Part Four: Rule One Of a Successful Relationship – Never Bogart The Heroin
Morning arrives with a particularly sickening thud, cue boring unnecessary descriptions of everyone having breakfast. Zarq finds Dono looking much the worse for wear, and offers to share some venom with him to make him feel better (remember when she did that with Beauty and Beauty had the sense to Just Say No?). Dono asks what it’ll do to him, and she explains that it will kill the pain and make it easier to function.
We then get a boring scene in which Egg continues to talk like he’s British – seriously, get a load of this:
“This is where all the gear is kept, reins an’ saddles an’ parade stuff. [snip] Don’t just stand there! Pair up an’ carry a saddle to the bench.”
Seriously, what the hell? No-one else in the trilogy so far has talked like this, and he’s not established to be a foreigner or anything. Hell, Dono himself periodically speaks like this. What gives? It’s incredibly distracting.
Zarq and Dono then get into a bitchfight over whether he’s prepared to trip the light fantastic with her, and he calls her a “deviant” because of all the venom she’s done, and compares drinking the venom with eating dragon meat, because as far as Temple statute is concerned it’s the same thing. For some reason I’m reminded of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with their weird rule about “blood transfusions R Bad because Incest”.
In any case Dono finally folds and takes the venom. This causes him to get an erection, and now we finally get an explanation for the “venom cock”.
Are you all ready for this? Please make sure you’re not standing up or drinking anything.
Zarq realises that the reason why venom makes men horny is because that will make women horny too, so they’ll be more prepared to do it with a dragon. Funny, I’d have thought it would make the women horny so they’ll be interested in doing it with the men.
There’s a subtext here, and I really don’t like it. The trilogy so far has done a great job of making all its male characters either evil or useless, and now the author has taken it so far to imply that a man’s erection is basically just there to get you interested in screwing an animal. In other words, men are just mindless cattle, and you shouldn’t actually want to have sex with them. Zarq even finds it arousing when she realises Dono is helpless to control his reaction. She starts fondling him and commanding him to say he wants to stay with her, and this just adds disgusting undertones that the venom is a date rape drug.
This is incredibly creepy stuff, guys. Anyone who reads this and then claims sexism and sexual abuse against men isn’t a thing (or worse, doesn’t matter) can go to hell. Where they will have to have my boot surgically removed from their arse.
But never mind about any of that! The text abruptly cuts away to more exposition, in which Zarq explains how life for women used to be even worse. Basically, it was like living under a fundamentalist Muslim dictatorship: women had to wear a “bitoo”, mentioned in the last book but not described, and we now find out that, yep, it’s basically a Burka with a fakey made-up name. They also couldn’t go anywhere without a male escort, and were forbidden to speak in public, or touch a man. We get a story about how Zarq’s great aunt accidentally tripped and grabbed her nephew’s arm, and was then graphically stoned to death for attempting to “seduce” him.
I’m gonna just come out and say it – fuck misogynistic fundamentalist religion, and fuck this author for having the gall to use the horrific and all too real spectre of stoning to try and make us take her groteque little porn novel seriously.
Anyway, we’re then treated to two long and extremely tedious pages of flat description about how the Temple is actually not doing well at the moment and has all sorts of internal problems, which is why the rules have been relaxed since then. And then – get this – Zarq concludes with “but none of that was my concern”, and in fact she didn’t find out about it until two years later!
So why the hell did you see fit to waste two entire pages telling us all about it in excruciating detail, Zarq? And why now? What precisely did that add to the story? I swear, it’s as if the author just stuck her head out of the page and told me “yeah, I was deliberately wasting your time. Suck it!”
After at least two days spent wearing nothing but Kratt’s cape (in other words, basically nude), Zarq decides to make herself a tunic. She steals a blanket and sews one despite never having done so before. I had no idea tailoring was that easy. Or that it was that quick. Because honestly, I’ve done plenty of hand sewing in my time, and it’s one of the most time consuming hobbies around.
We then move on to boring descriptions of Zarq helping to wax some dragon saddles. She teaches the boys how to braid decorations for the things, because apparently all women in this setting know how to braid. One of them gossips about how one of the other Clutches has been attacked by several “Hamlets of Forsaken”. And no, we’re not told what a Hamlet of Forsaken is, thanks for asking.
Zarq realises that the local bigwigs will soon return, and then she’ll probably be beheaded for being a y’know, woman. (Ew, two X chromosones! Grody!). She concludes that she has to go back to the Zone of the Dead to get the scroll which says a circumcised woman is allowed. Rather than ask the dragonmaster for help, she takes an opportunity and runs off like an idiot (again).
