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antishurtugal_reborn2023-04-27 06:16 pm
ignoresandra) wrote in antishurtugal_reborn2023-04-27 06:16 pm
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The Eldritch Heart Commentary 22: Go Evermoor!
The Eldritch Heart Sporking
Chapter 22: Evermoor Bound
Content Note: Kidnapping, sexual assault, violence to children, fantastic drugging, misogyny, violence, drowning, racism
Preliminary: Oh goddess. Here we go. In this chapter Oona & Kitlyn are taken to Evermoor. During the journey, both are drugged, Kitlyn is sexually assaulted, Oona displays yet another power, there’s a fight, and Kitlyn enters a situation where she should almost certainly die yet will survive. I’ve decided to stop using my counts and try a different style.
For all the content notes Cox has generated on this chapter, he isn’t using them to their full potential or really intelligently at all. We’ll get into it, just know this is going to be a long one.
It’s Day 8 and Cox thinks it’s Day 7.
We open our chapter in Kitlyn’s head as the wagon jostles her around. I don’t know how to describe my next line. Is it something Kitlyn is thinking, or something Cox is saying? It seems like something Kitlyn should be thinking.
I have to say I’m not a big fan of writing what is probably a character’s primary perspective in third person like this. It comes across as if Cox is telling the truth of the world from on high when it seems like he’s trying to have Oona & Kitlyn perceive their current situation differently - Oona seeing it as a necessary sacrifice to save Kitlyn & Lucernia and Kitlyn seeing it as a mistake Oona made. If he’d been able to pull that off it would have been a great character moment (Even if it makes Kitlyn seem remarkably unconcerned with civilian casualties), but it falls flat for me and a big part of it is this insistence he has on writing the thoughts of his protagonists as one step removed from them.
This is also a retcon of what Oona noticed in the last chapter with the Evermoorians being (relatively) gentle with Kitlyn. This is because Cox intends to make Kitlyn suffer in this chapter, and his vehicle for doing that is to turn these Evermoorian soldiers into one-note villains regardless of everything he’s established about the culture of Evermoor and indeed what he wrote last chapter.
Kitlyn starts staring at the rope binding her ankles, wondering if the men will sexually assault them or just her because Oona is the princess and might be protected from that on those grounds. Cox phrases it as wondering if these men “would do unsavory things” but his intent is clear.
If you’re intending to invoke this kind of real life trauma, use the word rape like a grown up. This wishy washy bullshit pisses me off. Sexual assault is a serious topic and a clear and present trauma for far too many people in this book’s target demographic. I’m not one of those people who says rape is never an appropriate topic in a book, but when you use it you gotta take it seriously and a big part of that is recognizing that a spade is indeed a spade.
Also, in real life I’d imagine a princess’ status would to some extent generally protect her. I don’t think that’d be the case in this war, for reasons I’ll get into later in this chapter.
The narration tells us dispassionately that Kitlyn should be terrified, but she can’t make herself care enough because they’re gonna kill Oona and then probably herself. This’d be a good darkest before the dawn moment, but Kitlyn ruins it by being unable to decide whether it’d be worse to die before Oona or after her. Kitlyn really seems to be passive during this whole dang story. Meanwhile Oona has become less passive, which’d be character development if I thought that Cox considered Oona’s lackadaisical attitude towards martial training a flaw.
Cox is doing everything he can to make us hate and fear the first Evermoorians we encounter in the narrative, which is going to be bad for his brilliant plot twist that everyone in this war is a victim of King Talomir and Evermoor is not to blame.
We also get a couple sentences of Kitlyn thinking about how awful the gag is. The main relevant thing is that she keeps drooling around the cloth and can’t close her jaw. Store that fact in your brain pockets, it’ll be important later.
Kitlyn thinks about how shocked she is that Oona lied (Referring to Oona claiming to be the true princess) to try and protect her since lying is a sin against Lucen and Oona is an extremely hardcore devotee. Of course Cox phrases it as
Setting aside the fact that Oona didn’t lie because the evidence that Kitlyn is the true princess is so thin on the ground that the only folks who should believe it are people who want to believe it (Like Oona, who’d love to divest her responsibility on to Kitlyn), I really don’t like this visualization of how Oona has acted about lying. This idea that Oona has acted constantly like she’s going to be punished for lying. We’ve been in her head for far too much of this story. Oona’s relationship with the truth has been shown to be more of a “She believes telling the truth is a positive good” thing and not a “she’s terrified of lying” thing. The fact Kitlyn doesn’t know that but can’t stop thinking about stupid shit they did as kids makes me think Kitlyn doesn’t really know who Oona is.
That’s not all that surprising for a pair of 16 year olds but these are supposed to be star-crossed lovers who know everything about each other because they grew up together. Or maybe Cox just picked a weird fetish-y descriptor with how frequently this story brings up “paddling”. Or a weird description that stresses the childishness of these lesbian lovers who are adults by the standards of their society. Or at least I hope they’re adults considering we had an entire filler third of this book about Oona getting married.
All that said, I do like the idea of Oona’s first lie being a way to sacrifice herself for the sake of her girlfriend. It fits really well with one of the few overarching themes of this book - honesty no matter what, and also does a better job than many things at making Kitlyn seem important to Oona. Goddess I am not looking forward to the rest of this chapter.
Reminder that the “man in blue” is Prince Renard. Also Cox, I didn’t need a reminder of that transphobic libel you wrote down. It is at least sort of nice to know that Evermoor has been badmouthing Lucernia like Lucernia has been badmouthing Evermoor, and it’s interesting that Prince Renard seems to be above it.
I’m also struck by how similar the language the Evermoorians use is to the language Lucernians use. Even the same diminuitives for certain words - also sots, milord, etc. I’d be more fine with this if it was established this was a civil war. But it’s not, it’s an international war between two pretty different cultures. If we’re going for accuracy, they should talk in different ways even if they don’t have different languages.
One of these “fire-callers” is our final one-note villain before we leave Lucernia. Also, the fact Kitlyn is going numb says she’s been tied too tight and will soon be permanently damaged. It’s going to be two days before she’ll be untied. At that point it should be a question as to whether she’ll ever walk again. God I really don’t want to have to research potential injuries from prolonged restriction of blood circulation. It’s bad, alright?
Oona nonverbally signals to Kitlyn that they should try to fall out of the back of the wagon, and Kitlyn just wonders what they’d even do if they managed that. I have to say that it’s good to see Oona actually trying to do things for once.
Evermoor’s military is allegedly 60% women. No part of this conversation makes sense - Berian should be taking Kitlyn seriously as a threat, the men in the front should be taking our protagonists seriously, Berian shouldn’t feel the need to tell this kind of self-aggrandizing misogynist joke - “I can handle these two and all your sisters at the same time” - and the person in front shouldn’t be so offended by the notion that his sisters are good with swords that he SETS AN ALLY ON FIRE. Though that last one would be good characterization if Dahn or Marr or whoever this is were a character who’d be in this story longer than this one chapter.
Also don’t think I didn’t notice the similarity between Berian’s name and Beredwyn’s. It’s relevant because Berian is the Designated Reasonable Person We’re Supposed To Sympathize With of this Evermoorian contingent.
Hours pass. Kitlyn’s just lying still, while Oona is constantly struggling and looking at Berian with “extreme concentration” on her face. We are treated to a description of how Oona’s drool has soaked the entire front of her dress, which has my finger hovering over the “delete spork” button. We then non-sequitor into what time of year it is - it’s apparently three weeks until the end of summer, so the inside of the wagon is extremely hot.
Meanwhile, Kitlyn is thinking clearly. I would normally be saying something like “Where is this girl’s panic” but earlier it was established that Kitlyn has kind of just accepted this situation. Anyway, Kitlyn’s wondering why they’re being kidnapped when they were taught that Evermoor wants to kill the princess. She then thinks that maybe Evermoor believes that they can use Oona to force King Talomir to surrender and that this was only possible for Evermoor because the two of them left the castle, as an assassin could not have kidnapped Oona from the castle.
