antishurtugal_reborn | Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Three

Part Three: Too Much Grimdark Getting You Down? Just Add Cute Kid Stuff!

Zarq wakes up to find Tansan watching her. At least neither of them are masturbating. Yet again Zarq describes how incredibly hawt the woman is. For an entire paragraph. She even waxes lyrical about how she doesn’t look like she’s worked hard in poverty her whole life. I already know how ridiculously improbable it is for a dirt-poor peasant in a place stricken by severe malnutrition to look like a model, author. You don’t need to point it out for me. I’m the sporker here, not you.

Unfortunately (I guess) unlike whatshername from the last book, Tansan isn’t here for some furtive girl on girl action. Instead she tells Zarq to keep away from her kid. Zarq refuses, and Tansan – who apparently has “curvaceous hips” (okay, we GET IT) shoots back that Savga is her kid, before sneerily asking where Zarq’s kids are.

So apparently Tansan is jealous of Zarq Having a Bond with her kid. Um, why? And apparently she wants to make Zarq jealous in return by reminding her that she doesn’t have any kids of her own.

Excuse me, but where the fuck did that come from? Why is Zarq suddenly so fixated on motherhood and kids? GAH! Come to that, why is she so fixated on Tansan? Because she’s hot? Because she’s intelligent enough to see through Zarq’s bullshit? I don’t know!

Tansan leaves, still being sexily described, and she’s basically Waivia 2.0 at this point, bitchiness included. Savga shows up, eager to hang out with her new pal, and now Zarq finally informs us that she just did the BFF promise thing to annoy Tansan. Right, whatever. Zarq then earns yet another Unlikeability Point when Savga tugs on her arm and Zarq considers smacking the kid because that made her broken ribs hurt. Charming. Isn’t she just a wonderful, lovely, sweet person?

Zarq eats and “performed ablutions”. What is it with some authors and their reluctance to just come out and say their character had a bath? Everyone is sucking on “slii fruitstones”. This was mentioned in the last chapter, but it’s not really stated what a fruitstone is other than that you suck it to ward off hunger during times of famine and it turns your teeth black.

Again, people here are hungry enough that they’re willing to suck rocks to get by, and yet Tansan looks like she strolled right off the cover of Vogue. I’ve heard of suspension of disbelief but this is beyond ridiculous.

Savga shows Zarq to a “warehouse” which stinks to high heaven. It’s full of dying female dragons, each of them coated in a horrible maggot-ridden waxy cocoon thingy (it was mentioned in passing in the last book that a dying female will coat herself in a coccoon with a fakey made-up name I’m just going to ignore). Zarq starts thinking about the “dragonmemory” she got from all the wonderfully romantic dragonsex she had in the last two books, and remembers experiencing what it’s like to have one’s wings chopped off as a hatchling and what it’s like to lay an egg. (In case you care, the female dragons apparently have “cloacas” like reptiles despite being written like horses about 99% of the time). Once again she starts thinking about how unfair it is that dragons are treated as beasts of burden and not allowed to fly, etc. She thinks about how she wants to improve the lot of the dragons who live in “her” Clutch (does she seriously still think she’s in charge of the place? Hahah, it is to laugh).

We then get an absolutely revolting description of the cocoons whose occupants are no longer responsive being put through some sort of woodchipping device and reduced to mush which will then be used as fodder for the living dragons. Apparently they like eating maggoty, rotted dead dragon. But hey, wouldn’t? That sounds like some real gourmet shit.

Zarq, the moron, falls asleep in the sun and winds up with a horrible sunburn (yes, people of colour can get sunburn. Try not to look too shocked). She then gives us a completely unnecessary description of how the dragon cocoons work, which was already covered without the infodumping on the previous couple of pages. Thanks for wasting even more of my time, Zarq. I’d ask where the hell the editor was, but I think by this point it’s pretty obvious that she was passed out in an alcoholic stupour by this point, and I really can’t blame her.*

(* I don’t actually know who the editor was, but I’m pretty confident in assuming it was a woman because about 99% of all editors are female for some reason. Never been edited by a man in my life).

