Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Two

[epistler]

Part Two: In Which More Pretentious Philosophical Babbling Is Had

Anyway, so Dono is dead. Too bad, so sad. But enough about that – it’s time for more pointless meandering! Zarq (as the narrator; this thing is still in first person) waxes lyrical about Home and what it means, etc. etc. She has apparently tried to convince herself that the Clutch she just won in the Arena bet, Xxamer Zu, will now be her home, and how she’ll be able to change things there as she sees fit to make it just right.

Boy is she in for a nasty shock.

Cue some purple description of the jungle below. The word “topography” is used, after which we get this priceless bit:

My body screamed with ache.

But is your brain also full of fuck? I mean, really. Who in the hell thought that was a good line?

Zarq reflects on how this is where her mother came from, and wonders if any of the people will recognise her. We get the first actual description of her in pretty much forever. Here it is for your consideration:

Would they recognise my mother in my scarred, lean body? In my hacked-short hair? In my skin colour, which bore not a pigment nor whorl of my mother’s Djimbi green?

Well let’s see now – Mummy Dearest was by all accounts voluptuous rather than “lean” and wore her hair long, plus she had Djimbi colouring. So… no? Also, I just love how the author tries to make Zarq sound tough by describing her as “lean” and “scarred”. Ahahahah… no.

Gen tells Zarq that Ghepp, aka Kratt’s nicer brother, will have arrived yesterday and accepted his new role as the Clutch’s ruler. But Zarq, the real owner, will now be given wealth and luxury. Yeah, right. Zarq actually having a nice comfy life? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

It’s pretty sad when a book or series becomes that predictable. There’s no particular reason why Ghepp wouldn’t see to it that Zarq gets the good life, given that she’s kind of important, but we still know it won’t happen because that wouldn’t be dreary and unpleasant.

Oh, and the author takes the opportunity to throw in yet another ridiculous anachronism as Zarq tells us she sees a “gold-plated minaret” among the buildings. Yeah, a minaret. One of those things Muslims build and use as part of a mosque. It’s the tower the muezzin uses to issue the call to prayer. Are there Muslims in this setting? No? It’s a fantasy world with no real-world religions in it? Then what the bleeding fuck is a minaret doing there? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this point that the author has no frigging idea how to build an internally consistent setting, but I’m still annoyed.

Oh yeah, remember what I said at the beginning of the first spork about the worldbuilding/setting being one of the better parts of the trilogy? I take it all back. This setting is absolute nonsense that can’t even decide what time period it’s supposed to be modelled on, let alone what country. And we haven’t even gotten to the bit where Zarq meets a scientists who owns a centerfuge device and performs blood tests on people.

Yes, that’s really in there. I’ll say more about it when we get to it, but suffice it to say this book really does get just that ridiculously stupid.

For now Zarq and Co. come in for a landing at the estate, and Zarq randomly informs us that they left Dono’s body with the rebels and promised to pay them to… uh… nail his corpse to a tree in the “sepulchral grove” for the jackals to eat. Apparently there are jackals in this setting now, and also people are in the habit of crucifying their dead instead of, I dunno, burying them or some such. I’m unreasonably creeped out by this.

Zarq and the others dismount, and are instantly attacked by randomly appearing Inquisitors, who throw “quoits” at them. Gen grabs a sword and throws it at them like a spear, and… uh…

The blade flew with preternatural speed and sank into an Auditor’s Inquisitor’s belly, where it exploded into a shower of blue-white shards.

The shards formed a howling vortex.

Lolwhut.

It actually took me a few moments to realise that this wasn’t an Eragon-like trashing of the laws of physics, or a ridiculous attempt at a visual metaphor, and that the sword really did explode, because Gen used some sort of Djimbi magic. If the Djimbi have the power to pull shit like that, how did the Evil White Guys manage to conquer them in the first place?!

Zarq now develops yet another skill right out of the blue, as she grabs a “quoit” (here described as a razor sharp metal ring, aka a chakram) and is somehow able to throw it at the enemy. Not only does she somehow to use a weapon she’s never touched before, but it actually hits the guy and inflicts a fatal wound.

 

I could totally just pick up and use one of these things. What, you couldn’t? Punk.

 

Why? Because Zarq’s apprentice training has given her “force and precision”.

Ms Cross, that’s not how combat works. That’s not even close to how it works. You do not pick up a weapon that’s completely new to you and get it right on the first try just because you’ve had some vaguely described martial arts training with completely different weapons, none of which were throwing weapons to begin with. This is even dumber than Eragon somehow being able to accurately throw a spear in the first part of Inheritance even though he’s never used one before and couldn’t do it in the last freaking chapter.

The rest of the Inquisitors are then attacked from behind and wiped out, and Ghepp shows up looking annoyed and saying they were supposed to have arrived the previous night. Apparently the Inquisitors showed up the following morning and occupied the stable. Gen assumes it was an ambush, but Ghepp explains that no, it’s common practise to send some Inquisitors over to keep an eye on things during a change in management, and it was just bad luck that these guys were there and recognised Zarq. Now they’re going to be in big trouble.

Ghepp declares that Zarq will have to hide out with the peasants or the Temple will find her when they investigate. Gen is clearly still worried that they know she was involved in the whole “putting Ghepp in charge” scheme, and Zarq quickly hops on the paranoia train as well and realises she’d better do what Ghepp wants. And there’s her chance at a life of luxury down the drain.

