Chapter 2: The story is moving forwards again! A miracle!

Chapter 2.

Oh boy. This one’s a good one. The Seagull returns to Old-Bear’s village, bringing us back to where we were two chapters ago. It is apparently announced in advance by the booming of its sail.

Ok, sails can make a fair bit of noise if loose in a strong wind. Two minor nitpicks:

1)      A sail making noise isn’t very well trimmed. The entire point of keeping the sail taut is that as much energy as possible is captured from the wind pushing against it and converting it into forward motion. A sail flapping around is by definition losing energy.

2)      SAILS ARE NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO ANOUNCE YOUR SHIP’S PRESENCE BEFORE IT COMES INTO SIGHT ON THE OPEN FRIKKING OCEAN! I don’t care how loud it is, in any weather where you have not stowed the sail it is not going to be loud enough to carry beyond line of sight.

We get some more dialogue as Old-Bear and Longbow discuss whether he’ll leave now and why. All the dialogue in this story seems forced and unnatural, which is a real problem when, you know, you have four novels full of it. DE, you can do so much better than this. You have done so much better than this! Why did you put so little effort into this series?!? WHY?!?!?

Moving on… Longbow boards the Seagull, and we find out that Zelana and co. have ousted Sorgan from his cabin for the duration of the voyage. We also find out that Red-Beard has come along for the ride as well. Finally, we get an introduction to another of Eleria’s charming quirks: getting carried and repaying it in kisses. And I use the word charming quite wrongly. Also, ‘beloved’, take another shot.

Longbow uses… well, I’d call it his Mary Sue powers but actually it’s reasonable observation to notice that the Maags’ lips aren’t syncing up to what he’s hearing and deduces how the gods are getting around the language barrier. I only have one problem with this: it should have been Red-Beard, not Longbow, who spotted this. Why?

Well, Longbow has had little to no human contact for the last 20 years. Red-Beard is a socialite and peacemaker. If one of them has to notice that something is off about people it should be Red-Beard, while if something is off about their surroundings then Longbow should notice it.

Now one final thing. In this chapter we have Red-Beard and Longbow first meeting. It is specified as their first meeting. They are very formal because they don’t know each other. You’ll see why in about a year and a half when I get to Crystal Gorge, but suffice to say that if you do remember it then you’re doing better than the author.

Chapter 1: in which I return to life and wish I hadn't.

Chapter 1.

Ah, it’s good to be out of the cloning chamber and… I’m reviewing this? Still? Let me back in the chamber!!!

Drat, someone disabled my suicide pistol.

Ok. No escape.

This is chapter 1 of a new section, ‘The Land of Maag’, for those keeping score. These resets are a real annoyance, but no biggie. After all, Sir Terry Pratchett has managed for years without using chapters AT ALL, and you can’t exactly say that his work suffered for it. Call it a pet peeve.

We open the chapter with “Now Old-Bear was chief of the tribe, and though he seldom spoke, Longbow’s parents had told their son when he was but a child that Old-Bear was very wise.”

Hang on, did I miss something? Was there a chapter somewhere that I missed?

Nope.

Meh, it’s just an odd way to open a new section of the book. I would have to be a petty, nit-picking internet text reviewer to start on someone for something like that… *Cracks knuckles* so let us begin. Firstly, and most importantly, the very first word is a lie. It’s not ‘now’, it’s ‘then’. That’s right, we’re getting a new character introduced via their life story. I personally hate this narrative technique, as it really hurts immersion for the reader and it’s really quite lazy. I’ll give The Painted Man a pass on this as that book needs to introduce multiple characters, have all their backgrounds explained and their personalities nuanced, and to add to the difficulty of that they only meet up at the end. If it weren’t the first book in a series I would still consider it poor writing, but it was well executed and gave us a really solid understanding of the main characters for the rest of the series. Then came The Desert Spear and… BETRAYAL! Screw you Peter Brett! You derail your own characters! It could have been so good, and you ruined it!

I’ll get to that one day. PB is a talented writer, but he’s too constricted by his plans to let his characters evolve on their own.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, first word of the first sentence. This is gonna suck.

