. There, mathematics branched into physics and he learned about subatomic particles, relativity, and Gallen memorized the various equations for the unified field theory and its many corollaries.
WHY is Maggie's education rough and painful? WHY is Gallen's sweet and filled with light?
If the contrast is intentional, as it appears to be, then there are ways to make it PERSONAL. Instead of this omniscient narration, if it instead said something like: "Gallen was worried about Maggie. Whatever she was learning was probably rough and painful, where his education was sweet and filled wit light." I'm a clumsier writer than Wolverton, but I feel like the example still gets across what I mean. It'd be one thing if Gallen was meant to be a clueless fop with no idea how the world can be light for one person and dark for another, but he's supposed to be an imaginative and empathetic fellow. So let him have that awareness and the emotional tone will be smoother all around.
I also don't really know about what I think about this immediately easy fix for both characters, in terms of knowledge and ability. Suddenly, Gallen knows how starships work. Maggie understands complex genetic engineering. So why bother introducing the characters as ignorant medieval type peasants to begin with? Just for initial expositional purposes?
Gallen's even getting explanations of the Guides vs. Mantles (like Everynne wore) and nanotechnology, and how World Gates tap into singularities...
Basically these are all things that I'd have liked to see Gallen and Maggie learn in context. You know, from the characters we met and supposedly should have an emotional investment in. It might be nice to see Everynne actually get to teach someone else, given how she seems to be pulled around without agency. It might humanize Veriasse a little to have him interact with the younger, more clueless characters without being an opaque mystery.
So after his lesson, Gallen goes off to explore more. And again, no real mention of Maggie or his worry about her.
Heck, it occurs to me that the Guide vs. Mantle explanation would have been a perfect time to introduce the idea that Gallen is worried about his friend. One sentence where Gallen realizes that Maggie must be going through something horrible, given that her mind is being dominated by a Guide would have helped!
Instead, we have Gallen's view on Fale's society:
Merchants were frequently freemen who made themselves useful, but the vast majority of mankind were worthless in this society, and so long as they were free to eat and breed and be entertained, they seemed content.
Here on Fale, there was no need for a man with a strong back or quick wit. There was nothing a human could do that an android could not do better. So those who did not have some type of relationship with a personal intelligence—either as a possessor or as one possessed—were considered only waste, the excess of humanity. And as Gallen studied the peons of Fale, he began to see that behind the well-fed faces, there was a haunted, cramped look.
Gallen went to his camp that night and lay looking up at the stars, smelling the wind. On this world, despite all of his strivings, the people would consider him worthless, and this was something that he had never imagined.
...what is this story even supposed to be about?
Oh, I spoke too soon, Maggie is FINALLY mentioned:
He considered what Karthenor had done. Perhaps in the lord's mind, by giving Maggie a Guide, he had made her a person of worth, bestowed upon her some dignity. Yet such a gift was bound to carry a terrible price.
YOU JUST LEARNED THAT GUIDES DOMINATE THE WEARER'S MIND, YOU LITTLE TWIT.
--
Oh hey, viewpoint shift to Maggie. A note, that the last paragraph was the transition. Here's Maggie's first paragraphs.
On the morning of her third day on Fale, Maggie's Guide completed the task of injecting its own artificial neural network into Maggie's nervous system. The Guide now commanded a secondary network of neurons that led through all of her extremities, so that it could control the rate of Maggie's pulse and breathing, feel with her fingers and toes, watch with her eyes, and hear with her ears.
When it finished, it reported its progress to Maggie, flashing a three-dimensional image of the new nervous system to her. A sense of panic rose in her when she saw what had happened, but the Guide did not tickle her, did not send her its calm assurances. Instead, it left her with her fears.
HOW IS THIS THE SAME FUCKING STORY???
AGGGH.
So okay, yes Maggie is having more horror happen. Since the Guide is now totally in control, she gets to do more complex genetic manipulation. And slavery:
During one marathon twenty-hour work session, Maggie extracted, sorted, and upgraded over a hundred egg cells from one woman. Afterward, she added genetic enhancements to several hundred thousand sperm. She then mixed the cells and put them in the incubator before she left for the night. Her Guide reported her daily accomplishments to Karthenor, and Karthenor set up a credit account to give her advances on the future earnings of the children she was creating. In time, one hundred children would each pay her one percent of their life earnings. Inone day, she had sewn a crop that would in time reap a fortune. The Guide made sure that she understood and felt properly grateful to be so employed.
This is all while Gallen is having his adventure. Woo.
Maggie hears a wounded woman's scream, and her guide tells her that terrorists exploded a bomb. A fellow worker is injured, but Maggie must continue working and is too tranquilized to consider disobeying.
She is getting insight into the dronon:
Yet the dronon Guide also taught her the glorious plans that it had for Maggie's people, and as the plans unfolded, Maggie was tickled so that she felt as if she were floundering in a pool of ecstasy. The genes that Maggie inserted into that day's batch of children were specifically designed to decrease a female's infant mortality rate and at the same time engineer a subspecies of future women to become breeders. These breeders would bear litters of ten or more children. The women that Maggie engineered would be tall, languid, wide at the hips, and would spend a great deal of time eating. They would require little in the way of cerebral stimulation—would shun mental exercise, physical stimulation. In effect, they would be sacks to bear children.
In a few days, Maggie knew that she would be allowed to work on a second subspecies of females who would be sterile workers, filled with an incredible amount of nervous energy that would be released in the joyful pursuit of labor. Other colleagues were developing males that would consist of one subspecies of dreamy-eyed artisans and creators, while another subspecies would form a caste of giant warriors with superb reflexes, immense strength, and an instinct for killing. These would burn a path across the galaxies, uniting all mankind under a common banner.
It's not that this is badly written, or even badly conceived. I just wish we got to learn this in ways that wasn't an info-dump. Even if it's effectively horrifying and violating.
The technician Arvik makes his appearance:
He was a tall man, perhaps twenty-five years of age, with pale blond hair. The sculpted muscles of his chest and shoulders revealed a body type that Maggie recognized from her studies-the human equivalent of a dronon technician.
He entered her small bedroom and sat in her single chair. He watched Maggie with an intensity peculiar to those raised in dronon society. It was as if Maggie were food, and the man was feeding on her with his gleaming blue eyes.
I love that Avik is so creepy and ineffective here.
"My name is Avik," he said. "Lord Karthenor asked me to speak with you. He feels that you are not adjusting well to your new assignments. You've been distressed, and your Guide is devoting considerable resources in an effort to make you happy. Is there anything I can do to make you happy?"
Maggie stared at him, and it was as if suddenly her Guide shut off, and she was falling, swirling toward ruin. The false euphoria left her, and she felt helpless, abused, physically exhausted. Her head was spinning with visions of the children she was creating, the mothers with their vast wombs, the legions of sexless workers, the deadly warriors with their quick wits and killer's eyes.
