Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Nine

[epistler]

Part Nine:  Bright Lights, Big City, That’s The Life For Me

Zarq watches the dragonmaster check out some fancy-looking aerial maps, planning their trip together, and notes that “occasionally his teeth chattered, as an excited cat’s does before it pounces”.

Do cats actually do that? I haven’t owned a cat in donkey’s years, and I honestly can’t remember.

Meanwhile people back at the village are enjoying all the cool stuff they looted off the nobles; now they have nice new furniture and lots of good food. Hey, good for them. It’s about time somebody caught a damn break in this trilogy. Totally-not-Chinion is there, and Ryn now hero worships the guy – further foreshadowing, IMO. He also hits and threatens one of the other rebels for screwing around with the dragons (no, not like that), and Zarq thinks he reminds her of Kratt.

Finally she flies off with the dragonmaster, and Not-Chinion flies off to search for, uh, Chinion. Zarq and the dragonmaster fly to some stopping off point or other, stop for the night, then fly on for the seaside, where the city of Lireh is. It’s described something like an Ancient Greek or Roman city, with lots of marble, sandstone, and fancy temple domes. Zarq has your average country bumpkin amazed by the big city moment, and then they land at the docks where they’re immediately harassed by a bunch of grubby hookers. Zarq gawps like a total rube, and she and the dragonmaster set off for the meeting place to hook up with Malaban. Along the way they see urchins, beggars, traders, women gutting fish – the usual stuff you get in city scenes like this one. A previously unmentioned place known as “the island of Lud Y Auk” is brought up, and that sounds really Celtic to me. Which maybe it was supposed to, except its inhabitants apparently aren’t Celtic and don’t look anything like it. In fact they’re “brown”. Hey, I’m calling brownwashing on this one! How dare they appropriate my ancestral Celtic culture! *shakes fist impotently*

Finally they come to an “office” – no really – with a “sextant” on the sign outside. Zarq is disappointed because  the place looks pretty lame for a big important rich guy. The dragonmaster tells her to wait outside with the dragon, and when she says she’s coming with him he just throws the reins at her and leaves her behind anyway. Asshole.

Zarq is able to peek inside even so, and sees him meeting up with some guy who has a half-eaten “renimgar” on his desk. And now I’m wondering if renimgars are actually some sort of chicken – I’d been picturing a lizardly sort of thing.

Desk Guy complains that there’s no record of their dragon having come off one of “our” ships, and the dragonmaster bluffs, saying they flew in and he’d better send someone to get Malacar ASAP or he won’t be getting his new dragon after all. This does the trick, and Zarq is asked to fetch the legless beggar guy who’s sitting outside. She does, and the guy is sent off on his little cart thingy to fetch Malacar. I guess they didn’t have anyone with actual legs or the ability to open doors available.

Oh yeah, the beggar guy is also noseless thanks to some sort of flesh-eating disease. Lovely.

Zarq and the dragonmaster (seriously, give this guy a name already) wait around and fret until eventually a dragon comes flying to meet them. Zarq assumes Malaban is riding it, but surprise – it’s none other than Jotan Bri, the university professor lady she met in prison in the last book. She and Zarq exchange some naughty dialogue, as Zarq asks if she can ride back on Jotan’s dragon and Jotan says “only if you lie underneath me”. Zarq gets turned on and says “you always did prefer being on top”.

Woah, there you two – don’t make me get the hose! Still, it’s nice to see two characters actually act like friends for once. Jotan is even smiling and happy! How long d’you wanna bet that’s going to last?

In the next chapter Jotan takes the two of them to her brother’s big fancy house and explains that Malaban is away on business and will be back in a “clawful of days”. (“Clawful” is always used in place of “handful” in this series, but I’ve been ignoring it). Zarq says they need him back ASAP, but Jotan says she can handle it just fine on her own.  They exchange a few barbs about who’s more in the know than who, and Zarq reflects on how hot and sexy she looks and how she’s changed since the good old days in prison. She thinks about all the good times they had together, posing on couches and getting raped so severely they wound up with broken limbs. Ah, those were happy days. So also thinks about how much better and more confident Jotan is now, which brings back “frightening memories of all we’d suffered”. Except I really don’t remember her being scared during the prison interlude. Mostly she was just confused or pissed off.

In a satisfying moment, Jotan totally blows off the rude impatient dragonmaster, saying he’s just going to have to wait until she’s had a bath before they can talk. Zarq is given a room with a very ornately described bed which is carved to look like two dragons fucking. What is this, a room in a high-end brothel?

She’s also provided with a yellow “gown” to wear, sexily low cut to show plenty of boobage.