The sentence has a somewhat ambiguous structure. If it had started with “Now, Old-Bear” it would have made more sense as the start of a separate part of the narrative. Not a whole lot more, but now comma is not an uncommon start to ye olde retelling. Now without the comma implies that there was a before, which in this case there is not. I’m not going to go into the wanton abuse grammar suffers in this chapter any further so that this post doesn’t become longer than the rest of the blog combined, so let’s move on.

This chapter introduces Longbow (in fact it is a recounting of his life up to what we’re dubiously calling the present) and a couple of supporting characters. Their names in this blog will be the chief, Chief Stereotype, and the shaman, Dr Plotexposition. Yes, Dr Plotexposition’s real name is hyphenated. I may take a leaf out of Linkara’s book and kill this thing with fire after I’m finished reviewing it, but in the mean time take another shot. Now begins the start of the countdown to Mary Suedom for Longbow (male, so technically a Marty Stu).

1)      Made an orphan? Check.

2)      So hansom that all the girls in the village fall in love with him? Check.

3)      Has a one true love? Check.

4)      She’s the most beautiful girl in the world (not hyperbore)? Check.

Next page!

5)      Special power (Never misses with his bow. Ever. I am so getting back to that later)? Check.

6)      Everyone is in awe of him? Check.

7)      True love is murdered by villain on day of the wedding? Check.

Next page!

8)      Dedicates life to vengeance, thus becoming a tragic loner? Check.

Other.

9)      Being a tragic loner never has any bearing on the story beyond the scene he’s introduced, and he is routinely quite sociable? Check.

10)   Angst? Only when we need to be reminded how tragic he is.

11)   Can beat the beings that created the gods at their own games with little to no effort? Yup, check that too.

12)   Opinions are always viewed as right by the narrative? Big check.

I have read self-insert fanfics that avert Mary Sue better than this. You can make a strong hero with a tragic past WITHOUT going this route. The Painted Man does it really well, with all of its characters… until The Desert Spear comes along.

I hate that book. It can burn alongside this garbage.

Anyway, long story short Longbow begins his lifetime of vengeance… and does it wrong. I mean, he doesn’t once say the words “That’s it, Misty-Water. To avenge you, I shall become a bat!”

He kills every servant of the Vlagh that comes into the western domain (an area close on the size of the western coast of the USA by my reckoning), then gets recruited by Zelana to help her gather outlander armies to fight off the invasion. The one half-decent thing this chapter might have done was at least give us some epic Sue-on-Sue battle of wills between Longbow and Eleria, but nope. I suppose that the plot continuum wouldn’t have been able to hold as irresistible plot met immovable plot, so maybe this was for the best.

Chapter 3: in which we discover that pirates don't think of the economy.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 opens with a confirmation that yes, the people of Drall are at a stone-age technology level. This is a plot-relevant reiteration that helps cement an element of the world into the reader’s mind, and is thus an important part of the world-building process. One interesting thing is that no-one is even remotely suspicious of A) someone knowing their names in a country that has never been discovered, that they had no intention of going to, and that by rights shouldn’t speak the same language; B) that person was not just expecting them but waiting for them; and C) that a stone age society is offering gold as payment, implying that they know gold is the basis of your economy. Indeed, Ham-Hand is more concerned by the prospect of working for a woman than by the above weirdness. I guess Viking pirates hire for brawn, not brains.

They head up the coast and arrive at a village, and the captain shows why he gets the big bucks with 2 good ideas:

1) Weigh anchor for the night and approach in the morning, so that their arrival cannot be misinterpreted as a surprise attack.

2) Tell the crew to be on their very best behavior. This is important, considering how pirate Vikings must feel after a few months at sea. Of course, the reason is because they’ll be outnumbered and causing a ruckus might jeopardize their chance of being paid rather than, you know, from being halfway decent human beings… of course, if they were decent human beings then the little talk wouldn’t be necessary.

