Throne of Glass Spork: Part Ten

[epistler]

Chapter 28 – yes, that’s really how far along we are – opens with Cal playing pool. Oh good, finally she’s doing something relevant. While she dicks around with the cue ball she thinks about how fruitless her wyrdmarks research was before moving onto mentally bitching about how much pool sucks and how much Cain sucks and how she wants to burn him alive (really). And then… oh, for fuck’s sake. Really?

And then when she messes up the game she throws the kind of over the top temper tantrum you’d expect from a five year old with special needs. Not only does she start screaming incoherently, but she actually starts biting the pool cue while screaming even more.

…I think Cal might have some serious emotional problems. Just a hunch.

Then, oh god no, the prince shows up. He taunts her a bit, so Cal very maturely flips him off and then yells at him for mocking her. If you don’t want to be mocked, maybe you should make an effort not to be so incredibly mockable. Such as not throwing screaming baby fits over absolutely nothing when you’re supposed to be – ahahahah – “the world’s greatest assassin”, and yes that’s a direct quote.

Predictably the prince starts teaching her how to play properly, or rather he starts putting the moves on her under the pretext of doing so, complete with the old “putting his hand over hers to show her how to grip” chestnut seen in every other lameass romance movie. They both start getting all hot and bothered, and it’s about as steamy as an issue of Motor Homes Enthusiast For Retirees Magazine. It doesn’t help at all that I keep picturing Cal as a child (because she acts like one). Cal keeps on with the bitchiness and the prince keeps on with the smarm, and cut to some time later. It’s 2am and apparently the prince had a bunch of desserts brought down, and Cal “gobbled down a large piece of chocolate cake and then ate half his piece too”.

So we can also add “greedy” to her list of other unpleasant personality traits. What I’d like to know is how the fuck she stays petite and skinny when she eats like this at every meal. I haven’t gone into it that much, but you see her stuffing her face with rich, fattening food in every other chapter and my suspension of disbelief has officially reached its breaking point.

Of course, what this really is is one of the dumber forms of popular wish fulfillment, ie that of being allowed to eat whatever the hell you want in huge quantities whenever you please, without it ever going straight to your hips. Speaking as someone who cannot so much as think about chocolate cake without instantly needing a larger pair of pants: Get fucked.

Anyway, so Cal keeps going into ragefits and the prince finds it totally adorable and keeps laughing his ass off at her, but she also knows all about books and “was frighteningly smart” and understands all about politics and such. All of this is dictated rather than shown, and all I can do is laugh and roll my eyes because we’re still having it pounded into our heads that this moron is super intelligent.

No.

I’ve already been over the various ways in which Cal is a fucking idiot, and you’re not fooling anybody. Christ, who wrote this thing – a ten year old? Even Paolini’s stupid self-insert wish fulfillment fanfiction was less infantile than this garbage.

Cut back to the scene and the two bozos rest up and talk briefly about the murders, and as if to prove my point Cal comes out with this completely asinine remark:

“Do you think Xavier and the other Champion murders were intentional?”

Sweetheart, “murder” requires intent by its very nature. You cannot unintentionally murder someone. Let alone do it with obvious forward planning, each time making sure there are no witnesses. What, do you think someone accidentally stalked each victim, and then accidentally stabbed them in the brain, and then accidentally mutilated the corpse before making a clean getaway? Give me a break.

The prince has the equally stupid reply of “Perhaps. Does it make a difference?”

Well, if this pattern continues then it’s only a matter of time before your would-be girlfriend becomes a target, but don’t worry your empty little head about that, Dorian.

Cal just shrugs the whole thing off and goes to sleep, leaving the prince to think about how cool and mysterious she is before making her go to bed like a good little girl. And before he heads off for the night we get yet another stupid line:

“He felt as if it were familiar somehow, like he’d seen it before”.