Maggie found herself sputtering, trying in one quick burst to express the rage and horror that the Guide had been suppressing for two days now.
"I can't . . . " she cried helplessly. She wanted to launch herself at Avik, claw his eyes out, but the Guide would not let her.
Maggie observes the way Avik is different from other men, and the dronon influence is very obvious. She decides she can't hate him for something that he can't help, but pleads with him, arguing that humans aren't meant to live like the dronon.
Oh...this irks me:
Avik smiled, sat back smugly. "They are not forcing us into castes. Don't you see what they are doing? They are merely enhancing the differences that already exist between us. Even in the natural state, some of your men are born to be warriors. The urge to compete in them is so overwhelming that they can hardly control it." Maggie suddenly thought of Gallen. "And others of your men are like me, dreamers and creators. Some of your people are workers—unable to stop, unable to enjoy any other facet of life but the workplace. And some of you are nurturers, breeders who find comfort in sprawling families and take joy in raising children. And some of you are born to become leaders. In every age of humanity, it has been this way. The hive mind is within us, just as it is within the dronon. Believe me, once your people make the transition to our order, your children will enjoy greater peace and prosperity than they have ever known."
It was disconcerting in a way to watch Avik, so human in form, talk about humans as if they were alien. But she could see the alienness in his eyes, in the hungry way he watched her.
I like the explanation and the alien way Avik behaves. No. My problem is the way the narrative makes Maggie immediately think of Gallen here, when we see no equivalent sign from him. And yes, she's in love with him. He's not (yet) in love with her. But she's his friend and in danger, so he SHOULD fucking think about her.
And of course, it's a flattering comparison. The men born to be warriors with the urge to compete. Ugh. And it makes me wonder if Avik's creepiness, while effective in a story sense, is more meant to ensure he never actually acts as competition for Gallen.
Oh, but apparently, Wolverton's decided to be a bit more explicit in the rapey elements:
He cupped her chin in one hand, and her Guide sent her a spasm of lust that knotted her stomach and made her face burn. She tried to fight it, to give vent to her anger, but she realized that Avik was controlling her Guide, forcing this emotion on her. "You're such a pretty thing. I like red hair. Lord Karthenor has asked me to give you physical companionship. You will find that having sex while wearing a Guide is more compelling than anything you have ever dreamed. No beast in heat will ever find greater satisfaction than you will find with me this night."
Maggie locked her legs together and curled up in a ball on the bed. She knew that fighting would be no use. Her Guide could take control of her muscles at any moment, force her to open her legs and give herself to him. But she needed to do this, to commit one small act of defiance.
Avik grinned. "So, is that to be the way of it? Then I'll leave you to this lust, and it shall keep you company tonight. Tomorrow, when I return and make the offer again, you will be grateful."
Avik left the room. The lights dimmed as he exited, and Maggie was left in pain, screaming inside, aching for Gallen.
WTF?! FUCKING REALLY??
So the rape elements are now explicit. Okay. In a weird way, I'm fine with that. It was already rapey as fuck, anyway. Now it's officially on the table.
But do we need the aggrandizement here??
Of course Maggie's isn't equating the artificial lust to AVIK. Avik is not competition. She's thinking about GALLEN. The manly man. The born warrior with a built in drive to compete.
Jesus fucking christ.
--
Okay, scene shift back to Gallen. And we get...
Gallen returned to the pidc that morning, put on the instruction hood. "Teach me about mankind," he said. The teacher began with genetics and showed the path of evolution, including ancient species of mammals and dinosaurs whose DNA had been salvaged and reproduced on many worlds. The teacher taught him the genetic structure of man, showing how genetic engineers had developed mankind into over a thousand distinct subspecies, each bred to a specific purpose, to live in a specific environment.
He learned the schemes humans used to achieve life extension. Thousands of drugs and procedures had been developed to cheat death. Most who died had their consciousness transmitted to virtual heavens that existed within computers. Some had their memories downloaded to machines, like the artefs, which were simply colonies of self-replicating nanotech devices. The most ambitious plans to beat death involved life extensions coupled with downloading memories into clones. Such plans culminated in virtual immortality—a commodity that had once been reserved for the most deserving but now available only to the wealthiest.
Last of all, the teacher showed Gallen the crowning achievement of genetic manipulation, the Tharrin, a race fashioned to embody nobility and virtue, a race designed to integrate fully with personal intelligences without losing their humanity. The Tharrin were to be the leaders and judges of mankind, a subspecies that would control the naval fleets, the police forces, and the courts of a million worlds.
This. Immediately after poor Maggie is screaming internally. We get this.
Blah fucking blah.
It continues though, with MORE aggrandizement of the Tharrin.
The Tharrin's physical features embodied strength and perfection. Certain glands secreted pheromones that attracted other humans so that the Tharrin constantly found themselves at the center of attention. Yet the Tharrin seldom became conceited. They did not see themselves as leaders or judges, but as the servants of mankind.
Gallen was not surprised when an image of a Tharrin formed in his mind, and he recognized Everynne in a thousand details.
Yet the Tharrin represented only half of a human/machine intellect. The machine half, the planet-sized omni-minds, stored information on the societies, moral codes, and political factions of tens of thousands of worlds. All such information was used when debating criminal and civil suits, but the data was all considered to be obsolete when passing a judgment. When a Tharrin passed judgment, it did so based on information stored in its omni-mind, but human empathy and understanding were meant to vitiate judgment. In the end, the wise and compassionate Tharrin ruled from the heart.
What the fuck ever man.
Maggie is being tortured and raped, mentally and eventually physically, and Gallen's getting a history lesson of Wolverton's fucking Mary Sue race.
(Everynne's perfect in every way except the ability to actually assert herself or show agency.)
Anyway, the dronon overthrew the last queen, Semarritte, and took over the omni-mind, and that's why things are terrible now.
Oh, hey, Gallen finally thinks about Maggie. He searches for a legal way to free her. Because he's a born warrior, of course. There isn't one. The Tharrins had outlawed slavery, but the dronons are okay with it. Gallen does look for modern war and battle techniques, but the dronon blocked access.
He does get a map.
Oh, and hey, remember the quest for Everynne?
"I don't understand," Orick said heavily. "We all went in the same gate, but we didn't come out at the same place."
"The making of gate keys is hard," Gallen said, "and our key was stolen from someone who may have fashioned an imperfect key. Obviously, it dropped us off in the wrong spot. Each gate leads to only one planet, so I'm certain we are on the right world, but Fale is a big place. We might be two miles from Everynne, or ten thousand. There is no way to tell."
Orick studied Gallen. "You're certain of this, are you?"
"Aye, very sure," Gallen said.
Poor Orick. He doesn't get the benefit of cool future info-dumps. Gallen can bite me with his know-it-all bullshit.
(I know this isn't fair, but I find the whole plot element really boring and annoying. Imagine our characters actually getting to learn this organically and reacting emotionally to the fact that they're completely lost and isolated from their own world possibly forever???)