Kitlyn should not be assuming fault for this. Oona fled the castle for no reason. She’s the idiot here. Kitlyn was fleeing confinement, she needs no further justification. But Kitlyn’s thinking is
We were so stupid!
She also thinks that her dungeon cell doesn’t sound so bad anymore, and just. Honey. Kitlyn. Let me be clear with you: You are no worse off now than you were in that dungeon. In that dungeon you couldn’t talk to anyone and faced a real risk of lethal infection or insanity due to the inhumane conditions you were kept in. Now, you’ve had two days of real freedom and you’re presently facing serious medical issues from the way you’ve been bound and the conditions you’re being kept in, while you can’t talk to anyone. The lethal threat is from your captors suddenly changing their minds and killing you, but if they were gonna do that they’d prolly have done it earlier. It adds up about the same, and every element of this is ultimately Oona’s fault.
Also the text is referring to Prince Ralend as simply “Ralen” in these people’s diagloue, which tells me that the actress who reads the audiobook significantly mispronounced Prince Ralen’s name. To the point where it sounds like she’s saying “Prince Rylend”. This is not really her fault as I’m sure she was given direction or lack of it by the author, but is an indication of lacking quality control.
Anyway, immediately after this one of them comes back to hand Berian a waterskin and tell him that Ralen says they’re gonna let Kitlyn go once they’re far enough from Cimril. Berian takes a drink, and Oona asks for water. I think.
I actually really like the writing of this segment minus writing Oona’s dialogue phonetically. I feel Kitlyn’s terror and buy her helplessness. It’s also a good humanizing moment for the first Evermoorians we’ve spent any amount of time with. I complain a lot about Cox’s work, and I would feel dishonest if I didn’t also present things that I feel he did well. These paragraphs are among them. Had this been the end of this scene, I’d have a whole lot less to complain about in this chapter.
One of them - it’s not clear who - suggests giving Kitlyn some water too. Berian moves to place the knife to Oona’s neck the way he did to Kitlyn’s, but this causes a short argument. The other man here says Ralen has changed their mission to bring the princess back alive though he can’t imagine why, and it’d be way too easy for the wagon to hit a rock and Oona to die accidentally if there’s a blade to her neck. Berian says their original mission was to kill her, but he accepts this reasoning and just gestures at Kitlyn with the knife and tells her to be quiet. Kitlyn nods, which is the only real sign of agreement she can make right now.
Which sadly brings us to the next paragraph. S/A warning, folks.
It’s written reasonably effectively, honestly. I also like that another man steps in to stop it before it really gets started. It’s a good example for any men who might be reading this. My issue is it doesn’t really match with what we’ve been told or shown about Evermoor. Why is Lanek going after Kitlyn like this? Earlier in this chapter, Kitlyn theorized that Oona’s status would protect her from sexual assault. But considering Oona is Evermoor’s Great Enemy, the prophesied foe that they must defeat (to their understanding) and Prince Ralen has just issued an unpopular order that Oona is to be brought alive into Evermoor I’d buy this a lot more if it was directed at Oona. I could see an argument where someone from Evermoor could genuinely believe it was their duty to the nation to make Oona as unhappy as possible if they couldn’t kill her. Royal decorum is unlikely to protect her, especially given King Talomir’s personal role in the theft of the Eldritch Heart.
Furthermore, everything we’ve heard about Evermoor and everything we’ll be told about Evermoor paints a picture of a land where the genders are equal. This kind of gender-based violence simply should not be happening, especially not from a soldier who is personally escorting one of King Volduin’s sons. This also serves to cement Lanek (one of the firecallers) as a one-note villain. Not only was he willing to threaten a village to get Oona, but he’s a sex criminal, and he’s about to openly opine that Prince Ralen is stupid for capturing Oona and they really should just kill her and Kitlyn. I’m not kidding.
It is strange to openly question a royal when he’s literally on the other side of a curtain but Lanek is making a good point about what Ralen is doing in regards to Oona. This kind of thing could be justified but we’d have to learn about Evermoor’s internal structure as a nation and we didn’t learn about Lucernia so we’re certainly not gonna learn about Evermoor. The feeding Kitlyn to the wolves thing is very much a “You should hate this guy” thing I think. Other than that, I have no idea what Oona is trying to say here but I do like how protective she’s trying to be of Kitlyn. Where was this when Lanek was groping Kitlyn? You ask me, this segment could be shortened. We don’t need the sexual assault to get a sense of Lanek’s mindset, and if we have the sexual assault we don’t then need the wolves. Pick one, have Oona come crashing in to try and protect Kitlyn, call it a day.
Both of them panic and try to get out of their bindings, but all they can do is wiggle ineffectually for a few minutes before they tire themselves out.
Kitlyn thinks back over the past year and wonders what could have been if she’d told Oona the truth about her feelings much sooner. She mostly thinks everyone would hate her, especially Elsbeth (citation needed) and she thinks Margaret would too, but also thinks maybe not because Margaret did send her food. Honey. Not that simple.
Then she thinks about basically telling Beredwyn she was interested in Oona - when did this happen? - and realizes that Beredwyn must have known that Kitlyn was the true princess all along because King Talomir couldn’t have done a big deception like that alone. Kitlyn has no proof of this, mind. Kitlyn wonders if Beredwyn told King Talomir that Kitlyn is interested in Oona, and Kitlyn thinks it probably doesn’t matter because King Talomir either didn’t know or didn’t care that Kitlyn was imprisoned.
Night falls, though I have no idea how Kitlyn notices that. They give Oona some water and a bit of bread, and do the same for Kitlyn. Kitlyn describes the bread as crunchy, stale, with “awful-tasting” nuts and berries baked into it.
How many chapters has Cox discussed Kitlyn’s restroom usage? I’m sure it’s far too many and I’m annoyed. That shit was acceptable in Eliza Andrews’ Princess of Dorsa because she was making a point about just how far Princess Natacia had fallen and otherwise didn’t talk about it. Cox just keeps bringing it up and it’s always terrible plus Kitlyn’s starting situation wasn’t great so there isn’t a sense of changing conditions for Kitlyn.
Kitlyn’s reaction here is reasonable. Honestly Cox’s facility for writing terror (At least when young women are experiencing it, for some reason) is quite good. Maybe he should have written a whole book about that instead of something which is literally more than half cutesy queer romance. Also, how does fire as a powerset relate to sleep?
Berian props Kitlyn back upright, meanwhile Oona is facedown in a puddle of her own drool. Oona is, of course, dead. She drowned in the night in her own saliva, unable to roll onto her side. The Evermoor soldiers only discover this later in the day when they realize she isn’t breathing, and with no further need for Kitlyn they drop her off. Kitlyn spends several months wandering the wilderness numb with grief as Lucernia loses hope and loses the war, then Kitlyn meets a strange hermit who teaches her the value of anger as an emotion. Then, after the war is over and Evermoor has restored its relic, Kitlyn emerges from nowhere as a terrifying force to level most of occupied Lucernia and then most of Evermoor, with King Talomir and King Volduin in different ways making it clear that Kitlyn has been forged into the villain of the story. It’s ultimately a cautionary tale about how you treat your lessers, lest you mold them into your destroyer.
No, I’m kidding. But seriously, don’t leave a person who is expelling liquid from their mouth facedown. They’ll die. Instead Kitlyn just starts crying when she sees Oona. Fair. Oona’s only asleep, and wakes up about an hour later. Berian leaves Oona to struggle upright on her own. Kitlyn thinks that Oona hasn’t been sleeping well for the past five weeks, allegedly, and that whatever the magic was, “it must have hit Oona hard”. The soldiers in the front are apparently complaining that they’ve ridden all night. So…the horses are dead.
No, really. Horses aren’t magic. They can’t keep going literally all night. Also moving at night is going to attract more attention as “merchants” than not moving at night would. Anyway, Cox tells us AGAIN about our heroines using the, um, bucket and specifically says that Kitlyn has no privacy bc of her pants but Oona has a bit due to her dress. Which is NOT how dresses work. Not to get too into this, but you hike your dress up when you’re using the shitter. Otherwise you risk smearing human shit and/or piss on the inside of your nice dress which has health risks and smells awful.