Anyway, we are introduced to another of our future viewpoint characters at this point: a red-bearded native called, and you’ll never guess this in a million years… Red-beard! This actually raises an interesting question: What did they call him before he grew his beard? Seriously, there’s no mention of a birth name or a family name, he’s just Red-beard. Secondly, if red hair is rare enough to warrant naming someone over, where did the red-hair gene come from? Let’s be generous and say that the tribe has 300 adults (heck, even that many is a lot considering that they get all their food from hunting and gathering). Where would the anomalous red-hair come from? An outside tribe? It’s never mentioned, even though in a few books we get a fairly detailed life history of Red-beard. If red hair isn’t that uncommon, then isn’t it like calling someone ‘Blondie’ or ‘Goldielocks’ or… ok, but it’s still a stupid name! And this from the man who called a main character Kífffrlinï!

Anyway, Red-beard is rowing the chief White-braid (I give up) to speak with the captain. We then move on to the captain meeting with Zelana in her cave a way off from the village. I realize that it may seem like the narrative jumps like crazy with my retelling, but in fact the opposite is true. I’m just giving you a basic framework so you can follow why any of the plot holes is actually, you know, a plot hole.

Now the captain meets Zelana, the most beautiful woman he has ever met. Get used to that sentence. She opens with complaining about how long he took to get there, he calls her on knowing they were coming, and we get “the beloved knows everything.” Take a shot. I hate Eleria.

Apparently Hook-Beak is too busy staring to push the subject any further, even though if someone was spying on me and had just been proclaimed to know EVERYTHING you can bet I would start asking questions rather than getting distracted by the sexy.

Zelana suddenly endears herself to me greatly by kicking the plot into overdrive, leaving Hook-Beak to get caught up in her wake. This is the first time in 96 pages that there’s been any sense of energy, so this is a big thing. Hook-Beak asks how much he’s being paid for a bit of mercenary work, and the energy goes away as the plot stalls for another page of people stating the obvious. Also we are introduced to the running gag of Eleria intentionally mucking up peoples’ names, which is so funny it will obviously never get old… *Grabs suicide pistol*

###Emergency review subroutine loaded.

###Activating cloning vat. Estimated time until clone completion: 3 weeks.

###Resuming review.

Scene: Sorgan Hook-Beak is taken by Eleria to view offered payment gold.

Alert: Thermodynamics violated.

Alert: Gold shown exceeds total mined gold of human population of earth by year 2013.

Alert: Influx of this much gold into Maag economy will create total collapse and cause social regression that is likely to spread to neighboring nations, and is likely to cause a state of total war between Maags and Trogites.

Hypothisis: Total war between these two powers is goddess Zelana’s true goal, eliminating both technologically advanced nations as a threat to her own.

Query: Why is human Sorgan Hook-Beak incapable of suspicion in the presence of gold? Brain scans of test subjects reveal no shutdown of logical reasoning centers due to elements proximity.

Chapter end: A deal is struck, and Maag pirate Sorgan Hook-Beak is now transporting Goddess Zelana and cohorts for recruitment of additional pirate crews for PMC contract.

Logic error: Hook-Beak cannot take much gold as it will weigh down his ship, and speed is a factor. However, ship has not unloaded haul from Trogite merchant ship robbed 2 chapters ago, and is likely already at capacity. How can they be considering taking more?

###End review.

Chapter 2: Yeah, not much to make fun of here.

Chapter 2.                                                                                  

We start with the introduction of ‘Kaldo Tree-Top’, who is apparently very tall. His line for the series is “Land ho!”, informing us that our protagonists have found their way to Drall. Now in all honesty, this chapter isn’t really that bad. There are no massive plot holes, the story progresses, that sort of thing. However, there is one thing that starts getting on my nerves from the get-go: CharacterShilling. Now it’s a fine line to walk between introducing a new character’s reputation in a conversation and Character Shilling, but when you have a page dedicated to variations on the theme of ‘He runs fast’, I’d be inclined to put it in the latter camp. Other than that we get some world building and the characters make their way up the coast. They come upon a village, are informed that they are expected (but receive no answers as to how this is possible, after which they drop the issue and it is never raised again) and have to head further up the coast to meet with Zelana. We also get an early bird cameo from Longbow, easily the biggest Mary Sue character in this entire Suetopia of a series, but more on him later. A lot more.

