Chapter 41 - The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

Second-to-last post for this awful, awful book!  (The last two chapters are fairly short, so I decided to combine them into one post.)  Almost there!

Less than a month until The Last Jedi

as of this writing, by the way...

Also, this chapter ends up being the climax of our book.  You'd think Dr. Newman's illness being cured or some huge conflict between Bramford and Eden would end up being the book's climax, but apparently Eden decided we needed a huge action scene instead of actually resolving any of this book's pressing issues.  So she pulls one out of her butt for this scene.  At least I can crow about how I was right, Eden screwed things up for everyone...

Eden wakes up to hear wailing outside the prison hut, and she goes to the window to listen -- apparently the window's too high up for her to look out of.  (Then why have a window in the first place, I wonder...)  She hears men's voices, footsteps, and "heartbreaking cries" that she realizes must be Carmen and Etelvina.  

The door opens, and surprise, surprise, it's the FFP -- including Giant and Squeaky from many, many chapters ago.  Giant goes "Yum, Pearlie" and grabs Eden, going in for a kiss.  Ick, ick, ick... yeah, making your black characters into big scary wannabe-rapists is really the way to fight racism via your writing... *sarcasm*

Nobody kisses a she-cat without her permission, she decided, kneeing him hard in the groin. -- p. 289

She-cat is still a really stupid name, but whatever... one fragment of a star for making our protagonist slightly more proactive, I guess.

The knee in the crotch floors Giant, and Eden dashes past him to come face to face with... Jamal?

Wait... what?  But... but... HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!

"Yeah, weird..."

Mkay, having a seemingly dead character actually be alive is rather common in fiction... but it needs to make sense and serve an actual purpose in the story.  I've seen this trope abused and misused all too often, however (and even done my share of abusing it in the past), and all too often it's used as a "retcon" tool -- an author wants to kill off a character to add drama to a story or get rid of a villain, only to later realize they want a happy ending or need the villain back for the grand finale, and so bring said character back without a reasonable explanation.  

In Revealing Eden's case, it feels like the latter case -- Foyt wanted a grand finale and, instead of using one of the existing conflicts, decided she needed to resurrect a villain to get it.  Just my thoughts on it.

She took in the damage she had inflicted, feeling both horrified and vindicated.

He walked with a hitch, dragging one leg.  Hideous scar tissue crisscrossed the warrior tattoo, which now resembled a terrified old man.  The grin Eden once admired angled down one side of his face, making him look crazy.  Finally, Jamal looked as ugly as he was on the inside.  At least he wouldn't be able to trade on his looks in order to dupe the next girl. -- p. 290

Of COURSE Foyt would see being made ugly the ultimate punishment for a villain.  Because in Foyt's dystopian world, Beauty Equals Goodness.  Or at least it does inside the shallow brain of our protagonist.

"I had my doubts about you, [Eden].  But you've proven to be enormously helpful to the cause.  We never would have found this place without your message."

Called it

"What did you do to Shen?"

"He has needs.  Everyone does."  Jamal made a disapproving tsk, tsk sound.  "His mate is a Pearl, didn't you know?" -- p. 290

I could have sworn that earlier in this book Eden remarked about there being enormous amounts of hatred between all the races.  But there sure is an awful lot of intermarrying between the races if that's the case -- both Bramford and Shen have white mates, Shen is at least half-black...  Continuity?  What's that?

Eden thinks the obvious -- that Shen had been forced to choose between his brother and his mate and had chosen the latter.  We could infer as much from the text, Foyt, you don't have to spell it out for us.  Believe it or not, a LOT of readers aren't idiots.

Eden tells Jamal he's too late, that Bramford's gone and he'll never find him.  Jamal says "he'll come back for the boy."  Oh dear... I don't care what you do to Eden, Jamal, but leave that kid alone.

Squeaky (sigh) drags Eden to the clearing where the rest of the tribe is gathered, including her father.  Jamal heads for Logan's hut, skirting around a pile of leaves.  Eden figures he's trying to avoid whatever animals might be hiding in the leaves, but I'm thinking "obvious trap is obvious."  Especially since there's a guard there acting all shifty-eyed...

Jamal drags Logan out of the hut, and tries to rip off his bat-mask when we hear Bramford's roar.  Here comes the REAL hero of the story, folks.