Moving on as quickly as possible, Oona keeps staring at Berian. This day, they don’t give either of these girls any food. What’s missing from this is Kitlyn thinking about how ravenously hungry she is and how weak she feels from lack of food. The day ends, they’re magicked to sleep, and there’s a new day. So…we have three days of being tied up like this. Damnit. Do I really need to research injuries from interrupted blood circulation? Fine. Fucking fine.
I won’t go into details because holy shit it’s awful, but eight hours. That’s the timeline. That’s how long an extremity has without blood. It’s going to be longer in this case because it’s not an absolute cut, but clock’s still ticking and three days certainly fits the bill. Kitlyn and Oona both should neither have hands or feet at this point.
Now, I hear you asking “But Sandra, I want my fantasy heroine to be captured in a wagon and transported for three days and I’d really prefer to use rope instead of iron manacles. How can I do that in a way that doesn’t strain credibility for her survival?” What’s that? You didn’t ask that? Too bad, I’m answering it!
First off, rope should be firm but should not cause pain simply by being on her while having enough slack that the fantasy heroine can rotate and to some extent reposition her limbs. It should not at any point be so tight bits of her go numb.
Second off, rope should be positioned in such a way that it is not putting particular pressure on her wrists, ankles, or neck. These areas are high risk due to concentrations of blood vessels near the surface of the skin.
Third, when in doubt tie her to an object instead of relying on trussing her up like a wild boar. It can be fairly low-risk to tie her hands behind her back and then tie that knot to, say, a bit of the wagon she’s being transported in.
Fourth, rope should be treated as an accessory to the villains actively guarding her, not as the main reason she can’t leave. This would allow you to have the villains change how she’s tied up a couple times a day and thus keep her moving and keep the circulation going.
Fifth, rope is inherently less dangerous when the binding rests on clothing rather than on bare skin. Mention that the heroine is wearing thigh-high socks, or long formal gloves or the like.
Crap. The distraction expired. Back to the chapter then.
Considering Kitlyn has both her wrists and ankles tied, Berian shouldn’t need to hold her down. Continuity, I think. Anyway, Kitlyn tries to call out to her power to murder Lanek but she’s inexplicably pretty unsuccessful in that she manages to bombard the bottom of the wagon with small stones but nothing else. Which is, uh, much less than what she’s already done RE: slinging herself over the castle wall. She thinks that this is the first time that she’s wanted to kill someone, but I seem to recall her wanting to hurt Fauhurst earlier.
I’ve also got to say that the way Oona and Kitlyn are being treated would be much better justified if this scene had happened earlier, Kitlyn had murdered Lanek, and the Evermoorians believed Oona had done it and that this extreme treatment might stop her from doing it again. Also, where’s the light? It’s been established that when Kitlyn uses her power, there’s green light. She should be glowing, outing herself as having Evermoor-style magic.
So they hear voices from folks passing them, and Kitlyn somehow magically knows these are farmers. Even though Lanek said they were merchants. Didn’t anybody proof-read this? Also, writing Oona’s dialogue phonetically is really annoying and not adding much. “Lucen sees your evil” is a baller line though. Lanek calls an emotional support fireball to hold in his hand, which makes the air smell “sulfurous” apparently. It should also alert the folks they’re passing that there’s something happening because it’s a fire in a wagon. Our protagonists don’t do anything rash, then Kitlyn leans into Oona to try and comfort her while trying to get herself free. And, ofc, staring at “the red mark on her love’s face”.
I just wanted to present these paragraphs. I think they work. I think they work really well. What’s missing is the emphasis that the Churning Deep is a titan among rivers that they can hear it from so high up, because they are very high up. The ecology changing dramatically once they start passing into Evermoor is fascinating. There has to be some reason for this, because otherwise I’d expect Lucernia and Evermoor to have pretty similar ecospheres and particularly bird life due to their similar climates and physical proximity.
Berian shifts and seems close to sleep, and Oona goes back to staring directly at him. In the front of the wagon, the Evermoor soldiers talk about their families and homes - one of them says he has a son and hopes he can end the way by killing Oona before his son has to go fight. Another says that the war wouldn’t end instantly, but without the prophesied heir Lucernia would lose hope and surrender in a few weeks.
Oona keeps staring at Berian. First he just shakes his head, then locks his gaze on to hers. She keeps staring, “sweat dripping down her face”. Kitlyn tries asking a question I don’t understand because it’s written phonetically. Faint blue light circles Berian’s head, and he falls asleep.
Cox. I. Stop giving Oona more powers! God! When did Oona’s theme cross from “light” to “mind manipulation”? Holy hell. Anyway, Oona keeps staring at Berian while Kitlyn grabs his dagger with her “bare feet” and just manages to use it to cut the rope around her wrists before Lanek walks in. How big is this damn wagon? Most wagons don’t have the cover so high that you can walk through them like they’re buses! At which point Lanek notices what Kitlyn is doing and immediately acts. Kitlyn tries to defend herself but she’s so numb and weak from this ordeal, and even if she weren’t she doesn’t know the first thing about magical combat, so she can’t do anything as Lanek’s fire lances through her heart leaving a charred hole in her corpse.
Not really. Instead Lanek, who looks like a Darth Vader cosplayer now (Not kidding. He dresses in black so we know he’s evil) calls Berian a fool because “The peasant’s got your blade!” and throws a fireball at Kitlyn which Kitlyn somehow dodges despite the fact her ankles are still tied together. Which strains credibility. Anyway, this blasts the tailgate of the wagon apart.
Oona tries to move, managing to “jump” despite the obvious fact she’d have real problems doing that, but Lanek grabs her. Then Lanek stands off to the side politely while Kitlyn fights Berian.
Kitlyn literally squats down to free her ankles, upon which Berian immediately stabs her, then Lanek sets her on fire, then they throw her out of the wagon and into the Churning Deep. There, I found a way to end the chapter faster without sacrificing anything important. What actually happens is that Kitlyn manages this and the fight continues. The road is conveniently bumpy enough that Berian’s attacks against Kitlyn are all extremely ineffective, despite not being all that bumpy before. Kitlyn gets thrown out of the wagon.
This is what I’ve been given to work with here. I don’t get why Berian’s eyes are wide. He should not really be afraid. Also the fact the wagon is moving at a “modest pace” makes the bumps earlier a bit improbable. I’m not sure how Oona found the purchase to kick Lanek out of the wagon if we’re being honest. It really feels like Cox making sure no one gets to have dignity when they stand against Kitlyn in battle.
Anyway, Kitlyn then falls to her death. Or rather, she should. She lands in the Churning Deep, but at the height she fell she should probably have splatted. Water gets pretty hard at a high enough speed. So, remember earlier when I said you should hang on to the fact that Kitlyn can’t help but drool around her gag? She should at this point drown almost instantly. If you can’t help but drool, you can’t actually close your mouth. You can’t create an airtight seal. Water should immediately enter her lungs, with agonizing death shortly following. She SOMEHOW manages to cut the gag off her while she’s being taken by what sounds like white water rapids. I don’t buy it. She doesn’t slow down to do a “delicate task” when she has the opportunity, but manages to do it without injuring herself as she’s being swept away by a roaring current into underwater rocks and shit? Fuck off. Anyway, she slowly tires and loses the ability to keep herself above water and ends the chapter thinking ”Is this what it’s like to die?”
Afterword:
This sporking took me a while because I aggressively did not want to deal with this chapter. I don’t like sexual assault in stories when it’s not relevant or necessarily done well. I maintain that Oona should have been Lanek’s target in this chapter, that these girls should be dead, that Kitlyn should not have been able to do nearly all the shit she did immediately after getting out of those ropes, and that the composition of this Evermoor party makes no damn sense. Lanek is the final one-note villain we encounter in Lucernia and if memory serves he never shows up again. Which is a shame, because it means Oona’s eventual battle against a group of Evermoor soldiers is again against one-off villains when it could have been against Lanek who she has a personal score with.
