pangolin20: A cute Skraeling, done by Epistler (Axis Books)
[personal profile] pangolin20 posting in [community profile] as_sporkive

Did I mention this author sucks at chapter titles? Because the second one here is no exception. It’s called “The Song For Drying Clothes”.

EPIC!!!!!11

Apparently the royal apartments are being restored with help from a bunch of Icarii Enchanters, and generally made more suitable for “The StarMan and the Enchantress”. Because as Queen Sue, Azhure needs her own special title. Naturally.

Naturally we then move on to some Sue Praise for Azhure. I feel right at home already. Apparently the Icarii are “amazed” that she got the special ring of specialness, but obviously she’s the perfect person for the job because she already has the Wolven and the murder puppies and Axis Wubs her (but not enough to stop him from beating her half to death, apparently). And of course, nobody is in any doubt that Azhure will be just as powerful as the StarMan and “a legend in her own right”, etc. etc., Azhure is Special. Despite having accomplished… absolutely nothing other than accruing a bunch of special accessories and privileges she didn’t earn. I guess this is why the author has to keep desperately reiterating how special and important she is – otherwise the reader might catch on.

Anyway, we finally go to – ugh, speak of the devil – Axis, Azhure and StarDrifter, aka three of the most worthless characters to ever exist in any work of fiction. They’re chilling out in their fancy new digs. Axis points out that this room and the Chamber of the Moons (why is it even called that?) are clearly Icarii designed. Because, you’ll have noticed, every nice building occupied by humans in this setting turns out to have actually been built by the Icarii. Because humans suck and can’t build anything nice or spectacular all by themselves – only the special Sue race can do that. I gotta say I’m heartily sick of the constant anti-human themes in pretty much every epic fantasy novel I pick up. Fuck you, humans are awesome, and I should know because I am one. (I checked my medical records, shut up).

StarDrifter, busy lounging on a couch like the smug prick he is, says that once upon a time both human and Icarii lived in Carlon. Meanwhile Azhure’s back is hurting because of pregnancy number two. The two chauvinists tell her to get some rest, but wah wah Axis needs her because she’s just such an Awesome Commander. He also lies to the reader about how totally guilty he feels about “the events of a few days ago”. Which he of course doesn’t refer to in any detail because that might make him look bad, and we can’t have that.

But Azhure, being a Strong Female Character™, wants to keep on with the magical training they’ve just been doing. Rather surprisingly, it’s been going badly as unlike Axis she isn’t just instantly perfect at everything.

We get some blah blah about the Dark Music (and that’s still a really stupid name), and how Azhure can hear it, which other Enchanters can’t. She tries to use the “good”, Star Dance music instead, but it doesn’t work. She can’t even handle the Song for Drying Clothes, which is apparently really easy, and – gasp! – she still has a flaw! Her singing voice still sucks ass!

I take it all back – clearly she’s not a Sue after all. Clearly.

Caelum now proves that he’s just a much of an egomanical little shit as his father and grandfather, as he toddles over to them and hums the stupid song “beautifully”, just to show her up. Azhure bursts into tears and says she’ll never be able to do it, and StarDrifter says maybe the problem is that the two of them aren’t closely related enough to her to teach her properly.

After some argument Azhure says, well maybe Caelum can teach her.

Yeaaaah, seriously. The toddler. Way to demean your beloved heroine even more than you did in the last book, author. Sure she’s Super Powerful and Important, but she still needs to be taught by a fucking baby.

They decide to try it anyway, and Caelum uses the “mind voice” to try and teach her the song. Apparently he’s better at speaking with the “mind voice” than with “his still cumbersome tongue”, and I’m pret-ty sure that is not how speech development works.

Either way this fails too, and the supposed heroes eventually use their three collective braincells to figure out that – DUH – Azhure’s magic is different because again – DUH – when she destroyed the gryphon she didn’t sing a damn thing. So of course she can’t learn magic the same way they did. Axis patronisingly points out that perhaps she’s also having trouble because of all those years she spent blocking out her magic – and maybe the unborn babies are having an effect too.

We learn that when he sang to wake them up it wasn’t nice the way it was with Caelum, because they witnessed the whole thing where Axis “forced Azhure to remember her mother’s death and her subsequent physical and emotional torture at Hagen’s hands”.

Note that the physical and emotional torture she suffered at Axis’ hands doesn’t even warrant a mention.

