Bitterwood Chapter 1 -- If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten

For those wondering if there was a glitch and we started sporking the wrong book by accident, don't worry -- the dragons actually show up in this chapter.  Whether that improves things or makes them worse I'll leave up to you, gentle reader...

Chatper One, "Lightning," opens in the year 1099 DA (Dragon Age), in Year 68 of Albekizan's reign -- twenty-nine years since Preacher Man slaughtered half a village and forcibly converted our protagonist and his girlfriend/forced wife to God.  After that promising start, you'd think there'd be nowhere for this book to go but up, huh?

And because the name Alba-whatever is even more unwieldy than Eragon's villainous name Galbatorix, I can promise you I'm going to bungle it up every time I type it.  You decide if it's accidental or I'm just doing it on purpose to amuse my readers further...

Or a blog full of people eager for a

little schadenfreude

The sad little fire gave out more smoke than warmth.  The hunter crouched before it, turning a chunk of ash-flecked meat on the flat stone he'd placed amidst the coals.  The movement of the stone stirred more smoke.  The hunter coughed and wiped soot from his eyes.  He stretched his bony, knotted fingers above the embers, fighting off the chill.  He was a thin man, hair shoulder-length and grey, the deep lines of his leathery face forming a permanent frown.  He pulled his heavy cloak more tightly around him.

In the tree above him hung the body of a dragon, blood dripping from its mouth. -- p. 25

Aw man, the first dragon we meet and it's dead.  Curses.  Also the author packs a LOT of separate actions into that opening paragraph, which just makes it feel overly busy.  If all the actions were connected in some way, a logical chain of actions (reach out, check the food, flip it over, put it back), it wouldn't be such a big deal.  As it is, it feels choppy.

The dragon is apparently a sky-dragon, which seems pretty redundant -- most people picture dragons as flying creatures, even the wingless Chinese l'ung that are technically not dragons but get called that anyhow for lack of a better translation.  Apparently sky-dragons get called that for their pretty blue color.  Imaginative...

The text also makes it a point to say that the sky-dragons are the smallest species of dragon and aren't particularly dangerous despite having claws and "saw-like" teeth, and indeed are highly civilized and "fancied themselves as artists, poets, and scholars."  So when the text also brags that the hunter's killed plenty of sky-dragons over the years, it really doesn't make him seem more badass or awesome -- just that he likes to target the weakest dragons possible.

The hunter had brought the sky-dragon down with a single arrow, expertly placed on the underside of the jaw, the iron tip coming to rest dead center in the dragon's brain.  The beast had fallen from the air like a suddenly dead thing, catching in the crook of a tree.  -- p. 26

Maybe because it IS a "suddenly dead thing?"  Similes don't exactly work when the thing in question is Shaped Like Itself.  According to Dictionary.com, a simile is "a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared."  (Emphasis my own.)  Saying that the dead dragon fell from the sky like a suddenly dead thing is like saying "a rose is like a rose" or "a bad fantasy novel is like a bad fantasy novel."  It doesn't work except for humor purposes (like the famous "that snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me!" in Weird Al Yankovic's "Albuquerque"), and I really doubt that's what Maxey was going for here.

Also, I think this scene would have worked much better if the chapter had actually opened with our hunter shooting down the dragon instead of skipping directly to the aftermath.  Show, don't tell, folks.

The hunter stole the dragon's satchel, stared at its head and decided it reminded him of a goat's head, and cut out its tongue, which is the source of the meat now cooking on the fire.  He roots through the satchel, finding a bottle of wine, bread, apples, jerky, and something called "horch" which is a paste made of fermented fish guts and chilies.  Ew...

I gotta ask, though -- why is a dragon carting around this kind of food?  The jerky is understandable, but apples and bread?  The dragon was described as having crocodile-like jaws and teeth, which indicates a meat-eater that's not really built for being omnivorous.  Wouldn't it make more sense for this dragon to be packing meat instead of human-style food?  I think Maxey wanted the human-style food to be a convenient find for his hunter and didn't think of the logistics...

There's a few other items in the bag, including a silk blanket and a jar of ink "made from vinegar and walnut husks."  I don't know why that's important enough to be emphasized.  There's also quills made from the dragon's own feather-like wing-scales (neat, but not sure how that's important either) and a leather-bound book full of sketches and notes about flowers.  Poor dragon, he just wanted to study flowers before getting shot down...

Rendered in dark walnut ink, the flowers had a life and beauty.  The blossoms swelled on the page seductively enough to tempt bees.

The hunter ripped out the drawings and fed them to the crackling fire.  The paper writhed as if alive, curling, crumbling into large black leaves that wafted upward with the smoke, the inky designs still faintly visible until they vanished in the dark sky. -- p. 27

I find that quite a few writers will try to spice up their writing by including random "flowery" bits like the above -- sections of description that stand out against the plain-ness of the rest of the story, Purple Prose against Beige Prose.  Not only does the inconsistency stand out, but extra description like this should really be saved for important details, not random bits.

The hunter used his knife to retrieve the roasted tongue and sat back against the tree, oblivious to the blood soaking the trunk.  As he chewed his meal, he stared at the ink bottle.  It stirred memories.  Memories for the hunter were never a good thing. -- p. 28

See what I mean?  The step up in descriptive writing would have served this paragraph much better than the previous one of randomly burning paper.  It's the more important passage, and thus needed the extra emphasis, not the Beige Prose.

The hunter picks up the book, doodles on a page with one of the quills, and then writes his ABCs until "it all came back to him."  I'm going to guess Maxey means his writing skills, though he's unclear here and could be referring to anything, really.

Also the paper's apparently "white like an apple blossom.  White like a young bride's skin."  Again, know where it's appropriate to insert random ornate description, people...