…Writing this bad and poorly edited should not be published for money. It’s just arrogant and disrespectful to the reading public, and Bloomsbury should have known better. I mean they’re the people who published Harry Potter for fuck’s sake. Did anybody even bother to read back over this piece of crap before they sent it to the printers? You guys should be goddamn ashamed of yourselves.  

Anyway, so this annoying chapter ends with the prince thinking mushy romantic thoughts about his functionally six year old crush, and that’s that. For now.

The next chapter returns to Cal, getting ready for the next test, and – what else? – mentally whining about how much she hates Cain. Jesus Christ, will you give it a rest already?

The test is sparring with each other, and Cain does well and gets some praise, which makes Cal even more pissy. After some more childish threats she’s paired up with some guy named Verin. I don’t remember who that is, and I don’t care either, but apparently he’s Bad. They prepare to go at it with swords, but then Cal randomly takes him out with martial arts and is somehow able to send him “flying” with a kick to the chest.

I’m pretty sure that’s not physically possible. She’s a tiny eighteen year old girl and he’s a grown man, remember. This is ripped straight from a particularly stupid action movie and the author barely even bothered to try to hide it. To misquote The Simpsons, first you think of an action scene that has already been done. Then you write in a way that nobody could possibly ever like – WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!

Having demonstrated her grrrrl power, Cal then proceeds to brag loudly to everyone watching, and makes a sneery remark about how if she had “real men to fight” she might “bother trying”. She then decides to get all up in Cain’s face, which doesn’t work. End annoying scene.

Cut to the shithead later on in her room, watching the snow. After some description of the weather she has some self-pitying thoughts about how she always dreamed of adventure but this isn’t like what she expected and she wishes she had someone to help and boohoo she’s “so… alone”. Maybe if you weren’t such an irredeemably horrible person you’d have more friends.

She thinks about the very important Sam for maybe two seconds, then forgets all about him again and angsts a bit about how “the only truly evil thing in this world is the man ruling it”. You mean the king we’ve barely seen and know nothing about? Sorry, pal, but the only person I genuinely hate in this book is you and your two revolting love interests. The king is a nonentity.

Wait, that sounds familiar.

Cut back to the eeevil Lady Kalthrop, busy watching some acrobats perform along with the Queen. She still wants to marry the prince and not the evil Duke Perrington who is evil and fat, and she’s been suffering from migraines all week as well as having nightmares. So… she’s the real killer because she’s being possessed by some demonic force?

Good guess, but nope.

After the performance the queen discreetly asks Kalthrop if she knows whether the prince has his eye on anyone, and then flatters her with compliments about how pretty and intelligent she is, which gets the poor woman’s hopes up before the chapter just randomly ends.

Cut back to Cal practicing archery with the captain, and for the zillionth time we’re assured that she’s the greatest (just keep telling yourself that). It’s been three weeks since the last murder and the captain is looking tired. It must be from all that crime investigation he’s not doing. She finally bothers to tell him that Cain knows about her true identity, and that Perrington must have told him. But she’s still totally going to win, of course.

Fortunately this riveting conversation is interrupted by a guard who comes running up with the news that yet another body has been found. For some damn reason the captain invites Cal along, which prompts more back-sassing from her because of course it does.

To cut a long story short the corpse turns out to be Verin, the guy Cal beat up with implausible action movie “martial arts”. Who will be sorely missed I’m sure. He’s all torn up just like the rest of them, but now there are claw marks on the ground. Nobody can figure out what the hell kind of animal left them. Cal, who’s now suddenly a forensics expert, does a quick CSI (seriously) and deduces that the dead guy saw the thing that killed him coming, and then tried to save himself by scrabbling at the floor. Like a moron the captain asks her what all this means, and Cal smugly tells him it means “you’re in a lot of trouble”.

HE’S in a lot of trouble?? You’re the one who’s part of the group being targeted, you fucking idiot.  You wanna stop smirking and maybe exercise some basic self-preservation?