Gallen explains about the teaching machine, and Orick says he'd rather not deal with them at all. Because Orick is the best. He calls Gallen out as "not the same man who left two days ago".
And indeed. Gallen is now a patronizing fucking dick:
"No," Gallen said. "I'm not the same." He reflected for a moment. Only a few days before, Everynne had told him that she found the naivete of his world to be refreshing. She'd wished that all worlds could be so innocent. And now Gallen lived in a much larger universe, a universe where there was no distinct boundary between man and machine, where immortals wielded vast power over entire worlds, where alien races battled the thousand subspecies of mankind for dominance in three separate galaxies.
Gallen could have described the situation to Orick, but he knew Orick wanted to be a priest. He wanted to sustain the faith of those in Tihrglas, ensure the continuation of the status quo, and Gallen saw that this too was a valuable thing. In one small corner of the galaxy there could be sweet, blissful ignorance. In one small corner of the galaxy, adults could remain children. Knowledge carries its own price.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Anyway, Gallen explains he learned some of the knowledge of the Sidhe, and I think longingly of how charming it was to have these characters actually learning things themselves and rationalizing them with their pre-existing belief structure in a way that demonstrated that they were still intelligent people despite their ignorance.
Nope, infodump machine instead.
Oh, hey, we switch seens to Everynne and Veriasse. They actually ARE in Toohkansay!
In a darkened room in the city of Toohkansay, nine lords of Fale sat around a table in their black robes and boots. Their masked faces shone in shades of crimson starlight. Veriasse and Everynne sat with them, both masked and cloaked as lords, Everynne in a pale blue mask, Veriasse in aquamarine. Though they had been on the planet for less than an hour, Veriasse had set up this meeting nearly five years earlier, and as Everynne watched her guardian, she could see that he was tense to the snapping point. His back was rigidly straight, and his mask revealed his profound worry.
All their years of plotting came to this. If anyone down the long trail of freedom fighters had betrayed them, now was when they would be arrested. And everyone in the room expected to be arrested: one of their number had not been seen in two days. Surely, the dronon had captured him, wrung his secrets from him. Because of this, they had been forced to change the meeting place at the last moment.
...I feel like I'd care more if this weren't in the middle of a chapter where a main character is being tortured and raped, but at least it doesn't read like impersonal adventure fare.
Everynne is given some kind of McGuffin globe. It basically sounds like an armageddon weapon, that she'll be able to use against the Dronon. Which...okay. But I feel like that could be a problem if the dronon got their hands on it? Like they did all the other Tharrin tech?
Oh, and just in case we thought Everynne had agency:
"And how fast could this destroy Dronon?" Veriasse asked. "Will the Terrors be slowed significantly by being forced to reproduce on such a dry, desolate world?"
Even as Veriasse asked the question, Everynne cringed. The thought that the weapon might actually be used disturbed her. Time and again, she had begged Veriasse not to fashion such a weapon, to create only a simulated Terror. If the glass case broke, an entire planet would be destroyed. But Veriasse would not hear her arguments. He planned to take the Terror to the planet Dronon itself. He wanted to fear him, and the only way he could arouse such fear was if the dronon knew that a working Terror lay hidden on their world.
Honestly, I think Everynne is the only likable character at this point. I do sympathize with Maggie's situation, because it's horrific, but I didn't find her particularly likable. And Gallen's rapidly losing me.
I do wish she'd get to fucking DO SOMETHING in the plot though.
Anyway, more discussion about the weapon. It'll work in six hours. Many of the people are gleeful about it. Everynne is disturbed and unhappy and thinks maybe Veriasse just wants to commit dronon genocide. She does speak up and urge them not to discuss genocide anymore, as she believes that they'll retaliate and the resulting war would have no victors.
They make to leave, but one of the conspirators begs to see Everynne's face. Everynne shows her.
She peeled off her pale blue mask, and the lords stared at her in awe for a moment. "You are truly a queen among the Tharrin," the crimson lady said. Everynne felt sick at the words. After all, what was a queen among the Tharrin but a specific set of genetic codes given to those who were born to be leaders? It was nothing she had done, nothing she had earned. Her genetic makeup gave her a certain sculpted beauty, a regal air, a measure of charisma and wit that probably would never have been duplicated in nature. Yet Everynne sawall of this as a sham. It was simply a station she was born to. Her flesh was the clothing she wore.
I actually do like this bit. I wish we had more of Everynne and less of Gallen in this last chapter. I might be less frustrated now.
The other conspirators all unmask and swear they'll never betray her. She realizes this means that they'll be committing suicide. (As mentioned, they're expecting to die soon anyway.)
Actually, look at this a second:
The crimson lady cried; tears rolled down her cheeks. Everynne wanted to stay with them a little longer, hoping to keep them alive. If looking into her face gave them pleasure, then she would stand here for hours. But Veriasse took her elbow, and whispered, "Come, we must hurry."
THIS is what I wanted in Gallen's plot. Not these circumstances obviously. But the plot is moving, Veriasse and Everynne have to go. They've no choice. But we get a line from Everynne that shows us that she does truly care about these people. It's one line, but it's enough to show us that Everynne has an emotional investment in the situation.
There are many points in Gallen's part of the adventure where a line could have been slipped in to show that he's worried about Maggie, or hell even Everynne. And it would have helped ground the events emotionally. It would have felt less like a silly adventure story and more like a desperate man looking for someone who is suffering and needs help.
Oh, the means of suicide was an explosion, so that actually ties it in with Maggie's experience. (...did Gallen even notice an explosion??? I'm not going back to look. Fuck Gallen.)
Veriasse and Everynne get food, they start planning their next voyage when Everynne thinks she sees Orick. Veriasse dismisses it. But Everynne is vindicated when Orick calls after her.
We learn that for Veriasse and Everynne, it's only been a few hours since leaving Tihrglass, rather than the days it has been for Gallen and Maggie. Veriasse explains that their key, made by the dronon, must have been flawed. (I dunno, I feel like getting there early would be a good thing.)
But hey! Everynne gets AGENCY!
Wait a moment," Everynne said. "They need our help."
Anger flashed in Veriasse's eyes. "Many people need your help. You cannot risk staying in enemy territory for these."
Everynne looked at Orick. The bear was dirty, had lost a little weight. The whites of his eyes were wide. "I was born to be the Servant of All," she said. "I will take care of these three now, because they need me now."
I'm rolling my eyes at the servant of all bullshit. But hey, Everynne WANTS to help, and she's standing up for herself and good for her. Veriasse points out the nine people who just sacrificed their lives for her, but she points out that those nine volunteered to give up their lives for a cause they understood. Maggie, Gallen and Orick serve with "innocent hearts" and want to live.
She also points out that if Gallen hadn't grabbed the key, they'd have gotten here and faced a whole planet mobilized against them. (Because the dronon would have also gotten there four days early...flawed my ass.)
