antishurtugal_reborn | TsiaSoS Spork: Part 2: Exeunt II (Reply)

As pointed out in the previous Exeunt, “exeunt” is a stage direction for characters to leave the stage.

If only this was a direction for Kira to leave the book. Unfortunately, what it means in this story is that it’s time to movie on to the next Planet-Of-The-Day.

Kira is once again the only conscious person on the ship as it zooms at faster-than-light speed. Paolini mentions something about communication between ships travelling faster than light, but the connection isn’t good because they’re maintaining radio silence to avoid the attention of the jellies.

We’ll leave the whole FTL thing for the end of the book when we can go through the appendices where Paolini tries to justify his “science” with a bunch of technobabble jargon about tachyons (which I will refer to as convenienceons, because they can do anything that Paolini needs them to do for his story), but the idea of FTL ships passing data between them strains even the willing suspension of disbelief required to accept faster-than-light travel in the first place.

Greg the ship mind is also still awake: “a whispering presence that filled the hull but was poor substitute for face-to-face communication”

Which makes me thing Greg is just whispering meaninglessly to itself. Is this meant to be a sci fi, or a horror?

Greg also needs to go into cryosleep, but at some unspecified time after everyone else has gone to sleep, because reasons. Before he goes under, he tells Kira “I shall wait with you, O Tentacled Queen, until you sleep, and then I too shall sink into oblivion”

Is this a modern science fiction set in the distant future, or a historical fantasy? The antique verbiage is neither appropriate or charming. And really, “O Tentacled Queen”? What is Paolino’s obsession with granting his characters silly Titles and Noms De Guerre in Capital Letters? It got old back in Eldest.

And I’ve just realised where Greg’s behaviour comes from. We joke about how the characters in To Sleep are just recycled and renamed Inheritance Cycle characters: Gregorovich is Solembum. Aside from the ‘hanging out with Angela’ detail, they have the same attitude, the same nonsense “quirkiness”, the same smugness, similar dialogue style, and the same penchant for giving the main characters stupid Titles.

Argh.

Kira tries to argue that there’s no good reason why Gregorovich shouldn’t be the acting captain while everyone else is in cryo-sleep, and Greg responds with this:

“There are most comely and toothsome reasons.”

comely, adjective.

1. pleasurably conforming to notions of good appearance, suitability, or proportion.

2. having a pleasing appearance: A comely young woman.

toothsome, adjective.

a: agreeable, attractive

b: sexually attractive: a toothsome blonde

2. of palatable flavor and pleasing texture, delicious: crisp toothsome fried chicken

The thesaurus abuse never stopped, I see.

Mercifully this conversation ends after a few more terrible exchanges, and Kira goes into her room. She resolves to get “more practice” with the parasite, setting herself a schedule that allows for… 12 short practice sessions over the next 3 months.

Otherwise known as, practically nothing. A few hours once a week for 3 months is not enough to time to master anything, let alone a wilful telepathic parasite inhabiting your body.

Granted it’s slightly better than Eragon learning to read in a few weeks (and learning a new language and writing system in less than a year), but she should be taking every possible opportunity to figure out how to stop the parasite from spike-murdering at people she doesn’t want murdered by spikes. That should really be her number 1 priority, but instead she decides to only train once a week, and cryo-sleep for the rest of the time.

Because being ‘alone’ for more than a day at a time could psychologically damage her.

Kira, if you’re worried about being psychologically damaged… I’ve got some disturbing news for you.

Kira decides to ‘train’ the xeno by trying to compute complex maths equations while attempting to persuade the xeno to form into different shapes.

Mathematical equations? Not something related to her field of xenomicrobiology, of which I am certain there are more than enough frustrating puzzles and difficult problems to work on?

This whole bit is incredibly boring, because it just describes her chosen method of training, and why she chose it, and what she’s hoping to achieve by training that way.

Frankly, this whole thing should have been summarised. I don’t just mean this section, I mean the whole book. Just give me the Sparknotes version, Paolini, it might actually be readable.

And now somehow Kira has acquired a concertina. When did this turn into a Moby Dick fanfiction? I know 2021 is the year of the sea shanty, and space ships are often compared metaphorically to ocean ships, but did Paolini really need to include this trope? Really?

Did she play this song, too?

Watch on YouTube

Seriously, Paolini, this is a science fiction novel set 250 years in our future, with technology we can only dream of. Have there been no new musical instruments designed or adapted for interstellar space travel? Something that connects to the neural implants and “overlays” everybody seems to have to induce multisensory artworks? Nothing that manipulates electromagnetic or gravitational fields in strange and interesting ways to produce music? Now is the time for some 23rd-century sci-fi tech, not a 19th-century instrument.

Even today experiments in art and science are being conducted about converting electromagnetic fields and electrical activity into sound. My old hearing aids a few upgrades ago had a setting that incidentally converted nearby electromagnetic fields leaking off of high voltage power lines and electronic devices into audible electronic sounds. I used to deliberately turn that setting on when I travelled by train or bus because the sounds it made was so peaceful, like electronic space-whale song.

There is so much potential for awesome sci-fi musical instruments, throwing in this cheap 19th-century naval cliché is really not an effective use of worldbuilding.