Told you so.

Might I add, none of this would have happened if Zarq hadn’t insisted on wasting time dragging Dono’s carcass around. So pretty much all the bullshit we have to put up from this point onward is entirely due to her stupidity, and all in order to give us closure to an entirely pointless subplot and a character who could easily have been killed off in the last book. Now that’s some smart writing right there.

Zarq and the injured dragonmaster lie around in the stable for a while, and Zarq begins to suspect Ghepp had something to do with the whole attempted murder thing. Because why would he ever want to screw you over now you’re no longer of any use to him? I wonder.

Finally a Djimbi woman shows up and starts tending to the dragonmaster, who by the way has been acting like more and more of a raving loon since the book began. Zarq is given a “bitoo”, aka a burqua-by-another-name to wear. Along with that is a “dowry sword”, which is basically a wooden toy sword with a bunch of coins tied to it, and a note from Gen telling her to go out into the sticks with the dragonmaster, and there pose as husband and wife and use the sword to buy themselves a new life. He’ll send for them when the time is right.

Zarq and the dragonmaster head off together, and Zarq is shocked to see that the Djimbi serf women around here don’t wear bitoos but quite happily swank around showing plenty of skin. Horror!

And yet nobody had any problem with Zarq spending half of the previous book walking around basically nude, herself included. Seems legit.

Zarq and the dragonmaster spend two long, boring pages travelling to their new destination, which turns out to be yet another grubby little dump of a settlement where everyone is malnourished. Zarq should feel right at home. After two and a bit books we finally learn that Zarq’s skin is “fawn”, so no, she’s not white after all. (But she totally is on all three covers, which depict her as about as Caucasian as it gets). They’re greeted by a woman named Tansan, who Zarq finds attractive despite her dramatic facial scar. Tansan is suspicious, but Zarq, now playing at being a demure wifey wife, politely explains that her “husband” pissed off some nobles in a city on the other side of the country so they need to live somewhere out of the way. Tansan still isn’t happy, but the guy in charge – who for some reason isn’t doing the talking despite the relentless patriarchy in this setting – is keen on having the dowry sword, so after some arguing Tansan’s face “closed like an orchid in a deluge”. And that’s another unnecessary and completely awkward metaphor in the can.

Either way they’re accepted, and Tansan decides they should get a proper look at Zarq, so she pulls back the cowl of her bitoo. We then get a melodramatic description of Zarq’s scars and “marbled” eyes and how she’s all covered in bruises and other injuries. Tansan declares that Zarq has had a cursed life, and Zarq gets all pissy and thinks she’s being all presumptuous and how dare she, etc. Even though Tansan is absolutely correct; Zarq’s life has been nothing but an endless parade of ridiculously horrible luck and general misery and suffering. I guess the truth hurts.

The fact that Zarq keeps describing Tansan’s boobs and thinking about her own in this scene really isn’t helping me take it all that seriously. After which Zarq keeps checking her out and compares her sexy walk to Waivia’s. Wow, incest overtones are just what we needed here.

Zarq also meets an old woman with “eyes the colour of snails”, and this description is used twice just so we can all be appropriately grossed out. I don’t know about you, but all I’m getting is an image of a woman with snails for eyes and it’s really creepy and nasty. It’s used a third time on the next page -okay, we GET IT – and we’re also informed that she has teeth “like speckled black beetles”. Why the heck does the author keep using bug metaphors in description all of a sudden? It’s incredibly off-putting.

Anyway, so her new neighbours continue to treat Zarq with friendly sympathy and interest and she reacts by becoming more and more petulant and sulky. For fuck’s sake, this is the first time anyone’s been genuinely nice to her and she reacts by throwing an internal tantrum about how annoying it is, and snapping at them. I swear, as the trilogy has gone on she’s become steadily more and more unlikeable. And this really isn’t undone much at all on the next page, when she finally softens up a bit when they assume she’s been abused by her husband and tell her they’ll protect her.

Here she meets a cute kid named Savga, who amuses everyone by making fun of the Emperor. Apparently Savga has skin the colour of a “honey- drizzled cake” and “sloe eyes”. I really hate the way this author describes things. Zarq is highly displeased to find out the cute kid’s mother is Tansan, and immediately becomes jealous of the woman for having kids when she doesn’t.

Um, what? Since when did Zarq want to have children? This has literally never come up before. Hell, she had a chance to marry Dono and have his kids but didn’t take it. This had better not be another case of All Women Want Bebbes, but it sure as hell smells like it.

The two of them bicker for a bit, and then right out of nowhere Zarq tells Savga they’re friends. Even though they met like two minutes ago and have exchanged maybe three lines of dialogue. She then takes it even further by swearing an oath to the kid that from now on they are “foremost friends”. Apparently that’s a thing in this world, though as you’d expect it’s never been mentioned before. How many more times is the author going to pull this shit on us? Yet again Zarq suddenly has a Close Personal Relationship with someone right out of nowhere, and the only difference this time around is that we get the token showing of a few lines of cutesy dialogue.

And that’s it. I have no idea why Zarq likes the kid so much, or why the kid’s so taken with her. They just randomly are. Author says so, the end.