FINALLY we have some comparative urgency. Everynne does agree with Veriasse that they can't spend a LOT of time here. But she really does want to help. Of course Wolverton must annoy me:
"Orick says that Maggie has been kidnapped," Everynne said. "Do you know who took her?"
"A man named Karthenor, Lord of the Aberlains," Gallen panted. "I've scouted the city. I plan to get her back."
Everynne marveled that such a simple man could have so much faith in himself.
God fucking damnit. Can you go TWO MINUTES without stroking your cock at Gallen's shining magnificence?
I don't even dislike Gallen, but this is getting fucking old.
Veriasse recognizes the name, Karthenor, and I actually like this bit:
"If Maggie has been taken by Karthenor," Veriasse said, "she is in the hands of a most unscrupulous man. For enough money, he might sell her back to you—or he might become curious and send you to his interrogators to find out why you want her. With the right equipment, you could free her from her Guide and steal her back, but that would be very dangerous to attempt. Both plans carry their risks, and it seems to me that in any event you are likely to fail."
Veriasse is a dick, but he's supposed to be. And unfortunately, Everynne doesn't have the time to help. Everynne hates asking, but she does ask if Gallen and Orick would leave Maggie behind and come with her. She explains that if she succeeds in her quest, she can come back and rescue Maggie. If she fails, Maggie will be a valuable member of dronon society, and in the long run better off where she is.
...I don't particularly like THAT. But I do appreciate that Everynne and Veriasse have bigger picture priorities. Gallen and Orick choose to stay to get Maggie free.
Everynne asks if Veriasse has any allies here that can help Gallen and Orick, but sadly no.
Oh hey, Wolverton wants to annoy me again.
"I had few allies here," Veriasse said. "And all of them are dead now. Gallen must forge ahead on his own. The first thing he should do is go learn all that he can about our world."
"I've already been to the pidc," Gallen said. Everynne looked into his eyes, saw that it was true. There was a burden in his eyes, as if he knew too much.
FUCK OFF WOLVERTON. You can't decide that the pidc is suddenly a sad experience when you went on and on about how it was warm and nice, especially compared to Maggie's hellish one.
Veriasse does point out that while the pidc knows many things, it's under dronon control. One thing Gallen absolutely needs to know is that rescuing Maggie must be done without her knowledge, since the Guide will see and hear whatever she does, and force her to fight him. Gallen will need the help of a Guide-Master.
Veriasse gives him more information about the challenges he'll face, while Everynne feels guilty for leaving them there. She does tell them their next destination and the location of the gate, so that they can follow when they can. The chapter ends with their departure.
So let's get back to the Golden Queen. Ugh.
I don't know why I've soured on the book all of a sudden. I think it, as I've said last chapter, Maggie plot really feels mean-spirited? Or something. But it's really sent my enjoyment of the book into a nosedive. Let's see if it will look up this chapter.
So we rejoin Gallen. He's canvassing the city, methodically stopping at shops, studying merchandise and pumping proprietors for information:
The locals called the place Toohkansay, and Gallen learned about the various housing quarters, the manufacturing sectors, and the business districts. Some of these places denied access to the public, and this left gaping holes in his mental map of the city. For example, with only a few questions he learned where Lord Karthenor's two hundred aberlains worked night and day in some mystic enterprise that a businessman said would "improve mankind," but when Gallen went to the place, he found only a small clinic where men and women waited for some mysterious ministrations to be performed on them.
The inhabitants are small white men and women with enormous eyes and ears, called the Woodari. Apparently their guild is so powerful that they don't even fear the dronon.
This bit...I don't know, I feel like it illustrates my unhappiness with this part of the book:
Gallen asked so many questions of one little Woodari named Fargeth that the little man said, "Your vast ignorance amuses me, but I have work to do.You are so full of questions, why do you not go to the pidc?"
"The pidc?" Gallen asked. "What is that?"
"It is a place where all the questions you can ask in a lifetime will be answered in moments."
"Where is it?" Gallen asked. "What do they charge for their service?"
Fargeth laughed. "Knowledge carries its own price. Gain it to your dismay."
Gallen's not a bad character. He's competent and mostly amusing. And to be honest, when it comes to personality, I like him much more than Maggie, who has been one-note and kind of awful. But it's hard not to focus on the difference with the way his part of the story reads from Maggie's. He's searching for her, yes, but it's still presented as this fairly light adventure where he gets to be competent and amusing.
She's enslaved, with her brain being re-written. That's not even getting into the weird sexless sexual assault aspect as they force pleasure on her and plot for a man to seduce her. It's weird how much that bothers me. I'm not a huge fan of rape as a plot device anyway, but this is somehow more aggravating and I don't really know why.
I'd invented the tag "rape (symbolic)" to refer to events that are magic/sci-fi but written like a rape scene and with similar connotations. I've used it for the last chapter, but in a weird way, I think this is the reverse. We're dealing with, in some respects, an actual rape (through the forced pleasure at any rate), but it's written in a way that removes the sexualized elements entirely.
Is this an interesting approach to horror? Maybe, and maybe I wouldn't mind it as much if it weren't so singularly focused on the one female character with any kind of agency. But my gut reaction is more like "look, if you want to write a rape scene, then just fucking write a rape scene."
I don't know that my reaction is rational at this point. I do know I really don't like this. But let's move on.
Gallen ends up coming across the creator from last chapter. He's making a child. Which is weird. Gallen thinks about how in his past two days here in the city, this old alien is the only person he liked.
...and maybe this is part of the problem. We're given lip service to the idea that Gallen is frantically searching for Maggie. But two days of searching were summarized in three paragraphs or so. There is no attempt to portray Gallen's worry or fear on any kind of commiserate level that fits the horror happening to Maggie.
I think I've hit on a way to explain my dissatisfaction now. I'm thinking about western animation shows. Cartoons. Things like Avatar: the Last Airbender, the newer Voltron, Clone Wars or even older shows like Gargoyles, the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, even old He-Man and She-Ra or Thundercats cartoons.
I think specifically about them because these are adventure shows meant for children (as opposed to anime, which is generally broader in genre/scope). These shows tend to be fairly light-hearted, though they can definitely touch on darker themes. Characters get hurt. Sometimes, very rarely, they might even get killed. Captivity and torture can happen. But those topics are generally taken seriously within the show. And the characters who aren't suffering directly, are still allowed to be worried and anxious and react to the suspense and unhappy events. And even if there are one or two lighter moments to release tension, mostly, the tone is consistent throughout.
We've had a long section about what Maggie's going through, but Gallen's part is far more about establishing and reacting to this cool world than it is about finding her. Look at this. I already excerpted the first part, but I'm repeating it in context.