Either way as a result of this the, uh, unborn babies don’t like their dad and aren’t interested in Azhure either. We now get an “explanation” for why Axis couldn’t sense the “tug of [their] blood”. It’s because they’re “so self-absorbed that their SunSoar blood had not reached out beyond each other”, whatever the hell that means.

Naturally both kids are Enchanters, and are already demonstrating their powers… somehow. Even better, Axis has tried teaching them… in the womb. Which didn’t work. Then StarDrifter had a go, which did work for some reason.

I still can’t get my head around this. Icarii seriously start training their kids in the womb? That’s just… baffling. Either way StarDrifter says they’re not strong enough to block Azhure’s power, and she’ll probably ease naturally into her powers over time. If not, WolfStar will have to teach her himself. Surprisingly sensible thinking, actually.

The next chapter is called “The Sentinels”, and indeed that’s who we open with… in time for some infodumping! Yay!

They’re all sitting together holding hands, and we learn that three thousand years ago their race, the Charonites, got together for some reason. We also learn that twelve thousand years previously the Icarii and Charonites separated because the Icarii worshipped the stars and therefore “developed wings”. Somehow. Which is not how evolution works. As for the Charonites they went underground. Or as the author calls it, the UnderWorld. Which sounds like an amusement park.

But every now and then they left the caves to have some fun in the open air. On this particular night five of them bumped into a guy who looked like an Icarii but without wings, who told them terrible shit was going to go down in three thousand year’s time. They asked how he knows that and he replied that “The burden of prophecy weighs heavily on my soul and it consumes my days and nights” and “Soon I shall retire to solitude and commit what I have seen into words of power and magic.” Whereupon I immediately wanted him to shut the hell up.

The five Sentinels-to-be, rather than immediately assuming he’s a raving loon, instantly believe him and think about what a noble guy he is.

Hey, remember the last time you ran into a crazy guy on a street corner who kept going on about the end times? Did you stop and listen and nod seriously, or quietly edge away? ’Cause the latter is how sentient beings generally react when a random stranger starts raving on about something that is both a) unprovable, and b) sounds completely absurd. Even more so when said stranger insists on telling complete strangers about it. The Sentinels are so gullible I’m amazed they haven’t signed up for six different pyramid schemes and joined the Church of Scientology.

Then the prophet – or rather, WolfStar – recited the moronic prophecy to them, upon which they all started crying because it’s just so terrible. And not even in the sense that it sucks and is really poorly written. After a bunch of blah-blah about how “fragile” prophecies are, during which one idiot likens a prophecy to a garden that needs tending, WolfStar says he needs – I shit you not – a “gardener” to serve the stupid prophecy. Symbolism fail, and hard.

The five of them immediately volunteered for some godsforsaken reason, and became the Sentinels, after which they stayed with WolfStar, who entrusted very nebulous unspecified “secrets” to them and also changed them in some other equally nebulous way so they lost their former identities (not hard since they didn’t have any to begin with).

Cut to the present moment, and the Sentinels are now sharing “warmth and love” and thinking about all the times they’ve had together. Which we never saw and therefore don’t care about. Jackass declares that the stupid prophecy “moves apace” and that when Axis heads north to fight Gorgrael it’ll be time for them to “begin our final duties”. (Fortunately, these duties involve a slow and painful death).

They then move on to Sue praising Azhure, this being one of their real functions in the story, as apparently not only does she get the murder puppies, the Wolven and the Enchantress’ ring, but it’s now revealed that the previous owners were just custodians, while she’s the rightful owner of all those special shiny Sue accessories. Yes, really. Can Azhure please die a slow and horrible death too?

Finally Yr declares that as they’re in Carlon she, Yr, must “go first”, and she’s sad about it. It being something the author hasn’t revealed yet, but let’s just say Yr won’t be sticking around much longer. Mwahahahahah.

The next chapter returns to Timmy, who’s in WolfStar’s boat. Eventually it gets really fuck-off cold and they start sailing among a bunch of icebergs. Timmy hears a noise like thunder, and WolfStar tells him it’s “Talon Spike calving her icebergs into the ocean”. Wait, the Icarii capital is also an iceberg now? Is that how icebergs work? I thought Talon Spike was warm, also an extinct volcano. I’m so confused right now.

Then Timmy sees an “icebear”, aka a polar bear with an unimaginative made-up name slapped on. The bear gets a lot of description and has “uncomfortably all-knowing” eyes, so presumably she’s going to become important.

(Spoilers: She will, and Faraday’s donkeys will be involved. …No, not like that. It’s dumber than that).