I will say that now that the plot is moving there’s a lot less I have to complain about. So there’s that.
Table of Contents
Chapter 22: Evermoor Bound
Content Note: Kidnapping, sexual assault, violence to children, fantastic drugging, misogyny, violence, drowning, racism
Preliminary: Oh goddess. Here we go. In this chapter Oona & Kitlyn are taken to Evermoor. During the journey, both are drugged, Kitlyn is sexually assaulted, Oona displays yet another power, there’s a fight, and Kitlyn enters a situation where she should almost certainly die yet will survive. I’ve decided to stop using my counts and try a different style.
For all the content notes Cox has generated on this chapter, he isn’t using them to their full potential or really intelligently at all. We’ll get into it, just know this is going to be a long one.
It’s Day 8 and Cox thinks it’s Day 7.
We open our chapter in Kitlyn’s head as the wagon jostles her around. I don’t know how to describe my next line. Is it something Kitlyn is thinking, or something Cox is saying? It seems like something Kitlyn should be thinking.
Whatever bastard had tied her tried to hurt her by making it tight, but she hadn’t reacted at all. Nothing mattered anymore. The savages got Oona. Why had she given up? It didn’t seem likely that six men could destroy an entire village in an instant. Oona should have tried to fight. What if they were bluffing? Oh, well. Too late now.
I have to say I’m not a big fan of writing what is probably a character’s primary perspective in third person like this. It comes across as if Cox is telling the truth of the world from on high when it seems like he’s trying to have Oona & Kitlyn perceive their current situation differently - Oona seeing it as a necessary sacrifice to save Kitlyn & Lucernia and Kitlyn seeing it as a mistake Oona made. If he’d been able to pull that off it would have been a great character moment (Even if it makes Kitlyn seem remarkably unconcerned with civilian casualties), but it falls flat for me and a big part of it is this insistence he has on writing the thoughts of his protagonists as one step removed from them.
This is also a retcon of what Oona noticed in the last chapter with the Evermoorians being (relatively) gentle with Kitlyn. This is because Cox intends to make Kitlyn suffer in this chapter, and his vehicle for doing that is to turn these Evermoorian soldiers into one-note villains regardless of everything he’s established about the culture of Evermoor and indeed what he wrote last chapter.
Kitlyn starts staring at the rope binding her ankles, wondering if the men will sexually assault them or just her because Oona is the princess and might be protected from that on those grounds. Cox phrases it as wondering if these men “would do unsavory things” but his intent is clear.
If you’re intending to invoke this kind of real life trauma, use the word rape like a grown up. This wishy washy bullshit pisses me off. Sexual assault is a serious topic and a clear and present trauma for far too many people in this book’s target demographic. I’m not one of those people who says rape is never an appropriate topic in a book, but when you use it you gotta take it seriously and a big part of that is recognizing that a spade is indeed a spade.
Also, in real life I’d imagine a princess’ status would to some extent generally protect her. I don’t think that’d be the case in this war, for reasons I’ll get into later in this chapter.
The narration tells us dispassionately that Kitlyn should be terrified, but she can’t make herself care enough because they’re gonna kill Oona and then probably herself. This’d be a good darkest before the dawn moment, but Kitlyn ruins it by being unable to decide whether it’d be worse to die before Oona or after her. Kitlyn really seems to be passive during this whole dang story. Meanwhile Oona has become less passive, which’d be character development if I thought that Cox considered Oona’s lackadaisical attitude towards martial training a flaw.
Oona jostled about from her continuous struggle to free herself, but her squirming only served to amuse their guard… the way a cruel boy watches a spider missing half its legs trying to walk.
Cox is doing everything he can to make us hate and fear the first Evermoorians we encounter in the narrative, which is going to be bad for his brilliant plot twist that everyone in this war is a victim of King Talomir and Evermoor is not to blame.
We also get a couple sentences of Kitlyn thinking about how awful the gag is. The main relevant thing is that she keeps drooling around the cloth and can’t close her jaw. Store that fact in your brain pockets, it’ll be important later.
Kitlyn thinks about how shocked she is that Oona lied (Referring to Oona claiming to be the true princess) to try and protect her since lying is a sin against Lucen and Oona is an extremely hardcore devotee. Of course Cox phrases it as
Forever, the girl had acted as if Lucen himself would appear out of thin air and paddle her to bleeding for even a tiny fib. And here, she told a lie that would kill her.
Setting aside the fact that Oona didn’t lie because the evidence that Kitlyn is the true princess is so thin on the ground that the only folks who should believe it are people who want to believe it (Like Oona, who’d love to divest her responsibility on to Kitlyn), I really don’t like this visualization of how Oona has acted about lying. This idea that Oona has acted constantly like she’s going to be punished for lying. We’ve been in her head for far too much of this story. Oona’s relationship with the truth has been shown to be more of a “She believes telling the truth is a positive good” thing and not a “she’s terrified of lying” thing. The fact Kitlyn doesn’t know that but can’t stop thinking about stupid shit they did as kids makes me think Kitlyn doesn’t really know who Oona is.
That’s not all that surprising for a pair of 16 year olds but these are supposed to be star-crossed lovers who know everything about each other because they grew up together. Or maybe Cox just picked a weird fetish-y descriptor with how frequently this story brings up “paddling”. Or a weird description that stresses the childishness of these lesbian lovers who are adults by the standards of their society. Or at least I hope they’re adults considering we had an entire filler third of this book about Oona getting married.
All that said, I do like the idea of Oona’s first lie being a way to sacrifice herself for the sake of her girlfriend. It fits really well with one of the few overarching themes of this book - honesty no matter what, and also does a better job than many things at making Kitlyn seem important to Oona. Goddess I am not looking forward to the rest of this chapter.
“You certain ‘bout this, milord?” asked a man out front.
“Aye,” said the man in blue.
“They seem ‘armless. Like frightened little kittens.”
Someone spat. “Ach, don’t fall for it.” The voice belonged to one of the two who made fire. “They’re like everyone else from this unnatural place. Tricksters and thieves. They only look helpless.”
We’re tricksters? You disguise yourself as merchants. That assassin dressed as a maid! Her feet tingled, close to numb. She wiggled a little, but the rope only hurt more.
“Yeah, yeah,” said the other fire-caller. “All those shiny, regal gods of theirs, that’s a lie too. A pack of magic-given sots calling themselves ‘priests,’ and scaring everyone into submission.”
“Careful, Dahn. Our spirits are real. Their gods may be too,” said the man in blue.
Reminder that the “man in blue” is Prince Renard. Also Cox, I didn’t need a reminder of that transphobic libel you wrote down. It is at least sort of nice to know that Evermoor has been badmouthing Lucernia like Lucernia has been badmouthing Evermoor, and it’s interesting that Prince Renard seems to be above it.
I’m also struck by how similar the language the Evermoorians use is to the language Lucernians use. Even the same diminuitives for certain words - also sots, milord, etc. I’d be more fine with this if it was established this was a civil war. But it’s not, it’s an international war between two pretty different cultures. If we’re going for accuracy, they should talk in different ways even if they don’t have different languages.
One of these “fire-callers” is our final one-note villain before we leave Lucernia. Also, the fact Kitlyn is going numb says she’s been tied too tight and will soon be permanently damaged. It’s going to be two days before she’ll be untied. At that point it should be a question as to whether she’ll ever walk again. God I really don’t want to have to research potential injuries from prolonged restriction of blood circulation. It’s bad, alright?
Oona nonverbally signals to Kitlyn that they should try to fall out of the back of the wagon, and Kitlyn just wonders what they’d even do if they managed that. I have to say that it’s good to see Oona actually trying to do things for once.
“What are you planning, milord?” asked a different man beyond the curtain. “You know what the seers have scribed. She needs to die, and die soon.”
Kitlyn leaned into Oona, glaring death at the faceless grey curtain.
“Easy, Marr,” yelled the man sitting in back with them. “The handmaiden’s ready to kill you with her eyes. Defensive little thing.”