And that’s pretty much it. The chapter is short and progresses the story by one notch, but isn’t terrible and contains little for me to mock.

Chapter 1: The Seafarers

Chapter 1

Ok, I have to start out by saying that this isn’t chapter 5. It’s the seafarers, chapter 1. You see these books are divided into different sections to help us keep track of the viewpoint character, which is actually not a bad idea for a story like this where perspective jumps around a bunch. The problem is that every time we reach a new section the chapter count starts over. This part is extremely annoying and makes keeping track of things harder without adding to the story or feeling in any way necessary. Protip for aspiring writers: If it makes your book needlessly more complicated and doesn’t add to the story then don’t put it in.

I’ll put my hand up and admit that my own book contains a timekeeping system which takes a bit of getting your head around, but at least that adds to the setting and is part of the worldbuilding. This? It’s needlessly annoying, and I have no idea why you would bother numbering the chapters at all if you were simply going to reset the count every 60 or so pages.

Right, now that’s out of the way.

This next section of the book is called the seafarers, and follows the charmingly sociopathic pirate/Vikings we were introduced to at the end of the last chapter. Our viewpoint character this chapter is Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak, the lad with firm economic advice about not killing people for kicks if you can still make a buck off of them. I’m going to take a bit of a risk here and post a quote, in spite of the whole ‘no part of this publication can be reprinted’ thing. It’s for a good cause, and if anyone really gets upset let me know and I’ll take it down.

‘Though he would deny it with his dying breath, if the truth were to be known, it was sheer coincidence that led to the discovery of the Land of Dhrall by Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak and the crew of his ship, the Seagull.’

Why was this quoteworthy? Well apart from demonstrating a fondness for commas beyond even my own obsession with them, it generates another plot hole when compared with the series finale. In fact the plot hole comes from the same problem as the preface, so take another shot. There are so many of these that I am convinced that the finale is an ass-pull ending that was never planned at this stage of the undertaking. This is a major problem, and here’s why:

Most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.

The beginning of the story is where you establish your characters and setting, along with setting in motion whatever plot or conflict is going to drive the series. The beginning can be fast such as in the hobbit, or slow as is the case in the lord of the rings. A strong beginning is vital for getting your readers invested and engaged, and a half-baked beginning can kill an otherwise good book by losing the interest of prospective readers.

The middle of the story is, naturally, everything that happens between beginning and end. Character development, plot progression… almost everything that makes a story enjoyable is going to happen in this section of the series, which is as it should be as this is what makes up the vast majority of the series. Of the three, having only a vague idea of the middle of a book is probably the least damaging as it allows the plot and characters to develop more organically.

Then we come to the end, the culmination of our series. A weak ending can potentially damage a franchise more than several lackluster chapters in the middle of a story, as demonstrated with the fan outcry at the ending of mass effect 3. While knowing exactly how a story will end when you start writing it isn’t vital, having some idea of what is going to happen is a good idea. A good ending will tie up the main plot and preferably deal with the majority of any loose ends still remaining, though with more complex stories one or two threads will inevitable be missed by all but the most methodical and talented.

What you most certainly do not want is an ending that concludes none of your plot threads, comes completely out of left field, and creates a bunch of plot holes. Rest assured, if you stick with me then you’ll see an ending that ticks all of these boxes and more besides.

Ok, major tangent already and we’re only a single sentence in. So let’s take a look at the second sentence. Yes, we’re in for the long haul on this one. It’s basically telling us how awesome Sorgan Hook-Beak is as a sailor, as it’s easier to do this than actually show him being a good sea-captain. Oh, but merely being good isn’t enough for our main character: He’s the best there has ever been. So of the random ships Zelana could have stumbled upon, the first one contains the greatest sea-captain ever. Take a shot, and restock your alcohol because EVERY ONE of our main characters is going to be the best that has ever lived in their respective fields… one of which I will be taking particular issue with as I, an internet reviewer, can out-do him in his field of mastery without even raising a sweat. But more on that later.