Oh, but it gets better. Because right after that Cal suddenly realises that maybe the evil thing she’s been Chosen One’d to fight is the same thing that’s committing the murders! OMG no way! Ya think??

If this is your idea of a “frighteningly smart” character, seek help.

Cut to her later on flipping through a book for more wyrdmark information, but instead she just finds a map and gets all nostalgic when she sees her birthplace on it. You know, you could just take the secret passage the hell out of here and go home, Cal. Apparently she’s been having dreams about “ancient battles”, which makes her shudder, and the author keeps calling her “the assassin” and “Adarlan’s Assassin”, lest we forget what her profession is supposed to be. I’m still not buying it, and it’s almost as if the author wanted to contradict herself on purpose because immediately after this the prince manages to sneak up on the Best Assassin Evah. The two of them flirt some more and Cal claims not to be worried for her personal safety. She must have figured out that she’s the self-insert Sue and therefore functionally immortal.

The prince randomly tells her about how one of his hunting dogs has given birth to a litter of “mongrels” thanks to her wilful straying. Unsubtle symbolism alert. After that he asks her to play the piano for him some more, and then starts needling her about her totally generic backstory. She doesn’t give much away, but he does manage to get her to explain why she likes music, which entails giving a pretentious little speech about the Power of Art. Blah blah more tedious flirting, and the prince just as pretentiously confesses that he “can’t stomach the idea of marrying a woman inferior to me in mind and spirit. It would mean the death of my soul”.

You heard that correctly, people. He refuses to marry because he thinks every woman he knows is beneath him. God, what an asshole. Even Cal calls him out for being a selfish twat. Which causes him to throw a sulk and whine about how “judgemental” she is. He proceeds to descend even further into childish whining as he goes on about his “dreams” and how she’s being “cruel”.  How is this any different from how unpleasant she usually is?

More arguing, Cal reveals that she wants the kingdom to change so that everyone is free to govern themselves. Uh-oh, that sounds like socialism to me!

The scene eventually ends with Cal realising she likes the prince. This is played off as a big revelation, but instead it’s just redundant because we already know she has the hots for him.

I can see why; he’s just as whiny, arrogant and self-centered as she is.

Scene break, and now we’re with the captain. He’s watching the eeeevil Duke Perrington at dinner. The surviving champions are there too, and all acting like it’s just business as usual. He thinks of them as “idiots”. I maintain that they’re still probably smarter than Cal.

Meanwhile he thinks the Duke looks like he’s up to something, and he’s never really trusted the guy (because he’s, y’know, eeevil). In fact the guy is acting so brazenly suspicious it’s kind of ridiculous that nobody else has twigged. Not only is he wearing an evil looking “black ring”, but he keeps glancing at it and every time he does it makes his eyes do this weird supernatural-looking thing.

But then the captain just writes him off as “certainly not a threat” and walks off.

I’m running out of ways to express how jaw-droppingly stupid these characters are. End chapter.

Between chapters, I heard a rumour from someone who was around during the early years that Maas – the author of this thing – is a massively insecure diva who acts all buddy-buddy with new YA authors, then ditches them the moment they become successful enough to make her jealous. This may or may not be true, but given that there are quite a few authors in the industry who behave this way (and unfortunately I’ve met some of them), and given the way her blatantly obvious self-insert behaves, I for one am inclined to believe it.

I am so, so sick of the entertainment industry enabling and even rewarding this kind of childish, self-centered behaviour. I really am.

Anyway, so we open with yet another Important Dream. Cal sees someone at the foot of her bed and grabs “the makeshift knife she’d crafted of pins, string, and soap”. Oh so now it’s not a “pike” any more.  Also, I have no idea how the hell something like that is supposed to work. How on earth would any of those things be able to form a blade?