She reaches the place eventually, and then has a big emotional moment where she thinks about how much it means to her. She thinks about KZ and her kid, and once again tries to convince us that there was an actual relationship there as she lies about how she “loved them both fiercely” and how their disappearances were “a wrenching loss”. I guess that’s why she didn’t bother to look for them or even ask if they were okay.
Nice try, Ms Cross, but I’m still not buying it.
Then Zarq forgets all about it and starts looking for the scroll. But oh no, she can’t find it! She decides to wait until the Daronpu guy comes back (remember him? The drunken loon who helped Deus Ex Machina her back to life in the last book?), but the guy’s apprentice shows up and says he’s disappeared to parts unknown. He quite rightly accuses her for being responsible for the Zone of the Dead being burned down, and threatens to turn her in, so Zarq runs off. End chapter.
Might I add, we’re not about a third of the way into the book and virtually nothing of any importance has happened. What is it with certain fantasy authors and their insistence on filling hundreds of pages without actually saying anything? Come on.
In the next chapter Zarq gets back only to find Dono waiting for her. Apparently the dragonmaster (now referred to as the Komikon, because keeping to a consistent name for one guy is just too hard) wants to see her. Zarq freaks out and Dono tells her she’s in deep shit and asks where she went. She freaks out even more babbling about how the scroll is gone and she’s done-diddly-done for.
Maybe she’ll get executed! But that won’t happen because then the book would be over and we couldn’t have a third annoying installment. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
Anyway, so the dragonmaster is predictably and quite justifiably pissed. He demands to know where Zarq has been and when she doesn’t answer right away he stabs her under the fingernail (ouch! And was that really necessary?). She spills the beans, and he tells her she’s not allowed to do anything without his permission. Which honestly, is kind of fair enough – he is supposed to be her boss, after all. If I just strolled off to the shops in the middle of work without notifying anyone and didn’t come back for hours, I know my boss wouldn’t be at all happy about it.
He then makes my heart sing by forcing Zarq to call herself stupid and then calling her a brainless moron. Thiis is of course supposed to make him look like an abusive asshole, but instead I found myself nodding in agreement, because a brainless moron is exactly what she is, even if the author won’t admit it. He adds that (duh) if the scroll is needed to prove she’s legit, he’ll deal with it himself.
Again, why didn’t Zarq just go to him about it in the first place?
Oh, right- it’s because she’s a brainless moron. Check, please.
Zarq then randomly concludes that the guy is “insane”, even though he’s shown no sign at all of being anything other than short-tempered and mildly eccentric. Great, I smell another “mad” villain in the offing.
After that Zarq is allowed to go to bed. Next day more uninteresting work ensues, and the other named apprentices continue to talk like backalley Brits. One of them gives her a special twig to chew on which has the same effect as shotgunning a few glasses of wine, and Zarq naturally compares it unfavourably to getting high on dragon venom because it doesn’t have the “accompaniment of giddy puissance”.
I guess Ms Cross has never been drunk before, because mainlining booze generally makes me feel pretty darn special and invincible.
Two of the apprentices invite Zarq to join in their game ofprostitution“prognostication”, because apparently “a game of chance” was just too pedestrian. They explain the rules in minute detail and I’m not being paid enough to waste my time reading it (and no, the game will never be important). We also finally learn what the hell a Skykeeper is, as apparently eight of them guard the “Celestial Realm”, whatever that is. Paradise, I guess?
Either way the two apprentices, Ringus andDingus Eidon want Zarq to hang out with them from now on, and she realises she now has an ally. For… reasons. Don’t look at me; it just randomly happens.
Here’s something else I’m wondering about: why do the people in this setting worship dragons anyway? They don’t have any magical powers, they’re not fierce hunters (in fact they appear to be mostly vegetarian), they don’t talk or have human level intelligence. What’s so special about them? Gods help me, it’s not the venom, is it? You know, the date rape drug that makes people go crazy? Because if it is you may just see a grown woman cry.
Time passes, Zarq keeps training. She has nightmares about Waivia, brought on by the haunt, and wishes she could shoot up some venom to make it stop. More anachronisms show up, as apparently these people have special equipment for dosing dragons to treat “intestinal parasites” – in other words, sheep drenching for dragons. Zarq wins some admiration because she’s so good at dragon grooming, and during fight training she develops a new technique for defending herself: whipping her cape at the opponent’s balls.
Apparently no-one else has ever thought of going for a nut shot.
Uh-huh, sure. I’m totally buying it. Because it totally takes a woman to figure out that a man’s balls are a tender spot. A man would never have pegged it in a million years. That would be silly!