Just then Eden glimpsed a young soldier, no more than thirteen-years-old, peeking out from behind a nearby tree.  His light brown skin puzzled her.  How had a Coal of such obvious mixed race been accepted into the FFP?  -- p. 291-292

Foyt, you do know that black people come in more shades than jet-black and really, really dark brown, right?  Also, you have less than three chapters to go, why are you suddenly dumping in another "really obviously important" character now?

The guard gives the leaves a pointed look, which is Foyt's really obvious way of pointing out to the protagonist that...

Seriously, she couldn't make it any more obvious had she stuck Admiral Ackbar in there to point it out.  If your protagonist is really SO SMART, can't she guess this herself?  I'm starting to think that your SO SMART protagonist is either not as smart as you want us to believe, or limits her smarts to memorizing Latin names and Emily Dickinson poetry.

And of course Bramford runs right into the trap -- a net that hauls him up into the trees cartoon-net style.  Kevon -- the young guard, who gets his name pointed out because obviously he's going to be important later -- ties the net up while Jamal gloats about having caught "the entire freakish Bramford family."

"You see, Eden.  You underestimated me."

"You'll never make it out of here alive," she said, though she wondered what could stop him now.

"Wrong again.  With your father's technology, I can command the FFP.  I can have whatever I want.  Including you." -- p. 292

Oh, how I weep for a future where the ability to turn people into jaguar furries is such cutting-edge, valuable technology that people are willing to kill for it.  This isn't green energy or the atomic bomb or a cure for cancer, this is half-assed DNA research for splicing cat genes into people.  I'm just not seeing how this can give anyone a powerful advantage over others.

Oh, and apparently Jamal's burn scars have dropped his mate-rate down to the point where the mate he chose rejected him and Eden's now his only chance at getting a mate.  I thought mate-rates were based on your genes, not on your looks.  Your face might be burned, dude, but your genes should still be healthy.  Wait, I forget, in this world beauty means everything... but still, it's not like burn scars are something you can pass down to your kids...

Okay, Kenya, stop trying to assign logic to this book in any way.

Still trying to find a single shred of logic in this book...

Jamal even offers Eden a "peace offering," and drags out... oh no, oh Primus no, I can kinda-sorta buy Jamal surviving the fire at the labs, but there's the Never Found the Body trope, however thin the explanation might be, and then there's THIS.

Yes, it's Austin, Eden's dog.  The dog that she showed little to no sign of caring about until the labs -- and presumably the poor pooch -- blew up, and then moaned and angsted over.  Okay, Foyt's fallen into BOTH sides of the "back from the dead" cliche now -- wanting a "beloved" character back for a happy ending and wanting a villain back to ensure a climactic showdown.  Foyt, you are a HACK.

"Now where were we?" Jamal said, leering at her.  "Oh, yes, mates."

"I'll go with you under one condition," Eden said.

"You're in no position to bargain, pet."

She pretended more confidence than she felt.  "Let the boy go and I'll do whatever you want."

Jamal laughed.  "Do you know how much I can get for an albino?  Especially, the Cotton son of the Great Bramford?"  He approached the netted cage.  "Or maybe I'll keep the boy a secret in exchange for the keys to Bramford Industries." -- p. 293

Yeah, yeah, we have to have it rubbed in how EEEEEEEEVIL Jamal is because he Would Hurt a Child.  Having a villain willing to hurt or kill kids is just as cheap a means of making them evil as making a villain a rapist -- it's a lazy shortcut.  I'm not saying villains can NEVER hurt kids or commit rape, I just see it used all too often as a substitute for, y'know, actual character development.  Even villains are boring if they're flat.

Jamal kicks Bramford, Eden yells at him to not hurt him and that she loves him, and Jamal slaps her and calls her a "Pearl bitch."  Eden retorts that "at least I know how it feels to love," and Jamal retorts by ripping off Logan's mask and asking how she can love a man who's produced an albino.  This finally prompts Eden to try to do something... so lame action sequence ahoy, y'all.