Moving on the intruder turns out to be the ghost elfy queen again, who has “long, silver hair” because of course she does. She addresses Cal as “child’, because of course she does and reminds her that she has to win the stupid contest. Cal snaps back at her and tells her to cough up some more information about the demon or whatever it is, or fuck off. Oh and she also bitches about being woken up. Elfy queen goes all pointlessly cryptic and tells her to “look to your right” for answers before vanishing. Yeah, thanks for nothing.

Cut to Cal some time later. We’re informed that she passed another trial involving knife throwing, and also there was another murder which the author has just skipped over, because god forbid anything actually exciting happen in this thing. Now she’s in the middle of another trial in which she has to identify the poison in a row of “goblets” and arrange them in order. And then drink the one she judges to be the most harmless. Finally something relevant to being an assassin.

Somehow she’s able to identify one as “Definitely belladonna” just by looking at it, and then does the same with “Hemlock, bloodroot, monkshood” and “oleander”. These are all real poisonous plants, but I’m pretty sure you can’t identify them in a drink that easily.

The last two appear to be harmless, so she decides to cheat by seeing what the others are doing. Sure enough, the guy to her right has extra training in poisons and helps her out. And omg the dream was true; the answers did lie to the right!!!1 Cal puts the last two cups in order and we get a pointless infodump about why the guy who helped her decided to do so. This is the sort of thing you need to establish before it becomes plot relevant.

Anyway, so time’s up and everyone has to drink the cup they think is harmless. Cain screws up and drinks the one with belladonna, which of course Cal gloats about. He gets given an antidote before it does any real harm, though, so don’t get your hopes up. Cal and the guy who helped her cheat both win, and Cal is gracious enough to concede that she’s okay with sharing this time. How magnanamous of her. End chapter.

Next up Cal hangs out with Princess Nemo some more. There’s only a month plus five days until the final test, and yet another body has turned up. Nemo mouths some BS about how troubled Cal is, and the two of them share some more homoerotic touching and declarations of “friendship” before Nemo suggests that everyone is afraid of Cal. Sure they are. If you keep tiresomely insisting on it, it magically becomes true!

After some more boring dialogue they go and visit the kennels so cue descriptions of dogs. Dogs are nice. The prince is there holding a puppy, and yet again the dogs are all over Cal because she’s just so nice and wonderful. And then, just to rub it in even further, there’s a Special Puppy. It’s “silvery gold that shimmered in the shadows” (oh brother) and according to the prince it doesn’t really like people very much. Cal insults the prince for the umpteenth time, and when he says it’ll have to be put down since it won’t be any good for a pet she gets all self-righteous and goes on about how it’s not the dog’s fault it’s an antisocial jerk and it’s cruel to keep it away from its mother and “I won’t let you harm it!”.

This, children, is what is called sym-b-o-li-sm. FFS the special puppy even has matching hair with Cal.

She eventually gets the prince to promise he won’t put it to sleep (because they totally used humane lethal injections on dogs in those days and didn’t just get some flunky to slit its throat in the pigpen), and it looks like she’ll be adopting it at some point. Because No True Sue™ is complete without a special pet. At least this time around it’s not a panther or a giant eagle.

And no, this has nothing to do with anything. Thanks for asking.

Cal and Nemo leave, and Nemo blah blahs about how it’s obvious she has something going on with the prince, which causes Cal to get all pissy and “snarl” at her, because Cal is – well, I’ve said it enough times by now. She ends up back in her room, and then Cain shows up. He’s looking weird and clutching his throat, and is wearing an “ebony ring” just like the one the evil duke has. Cal notes that the guy has just kept on gaining more muscle over the last few days. Because muscle is all you need to win, apparently.

She has a go at him rather than react to the odd behaviour, but Cain just runs off in a panic. Cal thinks nothing about it and presumably goes to bed. Right, whatever. Don’t bother to have any reactions or anything like that, you useless mannequin.

