Chapter 15 -- Still Alive!

Hey guys, what's happening?  Did I miss anything?

Sorry for the long silence -- I ended up packing up most of my books so I could paint my bedroom, and my copy of Revealing Eden ended up at the bottom of one of the boxes.  (Yes, multiple boxes -- I own a lot of books, okay?)  I'm still in the process of moving stuff back in, but I finally dug out the book and am back to shredding it.  Figuratively, of course, though there may be some literal shredding or even burning done once I'm done with this thing...

I do not advocate book-burning, but in this case

I might make an exception...

Brief recap -- Eden and company have fled into what used to be the Amazon and are among the Huaorani, a real-life indigenous tribe from Ecuador who happen to worship furry!Bramford as El Tigre, their jaguar god.  I've already gone into why this is idiotic and ridiculous last post, so if you want a recap you can re-read the last blog entry while I go bang my head against a desk and bemoan this bastardization of South American mythology.

Okay, I'm done...

Anyhow, Chapter 15 opens with Eden riding in a vehicle with the Huaroani, passing "mud-baked shanties and desolate fields with an occasional tree or small rodent scurrying past."  (p. 106)  I thought the upper world was lifeless -- why are there still trees and animals?  Unless by "small rodent" you mean "very large cockroach," seeing as those things are supposed to be able to survive just about anything, up to and including nuclear war, but maybe Foyt thinks any animal with fur is magically immune to The Heat.

We get a paragraph of Eden whining about how hot and dirty she is, and figuring she only has a week or two to survive in the upper world.  I'm feeling absolutely no tension or concern for this heroine, as she's not only completely unlikable, but apparently completely unkillable too.  She has an unfair amount of luck for how sociopathic she is, seriously.

She stared daggers at the back of Bramford's head.  The beast seemed to enjoy the ride.  His broad back and alert posture reminded her of a big cat attuned to subtle signs.  Signs Eden couldn't read without her Life-Band.  -- p. 106-107

Have I added "take a drink every time Bramford's referred to as a beast" to the drinking game rules yet?  If not I need to...

Eden's hands crawl "like spiders" to her backpack (awkward analogy GO!) in the hopes of finding a Life-Band in there, and thinks of contacting Shen.  There's an awkward aside about how Shen's name means "strong spirit" in Chinese, though according to Google it actually means "the spiritual element of a person's psyche," so again Foyt's did a crappy job at her research.  She hopes if Shen comes, then she can convince Bramford to send her and her father back home.  Sorry, Eden, you're still needed for the book's prerequisite "opposites attract" romance...

Eden also has a flashback to working in the lab with her father, and doing her first DNA analysis at age six.  This is probably meant to show just how BRILLIANT and SMART our "genius" heroine is, but considering Eden's shown no intelligence up until this point, it's pretty much there just to back up an Informed Attribute.  

Also during this flashback, we learn that apparently Eden's father goes by the philosophy of "wait and see."  Confused?  So's Eden, and frankly, so am I, so Dr. Newman gives us this story:

"Some of the biggest discoveries have come from plans gone awry.  Think of Albert Einstein unable to obtain a university job.  For two years he suffered odd jobs and even questioned his goal of becoming a physicist.  Imagine that.

"Forced to take a lowly position as a clerk at the patent office, Einstein found 'a kind of salvation,' as he put it.  The regular salary and stimulating work of evaluating patent claims freed him to think, even to dream.  He began to publish important physics papers and change the world.

"You see, Daught, we must be patient.  One door closes and another opens.  Wait and see."  -- p. 107-108

Not a bad philosophy, I suppose.  And for once, it looks like Foyt did her research -- Einstein did work at a patent office, and he enjoyed both the salary and the fact that it was intellectually undemanding enough to let his mind run free on scientific matters.  Which just makes the fact that she half-asses so much of her other research inexcusable in my mind.