A scattering of laughter emanated from out front.
“You sure you can handle them all alone, Berian? Or do you need us to back you?”
“I can handle these two and all your sisters at the same time,” shouted Berian, to more laughter. “And those ladies are better with a blade than you.”
A head and arm poked through the curtain, glaring. He flicked a finger, and Berian’s tunic caught aflame. Yelping and flapping, the soldier patted at himself until the tiny candle fire died to wisping smoke. After, he settled back against the wagon wall and grumbled.
Evermoor’s military is allegedly 60% women. No part of this conversation makes sense - Berian should be taking Kitlyn seriously as a threat, the men in the front should be taking our protagonists seriously, Berian shouldn’t feel the need to tell this kind of self-aggrandizing misogynist joke - “I can handle these two and all your sisters at the same time” - and the person in front shouldn’t be so offended by the notion that his sisters are good with swords that he SETS AN ALLY ON FIRE. Though that last one would be good characterization if Dahn or Marr or whoever this is were a character who’d be in this story longer than this one chapter.
Also don’t think I didn’t notice the similarity between Berian’s name and Beredwyn’s. It’s relevant because Berian is the Designated Reasonable Person We’re Supposed To Sympathize With of this Evermoorian contingent.
Hours pass. Kitlyn’s just lying still, while Oona is constantly struggling and looking at Berian with “extreme concentration” on her face. We are treated to a description of how Oona’s drool has soaked the entire front of her dress, which has my finger hovering over the “delete spork” button. We then non-sequitor into what time of year it is - it’s apparently three weeks until the end of summer, so the inside of the wagon is extremely hot.
Meanwhile, Kitlyn is thinking clearly. I would normally be saying something like “Where is this girl’s panic” but earlier it was established that Kitlyn has kind of just accepted this situation. Anyway, Kitlyn’s wondering why they’re being kidnapped when they were taught that Evermoor wants to kill the princess. She then thinks that maybe Evermoor believes that they can use Oona to force King Talomir to surrender and that this was only possible for Evermoor because the two of them left the castle, as an assassin could not have kidnapped Oona from the castle.
Kitlyn should not be assuming fault for this. Oona fled the castle for no reason. She’s the idiot here. Kitlyn was fleeing confinement, she needs no further justification. But Kitlyn’s thinking is
We were so stupid!
She also thinks that her dungeon cell doesn’t sound so bad anymore, and just. Honey. Kitlyn. Let me be clear with you: You are no worse off now than you were in that dungeon. In that dungeon you couldn’t talk to anyone and faced a real risk of lethal infection or insanity due to the inhumane conditions you were kept in. Now, you’ve had two days of real freedom and you’re presently facing serious medical issues from the way you’ve been bound and the conditions you’re being kept in, while you can’t talk to anyone. The lethal threat is from your captors suddenly changing their minds and killing you, but if they were gonna do that they’d prolly have done it earlier. It adds up about the same, and every element of this is ultimately Oona’s fault.
Also the text is referring to Prince Ralend as simply “Ralen” in these people’s diagloue, which tells me that the actress who reads the audiobook significantly mispronounced Prince Ralen’s name. To the point where it sounds like she’s saying “Prince Rylend”. This is not really her fault as I’m sure she was given direction or lack of it by the author, but is an indication of lacking quality control.
Anyway, immediately after this one of them comes back to hand Berian a waterskin and tell him that Ralen says they’re gonna let Kitlyn go once they’re far enough from Cimril. Berian takes a drink, and Oona asks for water. I think.
“Cmm ee mmf ummm warer?” mumbled Oona.
Berian exchanged a look with the other man, and shrugged. He leaned forward, pulling a dagger from his belt, and held it to Kitlyn’s throat. “Scream or call out, and… Well, don’t.”
Cold steel nibbled at her neck. Kitlyn pressed herself into the wall, raising her head to get away as much as she could. Her heart raced. No matter how hard she strained, her hands remained trapped behind her. She couldn’t do a blessed thing to stop him if he wanted to slit her throat. At what had to be the wild terror in her eyes, Berian’s expression softened ever so slightly. He relaxed the knife, no longer touching her with the edge, but holding it close enough to keep Oona cowed.
The other man loosened the gag and let her drink. Evidently not enough, as she chased the retreating waterskin with her tongue. He sighed and grumbled, but gave her a little more before retying the cloth through her mouth. Oona let out a whine of protest as he seemed to wrench it tighter than before.
“Sorry if this isn’t exactly the royal coach, Highness.” He patted her on the cheek.
She glared at him.
Kitlyn resumed breathing when Berian lowered the knife. She slouched and exhaled.
I actually really like the writing of this segment minus writing Oona’s dialogue phonetically. I feel Kitlyn’s terror and buy her helplessness. It’s also a good humanizing moment for the first Evermoorians we’ve spent any amount of time with. I complain a lot about Cox’s work, and I would feel dishonest if I didn’t also present things that I feel he did well. These paragraphs are among them. Had this been the end of this scene, I’d have a whole lot less to complain about in this chapter.
One of them - it’s not clear who - suggests giving Kitlyn some water too. Berian moves to place the knife to Oona’s neck the way he did to Kitlyn’s, but this causes a short argument. The other man here says Ralen has changed their mission to bring the princess back alive though he can’t imagine why, and it’d be way too easy for the wagon to hit a rock and Oona to die accidentally if there’s a blade to her neck. Berian says their original mission was to kill her, but he accepts this reasoning and just gestures at Kitlyn with the knife and tells her to be quiet. Kitlyn nods, which is the only real sign of agreement she can make right now.
Which sadly brings us to the next paragraph. S/A warning, folks.
The other man undid her gag and held the waterskin to her lips. The warm liquid tasted like leather, but in the sweltering wagon, brought welcome relief nonetheless. She kept her gaze locked on the glinting steel only inches from her heart while suckling on the waterskin like a foal. The man holding it glanced at her chest. A few seconds after she started to drink, he cupped her breast. The ropes seemed to tighten. The water turned sour. If she recoiled, she’d stay parched. If she didn’t… She wriggled to the side trying to get her chest out of his hand while keeping her lips on the waterskin.
“Hey…” Berian poked him in the leg with the tip of the knife. “None of that. You’re old enough to be her father.”
It’s written reasonably effectively, honestly. I also like that another man steps in to stop it before it really gets started. It’s a good example for any men who might be reading this. My issue is it doesn’t really match with what we’ve been told or shown about Evermoor. Why is Lanek going after Kitlyn like this? Earlier in this chapter, Kitlyn theorized that Oona’s status would protect her from sexual assault. But considering Oona is Evermoor’s Great Enemy, the prophesied foe that they must defeat (to their understanding) and Prince Ralen has just issued an unpopular order that Oona is to be brought alive into Evermoor I’d buy this a lot more if it was directed at Oona. I could see an argument where someone from Evermoor could genuinely believe it was their duty to the nation to make Oona as unhappy as possible if they couldn’t kill her. Royal decorum is unlikely to protect her, especially given King Talomir’s personal role in the theft of the Eldritch Heart.
Furthermore, everything we’ve heard about Evermoor and everything we’ll be told about Evermoor paints a picture of a land where the genders are equal. This kind of gender-based violence simply should not be happening, especially not from a soldier who is personally escorting one of King Volduin’s sons. This also serves to cement Lanek (one of the firecallers) as a one-note villain. Not only was he willing to threaten a village to get Oona, but he’s a sex criminal, and he’s about to openly opine that Prince Ralen is stupid for capturing Oona and they really should just kill her and Kitlyn. I’m not kidding.
“Well,” said the waterskin man, “Ralen didn’t say where to let her go. Ebonwolf Shire’s got plenty of reasons why she won’t be a problem.”
“Lanek!” Berian blinked in disbelief. “He doesn’t want us to kill her.”
“We wouldn’t be killin’ her.” Lanek chuckled. “The wolves’ll do that.”
“Nmmm!” yelled Oona, kicking at him. “Dmmn ymmm drrrr!”