The next chapter goes to Lady Kalthrop. Blah blah clothes, blah blah perfume, and apparently she’s in the habit of smoking opium. Hey, if I was stuck living in this awful place full of awful people I’d want to check out too. The duke shows up to annoy her some more, and she has a moment of feeling like she’s living in a luxurious cage. Poor thing.

I love how we’re not supposed to like her.

She starts hallucinating and seeing the duke as a scary statue, though I’m not sure if this is supposed to have been caused by the drugs, and the duke tells her the prince is definitely shacking up with Cal. Having gotten her all worked up he implies that Cal is a disreputable person who needs to be gotten out of the way, and Kalthrop falls for it hook line and sinker.

This takes a page and a half of mostly irrelevant description and filler to get across, by the way.

Unfortunately we cut back to Cal. She’s reading again when Nemo shows up in tears, holding a letter saying her rebel friends have been slaughtered by the evil king’s evil forces. Oh no, I was so invested in that barely mentioned subplot. The two of them boo-hoo over the deaths, end chapter.

Well that was pointless.

I’m going to start being even more brief from now on.

Next chapter. Cal has started getting her period again now she’s in better health, which is actually a realistic touch because starvation can and does cause a woman’s cycles to completely shut down. For those reading who don’t have to put up with that shit, menstruation can cost you a lot of blood, and when you’re starving you can’t afford to lose it because you’re anemic enough as it is.

Anyway, the captain comes in asking her what the matter is, and then compliments her for being nice to Nemo. After that things take a turn for the truly groan-worthy, as Cal pukes and the captain Just Doesn’t Get it when she hints as to why she’s ill and then gets all embarrassed when she has to spell it out. Has this guy ever met a woman before? No word on how she’s dealing with the bleeding, by the way, but presumably she’s using Ye Olde Always With Wings. This thing already has every other modern convenience except for free WiFi, so why the hell not.

As if that wasn’t enough, right after that the prince shows up saying the captain told him about “your condition” and laughing about it. Cal whines that she’s in paaaaain, but instead of getting the hint he just sits down and demands to play cards with her. She keeps telling him to fuck off and he keeps making fun of her, and it’s clearly supposed to be cute and romantic, and maybe it would be to someone who’s never been on the rag and therefore has no idea how how utterly miserable it is. It’s not just the pain and the gross bleeding and bowel problems – your hormones go haywire and it plays merry hell with your moods.

So for once I can kind of forgive Cal when she snaps and throws a heavy book at his stupid smug asshole face. But then she just apologises and they end up flirting some more. Gag. The prince angsts a bit about the dead rebels we never even saw, and then goes off on a speech about how awful all this is and how Cal must hate him. This leads Cal to aplogise for being mean to him, claiming that “I’m joking most of the time.”

No you aren’t. For one thing that would require a sense of humour which you clearly don’t have, and for another you’re far too awful a person for good-natured… anything.

The prince claims that she’s never hurt him, because apparently he likes being treated like dirt. They both nod over how awful the duke is because he was – groan – mean to Cal several months ago, and eventually part ways with a first kiss. Oooh baby do you know what that’s worth? Oooh heaven is a place on earth…

Once she’s alone Cal moons a bit about how she’d like to go to the “Yulemas ball” – what, another big fancy “ball” she’s not invited to? And then she spares a moment to think about the supposed main plot and wonders if maybe she should’ve, y’know, told someone about Cain’s weird behaviour. Because I’m sure that’s nothing you should be at all concerned about, Cal.

Instead she just smiles to herself about how great it would be if Cain died next. Lest we forget that Cal, like her author, is so childishly insecure she can’t stand the idea of anyone who isn’t her getting any attention and praise.

You are pathetic.

Pathetic.

Comments

[epistler]

I think someone recommended this one to me. I had seen someone else spork it before, but they didn't finish it. I don't blame them; I came this close to quitting too.

[ultimate_cheetah]

I don't blame you. Speaking of which, I've got to get back to the Ready Player One spork. That thing is hard to read.