Blah blah, the dragons all have different personalities (this is of course told, not shown), Zarq somehow knows what a torn ligament is, and Dono keeps avoiding her. Aw, and after he whacked off in front of her I really thought they had something special together!
The authorities eventually find out about her, and Kratt shows up in a bad mood. He makes Dono twist her arm behind her back for no particular reason, then smacks her around a bit while demanding that she summon the Skykeeper. Zarq, the idiot, blabs that in fact she can’t control it as she had originally claimed, and it only shows up if her life is threatened. This immediately gives Kratt an idea (uh-oh).
Might I add, during this scene we keep getting descriptions of Kratt’s muscles and the way his chest moves. Wow, that is so not appropriate.
Kratt has her tied up just as he did with her father, and threatens her with a disgruntled dragon whose wings are apparently “almost pellucid”, and no I have no idea what that word means. The Skykeeper shows up and scares the dragon off, after which the dragonmaster comes storming up demanding to know what the fresh hell is going on. Kratt says the Temple is getting paranoid and he needed proof… even though there were precisely zero witnesses from the higher-ups present other than himself, and he’s already seen the Skykeeper.
Which means the whole exercise was – you guessed it – completely pointless.
Unfortunately the dragonmaster doesn’t point this out, instead yelling about how Zarq isn’t a Forsaken. We now find out that the Hamlets of Forsaken are “agricultural communities” which have sprung up about the place outside any outside control, with no oversight from the Temple or anyone else. Even so they’re doing quite well, and are directly challenging the Emperor. What, nobody thought to just waltz over there on dragons and slaughter the lot of them? They managed it with Zarq’s original clan and the Zone of the Dead, and they barely did anything.
You know, I really think Ms Cross has no idea how to write a fantasy novel. Clearly she has absolutely no clue that one of the first things you need to do is avoid anachronisms at any cost, because she makes not the slightest effort in that direction. She also, like Paolini, clearly thinks that Long Words Equals Sophisticated and Intelligent.
No, stuffing the text full of annoying pointless neologisms won’t fix that. Sorry.
Kratt then demands that bloody scroll Zarq was whining about earlier, and the dragonmaster says it’s with someone he trusts and promises to produce it. Kratt goes on to ask if Zarq has undergone “the rite” here yet, and we all know what that means. He says no, and he would prefer to test it on some “a few more inductees”. So I guess now we know why some of Zarq’s fellow apprentices have mysteriously disappeared – that moron seriously thinks men can have dragon tongue sex, when he needs a perfect superior all-seeing woman! Haha, it is to laugh. End chapter.
Morning arrives with a particularly sickening thud, cue boring unnecessary descriptions of everyone having breakfast. Zarq finds Dono looking much the worse for wear, and offers to share some venom with him to make him feel better (remember when she did that with Beauty and Beauty had the sense to Just Say No?). Dono asks what it’ll do to him, and she explains that it will kill the pain and make it easier to function.
We then get a boring scene in which Egg continues to talk like he’s British – seriously, get a load of this:
“This is where all the gear is kept, reins an’ saddles an’ parade stuff. [snip] Don’t just stand there! Pair up an’ carry a saddle to the bench.”
Seriously, what the hell? No-one else in the trilogy so far has talked like this, and he’s not established to be a foreigner or anything. Hell, Dono himself periodically speaks like this. What gives? It’s incredibly distracting.
Zarq and Dono then get into a bitchfight over whether he’s prepared to trip the light fantastic with her, and he calls her a “deviant” because of all the venom she’s done, and compares drinking the venom with eating dragon meat, because as far as Temple statute is concerned it’s the same thing. For some reason I’m reminded of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with their weird rule about “blood transfusions R Bad because Incest”.
In any case Dono finally folds and takes the venom. This causes him to get an erection, and now we finally get an explanation for the “venom cock”.
Are you all ready for this? Please make sure you’re not standing up or drinking anything.
Zarq realises that the reason why venom makes men horny is because that will make women horny too, so they’ll be more prepared to do it with a dragon. Funny, I’d have thought it would make the women horny so they’ll be interested in doing it with the men.
There’s a subtext here, and I really don’t like it. The trilogy so far has done a great job of making all its male characters either evil or useless, and now the author has taken it so far to imply that a man’s erection is basically just there to get you interested in screwing an animal. In other words, men are just mindless cattle, and you shouldn’t actually want to have sex with them. Zarq even finds it arousing when she realises Dono is helpless to control his reaction. She starts fondling him and commanding him to say he wants to stay with her, and this just adds disgusting undertones that the venom is a date rape drug.