Cut to Gorgrael, the tit, fretting over how he has to make a good impression on Timmy. He sounds like a fussy housewife. He’s “waxed” the furniture (where did he get the wax?) and polished everything, and he’s got some wine ready. Am I really supposed to be taking this guy seriously?

Cut back to Timmy. WolfStar guides him ashore and we get several pages of the two of them trekking to Gorgrael’s home, imaginatively named The Ice Fortress. Cue a big description of said fortress, which Timmy declares is – wait for it – “beautiful”. They go inside, and it’s nice there too. They eventually get to Gorgrael, and – oh, for fuck’s sake – Timmy thinks about how in his nightmares he was “forced to mortgage his soul to Gorgrael”.

Mortgaged?? They have mortgages in this setting now? And even if they do that is a horrible metaphor.

Tencendor! Where prophecies are gardens and you can get a payment plan on your soul. I just hope the interest rates are reasonable, or Timmy will really be in trouble.

Anyway, so Timmy is horrified by how ugly Gorgrael is, and we here learn that Gorgrael has wings. Which he will never use. No mention of whether he’s wearing any clothes, by the way. So I’m just going to assume he’s naked and has his leathery dick hanging out. Which will only make the ensuing scene that much more hilarious to read.

Timmy asks him if he wants to destroy the Forbidden, and Gorgrael says yes – and yes, he also wants to “shred” Axis. You and me both, pal. Gorgrael asks him if he’s up for “rescuing” Faraday and Timmy says sure and promises his soul to Gorgrael.

Then Gorgrael… uh… rips Timmy’s shirt off and we get another bit that reads like a rape scene, as he sticks his talons in Timmy’s chest and pulls him close like “a frightful parody of a lover’s embrace”. And this makes the third bad fantasy novel I’ve read where something is “a parody of a lover’s embrace” (the other two were Inheritance and Touched by Venom, in case you’ve forgotten). What the hell is with these guys and their messed up lovers embraces?

Anyway, Gorgael “whimper[s] with pleasure” and implants a “bolt of power” in Timmy while hissing “feel it! Feel it!” Then Timmy feels something “warm and dark writhing in his belly”.

EPIC INNUENDO.

It only gets better, as then Timmy passes out and wakes up feeling awesome, and “Not even Yr at her best had caused him to feel this satisfied”.

Well I guess now he has a better reason to join Gorgrael than “madness” – clearly the guy is fantastic in the sack.

Now Timmy has “the outline of a clawed hand” branded into his chest, and doesn’t remember how it got there, but he feels great about being Gorgrael’s bitch.

The three of them drink some wine, and then we get some exposition about how Gorgrael fucked up strategy-wise in the first book, but that’s okay because now the Skraelings have “bony armour” and are “near-impossible to kill”. In other words, they’ll look different but the Sues will keep mowing them down like grass stalks anyway. Gorgrael adds that he now has “virtually total control over the ice and the wind”. Aw, that’s cute – the author is trying to convince us he’s threatening and dangerous again.

Timmy gives him some advice, then asks why he hasn’t killed the shit out of everyone with ice spears the way he did in book one when Faraday’s mum ate it. Gorgrael makes some excuses, and now he talks exactly like Axis. How the hell did he go from “pretty pretty, tasty tasty” to “But I am afraid that I will not be able to use the ice spears again in any case, although they were such a pretty creation”?

Anyway, then Gorgrael proclaims that he has a new and better weapon. This is of course the gryphon(s). Gorgrael introduces one, but it’s bigger than the original, which shocks WolfStar. Gorgrael says he made a new one from the last dead SkraeBold, “larger, more powerfully built. More intelligent”. None of which will make the slightest difference in the long run of course, but WolfStar isn’t happy about it for some reason.

Gorgrael tells Timmy to give the gryphon scritches like she’s a pet dog, and says he can have one of her pups to ride. Then Gorgrael takes WolfStar aside and confides to him that he’s gone over the guy’s head – the original set of gryphons was only supposed to asexually reproduce twice, but the new lot have no such limits and now he has more than seven hundred of the things and that number will soon swell to “six and a half thousand” and beyond. Gorgrael adds that even if Axis kills him, the gryphons will still wipe out the entire country, and WolfStar is mortified because “the plans of three thousand years” have just “crumble[d] to dust about him”. Yup, the all-powerful all-knowing WolfStar had three thousand years to prepare and it was just that easy to screw him over. Did he not think up any contingency plans at all?

WolfStar is officially an idiot. He just got upstaged by an overgrown toddler with the head of a protoceratops for god’s sake.

And the chapter ends there.

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