After that she has a cutesy bonding scene with Savga while they make dinner together. Tansan shows up and isn’t happy about it, but just then some jerkass nobles show up, demanding to see all the women in the village. Savga asks Tansan not to let them take her special friend away, so Tansan tells them they’re all off working and she’s by herself. They decide they’ll take both Tansan and Zarq for fun rapeytimes, but Tansan lies that Zarq is full of VD and they buy it and just take Tansan. Apparently Tansan does this so she can keep her promise to Savga not to let Zarq get hurt.

Riiight.

Hilariously, we’re informed that when the nobles come by looking for women to rape it’s called “trolling”.

BAHAHAHAH! Pardon me while I wipe away a tear. This unintentional bit of hilarity almost makes up for the fact that the nobles are riding in a “rickshaw”, ie. yet another really poor word choice which doesn’t fit the setting.

Trolling.

Seriously.

In the next chapter we learn that Tansan gets taken off for fun rapeytimes a lot, because she’s just so hot and sexy. Alas, the price a woman pays for being unreasonably attractive in a land where all men are rapists!

In Tansan’s absence Zarq looks after Savga, and when Tansan finally comes back looking all beaten up she declares that one day soon the clan will rule itself and belong to her daughter. With that she goes off to get some sleep, and Savga tells Zarq that her mother hates her because she’s the result of a previous fun rapeytimes, which is also how Tansan got the scar on her face. Zarq concludes that this is why Savga’s so keen on her; because she’s a perfect Substitute Mum. This falls flat since there’s been zero indication that Tansan dislikes her kid – on the contrary she’s so far been very overprotective of her – but this scene is actually kind of sweet, and especially when Zarq comforts Savga with a hug and then cries because she realises it’s like holding “a mirror image of a younger me”.

The Zarq/Savga relationship is, by the way, pretty much the only semi-genuine one in the entire trilogy. Unlike the one with KZ or KZ’s pointless kid, or the one with Dono, or Waivia, it’s actually shown rather than told, and Savga is a realistically written and really quite adorable kid. At least the author is finally showing some signs of improvement when it comes to writing character. That’s one point in her favour, so the current score now stands at -999,999 rather than -1000,000. First prize is a brand new washer and dryer! The loser, however, gets a bucket of dog puke.

Now if the plot would start going somewhere, that’d be just peachy.

Zarq spends the next day picking “oil seeds” out in the fields, and that evening the until-now-useless dragonmaster shows up and gives her a pebble to put in a special offering bowl, as a sign to everyone that he’s summoning her to the “mating shack” for some husband and wife hanky panky. Zarq is mortified (I would be), and, typically slow on the uptake, has to be given a nudge before she realises – duh – he doesn’t actually want to have sex with her; he just wants to talk in private. There’s a moment of false tension when Zarq realises she can’t remember the proper words to say before depositing the pebble, and then she and the dragonmaster (um, does this guy have a name?) go off to their private room in the Love Shack for a chat.

Zarq assumes he’s heard from Gen, but instead he starts demanding to know what the locals here are up to and what their names are (um, moron? You could just ask them their names). They’re Djimbi like him and he’s interested in joining up with whatever rebellion they have in mind, but Zarq isn’t keen because then they’d be helping to put them in danger or some junk like that. Because she cares so much about them, I’m sure. Just like all the other people she’s gotten killed thanks to being an idiot.

Actually, I’m now wondering just how many people have died thanks to Zarq. Given that she got the Zone of the Dead burnt to the ground in the first book, the body count must be prettty high by now. Does she feel the slightest remorse for that? Of course not.

The two of them part ways on bad terms, and it’s pretty obvious that the dragonmaster is still unbalanced and close to boiling over. Will he wind up doing something he shouldn’t? Probably. Will it be exciting? Probably not.

The next chapter plods on with more boring unnecessary description of how Zarq settles into her new li-

Wait a minute.

…oh dear gods.

It’s happening AGAIN.

Gimme a sec – I’m gonna see if I can tally up just how many times the author has recycled this particular plot development. Okay… there was the merchant train… then there was the convent… then there was the Zone of the Dead… twice… dragon training… drugged-up lesbian prison…

Six times. Six times this has happened before. SIX. And now it’s happening for the seventh fucking time.