The locals called the place Toohkansay, and Gallen learned about the various housing quarters, the manufacturing sectors, and the business districts. Some of these places denied access to the public, and this left gaping holes in his mental map of the city. For example, with only a few questions he learned where Lord Karthenor's two hundred aberlains worked night and day in some mystic enterprise that a businessman said would "improve mankind," but when Gallen went to the place, he found only a small clinic where men and women waited for some mysterious ministrations to be performed on them.
Gallen surveyed the area around the clinic-studied Toohkansay's exits, found each window and skylight, hunted for likely places to hide.
Most of the city's inhabitants fit within certain categories: those who wore silver bands on their heads either could not or would not speak to Gallen. The merchants with their lavish robes soon became easy to spot. In a dark cafe near one manufacturing district, Gallen sat at a table filled with the small white men and women with enormous eyes and ears. His questions elicited raucous laughter from them, yet they answered good-naturedly. They called themselves the Woodari. Their ancestors had been created to work on a distant planet where the sun was dark. Here on Fale, they worked as miners and built ships to carry cargo from one world to another. The Woodari starfarers claimed that their guild was so powerful that they did not fear the dronon.
This is the structure of the first page of the chapter. It then goes into the Fargeth bit. Where is the emotion? Where is the worry?
It's not that Gallen is just brushing her off. We see that he is doing things! A lot of things! I imagine that he feels something here. He hasn't been established as a sociopath after all. But where is it?
The chapter hasn't even mentioned Maggie's NAME.
Where is the tonal consistency?
Anyway, enough bitching. Gallen brings up Maggie's predicament, and the creator immediately says he'll take him where he needs to go. Because why should Gallen have to expend effort for more than a few paragraphs.
And in fact, we do see what a pidc is, and it's again a nice bit of world-building:
The creator set Gallen in a white chair, showed Gallen how to strap a silver band to his temples, and whispered, "Good luck, my friend. For most people, this is all they ever learn in life, and a session here becomes the end of knowledge. If you were from Motak, you would know that filling your mind with trivia is only the beginning of study. Right action will lead to greater light."
The toadman left, and Gallen held the silver strip a moment. He placed it on his head as if it were a crown. A gray mist seemed to form before Gallen's eyes. The room went dark, and in the distance he could see a bright pinpoint of light. A voice within the light said, "I am the teacher. Open yourself to knowledge. What do you wish to know?"
It is, essentially, the same thing happening to Maggie. But you know, without all the horror and violation. Because Gallen is a man? Because his suffering isn't as interesting? I don't know. I do think that Maggie could have had an adventure where she's lost in the city, and ends up in one of these places and gifted with knowledge in a way that isn't so horrible or traumatizing.
OR Gallen could actually be suffering in some kind of commiserate way: emotionally for her, if not physically, so that we could explore the horror of this setting beneath it's pleasant exterior.
I mean, look, Wolverton even says it here:
"Teach me," Gallen said. And if Maggie's education was rough and painful, Gallen's was sweet and filled with light. It began with a knowledge of mathematics that coursed into him evenly—beginning with the basics of number theory, moving up through advanced spatial geometry. There, mathematics branched into physics and he learned about subatomic particles, relativity, and Gallen memorized the various equations for the unified field theory and its many corollaries.
WHY is Maggie's education rough and painful? WHY is Gallen's sweet and filled with light?
If the contrast is intentional, as it appears to be, then there are ways to make it PERSONAL. Instead of this omniscient narration, if it instead said something like: "Gallen was worried about Maggie. Whatever she was learning was probably rough and painful, where his education was sweet and filled wit light." I'm a clumsier writer than Wolverton, but I feel like the example still gets across what I mean. It'd be one thing if Gallen was meant to be a clueless fop with no idea how the world can be light for one person and dark for another, but he's supposed to be an imaginative and empathetic fellow. So let him have that awareness and the emotional tone will be smoother all around.
I also don't really know about what I think about this immediately easy fix for both characters, in terms of knowledge and ability. Suddenly, Gallen knows how starships work. Maggie understands complex genetic engineering. So why bother introducing the characters as ignorant medieval type peasants to begin with? Just for initial expositional purposes?
Gallen's even getting explanations of the Guides vs. Mantles (like Everynne wore) and nanotechnology, and how World Gates tap into singularities...
Basically these are all things that I'd have liked to see Gallen and Maggie learn in context. You know, from the characters we met and supposedly should have an emotional investment in. It might be nice to see Everynne actually get to teach someone else, given how she seems to be pulled around without agency. It might humanize Veriasse a little to have him interact with the younger, more clueless characters without being an opaque mystery.
So after his lesson, Gallen goes off to explore more. And again, no real mention of Maggie or his worry about her.
Heck, it occurs to me that the Guide vs. Mantle explanation would have been a perfect time to introduce the idea that Gallen is worried about his friend. One sentence where Gallen realizes that Maggie must be going through something horrible, given that her mind is being dominated by a Guide would have helped!
Instead, we have Gallen's view on Fale's society:
Merchants were frequently freemen who made themselves useful, but the vast majority of mankind were worthless in this society, and so long as they were free to eat and breed and be entertained, they seemed content.
Here on Fale, there was no need for a man with a strong back or quick wit. There was nothing a human could do that an android could not do better. So those who did not have some type of relationship with a personal intelligence—either as a possessor or as one possessed—were considered only waste, the excess of humanity. And as Gallen studied the peons of Fale, he began to see that behind the well-fed faces, there was a haunted, cramped look.
Gallen went to his camp that night and lay looking up at the stars, smelling the wind. On this world, despite all of his strivings, the people would consider him worthless, and this was something that he had never imagined.
...what is this story even supposed to be about?
Oh, I spoke too soon, Maggie is FINALLY mentioned:
He considered what Karthenor had done. Perhaps in the lord's mind, by giving Maggie a Guide, he had made her a person of worth, bestowed upon her some dignity. Yet such a gift was bound to carry a terrible price.
YOU JUST LEARNED THAT GUIDES DOMINATE THE WEARER'S MIND, YOU LITTLE TWIT.
--
Oh hey, viewpoint shift to Maggie. A note, that the last paragraph was the transition. Here's Maggie's first paragraphs.
On the morning of her third day on Fale, Maggie's Guide completed the task of injecting its own artificial neural network into Maggie's nervous system. The Guide now commanded a secondary network of neurons that led through all of her extremities, so that it could control the rate of Maggie's pulse and breathing, feel with her fingers and toes, watch with her eyes, and hear with her ears.
When it finished, it reported its progress to Maggie, flashing a three-dimensional image of the new nervous system to her. A sense of panic rose in her when she saw what had happened, but the Guide did not tickle her, did not send her its calm assurances. Instead, it left her with her fears.
HOW IS THIS THE SAME FUCKING STORY???
AGGGH.