We now get some exposition on the land of Maag and the history of Sorgan Hook-Beak. Several pages later we read what we just read last chapter from another point of view (take a shot) and the chapter ends with us catching up to where last chapter left off, his ship and crew getting swept away by a divinely mandated tide and to the land of Drall.

Chapter 4: In which we meet our "Heroes"

Chapter 4

Zelana starts us off by drifting westward over the sea on the wind. Fair enough, it’s an effective way to travel from A to B and it’s not like it’s laborious. She’s heading west because she knows that there was a continent over there before she got obsessed with the pink dolphins, once again bringing up the plot hole that they seem to live forever as apparently there’s a real risk that continental drift had already moved it away since she retreated to her grotto. I should also take this moment to apologize, as apparently pink dolphins are a real phenomenon in the form of albinism. Given that there’s an entire race of them I’m not sure if it counts, but whatever. This book could benefit from having less plot holes, so we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The sea is always referred to as ‘Mother Sea’, which irks me… but that’s just my personal preference. Also, since the sea in this setting is actually sentient the term is not entirely without merit. How did the sea become sentient? Never explained, but apparently both the planet and its moon are also sentient, as are: lightning; a manicure sun; the winds (I think. Brief mention in a later book, and I could be misremembering). I want you to dwell on that for a moment. The air has thoughts and feelings in this world. You’re breathing in a sentient entity. That is all kinds of horrifying.

It also occurs to me that Zelana is arguably the worst goddess ever. She seems to be such a fifth wheel in the whole running the universe thing, what with the fact that she went into a cave and wrote poetry for a few millennia and everything seemed to go along fine without her. Likewise, her brother got sent to the moon for a similar amount of time with likewise no ill effects to his domain. I don’t know, it seems like their presence isn’t really necessary either within the context of the story world, or that of the narrative. In all honesty, I feel that the story would have benefited if, instead of a goddess floating over the ocean to go find outlanders to bring against her enemies, we were following a lone tribesman braving the terrors of the open oceans in a desperate bid to find someone, anyone, who could help save his tribe from the horrors of the Vlagh. I don’t know, maybe I don’t find immortal and all-powerful protagonists that interesting.

Anyway, Zelana demonstrates her hit-and-miss knowledge of the world by not knowing what a ship is (Despite her fellow gods knowing about how savage and warlike the outlanders are, or even knowing about metalworking. Maybe she just didn’t ask them for any information on the people she was going to try and meet… which considering the urgency of her mission and the fact that using her fellow gods’ experience could save her valuable time seems to me to be a bit stupid). She lands on the water and tiptoes towards the longboat. Screw you physics, I’m a goddess! On the bright side, we’ve got a ship full of Viking warriors about to be introduced to the story, and that has to be an improvement… right?

Ok, one quick thing. Zelana quote ‘adjusted her hearing’ unquote to understand the Vikings. Except that we established that the understanding of languages comes from telepathy and has nothing to do with hearing, and we established this about 2-3 pages ago. They weren’t even trying.

In a surprisingly well executed exposition dump we learn that the longboat is called the Seagull, the first mate is known as Ox, the Vikings are known as the ‘Maags’, and their favorite prey are a race known as the ‘Trogites’.  I wouldn’t say that the dialogue here is flowing, but I’ve seen a lot worse in my time and it gets the job done quickly, cleanly, and without feeling too forced.

Take another shot, the Maags are referred to as ‘Man-Creatures’. Seriously David, what have you got against the word ‘humans’? Zelana knows what humans are, why do we need the stupid hyphenated speech-on-paper-thing? Anyway, goddess-called-Zelana sits on big-water-thing-known-to-some-as-mother-sea-but-to-others-as-the-ocean-and-this-joke-is-going-on-too-long and thinks, somehow avoiding hurting herself while doing so. She concludes that the Maags are not in fact fishermen, what with their weapons and the fact that they were talking about hunting down other ships. She also deduces that they are in fact out to steal gold from the Trogites, for reasons that she cannot fathom. I can’t actually fault her on this, as throughout the books the concept of money is never broached or explained to any of the Dhrall characters, leaving them to wonder about this obsession with gold the outlanders have. More on that later.