“What was that, Highness?” Lanek put a hand to his ear. “I couldn’t quite make that out.”
Oona writhed, struggling. “Ymm hrrrrbl!”
“Maybe Ralen wants her to bring the news back to their king?” asked Berian. “Ever think of that?”
“Bah. He’s too young and inexperienced. This… taking her back alive is a bad idea. He’s playing dice with the lives of everyone in Evermoor. You ask me, we should be done with the both of them and go home. There’s too much at stake.” Lanek, grumbling, tramped back behind the curtain.
It is strange to openly question a royal when he’s literally on the other side of a curtain but Lanek is making a good point about what Ralen is doing in regards to Oona. This kind of thing could be justified but we’d have to learn about Evermoor’s internal structure as a nation and we didn’t learn about Lucernia so we’re certainly not gonna learn about Evermoor. The feeding Kitlyn to the wolves thing is very much a “You should hate this guy” thing I think. Other than that, I have no idea what Oona is trying to say here but I do like how protective she’s trying to be of Kitlyn. Where was this when Lanek was groping Kitlyn? You ask me, this segment could be shortened. We don’t need the sexual assault to get a sense of Lanek’s mindset, and if we have the sexual assault we don’t then need the wolves. Pick one, have Oona come crashing in to try and protect Kitlyn, call it a day.
Both of them panic and try to get out of their bindings, but all they can do is wiggle ineffectually for a few minutes before they tire themselves out.
Kitlyn thinks back over the past year and wonders what could have been if she’d told Oona the truth about her feelings much sooner. She mostly thinks everyone would hate her, especially Elsbeth (citation needed) and she thinks Margaret would too, but also thinks maybe not because Margaret did send her food. Honey. Not that simple.
Then she thinks about basically telling Beredwyn she was interested in Oona - when did this happen? - and realizes that Beredwyn must have known that Kitlyn was the true princess all along because King Talomir couldn’t have done a big deception like that alone. Kitlyn has no proof of this, mind. Kitlyn wonders if Beredwyn told King Talomir that Kitlyn is interested in Oona, and Kitlyn thinks it probably doesn’t matter because King Talomir either didn’t know or didn’t care that Kitlyn was imprisoned.
Night falls, though I have no idea how Kitlyn notices that. They give Oona some water and a bit of bread, and do the same for Kitlyn. Kitlyn describes the bread as crunchy, stale, with “awful-tasting” nuts and berries baked into it.
Soon after the highly mortifying experience of having to use a bucket for a garderobe while tied and in view of their captor, the other man who had held fire emerged from the curtain. He looked like a Lucernian farmer, pale and pudgy in his amber tunic. Something near him clattered like a sword on a sheath, though he didn’t appear armed. He grabbed a handful of Oona’s hair and stared at her. His eyes glowed orange, driving a spike of terror into Kitlyn’s gut.
“Smmm! Dmmm!” she screamed, thrashing about.
Oona slumped over, unconscious.
Kitlyn shrieked as the man grabbed her head in both hands. He whispered something that echoed in her mind; the walls of the wagon blurred into a spiral. His hands slid away from her cheeks and the floorboards came up to greet her face. She lay there for a second feeling groggy, until she noticed the wagon had become an oven again.
They… magic-ed me to sleep somehow. Woozy, she squirmed in her bindings and moaned.
How many chapters has Cox discussed Kitlyn’s restroom usage? I’m sure it’s far too many and I’m annoyed. That shit was acceptable in Eliza Andrews’ Princess of Dorsa because she was making a point about just how far Princess Natacia had fallen and otherwise didn’t talk about it. Cox just keeps bringing it up and it’s always terrible plus Kitlyn’s starting situation wasn’t great so there isn’t a sense of changing conditions for Kitlyn.
Kitlyn’s reaction here is reasonable. Honestly Cox’s facility for writing terror (At least when young women are experiencing it, for some reason) is quite good. Maybe he should have written a whole book about that instead of something which is literally more than half cutesy queer romance. Also, how does fire as a powerset relate to sleep?
Berian props Kitlyn back upright, meanwhile Oona is facedown in a puddle of her own drool. Oona is, of course, dead. She drowned in the night in her own saliva, unable to roll onto her side. The Evermoor soldiers only discover this later in the day when they realize she isn’t breathing, and with no further need for Kitlyn they drop her off. Kitlyn spends several months wandering the wilderness numb with grief as Lucernia loses hope and loses the war, then Kitlyn meets a strange hermit who teaches her the value of anger as an emotion. Then, after the war is over and Evermoor has restored its relic, Kitlyn emerges from nowhere as a terrifying force to level most of occupied Lucernia and then most of Evermoor, with King Talomir and King Volduin in different ways making it clear that Kitlyn has been forged into the villain of the story. It’s ultimately a cautionary tale about how you treat your lessers, lest you mold them into your destroyer.
No, I’m kidding. But seriously, don’t leave a person who is expelling liquid from their mouth facedown. They’ll die. Instead Kitlyn just starts crying when she sees Oona. Fair. Oona’s only asleep, and wakes up about an hour later. Berian leaves Oona to struggle upright on her own. Kitlyn thinks that Oona hasn’t been sleeping well for the past five weeks, allegedly, and that whatever the magic was, “it must have hit Oona hard”. The soldiers in the front are apparently complaining that they’ve ridden all night. So…the horses are dead.
No, really. Horses aren’t magic. They can’t keep going literally all night. Also moving at night is going to attract more attention as “merchants” than not moving at night would. Anyway, Cox tells us AGAIN about our heroines using the, um, bucket and specifically says that Kitlyn has no privacy bc of her pants but Oona has a bit due to her dress. Which is NOT how dresses work. Not to get too into this, but you hike your dress up when you’re using the shitter. Otherwise you risk smearing human shit and/or piss on the inside of your nice dress which has health risks and smells awful.
Moving on as quickly as possible, Oona keeps staring at Berian. This day, they don’t give either of these girls any food. What’s missing from this is Kitlyn thinking about how ravenously hungry she is and how weak she feels from lack of food. The day ends, they’re magicked to sleep, and there’s a new day. So…we have three days of being tied up like this. Damnit. Do I really need to research injuries from interrupted blood circulation? Fine. Fucking fine.
I won’t go into details because holy shit it’s awful, but eight hours. That’s the timeline. That’s how long an extremity has without blood. It’s going to be longer in this case because it’s not an absolute cut, but clock’s still ticking and three days certainly fits the bill. Kitlyn and Oona both should neither have hands or feet at this point.
Now, I hear you asking “But Sandra, I want my fantasy heroine to be captured in a wagon and transported for three days and I’d really prefer to use rope instead of iron manacles. How can I do that in a way that doesn’t strain credibility for her survival?” What’s that? You didn’t ask that? Too bad, I’m answering it!
First off, rope should be firm but should not cause pain simply by being on her while having enough slack that the fantasy heroine can rotate and to some extent reposition her limbs. It should not at any point be so tight bits of her go numb.
Second off, rope should be positioned in such a way that it is not putting particular pressure on her wrists, ankles, or neck. These areas are high risk due to concentrations of blood vessels near the surface of the skin.
Third, when in doubt tie her to an object instead of relying on trussing her up like a wild boar. It can be fairly low-risk to tie her hands behind her back and then tie that knot to, say, a bit of the wagon she’s being transported in.
Fourth, rope should be treated as an accessory to the villains actively guarding her, not as the main reason she can’t leave. This would allow you to have the villains change how she’s tied up a couple times a day and thus keep her moving and keep the circulation going.
Fifth, rope is inherently less dangerous when the binding rests on clothing rather than on bare skin. Mention that the heroine is wearing thigh-high socks, or long formal gloves or the like.
Crap. The distraction expired. Back to the chapter then.
Lanek entered and stared at Oona with a dark smile before conjuring up a handful of orange-red flame. “We’re about to pass some merchants. If either of you make a sound, I’ll ash the peasant girl’s head to a stump.”
“Ummen eeef uur eeeml.” Oona narrowed her eyes at him.