So okay, yes Maggie is having more horror happen. Since the Guide is now totally in control, she gets to do more complex genetic manipulation. And slavery:
During one marathon twenty-hour work session, Maggie extracted, sorted, and upgraded over a hundred egg cells from one woman. Afterward, she added genetic enhancements to several hundred thousand sperm. She then mixed the cells and put them in the incubator before she left for the night. Her Guide reported her daily accomplishments to Karthenor, and Karthenor set up a credit account to give her advances on the future earnings of the children she was creating. In time, one hundred children would each pay her one percent of their life earnings. Inone day, she had sewn a crop that would in time reap a fortune. The Guide made sure that she understood and felt properly grateful to be so employed.
This is all while Gallen is having his adventure. Woo.
Maggie hears a wounded woman's scream, and her guide tells her that terrorists exploded a bomb. A fellow worker is injured, but Maggie must continue working and is too tranquilized to consider disobeying.
She is getting insight into the dronon:
Yet the dronon Guide also taught her the glorious plans that it had for Maggie's people, and as the plans unfolded, Maggie was tickled so that she felt as if she were floundering in a pool of ecstasy. The genes that Maggie inserted into that day's batch of children were specifically designed to decrease a female's infant mortality rate and at the same time engineer a subspecies of future women to become breeders. These breeders would bear litters of ten or more children. The women that Maggie engineered would be tall, languid, wide at the hips, and would spend a great deal of time eating. They would require little in the way of cerebral stimulation—would shun mental exercise, physical stimulation. In effect, they would be sacks to bear children.
In a few days, Maggie knew that she would be allowed to work on a second subspecies of females who would be sterile workers, filled with an incredible amount of nervous energy that would be released in the joyful pursuit of labor. Other colleagues were developing males that would consist of one subspecies of dreamy-eyed artisans and creators, while another subspecies would form a caste of giant warriors with superb reflexes, immense strength, and an instinct for killing. These would burn a path across the galaxies, uniting all mankind under a common banner.
It's not that this is badly written, or even badly conceived. I just wish we got to learn this in ways that wasn't an info-dump. Even if it's effectively horrifying and violating.
The technician Arvik makes his appearance:
He was a tall man, perhaps twenty-five years of age, with pale blond hair. The sculpted muscles of his chest and shoulders revealed a body type that Maggie recognized from her studies-the human equivalent of a dronon technician.
He entered her small bedroom and sat in her single chair. He watched Maggie with an intensity peculiar to those raised in dronon society. It was as if Maggie were food, and the man was feeding on her with his gleaming blue eyes.
I love that Avik is so creepy and ineffective here.
"My name is Avik," he said. "Lord Karthenor asked me to speak with you. He feels that you are not adjusting well to your new assignments. You've been distressed, and your Guide is devoting considerable resources in an effort to make you happy. Is there anything I can do to make you happy?"
Maggie stared at him, and it was as if suddenly her Guide shut off, and she was falling, swirling toward ruin. The false euphoria left her, and she felt helpless, abused, physically exhausted. Her head was spinning with visions of the children she was creating, the mothers with their vast wombs, the legions of sexless workers, the deadly warriors with their quick wits and killer's eyes.
Maggie found herself sputtering, trying in one quick burst to express the rage and horror that the Guide had been suppressing for two days now.
"I can't . . . " she cried helplessly. She wanted to launch herself at Avik, claw his eyes out, but the Guide would not let her.
Maggie observes the way Avik is different from other men, and the dronon influence is very obvious. She decides she can't hate him for something that he can't help, but pleads with him, arguing that humans aren't meant to live like the dronon.
Oh...this irks me:
Avik smiled, sat back smugly. "They are not forcing us into castes. Don't you see what they are doing? They are merely enhancing the differences that already exist between us. Even in the natural state, some of your men are born to be warriors. The urge to compete in them is so overwhelming that they can hardly control it." Maggie suddenly thought of Gallen. "And others of your men are like me, dreamers and creators. Some of your people are workers—unable to stop, unable to enjoy any other facet of life but the workplace. And some of you are nurturers, breeders who find comfort in sprawling families and take joy in raising children. And some of you are born to become leaders. In every age of humanity, it has been this way. The hive mind is within us, just as it is within the dronon. Believe me, once your people make the transition to our order, your children will enjoy greater peace and prosperity than they have ever known."
It was disconcerting in a way to watch Avik, so human in form, talk about humans as if they were alien. But she could see the alienness in his eyes, in the hungry way he watched her.
I like the explanation and the alien way Avik behaves. No. My problem is the way the narrative makes Maggie immediately think of Gallen here, when we see no equivalent sign from him. And yes, she's in love with him. He's not (yet) in love with her. But she's his friend and in danger, so he SHOULD fucking think about her.
And of course, it's a flattering comparison. The men born to be warriors with the urge to compete. Ugh. And it makes me wonder if Avik's creepiness, while effective in a story sense, is more meant to ensure he never actually acts as competition for Gallen.
Oh, but apparently, Wolverton's decided to be a bit more explicit in the rapey elements:
He cupped her chin in one hand, and her Guide sent her a spasm of lust that knotted her stomach and made her face burn. She tried to fight it, to give vent to her anger, but she realized that Avik was controlling her Guide, forcing this emotion on her. "You're such a pretty thing. I like red hair. Lord Karthenor has asked me to give you physical companionship. You will find that having sex while wearing a Guide is more compelling than anything you have ever dreamed. No beast in heat will ever find greater satisfaction than you will find with me this night."
Maggie locked her legs together and curled up in a ball on the bed. She knew that fighting would be no use. Her Guide could take control of her muscles at any moment, force her to open her legs and give herself to him. But she needed to do this, to commit one small act of defiance.
Avik grinned. "So, is that to be the way of it? Then I'll leave you to this lust, and it shall keep you company tonight. Tomorrow, when I return and make the offer again, you will be grateful."
Avik left the room. The lights dimmed as he exited, and Maggie was left in pain, screaming inside, aching for Gallen.
WTF?! FUCKING REALLY??
So the rape elements are now explicit. Okay. In a weird way, I'm fine with that. It was already rapey as fuck, anyway. Now it's officially on the table.
But do we need the aggrandizement here??
Of course Maggie's isn't equating the artificial lust to AVIK. Avik is not competition. She's thinking about GALLEN. The manly man. The born warrior with a built in drive to compete.
Jesus fucking christ.
--
Okay, scene shift back to Gallen. And we get...
Gallen returned to the pidc that morning, put on the instruction hood. "Teach me about mankind," he said. The teacher began with genetics and showed the path of evolution, including ancient species of mammals and dinosaurs whose DNA had been salvaged and reproduced on many worlds. The teacher taught him the genetic structure of man, showing how genetic engineers had developed mankind into over a thousand distinct subspecies, each bred to a specific purpose, to live in a specific environment.
He learned the schemes humans used to achieve life extension. Thousands of drugs and procedures had been developed to cheat death. Most who died had their consciousness transmitted to virtual heavens that existed within computers. Some had their memories downloaded to machines, like the artefs, which were simply colonies of self-replicating nanotech devices. The most ambitious plans to beat death involved life extensions coupled with downloading memories into clones. Such plans culminated in virtual immortality—a commodity that had once been reserved for the most deserving but now available only to the wealthiest.