It is now that we are introduced to one of our interchangeable outlander main cast, Sorgan Hook-Beak. His defining qualities are that he’s in charge and he’s greedy, with the generic persona of a lovable rogue of the pirate persuasion. We’re mixing and matching cultures at this point, just roll with it. We are also introduced to the other Maags, most of whom we never hear about again. However, there are two that we will see regularly introduced here: Kryda Ham-Hand and Rabbit. Ham-Hand and Ox never receive any real characterization beyond dumb muscle and that Ox has terrible hayfever, though this never gets forshadowed and is only mentioned when it becomes important to the plot in book 3. These two are basically interchangeable. Rabbit is one of the few members of this entire series with an IQ as high as room temperature, and as a result will be our ‘smart guy’ from now on. Be prepared to find yourself dazzled by his intellect. He is genuinely a skilled metalworker, which will prove consistently useful throughout the four books.

They attack a Trogite vessel, who’s inhabitants bail out rather than show resistance. I personally feel that this is a poor way to demonstrate how badass these guys are, as all it really shows is that their reputation is bad enough that a bunch of unarmed merchants will jump ship rather than get slaughtered. Ox suggests burning the vessel after they’ve finished looting it. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen! Oh, and remember that this is out in the middle of the ocean, so burning the ship would effectively condemn all those men to swimming until they were too tired and drowned. Sorgan vetoes the suggestion on the grounds that if they get their ship back they can be robbed again at a later date. Whatever you say about that, at least it’s better than his first mate’s ‘burn everything’ mentality.

Long story short, Zelana abducts them by asking the sea to create a strong current to the land of Dhrall, pulling their ship along for the ride. 

Chapter 3: The least dramatic council of the gods in recorded history.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 opens with Zelana swimming out of her grotto, once again showing that there’s no surface exit. We then get to find out how the gods get around in this world: they glide on the winds. Well, technically that’s not fair. The female gods glide silently on the winds, while the male gods ride around on tame ‘thunderbolts’ (which I assume is lightning). Come on, be honest: if you could tame lightning and ride it around as a form of transportation you totally would. One interesting factor is that apparently the gods can levitate up and down under their own power but are unable to fly at a reasonable velocity without assistance.

Our next scene takes place in the cave home of Zelana’s older but the same age brother (They’re gods, they don’t have to explain it) Dahlaine. Now Dahlaine has recently discovered that the civilizations beyond their little continent have found metal and learned to shape it, something that is a new concept around here. Now judging from the dialogue this is the first time the gods have even HEARD of metal (just metal. Not even ‘Iron’ or ‘Copper’ or anything like that. Just generic ‘metal’), which strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s my modern sensibilities shining through but I would expect that GODS who’ve had thousands of years to get bored and poke around have never so much as heard of metal before a bunch of apes got digging.

We also find out that his dreamer is called Ashad, and he was raised by bears in the same way as Eleria was effectively raised by dolphins. By the way, you can safely forget any dreamer apart from Eleria. They never do anything interesting that we see firsthand, and get SFA dialogue.

Anyhow, we get a quick recap of the events of last chapter. Look, I may only be an amateur author compared to David but it seems to me that recapping the last chapter for about a three pages, on the third chapter of the first book, might not be the best way to get the story rolling. I like a slow start, but seriously! We just read that a few pages ago! The dialogue tends to repeat itself a bit as well, which is irksome.  

Now we get another glimpse of Zelana’s wonderful personality: She’s what TvTropes would probably list as a deadpan snarker.  This character trait is normally very endearing to me, but in this instance the sarcasm is somewhat unjustified. Also, every member of the cast displays this trait, so the novelty will be wearing off very quickly.