Hah, given Zarq’s infertility spell and lifetime of malnutrition, she probably has a rack like two peas on an ironing board anyway. A couple of servants bring in a bath for her. Zarq questions them about their lives, asking them if they’re required to pleasure male guests. They answer no, but there are girls available if she’s interested. Zarq likes the idea, but moves on to ask if they’re “indentured serfs” – in other words, are they allowed to quit their jobs if they don’t like it here. They evade the question and leave her to her bath. Once Zarq is clean she puts on her new dress and is served a very impressive sounding meal: “Candied breadfruit flowers, bananas boiled with gharial meat, spicy roasted parrots in yolk sauce”, and “flying fish and roasted coranuts baked in pastry”. Zarq enjoys the meal – finally something that isn’t “gruel”! – and then she gets a manicure and some new shoes.

Well I’ll be damned. Something actually nice is happening. No rape, no agonising pain, no starvation or squalor… just what the hell is going on here? Did the author finally get sick of dreary Grimdark? Is Zarq finally going to catch a break?

I swear, if Zarq manages to sabotage this windfall like she has with everything else, I’m going to jump right through the pages and throttle her.

After that Zarq goes to the library, where the dragonmaster is hanging out with Jotan. There she tells Jotan everything except for the part about hatching bull dragons. Jotan, who’s dressed even more provocatively than Zarq (her dress is open to the navel, like something out of a Final Fantasy game), concludes that they’ll need to get Malaban back right away; she’ll send a messenger and he’ll be here in two days. In the meantime Zarq can stay in the “villa” and Jotan will get the rest of the network into gear and see to it that Xxamer Zu (the Clutch Zarq allegedly owns) will get the money and manpower to fortify it against its enemies. Zarq assumes she’ll have a role in this, but Jotan flat-out tells her not to expect to play any important role because she’s a commoner.

Wow, bitchy much? Since when did Jotan have a problem with Zarq anyway? She goes on to point out that when commoners rise up it never goes anywhere. But now Zarq knows the Secret About Bulls, she will be the “catalyst” for what Jotan calls the Great Uprising… but she won’t be the uprising itself. Zarq is displeased because she personally wants to give the new bull dragons to the commoners, while Jotan clearly wants the rebellion to seize power for the nobles, and fuck the peasantry. Okay, that’s realistic enough.

This is going to sound completely crazy, but I’m actually kind of… enjoying the book right now. The rape and torture and rape and bestiality and rape have disappeared, shit is actually happening, and Zarq isn’t acting like a blithering idiot. Could it last?

I’m torn between hoping it does and hoping it doesn’t. If it does last, I actually get to have a nice time reading this thing. But if it doesn’t, I won’t have to start reaching for the jokes/criticism. My gods, if this level of improvement continues, I’m gonna have to start getting really petty, which I’d rather not have to resort to.

Jotan sends off some messengers, then tells Zarq that tomorrow she’ll be meeting up with her mother, who knows everything about what happened at the prison. Oh dear.

Finally the dragonmaster, having been brushed off and ignored for the whole conversation (guys do that to me all the damn time), decides he’s had enough and flies off the handle. He yells about how wants answers (about what?), and Jotan tells him to suck it up because she’s the boss here, not him.

We then get an absolutely ridiculous description of the guy which comes right out of nowhere and is based on nothing the author has bothered to establish:

“The dragonmaster was a monkey of a man, enraged and impotent and demented and old. Yet he’d killed so frequently, and so well, that his arms were corded with death; his muscles were lubricated with murder instead of blood; his sinews were fed by slaughter; his bones had grown strong and thick from the crack of skulls beneath his fists”

Since when was he some sort of badass killing machine?! And why did the author not bother to establish that until now, immediately before he attacks Jotan in a bloody rage? Either way it doesn’t last, because Jotan just cracks the lunatic over the head with a handy statuette, and he goes down.

Jotan declares that the guy is dead. Really? I thought in this world, hitting guys over the head with lumps of metal just put them under for a while with no side-effects or any lasting damage. Why was that not the case this time around? Dramatic convenience, that’s why.

It’s a moot point anyway, as he isn’t dead, and keeps on stubbornly breathing.

For some damn reason both Jotan and Zarq are instantly turned on . But before they can the deed Jotan goes and gets a crystal vial full of venom. She feeds some to Zarq, then applies some to “the gnarled flesh that remained where a nun had circumcised me”. Oh, so you remembered that, did you?

Zarq reacts as if she’s in the throes of passion, sobbing and “ach[ing] for dragonsong”. Why the hell is sharing the thoughts of a dumb animal so erotic anyway? In any case the two of them get down and dirty on the floor. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – yeeha! And thank goodness; the absurd bad sex is back in full force, so I can stop being nice and get back to being mean.