I’m seriously about to lose it, you guys.

I mean really. Does the author seriously not know of any other way to progress the plot?

Ugh… I really don’t want to have to plough through this, but here we go. Blah blah, Zarq feels safe out here in the middle of nowhere… author pulls a Paolini with the descriptions of “undulating plains” and “the night’s myriad stars”. The children harvest “kadoob tubers”, and apparently this is all anyone has to eat. Wow, these guys really suck at farming. The elders meanwhile spend their time clearing snakes out of the dragon cocoon warehouse thingy. Remember those parasitic “Kwano” snakes from the first book? While Zarq was at the convent she had to pluck them off the dragons. She now drops some exposition about how the kwano snake is seen as basically the spawn of Satan-by-another-name.

Wow, snakes as a sign of evil. Never seen that one before.

Zarq is still too unwell to do much heavy lifting, so she hangs out with Savga and does odd jobs. She and the kid remain close, and Zarq feels guilty because the child’s “devotion was wholly undeserved”. It is, but that’s little kids for you; the poor things don’t know any better. Happens to me all the time.

Kid: “Hewwo, Epistler. I picked a fwower for you!”

Epistler: “Bugger off, you little sod.”

Kid: “Teehee, you’re funny! I wike you!”

See what I mean?

Tansan meanwhile gets steadily more and more pissed at Zarq for being besties with her kid. You know, the kid she supposedly doesn’t love? The slavish worship of how awesome kids are continues onto the next page, on which Zarq goes on and on about how Savga’s “little ribs” “swell and ebb” while she sleeps at night, and how she smells like “smooth sun-warmed stone” and “sugared nutmilk”.

…am I the only one who’s beginning to feel skeeved out?

Zarq exposits (yes of course it’s told, not shown, what else do you expect) that her beautiful friendship with the world’s most adorable kid has reminded her of her vow to free the peasantry from the Dragon Temple’s tyranny, because then the children can be safe and happy and so on.

Okay, apparently her motivation now is “For The Children”. Glad to have that cleared up. Actually it’s good to be reminded of what her motivation is supposed to be, period, given how often it’s entirely forgotten for big chunks of the trilogy.

But Zarq isn’t at all happy that Tansan is becoming increasingly pissed off at her for being friends with her kid. Just why Tansan is so bothered by her kid having a new friend to help take care of her is beyond me, but whatever. It’s particularly painful for Zarq because she’s madly in lust with the woman, to the point of having sexy dreams about her. Unfortunately, the jealousy over Savga makes this read a little too much like some sort of really fucked up love triangle, something not at all helped by the uncomfortable descriptions of Savga’s sleeping body earlier on.

Who said Ms Cross couldn’t skeev us all out without bringing dragon tongues into the picture, huh?

Now, it’s possible I’m just reading too much into it, but I’m definitely not making the next part up, where Zarq tells us that her lust for Tansan gives her a huge craving for venom and “dragonsong”. Because as usual she can’t think or do anything sexual without somehow bringing dragons into it. This woman really needs professional help. And I honestly don’t know if I’m talking about Zarq or her author by this point.

Hey, wasn’t there supposed to be a revolution in this trilogy? Because I’m now 61 pages in and no such thing has even begun to occur. Or not while I’ve been looking, anyway.

Instead we get more blah-blah about how Tansan has a husband, but they don’t seem remotely interested in each other and it’s probable her other kid isn’t his either. Which is all so very relevant, I’m sure.

Meanwhile the dragonmaster continues to act like a crackpot and everyone starts calling him by a fakey made-up word which means “the madman”. That dragon tonguing must have really done a number on him. Or maybe, like me, he’s simply being driven to distraction by the lack of anything happening.

Even more blah-blah follows, as Zarq realises the purgative she was given in the last book is wearing off at last and she’s getting the venom cravings again. Will she wind up doing something idiotic to get her fix? Does the pope shit in the woods?

Meanwhile she hears stories about all the people who, like her mother, were sold off into slavery to pay off the Clutch’s gambling debts. Wait, there are slaves in this setting? Since when? I thought all the non-nobles were basically slaves already; they just weren’t specifically called that.