Now we get our introduction to Zelana’s older sister, Aracia. Her primary character traits are vanity that verges on narcissism and a lack of general grounding in reality. She lives in a large temple/palace which is populated with lazy, sycophantic priests who spend all day telling her how awesome she is. Now according to the book the temple is made of carved stone blocks sheathed in pale marble, which is pretty… I’m just not sure how they managed that without any form of metal tools. I mean it’s obviously possible for the basic construction as the mayans managed to make their pyramids at a similar tech level, but I was always under the impression that marble required more advanced tools to work effectively. Ok, I admit that’s nitpicky.

Hmmm… Aracia is introduced as wearing a golden crown and sitting in a golden throne. Once again I could be wrong but I thought that kind of metalworking was beyond stone age technology. Oh well, she’s a god so I should probably let it slide.

Some of you may have noticed that I’m repeatedly getting hung up on the technology inconsistencies. This is intentional, because one of the entire themes of the series is technology levels… which are then arbitrarily ignored, seemingly at random.

Anyway… we get a scene of Zelana rocking up to the middle of the church practically naked, solely to cause offense. In essence, to troll her sister and the priests. We then get the family hierarchy explained to us in some dialogue which is supposed to show Aracia as inflexible and stuck up but actually shows Zelana as rude and obnoxious. So Zelana drags Aracia away and off to the family meeting, and on the way we glean a couple of things from their conversation. Firstly, Aracia knows very little about the world she’s a god on, up to and including that the planet is round. Secondly, gods can breathe in space. Thirdly, the young brother Veltan was once banished to the moon. Fourthly, Veltan is obsessively trying to catalogue every possible shade of the colour blue. Well, if you’ve got eternity I suppose you’ve got to kill time somehow.

New scene! Our goddesses enter… an empty cave! It looks like Dahlaine hasn’t managed to round up Verltan yet. On the bright side we get to see Dahlaine’s pet sun, which is another pretty cool demonstration of the kind of thing you can do when physics are more guidelines than actual rules. Aracia demonstrates a lack of understanding of the world again, this time being ignorant of how stalactites form. You know, if I were on a world where one of the oldest and most powerful beings in existence was this ignorant of stuff that it’s pretty much her job to know… I think I’d be very worried.

And now the boys arrive, riding on their thunderbolts. Naturally Aracia comments on how childish the showing off is without even a hint of irony… the book doesn’t mention if she’s still wearing her crown at this point. This is followed by some condescension about their maturity by Zelana… you know, the lady who’s spent the last few thousand years shirking her duties to sit in a pink grotto and compose poetry.

Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me… they’re recapping again! Fortunately it gets interrupted quickly by a reveal that was already spoiled by the back cover, and the last chapter, and earlier this chapter. I mean, there’s forshadowing and then there’s hammering the point home with an oversized mallet! The dreamers are… the other gods! *Du du du!*

Now apparently this is a very bad thing, on par with crossing the streams… though exactly why is never explained. Something to do with too much power being active at once or something is the best we get. Dahlaine reveals that he did this so they could help defend against the Vlagh’s invasion. Zelana summarizes the incredibly obvious plan and gets complemented on her intelligence by her brethren, and we get a recap of what was just discussed.

Now Dahlaine points out that their population of stone age hunter gatherer tribes aren’t really suited for resisting a bug invasion, and suggests they bring in the more advanced societies on other continents to fight the war for them. Aracia comments on how they’re barbarians who’re no better than the creatures of the wasteland, and the gods should not get them involved. Dahlaine says that they can manipulate them to their own ends… which ironically is the most classic god suggestion we’ve seen so far (most pre-christian pantheons were considered to play games with the fates of men).

It turns out that Verltan is the one god that takes any interest in the world around him and has actually looked into the world beyond his house. He tells his family how to make the language barrier redundant and simultaneously make the entire scene with Eleria learning to speak human COMPLETELY REDUNDANT: use a low-level telepathic field to translate.

Ok, we’re winding up the chapter now with one more mystery: Dahlaine somehow knows that the outlanders like gold, in spite of saying earlier that he doesn’t understand their language and implying that he doesn’t understand their cultures. Now this will come up again… repeatedly. However, that rant can wait.