Gregorovich finally tells Kira he has to go into cryo-hibernation (because otherwise his vat-brain will overheat, because that’s totally something that was referenced earlier and is important to the plot).

And then there’s this.

“As she drifted ever deeper into the hazy twilight of near unconsciousness, she allowed the mask to slide into place over her face, and she was dimly aware of the suit bonding with itself, joining limb to limb and winding her in a protective shell, black as ink and hard as diamond.”

This sounds extremely claustrophobic to me. So there’s an alien parasite in your body, which can act independently of you and potentially take control your limbs away from you, and now it’s forming a cocoon around you preventing you from moving at all. I don’t panic easily, but that would trigger a panic attack for me. Mind you, the whole ‘alien parasite in my body doing things without my knowledge or consent” would also give me panic attacks.

On the other hand, this could also be interpreted in a very different way. There’s a whole genre of sex kinks involving “sleep sacks”, straitjackets, immovability, and even vacuum chambers.

Either way, it’s a detail that REALLY didn’t need to be in there.

There’s another stupid dream sequence, and the return of Saphira’s infamous hyphenated-words-to-make-the-perspective-seem-different, specifically in this case the hyphenated title “Flesh-that-she-was”. Which is just bad. I don’t know if it’s meant to be gory or Lovecraftian, but it’s just bad.

And then I need to quote the entire paragraph, because there’s a lot to unpack.

“… Flashes of images: an invisible box filled with a broken promise that thrashed with mindless rage. A planet blanketed in black and pregnant with malevolent intelligence. Streamers of fire descending through an evening sky: beautiful and terrifying and heartbreakingly sad to see. Towers toppled. Blood boiling in a vacuum. The crust of earth shuddering, splitting, spilling lava across a fertile plain …

And worse still. Things unseen. Fears that had no name, ancient and alien. Nightmares that revealed themselves only in a sense of wrongness and a twisting of fixed angles.…”

Okay, let’s start. I actually quite like the surreality of giving “a broken promise” a concrete material existence, but it would have been stronger if Paolini had described it more concretely. “thrashing with mindless rage” could imply any shape, or a shapeless amorphous blob.

“Pregnant” is another of those words Paolini really needs to stop using, along with “throbbing”. I just doesn’t help his description, and doesn’t really work as a metaphor.

Overall, as a standalone dream sequence it’s not the best, but it does work to convey a confusion of scary images.

But in the context of the story, it’s wasteful indulgence. It doesn’t really add anything to the story. We already know there’s some dangerous enemy out there. We already know Kira is (or at least should be) scared of the unknown alien powers she’s gotten involved with. There’s not much either for the character or for the story, that this scene builds on.

Anyway. Now we’re up to subsection 4.

“b-b-b-beep … b-b-b-beep … b-b-b-beep …

The ratcheting alarm hauled Kira back to wakefulness. She blinked, confused and bleary, for a long moment not understanding. Then a sense of self and place returned to her and she groaned.

“Welcome back, Ms Navarez. You’ve been in a coma since you hit your head falling into that hole.”

I joke, that’s just wishful thinking. Instead, Kira wakes up, commands the computer to stop the alarm, and then gets out of bed. Truly riveting stuff.

Kira almost gets uncomfortable by being completely immobilised by an alien parasite she can only barely control via telepathic bargaining, but then gets it to let her go. After a quick meal, she goes back to sleep.

Subsection 5. That was quick.

Kira is now awake again, and it is very boring. We are told that she has spent time practising to control Limpy. We are not shown this practice, that would take up valuable space for Kira to aimlessly wander the empty corridors and feel bored and alone.

The ship occasionally drops back to sub-lightspeed speeds, during which time Kira exercises and runs on a treadmill.

“They weren’t enough to maintain muscle or bone—for that she relied upon the xeno”

Paolini says the subtext out loud, admitting that Kira is becoming way too dependent on the parasite. What will she be if it decides she is no longer useful to it, and abandons her? Of course it won’t, because Paolini, but I would be concerned about letting my body atrophy while the parasite uses it as a climbing frame.

Subsection 6. Is Paolini trolling with these subsections? The last one was only 300-odd words.

We are now one-third of the way to the destination. The isolation and repetition is beginning to get to Kira.

Subsection 7. What the f---?! The last subsection was a bit over 100 words.

We are now two months in. Thank gods Paolini has had the idea of skipping through the journey, instead of writing the boring minutiae of each day or week of the trip.

Kira’s starting to experience mental dissociation, to the point that she doesn’t trust her own judgement. I read this as the parasite dissolving parts of her frontal lobe so it can gain greater control over her body.

Aaand that’s the end of the chapter.

Is it just me, or is this chapter 100% filler that could have been summarised in a paragraph?

I’m going to do a There I Fixed It.

Fourteen minutes later, the Wallfish went FTL.

Kira watched the transition on the display in her cabin. One moment a field of stars surrounded them; the next a dark mirror, perfectly spherical.

She studied the ship’s reflection for a long, wordless while and then closed the display and wrapped her arms around herself.

They were finally on their way. [from the end of Part 2 Chapter 12]

PART III – APOCALIPSIS

CHAPTER 1- PAST SINS

A slow dawning of light drew Kira toward wakefulness.

THERE, I FIXED IT.

And now to get back to something I can actually enjoy, with well-developed characters and compelling storylines.