“Sorry, sweetness.” He winked. “Can’t understand you.”
Berian chuckled. “I believe she said, ‘Lucen sees your evil.’”
Lanek frowned. “I’ve not a clue how you got that from this wretch’s simpering.” He leaned down and slapped Oona across the face with enough force to knock her over.
Kitlyn growled and tried to fling herself at him, but Berian held her down.
“Evil, pah!” Lanek glared at her. “Nervy little thing, callin’ me evil. I’m not the one who’ll suck the very life blood from our home.”
Oona remained on her side, shivering.
Considering Kitlyn has both her wrists and ankles tied, Berian shouldn’t need to hold her down. Continuity, I think. Anyway, Kitlyn tries to call out to her power to murder Lanek but she’s inexplicably pretty unsuccessful in that she manages to bombard the bottom of the wagon with small stones but nothing else. Which is, uh, much less than what she’s already done RE: slinging herself over the castle wall. She thinks that this is the first time that she’s wanted to kill someone, but I seem to recall her wanting to hurt Fauhurst earlier.
I’ve also got to say that the way Oona and Kitlyn are being treated would be much better justified if this scene had happened earlier, Kitlyn had murdered Lanek, and the Evermoorians believed Oona had done it and that this extreme treatment might stop her from doing it again. Also, where’s the light? It’s been established that when Kitlyn uses her power, there’s green light. She should be glowing, outing herself as having Evermoor-style magic.
So they hear voices from folks passing them, and Kitlyn somehow magically knows these are farmers. Even though Lanek said they were merchants. Didn’t anybody proof-read this? Also, writing Oona’s dialogue phonetically is really annoying and not adding much. “Lucen sees your evil” is a baller line though. Lanek calls an emotional support fireball to hold in his hand, which makes the air smell “sulfurous” apparently. It should also alert the folks they’re passing that there’s something happening because it’s a fire in a wagon. Our protagonists don’t do anything rash, then Kitlyn leans into Oona to try and comfort her while trying to get herself free. And, ofc, staring at “the red mark on her love’s face”.
The wagon drove on for hours. Eventually, a great roaring rush rose outside, a heavy presence in the air that made her imagine a titanic waterfall. Kitlyn swallowed hard. That could only be the Churning Deep, a river at the bottom of a great canyon separating Lucernia from Evermoor. She struggled with fervor, but only succeeded in making her wrists and ankles sore. Wagon wheels went from silent to grinding stone. A bridge. Oona pressed herself into Kitlyn, shaking.
They’d left Lucernia behind.
Kitlyn grunted and squirmed as the roar of the distant water faded once again to silence. Bird calls outside changed, trills and whoops the likes of which she’d never heard before. Some manner of insect emitted a constant ws-ws-ws-ws noise.
I just wanted to present these paragraphs. I think they work. I think they work really well. What’s missing is the emphasis that the Churning Deep is a titan among rivers that they can hear it from so high up, because they are very high up. The ecology changing dramatically once they start passing into Evermoor is fascinating. There has to be some reason for this, because otherwise I’d expect Lucernia and Evermoor to have pretty similar ecospheres and particularly bird life due to their similar climates and physical proximity.
Berian shifts and seems close to sleep, and Oona goes back to staring directly at him. In the front of the wagon, the Evermoor soldiers talk about their families and homes - one of them says he has a son and hopes he can end the way by killing Oona before his son has to go fight. Another says that the war wouldn’t end instantly, but without the prophesied heir Lucernia would lose hope and surrender in a few weeks.
Oona keeps staring at Berian. First he just shakes his head, then locks his gaze on to hers. She keeps staring, “sweat dripping down her face”. Kitlyn tries asking a question I don’t understand because it’s written phonetically. Faint blue light circles Berian’s head, and he falls asleep.
Cox. I. Stop giving Oona more powers! God! When did Oona’s theme cross from “light” to “mind manipulation”? Holy hell. Anyway, Oona keeps staring at Berian while Kitlyn grabs his dagger with her “bare feet” and just manages to use it to cut the rope around her wrists before Lanek walks in. How big is this damn wagon? Most wagons don’t have the cover so high that you can walk through them like they’re buses! At which point Lanek notices what Kitlyn is doing and immediately acts. Kitlyn tries to defend herself but she’s so numb and weak from this ordeal, and even if she weren’t she doesn’t know the first thing about magical combat, so she can’t do anything as Lanek’s fire lances through her heart leaving a charred hole in her corpse.
Not really. Instead Lanek, who looks like a Darth Vader cosplayer now (Not kidding. He dresses in black so we know he’s evil) calls Berian a fool because “The peasant’s got your blade!” and throws a fireball at Kitlyn which Kitlyn somehow dodges despite the fact her ankles are still tied together. Which strains credibility. Anyway, this blasts the tailgate of the wagon apart.
Oona tries to move, managing to “jump” despite the obvious fact she’d have real problems doing that, but Lanek grabs her. Then Lanek stands off to the side politely while Kitlyn fights Berian.
Berian lunged at her, seizing her right wrist in one hand, the other around her throat.
“Drop it, girl. Don’t make me hurt you.” Berian wobbled as the terrain grew more uneven. A rightward turn sent them both spilling into the left wall. The dagger caught the canvas and tore it.
Unable to move her feet apart, Kitlyn swayed, at the mercy of gravity.
“What’s going on back there?” barked a man out front.
“Gmmmmm!” yelled Oona. She stared at Kitlyn.
“Nmm!” I’m not leaving you!
Berian wrestled with her, trying to squeeze off her air while crushing the wrist of the hand holding the dagger. She reared back and smashed her forehead into his mouth. Stars of pain burst in her vision as the man stumbled away, favoring a bleeding nose. He gawked at her, astounded, and drew a broadsword from his other hip. “I mean it. Now! Drop the damn knife!”
Kitlyn literally squats down to free her ankles, upon which Berian immediately stabs her, then Lanek sets her on fire, then they throw her out of the wagon and into the Churning Deep. There, I found a way to end the chapter faster without sacrificing anything important. What actually happens is that Kitlyn manages this and the fight continues. The road is conveniently bumpy enough that Berian’s attacks against Kitlyn are all extremely ineffective, despite not being all that bumpy before. Kitlyn gets thrown out of the wagon.
Kitlyn scrambled upright and sprinted after them. On the precarious span, the driver guided the horses at a modest walk. Knuckles white on the dagger handle, she ran, tugging on the gag, but it refused to come off without being cut. Unwilling to slow down for the delicate task, she ignored it.
“She’s running at us!” yelled Berian, eyes wide.
Lanek flung Oona to the floor and strode up to the opening as two other men filed in from the front. “She’s not important.” He raised his hand, fist aflame, and hurled a tiny meteor at her.
Kitlyn dove flat upon the stone bridge, and started concentrating on warping the stone to make a wall in front of the wagon.
The explosion behind her peppered her with painful shards of rock and a blast of hot air. She abandoned her magical focus, scrambling to get her feet under her as he raised a second glowing hand. Oona mule-kicked him in the back a split second before he threw the flaming bolt at Kitlyn. Lanek screamed and fell out of the wagon, his boot hooking a coil of rope at the side. His head struck the bridge at the same instant the second fireball detonated three feet in front of Kitlyn.
Heat and shards washed over her face, followed by a terrifying crack. She lowered her arms from her eyes as the blast subsided. The wagon dragged Lanek, unconscious, by one leg. Around her, the mortar broke, and a great chunk of stone fell free. Her attempt to leap away pushed the rock out from under her. One hand caught a jagged section of bridge for only seconds before her weight carried her down.
This is what I’ve been given to work with here. I don’t get why Berian’s eyes are wide. He should not really be afraid. Also the fact the wagon is moving at a “modest pace” makes the bumps earlier a bit improbable. I’m not sure how Oona found the purchase to kick Lanek out of the wagon if we’re being honest. It really feels like Cox making sure no one gets to have dignity when they stand against Kitlyn in battle.