This is incredibly creepy stuff, guys. Anyone who reads this and then claims sexism and sexual abuse against men isn’t a thing (or worse, doesn’t matter) can go to hell. Where they will have to have my boot surgically removed from their arse.
But never mind about any of that! The text abruptly cuts away to more exposition, in which Zarq explains how life for women used to be even worse. Basically, it was like living under a fundamentalist Muslim dictatorship: women had to wear a “bitoo”, mentioned in the last book but not described, and we now find out that, yep, it’s basically a Burka with a fakey made-up name. They also couldn’t go anywhere without a male escort, and were forbidden to speak in public, or touch a man. We get a story about how Zarq’s great aunt accidentally tripped and grabbed her nephew’s arm, and was then graphically stoned to death for attempting to “seduce” him.
I’m gonna just come out and say it – fuck misogynistic fundamentalist religion, and fuck this author for having the gall to use the horrific and all too real spectre of stoning to try and make us take her groteque little porn novel seriously.
Anyway, we’re then treated to two long and extremely tedious pages of flat description about how the Temple is actually not doing well at the moment and has all sorts of internal problems, which is why the rules have been relaxed since then. And then – get this – Zarq concludes with “but none of that was my concern”, and in fact she didn’t find out about it until two years later!
So why the hell did you see fit to waste two entire pages telling us all about it in excruciating detail, Zarq? And why now? What precisely did that add to the story? I swear, it’s as if the author just stuck her head out of the page and told me “yeah, I was deliberately wasting your time. Suck it!”
After at least two days spent wearing nothing but Kratt’s cape (in other words, basically nude), Zarq decides to make herself a tunic. She steals a blanket and sews one despite never having done so before. I had no idea tailoring was that easy. Or that it was that quick. Because honestly, I’ve done plenty of hand sewing in my time, and it’s one of the most time consuming hobbies around.
We then move on to boring descriptions of Zarq helping to wax some dragon saddles. She teaches the boys how to braid decorations for the things, because apparently all women in this setting know how to braid. One of them gossips about how one of the other Clutches has been attacked by several “Hamlets of Forsaken”. And no, we’re not told what a Hamlet of Forsaken is, thanks for asking.
Zarq realises that the local bigwigs will soon return, and then she’ll probably be beheaded for being a y’know, woman. (Ew, two X chromosones! Grody!). She concludes that she has to go back to the Zone of the Dead to get the scroll which says a circumcised woman is allowed. Rather than ask the dragonmaster for help, she takes an opportunity and runs off like an idiot (again).
She reaches the place eventually, and then has a big emotional moment where she thinks about how much it means to her. She thinks about KZ and her kid, and once again tries to convince us that there was an actual relationship there as she lies about how she “loved them both fiercely” and how their disappearances were “a wrenching loss”. I guess that’s why she didn’t bother to look for them or even ask if they were okay.
Nice try, Ms Cross, but I’m still not buying it.
Then Zarq forgets all about it and starts looking for the scroll. But oh no, she can’t find it! She decides to wait until the Daronpu guy comes back (remember him? The drunken loon who helped Deus Ex Machina her back to life in the last book?), but the guy’s apprentice shows up and says he’s disappeared to parts unknown. He quite rightly accuses her for being responsible for the Zone of the Dead being burned down, and threatens to turn her in, so Zarq runs off. End chapter.
Might I add, we’re not about a third of the way into the book and virtually nothing of any importance has happened. What is it with certain fantasy authors and their insistence on filling hundreds of pages without actually saying anything? Come on.
In the next chapter Zarq gets back only to find Dono waiting for her. Apparently the dragonmaster (now referred to as the Komikon, because keeping to a consistent name for one guy is just too hard) wants to see her. Zarq freaks out and Dono tells her she’s in deep shit and asks where she went. She freaks out even more babbling about how the scroll is gone and she’s done-diddly-done for.
Maybe she’ll get executed! But that won’t happen because then the book would be over and we couldn’t have a third annoying installment. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
Anyway, so the dragonmaster is predictably and quite justifiably pissed. He demands to know where Zarq has been and when she doesn’t answer right away he stabs her under the fingernail (ouch! And was that really necessary?). She spills the beans, and he tells her she’s not allowed to do anything without his permission. Which honestly, is kind of fair enough – he is supposed to be her boss, after all. If I just strolled off to the shops in the middle of work without notifying anyone and didn’t come back for hours, I know my boss wouldn’t be at all happy about it.
He then makes my heart sing by forcing Zarq to call herself stupid and then calling her a brainless moron. Thiis is of course supposed to make him look like an abusive asshole, but instead I found myself nodding in agreement, because a brainless moron is exactly what she is, even if the author won’t admit it. He adds that (duh) if the scroll is needed to prove she’s legit, he’ll deal with it himself.