Whatever.

Zarq whines about how unfair life is and how this isn’t what she expected when she became the owner of her own Clutch. I just had to laugh and pour myself a large drink at this point, because apparently Zarq seriously thinks she actually owns the Clutch rather than, I don’t know, Ghepp? The guy actually living in the palace and running everything while she’s moping around a dirt farm?

Don’t do drugs, kids. It seriously messes with your IQ.

And, might I add, there’s a decent chance she actually would have been living comfortably at this point if she hadn’t insisted on going back for Dono and then nagged the others into stopping for the night, thus ruining the entire plan. So she’s got nobody to blame right now but herself.

But, as usual, nothing is ever Zarq’s fault.

Once she’s finished whining, she watches Tansan talking with some guys who are now introduced with a few stock character traits dictated to the reader. They’re clearly plotting something. A couple of Djimbi guys show up from the jungle and Tansan prepares to go with them. Zarq suddenly catches a whiff of venom, and in a fit of desperation decides to sneak after them because they might just have access to some sweet, sweet dragonspit.

They head over to a neighbouring clan, which handles leather tanning. I wonder where they get the leather? I’m asking because I don’t recall seeing a single cow or any other large bovine in this setting. After some further unnecessary exposition, Tansan goes and sits with a bunch of guys and they start talking about the revolution they’re planning while Zarq watches secretly. They talk about how they have to call for someone to come down from the hills, but someone else (possibly Tansan; the dialogue is unattributed) wants to strike now, before Ghepp can get himself settled in. They bicker for a while, until Tanan loses patience and… uh… turns into a dragon? I’m honestly not sure; the description is really unclear, and Zarq herself says she only sees the dragon for a moment and maybe it was just the withdrawal making her see things. So it was pretty well pointless.

Tansan – who again – is statuesque and “magnificent”, etc. etc., gives a little speech about how they have to start the uprising, so on and so forth.

And here for the umpteenth time we have a much more logical protagonist than the one we got stuck with. You know, one who actually takes action instead of lying around whingeing when she isn’t being a bullying jerk. Or screwing a dragon.

They talk about some guy named Chinion, who’s apparently the leader of the revolution, but currently absent and not due back for months. They mention that Ghepp isn’t a fighter or a military man, and Zarq jams even more exposition down our throats about how this is true and why. Apparently now he’s recruiting soldiers from the peasantry, and one guy says they should join up so they can get weapons. Tansan shoots this plan down, saying there’s not enough time because soon the “poaching” will begin; ie some guys will come along and start picking out people to sell off, and they have to act now before all their kids are taken away.

She then uses a metaphor which would work fine in a European style setting but which sticks out horribly here, saying they’re “wolves” who must stop wasting time with howling and go on the hunt.

There are wolves in this setting? Since fuckin’ when?

As the argument goes on, Zarq is finally busted and dragged into the circle. The rebels demand to know who she is and what she’s up to, and Tansan is pissed at having been followed, as you’d expect. Zarq gives them some bullshit about being worried about the poaching and is afraid for the children, because apparently saving Teh Childrens is her thing now.

Fortunately the rebels don’t really buy it, and ask Tansan if she’s trustworthy. She answers that Zarq is new but can be watched over, and she’s told to do just that and to cut Zarq’s tongue out if she blabs.

I’m torn between hoping Zarq winds up losing her tongue, because then she’ll finally shut the fuck up, and hoping she doesn’t, because then we’ll get even more injury-angst. And more angst in general. And if there’s one thing I could really do without, it’s listening to Zarq whine even more.

Tansan insists that they have to make a decision now anyway, rather than meet again tomorrow, but is overruled because she led a “possible traitor” right to them. Nice work, Zarq. You’re never getting in those pants now. Mind you, Tansan was pretty frigging careless.

They finally agree to meet and make the decision tomorrow, and Tansan frog-marches Zarq back home, where – oh, for fuck’s sake – she ties the two of them together before lying down to sleep. Zarq complains that this is unnecessary, but goes ignored and spends the night lying awake “seething”.

I guess she’s not into bondage play.