Of course, it seems Eden only took this philosophy to mean "wait long enough and you'll find your dreamy dark-skinned prince who sees the Real Eden."  Typical.  

She spends the rest of the car ride analyzing everything Jamal ever said to her, wishing she'd listened to the dog's warning (oh, NOW you think about Austin) and that she was prettier.  You know, for all you've hyped Eden to be a strong, intelligent character, she sure only seems to care about finding a boy to mate with.  The fact that you've set up this society so that women have to be mated by age 18 or die only makes it worse in my mind.  

They end up at a small settlement by the river, with native women and children dressed in rags and covered in rashes -- because of course these people are primitive and so live in squalor, right?  No matter what your race is, this book treats you like crap, it seems... 

Also, we get descriptions of "patches of wild jungle."  Again, if The Heat is so destructive that it ruined the surface world and baked away all vegetation, how did the rainforest, one of the most delicate ecosystems out there, manage to survive?  This place should be a freaking desert!  There shouldn't be random patches of jungle anywhere!  Even if it is along the banks of a river -- you are aware there can still be rivers in a desert, right Foyt?

Oh hey look, more random lusting over Bramford!

Bramford's gaze raked over her as he passed her by.  She watched him head into a palm grove, mesmerized by the rippling of his muscled back and hips.  He moved with the simple grace and powerful confidence of a predator.  No wasted energy, no self-consciousness.  What must that be like?  -- p. 109

Still not sorry...

Suddenly Eden freaks out as the earth seems to move under her -- but it's just ants (and yes, we get the Latin name, because EDEN IS SO SMRT AMIRITE?).

Eden freaks again as the ants crawl all over her, runs, and trips in a mud puddle, which gets the native kids laughing at her.  She just thinks that at least the "pompous action hero" didn't see her fall, which I assume means Bramford.  Still not seeing how these two are supposed to get together, though I'm pretty sure they're going to be in TRUE LOVE FOREVER by the end...

She sits down by the "moribund" river -- that's the word used in the book, seriously.  "Moribund" means "dying" or "at the point of death," but the word doesn't seem to fit here.  Foyt seems to fall into the same trap of thesaurus abuse that Christopher Paolini did in his Inheritance books -- namely, using whatever word in the thesaurus catches her eye without stopping to think if it's an appropriate word choice.  

One of the natives sets Eden's father down on a giant banana leaf.  Instead of thanking them for not setting him on the ground, all she can think is that this place is so poor that their idea of comfort is "a leaf for a bed."  Would it kill you to show a bit of gratitude, Eden?  She at least shows enough human decency to ask if he's all right, since his leg is bleeding again, but he just says something about "the amazing variety of flora" and maybe discovering a new species here.  Shouldn't most animals be dead of The Heat by this point?  Oh wait, rainforests are apparently magically resilient to The Heat and animals are immune to it too... my bad... 

Someone brings them bowls of mashed yucca plant, which Eden refuses to eat.  Her father says "when you're starving you'll eat anything," and all she can think about is how much of a failure she is.  Of course.  *eyeroll*

The guy who brought them food -- Lorenzo (which is a Spanish and Italian name, so why a native from Ecuador would be called that I have no idea) -- also brings them coca leaves (yes, we get the Latin name for these too).  As in the same leaves used to make cocaine.  For a moment I thought Eden was going to scarf these up instead of the food, considering them a good substitute for oxy, but she refuses to.  Not because she's suddenly against drug use but because "they're dirty."  

Eden freaks out AGAIN when she finds they're going to be traveling by boat now.  Again, how is this supposed to be our strong protagonist?  And of course, "like any Pearl," she's scared of water.  What does being a Pearl have to do with being afraid of water?  

Eden takes off "for privacy" and goes to search the backpack, hoping to find a Life-Band.  And that's where the chapter ends.

Apparently Eden's gotten tired of making black people and Asians look terrible, so now we're moving on to trashing indigenous Americans.  No matter what your race is, you're going to be insulted reading this thing...