Last of all, the teacher showed Gallen the crowning achievement of genetic manipulation, the Tharrin, a race fashioned to embody nobility and virtue, a race designed to integrate fully with personal intelligences without losing their humanity. The Tharrin were to be the leaders and judges of mankind, a subspecies that would control the naval fleets, the police forces, and the courts of a million worlds.
This. Immediately after poor Maggie is screaming internally. We get this.
Blah fucking blah.
It continues though, with MORE aggrandizement of the Tharrin.
The Tharrin's physical features embodied strength and perfection. Certain glands secreted pheromones that attracted other humans so that the Tharrin constantly found themselves at the center of attention. Yet the Tharrin seldom became conceited. They did not see themselves as leaders or judges, but as the servants of mankind.
Gallen was not surprised when an image of a Tharrin formed in his mind, and he recognized Everynne in a thousand details.
Yet the Tharrin represented only half of a human/machine intellect. The machine half, the planet-sized omni-minds, stored information on the societies, moral codes, and political factions of tens of thousands of worlds. All such information was used when debating criminal and civil suits, but the data was all considered to be obsolete when passing a judgment. When a Tharrin passed judgment, it did so based on information stored in its omni-mind, but human empathy and understanding were meant to vitiate judgment. In the end, the wise and compassionate Tharrin ruled from the heart.
What the fuck ever man.
Maggie is being tortured and raped, mentally and eventually physically, and Gallen's getting a history lesson of Wolverton's fucking Mary Sue race.
(Everynne's perfect in every way except the ability to actually assert herself or show agency.)
Anyway, the dronon overthrew the last queen, Semarritte, and took over the omni-mind, and that's why things are terrible now.
Oh, hey, Gallen finally thinks about Maggie. He searches for a legal way to free her. Because he's a born warrior, of course. There isn't one. The Tharrins had outlawed slavery, but the dronons are okay with it. Gallen does look for modern war and battle techniques, but the dronon blocked access.
He does get a map.
Oh, and hey, remember the quest for Everynne?
"I don't understand," Orick said heavily. "We all went in the same gate, but we didn't come out at the same place."
"The making of gate keys is hard," Gallen said, "and our key was stolen from someone who may have fashioned an imperfect key. Obviously, it dropped us off in the wrong spot. Each gate leads to only one planet, so I'm certain we are on the right world, but Fale is a big place. We might be two miles from Everynne, or ten thousand. There is no way to tell."
Orick studied Gallen. "You're certain of this, are you?"
"Aye, very sure," Gallen said.
Poor Orick. He doesn't get the benefit of cool future info-dumps. Gallen can bite me with his know-it-all bullshit.
(I know this isn't fair, but I find the whole plot element really boring and annoying. Imagine our characters actually getting to learn this organically and reacting emotionally to the fact that they're completely lost and isolated from their own world possibly forever???)
Gallen explains about the teaching machine, and Orick says he'd rather not deal with them at all. Because Orick is the best. He calls Gallen out as "not the same man who left two days ago".
And indeed. Gallen is now a patronizing fucking dick:
"No," Gallen said. "I'm not the same." He reflected for a moment. Only a few days before, Everynne had told him that she found the naivete of his world to be refreshing. She'd wished that all worlds could be so innocent. And now Gallen lived in a much larger universe, a universe where there was no distinct boundary between man and machine, where immortals wielded vast power over entire worlds, where alien races battled the thousand subspecies of mankind for dominance in three separate galaxies.
Gallen could have described the situation to Orick, but he knew Orick wanted to be a priest. He wanted to sustain the faith of those in Tihrglas, ensure the continuation of the status quo, and Gallen saw that this too was a valuable thing. In one small corner of the galaxy there could be sweet, blissful ignorance. In one small corner of the galaxy, adults could remain children. Knowledge carries its own price.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Anyway, Gallen explains he learned some of the knowledge of the Sidhe, and I think longingly of how charming it was to have these characters actually learning things themselves and rationalizing them with their pre-existing belief structure in a way that demonstrated that they were still intelligent people despite their ignorance.
Nope, infodump machine instead.
Oh, hey, we switch seens to Everynne and Veriasse. They actually ARE in Toohkansay!
In a darkened room in the city of Toohkansay, nine lords of Fale sat around a table in their black robes and boots. Their masked faces shone in shades of crimson starlight. Veriasse and Everynne sat with them, both masked and cloaked as lords, Everynne in a pale blue mask, Veriasse in aquamarine. Though they had been on the planet for less than an hour, Veriasse had set up this meeting nearly five years earlier, and as Everynne watched her guardian, she could see that he was tense to the snapping point. His back was rigidly straight, and his mask revealed his profound worry.
All their years of plotting came to this. If anyone down the long trail of freedom fighters had betrayed them, now was when they would be arrested. And everyone in the room expected to be arrested: one of their number had not been seen in two days. Surely, the dronon had captured him, wrung his secrets from him. Because of this, they had been forced to change the meeting place at the last moment.
...I feel like I'd care more if this weren't in the middle of a chapter where a main character is being tortured and raped, but at least it doesn't read like impersonal adventure fare.
Everynne is given some kind of McGuffin globe. It basically sounds like an armageddon weapon, that she'll be able to use against the Dronon. Which...okay. But I feel like that could be a problem if the dronon got their hands on it? Like they did all the other Tharrin tech?
Oh, and just in case we thought Everynne had agency:
"And how fast could this destroy Dronon?" Veriasse asked. "Will the Terrors be slowed significantly by being forced to reproduce on such a dry, desolate world?"
Even as Veriasse asked the question, Everynne cringed. The thought that the weapon might actually be used disturbed her. Time and again, she had begged Veriasse not to fashion such a weapon, to create only a simulated Terror. If the glass case broke, an entire planet would be destroyed. But Veriasse would not hear her arguments. He planned to take the Terror to the planet Dronon itself. He wanted to fear him, and the only way he could arouse such fear was if the dronon knew that a working Terror lay hidden on their world.
Honestly, I think Everynne is the only likable character at this point. I do sympathize with Maggie's situation, because it's horrific, but I didn't find her particularly likable. And Gallen's rapidly losing me.
I do wish she'd get to fucking DO SOMETHING in the plot though.
Anyway, more discussion about the weapon. It'll work in six hours. Many of the people are gleeful about it. Everynne is disturbed and unhappy and thinks maybe Veriasse just wants to commit dronon genocide. She does speak up and urge them not to discuss genocide anymore, as she believes that they'll retaliate and the resulting war would have no victors.
They make to leave, but one of the conspirators begs to see Everynne's face. Everynne shows her.