Again, why didn’t Zarq just go to him about it in the first place?
Oh, right- it’s because she’s a brainless moron. Check, please.
Zarq then randomly concludes that the guy is “insane”, even though he’s shown no sign at all of being anything other than short-tempered and mildly eccentric. Great, I smell another “mad” villain in the offing.
After that Zarq is allowed to go to bed. Next day more uninteresting work ensues, and the other named apprentices continue to talk like backalley Brits. One of them gives her a special twig to chew on which has the same effect as shotgunning a few glasses of wine, and Zarq naturally compares it unfavourably to getting high on dragon venom because it doesn’t have the “accompaniment of giddy puissance”.
I guess Ms Cross has never been drunk before, because mainlining booze generally makes me feel pretty darn special and invincible.
Two of the apprentices invite Zarq to join in their game of
Either way the two apprentices, Ringus and
Here’s something else I’m wondering about: why do the people in this setting worship dragons anyway? They don’t have any magical powers, they’re not fierce hunters (in fact they appear to be mostly vegetarian), they don’t talk or have human level intelligence. What’s so special about them? Gods help me, it’s not the venom, is it? You know, the date rape drug that makes people go crazy? Because if it is you may just see a grown woman cry.
Time passes, Zarq keeps training. She has nightmares about Waivia, brought on by the haunt, and wishes she could shoot up some venom to make it stop. More anachronisms show up, as apparently these people have special equipment for dosing dragons to treat “intestinal parasites” – in other words, sheep drenching for dragons. Zarq wins some admiration because she’s so good at dragon grooming, and during fight training she develops a new technique for defending herself: whipping her cape at the opponent’s balls.
Apparently no-one else has ever thought of going for a nut shot.
Uh-huh, sure. I’m totally buying it. Because it totally takes a woman to figure out that a man’s balls are a tender spot. A man would never have pegged it in a million years. That would be silly!
Blah blah, the dragons all have different personalities (this is of course told, not shown), Zarq somehow knows what a torn ligament is, and Dono keeps avoiding her. Aw, and after he whacked off in front of her I really thought they had something special together!
The authorities eventually find out about her, and Kratt shows up in a bad mood. He makes Dono twist her arm behind her back for no particular reason, then smacks her around a bit while demanding that she summon the Skykeeper. Zarq, the idiot, blabs that in fact she can’t control it as she had originally claimed, and it only shows up if her life is threatened. This immediately gives Kratt an idea (uh-oh).
Might I add, during this scene we keep getting descriptions of Kratt’s muscles and the way his chest moves. Wow, that is so not appropriate.
Kratt has her tied up just as he did with her father, and threatens her with a disgruntled dragon whose wings are apparently “almost pellucid”, and no I have no idea what that word means. The Skykeeper shows up and scares the dragon off, after which the dragonmaster comes storming up demanding to know what the fresh hell is going on. Kratt says the Temple is getting paranoid and he needed proof… even though there were precisely zero witnesses from the higher-ups present other than himself, and he’s already seen the Skykeeper.
Which means the whole exercise was – you guessed it – completely pointless.
Unfortunately the dragonmaster doesn’t point this out, instead yelling about how Zarq isn’t a Forsaken. We now find out that the Hamlets of Forsaken are “agricultural communities” which have sprung up about the place outside any outside control, with no oversight from the Temple or anyone else. Even so they’re doing quite well, and are directly challenging the Emperor. What, nobody thought to just waltz over there on dragons and slaughter the lot of them? They managed it with Zarq’s original clan and the Zone of the Dead, and they barely did anything.
You know, I really think Ms Cross has no idea how to write a fantasy novel. Clearly she has absolutely no clue that one of the first things you need to do is avoid anachronisms at any cost, because she makes not the slightest effort in that direction. She also, like Paolini, clearly thinks that Long Words Equals Sophisticated and Intelligent.
No, stuffing the text full of annoying pointless neologisms won’t fix that. Sorry.
Kratt then demands that bloody scroll Zarq was whining about earlier, and the dragonmaster says it’s with someone he trusts and promises to produce it. Kratt goes on to ask if Zarq has undergone “the rite” here yet, and we all know what that means. He says no, and he would prefer to test it on some “a few more inductees”. So I guess now we know why some of Zarq’s fellow apprentices have mysteriously disappeared – that moron seriously thinks men can have dragon tongue sex, when he needs a perfect superior all-seeing woman! Haha, it is to laugh. End chapter.