She gave him [Squeaky] a swift kick in the knees and he collapsed.  But as she reached for his weapon, something whizzed by in the air.  The soldier guarding Logan's hut fell forward, a dart lodged in his neck.  Whoosh!  Another well-aimed dart felled the man who guarded the women and children.  Then Austin's handler slumped to the ground.  In a panic, the young soldier retreated behind the roped tree. -- p. 294

Okay, first of all, these guards are really lousy if a wimpy girl can take them down by kicking them.  And second of all, where are these darts coming from if the FFP has all the villagers rounded up?  You'll find out, and believe me, I'm going to complain about it...

Jamal pulls out a laser gun, but Eden sics Austin on him and the dog grabs his arm.  I wasn't aware that Eden had trained her dog to be an attack dog...  Squeaky grabs his machete and goes after Eden, but a dart takes him down and "blood spurted from his mouth," which shouldn't be happening if he just got hit with a dart.  But when has Foyt ever cared about medical accuracy?

But Jamal had the last laugh.  With his free hand, he reached for the laser and pointed it at Austin's head. 

"Call him off, Eden, or I'll kill him," he said. -- p. 295

When your novel's big climax is ripped off from

National Lampoon magazine, maybe it's time to quit

Eden screams for Jamal to shoot her instead, and jumps for the weapon.  But Austin proves that he's the most heroic character in this novel by jumping between Eden and the gun, taking the shot meant for her.  This is supposed to be a huge tear-jerker moment, but since Austin has been absent for almost all this book and Eden didn't even show she cared about him until she thought he died the first time around, it just comes across as a laughable cliche.  This scene was actually done much better in the book This Book Is Full Of Spiders (yes, that's the actual title), mostly because the dog was an actual supporting character instead of a plot device, and we already had proof that the characters cared about her before she met her untimely but heroic end.

Yeah, when both National Lampoon and a comedy-horror novel by a Cracked writer that was specifically written as a satire of zombie-apocalypse novels do something better with your concept than you do, you know you screwed up.

Meanwhile Logan gets ahold of a machete and uses it to stab Jamal in the chest.  Holy crow, that's a scary kid... and it's sad when the dog and the seven-year-old boy are more heroic characters than the supposed "hero" of the novel...

Oh, and those darts we saw earlier?  We finally get to see who fired them.

A breeze rustled over the compound and, even before Eden saw the me who had aided them, she realized who they were.  The Aztec warriors stepped into the light as silent as the trees from which they took their camouflage of bark and leaves.  In their hard-set expressions, Eden detected wisdom and, to her surprise, deep compassion. -- p. 295-296

So the Aztec warriors Bramford mentioned a few chapters ago happened to swoop in and save our protagonist's bacon.  I've already harped about how Aztecs shouldn't exist in Ecuador, so instead I'm going to call Deus Ex Machina on this development.  Foyt wrote her characters into an impossible situation, then instead of having them think their way out for themselves she just pulled a solution to the problem out of her butt.  I don't care that we got a mention of this "solution" in an earlier chapter, this still feels chucked in as a lazy excuse to not come up with a reasonable conclusion to the situation.

This in a nutshell -- comic comes from 

"Tom the Dancing Bug"

Bramford gets released from the net, and the Aztecs shove Kevon into the clearing and grab Giant before disappearing, taking Giant with them.  Eden cries as the women of the tribe take the wounded Austin away, and she prays to Mother Earth for him not to die.  There's an awful lot of praying in this book for this future supposedly giving up on religion...

And because apparently this whole brush with death is going to make Bramford forgive Eden instantly, despite the fact that THE ENTIRE THING WAS ALL HER FAULT, Bramford hugs and comforts Eden as she cries over Austin.  Dude... just ditch her and run.  Run far and fast and don't look back.  But then, I suppose it's too late, Foyt wants you two to be a couple and a couple you will be, no matter that Eden sold you out...

Bramford held her tight until the storm inside her passed.  She knuckled her eyes dry, wondering how he could be so annoying at times and then as irresistible as moonlight.

"I love you, Eden Newman," Bramford whispered in her ear.

Then he drew her into a deep kiss. -- p. 296-297

Because nothing says "make-out time" like your girlfriend selling you out to a racist organization and almost getting you and your son killed, am I right?  *sigh*

Going to cover the last two chapters in the next post... then there'll be a final wrap-up/response post before I conclude this spork once and for all.  Then it's bonfire time...

Burn, baby, burn!