She peeled off her pale blue mask, and the lords stared at her in awe for a moment. "You are truly a queen among the Tharrin," the crimson lady said. Everynne felt sick at the words. After all, what was a queen among the Tharrin but a specific set of genetic codes given to those who were born to be leaders? It was nothing she had done, nothing she had earned. Her genetic makeup gave her a certain sculpted beauty, a regal air, a measure of charisma and wit that probably would never have been duplicated in nature. Yet Everynne sawall of this as a sham. It was simply a station she was born to. Her flesh was the clothing she wore.
I actually do like this bit. I wish we had more of Everynne and less of Gallen in this last chapter. I might be less frustrated now.
The other conspirators all unmask and swear they'll never betray her. She realizes this means that they'll be committing suicide. (As mentioned, they're expecting to die soon anyway.)
Actually, look at this a second:
The crimson lady cried; tears rolled down her cheeks. Everynne wanted to stay with them a little longer, hoping to keep them alive. If looking into her face gave them pleasure, then she would stand here for hours. But Veriasse took her elbow, and whispered, "Come, we must hurry."
THIS is what I wanted in Gallen's plot. Not these circumstances obviously. But the plot is moving, Veriasse and Everynne have to go. They've no choice. But we get a line from Everynne that shows us that she does truly care about these people. It's one line, but it's enough to show us that Everynne has an emotional investment in the situation.
There are many points in Gallen's part of the adventure where a line could have been slipped in to show that he's worried about Maggie, or hell even Everynne. And it would have helped ground the events emotionally. It would have felt less like a silly adventure story and more like a desperate man looking for someone who is suffering and needs help.
Oh, the means of suicide was an explosion, so that actually ties it in with Maggie's experience. (...did Gallen even notice an explosion??? I'm not going back to look. Fuck Gallen.)
Veriasse and Everynne get food, they start planning their next voyage when Everynne thinks she sees Orick. Veriasse dismisses it. But Everynne is vindicated when Orick calls after her.
We learn that for Veriasse and Everynne, it's only been a few hours since leaving Tihrglass, rather than the days it has been for Gallen and Maggie. Veriasse explains that their key, made by the dronon, must have been flawed. (I dunno, I feel like getting there early would be a good thing.)
But hey! Everynne gets AGENCY!
Wait a moment," Everynne said. "They need our help."
Anger flashed in Veriasse's eyes. "Many people need your help. You cannot risk staying in enemy territory for these."
Everynne looked at Orick. The bear was dirty, had lost a little weight. The whites of his eyes were wide. "I was born to be the Servant of All," she said. "I will take care of these three now, because they need me now."
I'm rolling my eyes at the servant of all bullshit. But hey, Everynne WANTS to help, and she's standing up for herself and good for her. Veriasse points out the nine people who just sacrificed their lives for her, but she points out that those nine volunteered to give up their lives for a cause they understood. Maggie, Gallen and Orick serve with "innocent hearts" and want to live.
She also points out that if Gallen hadn't grabbed the key, they'd have gotten here and faced a whole planet mobilized against them. (Because the dronon would have also gotten there four days early...flawed my ass.)
FINALLY we have some comparative urgency. Everynne does agree with Veriasse that they can't spend a LOT of time here. But she really does want to help. Of course Wolverton must annoy me:
"Orick says that Maggie has been kidnapped," Everynne said. "Do you know who took her?"
"A man named Karthenor, Lord of the Aberlains," Gallen panted. "I've scouted the city. I plan to get her back."
Everynne marveled that such a simple man could have so much faith in himself.
God fucking damnit. Can you go TWO MINUTES without stroking your cock at Gallen's shining magnificence?
I don't even dislike Gallen, but this is getting fucking old.
Veriasse recognizes the name, Karthenor, and I actually like this bit:
"If Maggie has been taken by Karthenor," Veriasse said, "she is in the hands of a most unscrupulous man. For enough money, he might sell her back to you—or he might become curious and send you to his interrogators to find out why you want her. With the right equipment, you could free her from her Guide and steal her back, but that would be very dangerous to attempt. Both plans carry their risks, and it seems to me that in any event you are likely to fail."
Veriasse is a dick, but he's supposed to be. And unfortunately, Everynne doesn't have the time to help. Everynne hates asking, but she does ask if Gallen and Orick would leave Maggie behind and come with her. She explains that if she succeeds in her quest, she can come back and rescue Maggie. If she fails, Maggie will be a valuable member of dronon society, and in the long run better off where she is.
...I don't particularly like THAT. But I do appreciate that Everynne and Veriasse have bigger picture priorities. Gallen and Orick choose to stay to get Maggie free.
Everynne asks if Veriasse has any allies here that can help Gallen and Orick, but sadly no.
Oh hey, Wolverton wants to annoy me again.
"I had few allies here," Veriasse said. "And all of them are dead now. Gallen must forge ahead on his own. The first thing he should do is go learn all that he can about our world."
"I've already been to the pidc," Gallen said. Everynne looked into his eyes, saw that it was true. There was a burden in his eyes, as if he knew too much.
FUCK OFF WOLVERTON. You can't decide that the pidc is suddenly a sad experience when you went on and on about how it was warm and nice, especially compared to Maggie's hellish one.
Veriasse does point out that while the pidc knows many things, it's under dronon control. One thing Gallen absolutely needs to know is that rescuing Maggie must be done without her knowledge, since the Guide will see and hear whatever she does, and force her to fight him. Gallen will need the help of a Guide-Master.
Veriasse gives him more information about the challenges he'll face, while Everynne feels guilty for leaving them there. She does tell them their next destination and the location of the gate, so that they can follow when they can. The chapter ends with their departure.
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See, in a setting I'm working on, there was a rebellion against the Blue Faerie Empire, and a pair of sisters working with said rebellion developed a way to gather information in a surprisingly sneaky way- by getting it directly from the minds of a target. However, in order to do so without being caught, they couldn't just make a device to slap onto the target's skull, get the info and call it a day. No, this was espionage and they needed to be sneaky as hell.
So, one of the sisters got the idea to use physical contact to disguise the data copying. Kissing, hand-holding, and a playful poke to the forehead, if it is innocent enough, it can work to get the wanted information in seconds.
It took some time to perfect, but once it was it was certainly very helpful for the rebellion, and frustrating as hell as the Empire never figured out how the rebels were getting the info, and who was possibly betraying them.
And it can also send information to other people the same way info was copied from the target, so it could work as a way to subtly plant how to create a potion that could save lives or something if someone was getting desperate, and the price required to pay varied on whoever was going to give that info away.
So yeah. Also, hope Everynne gets more agency in the story.
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I do like the idea that the knowledge is limited by what the dronon is willing to share, but we haven't seen enough of the downsides to that yet. And I'm awfully skeptical about the idea that the dronon are happy to info dump how great the human predecessors were. It would have been much more interesting if Gallen had "learned" that the Tharrin were evil seducers, which could then effect his trust of Everynne when they reunite.
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