Anyway, Kitlyn then falls to her death. Or rather, she should. She lands in the Churning Deep, but at the height she fell she should probably have splatted. Water gets pretty hard at a high enough speed. So, remember earlier when I said you should hang on to the fact that Kitlyn can’t help but drool around her gag? She should at this point drown almost instantly. If you can’t help but drool, you can’t actually close your mouth. You can’t create an airtight seal. Water should immediately enter her lungs, with agonizing death shortly following. She SOMEHOW manages to cut the gag off her while she’s being taken by what sounds like white water rapids. I don’t buy it. She doesn’t slow down to do a “delicate task” when she has the opportunity, but manages to do it without injuring herself as she’s being swept away by a roaring current into underwater rocks and shit? Fuck off. Anyway, she slowly tires and loses the ability to keep herself above water and ends the chapter thinking ”Is this what it’s like to die?”
Afterword:
This sporking took me a while because I aggressively did not want to deal with this chapter. I don’t like sexual assault in stories when it’s not relevant or necessarily done well. I maintain that Oona should have been Lanek’s target in this chapter, that these girls should be dead, that Kitlyn should not have been able to do nearly all the shit she did immediately after getting out of those ropes, and that the composition of this Evermoor party makes no damn sense. Lanek is the final one-note villain we encounter in Lucernia and if memory serves he never shows up again. Which is a shame, because it means Oona’s eventual battle against a group of Evermoor soldiers is again against one-off villains when it could have been against Lanek who she has a personal score with.
I will say that now that the plot is moving there’s a lot less I have to complain about. So there’s that.
The fisherwoman stood on the pier her grandmother had constructed out into the Churning Deep where the river slowed and widened. She held her spear overhead, watching the water for her prey. Many of the other people of Glavendar preferred nets or boats, but her grandmother had fished with a spear and it was good enough for her as well. And if she didn’t catch as much as her neighbors, she made up for it with her magic. She could see into people, see their true natures, and align their bodies with those natures. Most of the time it meant she was a healer because almost everyone wanted to be healthy.
But in rare cases, such as when she turned her magic upon herself on her 17th birthday, the effects were far more dramatic. A woman standing where a man had been moments before, or the reverse, and sometimes far stranger yet equally wondrous things.
A shape in the water caught her attention. It wasn’t a fish, and the shape was wrong for the large predatory eels that sometimes swam these waters. She put her spear down and jumped in, wading out in the shoulder-high water.
The shape was a person! A young girl, scraped and bleeding and looking to be on the edge of death. She could help her, and so she reached for her magic and touched the girl’s mind. Her mother, who had the same power, had taught her that using her magic would mean learning the secrets of others and the best thing she could do was keep those secrets. So she had, all these years.
But as she touched the girl’s mind, excited about helping, excited about learning yet another way to see the beautiful world they all lived in, what she saw brought her pause. A moment played over and over again - the young girl looking at a person in a dress and judging that person to be a man based on her wrist hair. The fisherwoman looked down at her own wrist beneath the surface of the water, at the coarse black hairs that kept her warm in winter, and thought about the girl’s inability to accept that sometimes it wasn’t as simple as what one saw.
Slowly, she backed away, letting the Churning Deep carry the girl’s body downstream. Perhaps one of her neighbors would find her and bring her to her, and she’d certainly heal her then.
Sometimes it was best just to let sleeping dragons lie, though. The girl wouldn’t thank her if she learned she was saved by a woman who blossomed from a boy’s body, and so the girl should be saved by someone she didn’t think was an “abomination”.
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All of these are honestly great points. I just known I'm done with the sameiness of both of these girls' perspectives. I would expect star-crossed lovers to be similar in some ways, but not to have the SAME internal voice.
Jesus Christ that would have been really interesting! I was hyped to see that when I first read this book! But what's actually going to happen is that, even though it's going to generate a LOT of questions, Cox is going to drop basically everything that's been established about Evermoor except the fact they're at war with Lucernia, their capital is Ivendar, and King Lanas Volduin is the ruler. Oh, and they're better at everything than Lucernia is.
Which sucks! I wanted to see the folksy swamp witch council! I wanted this to be an asymmetric matchup between two radically different cultures! Instead Evermoor is basically Lucernia but larger, with more and better magic, and obvious direct intervention from their divinties.
Because then he couldn't have written about the saliva of 16 year old girls! Stop thinking with your big head, ElfBy! But really. This focus is just. I don't like what Cox focuses on in these chapters.
I really think keeping Oona and Kitlyn gagged lets this chapter down so much. This is our first non-combat interaction with folks from Evermoor. I would love ANY conversation with Berian, Marr, Dahn, Lanak, Prince Ralan, and so on. It'd also let our heroines display non-violent skills, such as trying to make friends and stuff. Also our gals having the ability to point the finger at the other and say "She's the True Princess" in exchange for being let go would make the fact they don't actually meaningful.
Honestly he uses questionable similes that can be read as pornographic pretty frequently. Frequently enough that my personal doubt is running out, but I suppose the true test will be if this is still the case in book 2. As far as the scene itself goes, I feel like I half remember Kitlyn having exactly ONE moment where she thinks about this being done to her. One. And I'm not even sure that's real at this point the book is so boring.
YEAH. I'd shut up if it was established that these are not actually horses, but magical constructs that look like horses but there's nothing like that in this setting so.
If I wanted to play Devil's AdvoCAT, I would say that maybe they believe that binding the Heir of Lucernia's hands and gagging her might stop her from killing them all with magic. Except I can't do that, because next chapter will establish that tying someone up (And by extension, gagging them) does not impact their magic or their ability to use it in any way. In fact, this chapter establishes that with both Kitlyn and Oona using their magic. Next chapter does establish a way to stop magic, and I imagine that should have been a supply that the non-magical Prince Ralen should have been fucking carrying with him (Maybe as a component of his armor?)
So yeah. Cox wrote them being trussed up like this just because he wanted to, because it doesn't make sense in setting however you look at it.
PREACH sibling.
The text says that Kitlyn stabbed the dagger into the wagon, then turned around and rubbed the rope between her wrists against the cutting edge.
This is implausible for numerous reasons.
1: How did Kitlyn get the combination of force and control to actually stab the dagger into the wood such that it stayed?
2: It is NOT easy to maneuver in any way with your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together, which I know from personal experience. Rotating yourself, keeping yourself upright, and rubbing your wrists against a blade? Very difficult.
3: She should definitely have cut herself doing this if she could do it at all.
A better way to have done it would have been to have Kitlyn get it with her toes, then drop it on the floor where Oona scrabbles to pick it up and just barely, with some cuts, manage to free Kitlyn's hands.
Kitlyn's next chapter opens with her being healed by a mysterious wise woman type character. You really could have had Lanek burn a hole through her body such that everyone assumes she's dead, and then they dump her body in the Churning Deep. If you were going to do that you need to keep Lanek around as a character tho so he can panic when Kitlyn seemingly returns from the dead.
Frankly, same. It hurts the verisimilitude of this world quite badly to write so viscerally about pain and literal shit and then just have Oona not have killed anyone so far. Lanek should be dead. Some of those bandits from earlier should probably be dead as well. Honestly, Oona's first kill being Lanek - unwitting and in direct defense of Kitlyn - would go a ways to addressing how weirdly calm Oona is at killing ppl in about six chapters' time or so. Because she would have killed already, and therefore would have the opportunity to reconcile herself with the concept.
YEAH. It's the same shit that happened with Nasuada sleeping on a stone slab.
I think for now my style is to write a little addition at the end of each spork segment. I'm considering writing a little side story as the chapters continue, but we'll see. I think I want to use the space to discuss shit that happens in the chapter.
I put a bit of effort in characterization and stuff lol. I wanted the fisherwoman to be the kind of person who takes action, values tradition while acknowledging the benefits of change, and believes the best of people but who also hasn't really encountered a transphobic person before. The girl in the water is Kitlyn, and I think if I were to spin this out into a story I'd portray the fisherwoman's decision here as not the right one to make, but such things are what stories are made of.