The hunter starts writing a letter to Recanna.  It's probably obvious who our hunter is by this point -- our "hero," Bant Bitterwood.  At this point are we going to learn what happened to him and his wife and their homicidal teacher since we last met them?  

Nope -- Bant quits writing the letter halfway through and tosses the book on the fire, saying "this was not a night to lose himself in memory and melancholy."  So much for fleshing out our hero a little more... or answering any questions...

Page break, and we get drums, a choir of sky-dragons, a royal chamber, and a brand new character!  Aren't you excited?

Jandra shivered with excitement as the ceremony began.  She was sixteen now, and this was the first time she'd persuaded Vendevorex to allow her to attend the contest.  For centuries the sun-dragons had used this ritual as the first step toward the enthronement of a new ruler.  She would be the first human to ever witness the ceremony.

More precisely, she reminded herself, she would be the first human to ever witness the ceremony and survive.  She looked at the two human slaves in their cages across the room.  She knew her sympathy should lie with them.  Alas, it was difficult to feel any connection to the brutish, wild-eyed men in the cages.  Wearing her blue satin gown with an elaborate peacock headdress, Jandra felt more kinship with the dragons that surrounded her. -- p. 29

Vendevorex?  Maxey's names for his dragons aren't QUITE on the level of "decide your fantasy names by letting your cat walk across the keyboard," but they're still ridiculous.  I hereby dub Vendevorex Vortex, because I can.

And because it amuses me to picture a

Decepticon hanging out with dragons as I

spork this book

Vortex is the king's personal wizard, and the king puts up with his quirks -- including having raised Jandra from infancy as his apprentice -- because he's supposedly "the most clever dragon in the kingdom."  If the dragons are as harsh as Maxey will have us believe later on in the book, I can't see them allowing a human to be trained as a wizard's apprentice.  Kept as a pet maybe (and we will meet human pets later on in the book), but not treated as an equal.  

There seem to be three kinds of dragons in attendance at this ceremony -- "brutish, thick-muscled" earth dragons, "elite, scholarly" sky-dragons, and sun-dragons (named for their red-and-orange coloring, apparently) who are apparently the nobility of the dragon clans.  

Twice the size of sky-dragons, they ruled the world with their heads held high in the regal air that came so naturally to them.  -- p. 30

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds that phrase awkward...

The info-dumping on the types of dragons is interrupted by two sun-dragons flying in -- King Azkaban and Queen Tanthia (hey, a name that's actually halfway not-ridiculous!).  Then we get another infodump describing the ceremonial hall, a circle "hundreds of yards in diameter" half covered with a dome and half open to the sky.  Sounds like a Super Bowl stadium to me...

Also, dragons are apparently bipedal and walk like "toothy, scaly chickens."  Which kind of ruins any attempt at giving us a sense of grandeur at these creatures...

The king and queen sit down on mounds of cushions on a dais as golden doors open to admit the High Biologian, an old sky-dragon named Metron.  How come some characters have names that are halfway reasonable and others get silly ones?  Also, High Biologian?  Why not High Wizard?  I have no idea right now...

Then two more dragons fly in, landing with "downy grace" in the center of the hall.  Downy grace?  Downy is defined as "fluffy or soft" or "covered in down."  I can see these dragons landing with "gentle" grace or even "soft" grace (though that last one is a stretch), but "downy?"  Don't just pick the first word in the thesaurus, people -- make sure it actually fits what you're describing!

Not sorry for abusing this meme

These dragons are apparently named Bodiel and Shandrazel.  Someone's really in love with their silly names...

Bodiel was radiant.  The crimson of his open wings blended with the sunset behind him as if all the sky were part of his being.  The wind ruffled his feathery scales, making the mane of his long, serpentine neck flicker like flame.  Light played on the rings of gold that pierced his wings.  He stretched and relaxed the long, powerful talons at the mid-joint of each wing, displaying sharp claws painted with powdered emerald.  The crowd nodded with silent approval at the display.  Jandra's heart fluttered at Bodiel's beauty. -- p. 31

Dear Primus, no, please not a dragon/human romance.  We just got our overdose of borderline-bestiality from the last book we sporked...

Shandra-whozit doesn't get such a vivid description -- he just scowls and stares at the floor.  Guess which one of these two is going to be the one that gets offed and kicks off the plot proper...

Metron gives a long and flowery speech about Alakazam's two mighty sons, and how each his his pride and promise.  Then we finally get an explanation of how the rite of succession works for dragons... and boy, is it a doozy.

Apparently these aren't King Alakazoo's oldest sons -- he's had several before.  But tradition decrees that the heir to the throne is banished from the kingdom, then must return and kill the king in order to claim the throne.  So... the dragons are essentially the Sith?

Sorry, but this just seems wasteful.  What happens if none of the king's sons are able -- or willing -- to kill him and take the throne by force?  What happens if the king ends up killing off all his offspring and dies without an heir?  And doesn't this kind of succession just breed hostility in the royal family instead of a strong line that'll, I dunno, actually rule effectively instead of constantly worrying about being stabbed in the back Starscream-style?  I mean, it works for the Sith, because anger and hostility and treachery fuel the Dark Side, but in this case it just seems counter-productive.

Pictured -- not the best person to give advice

on how to get ahead in politics

Also, whoever wins this contest will be the son banished from the kingdom to plot his taking of the throne, while the other will be castrated and sent to the libraries to serve Metron for the rest of his days.  Again, not effective.  Wouldn't you want some kind of backup ready to take the throne in case Abracadabra kills off the rest of his progeny and kicks the bucket without an heir?  You're essentially sterilizing half the family tree just to keep up a stupid tradition.

And while I'm all for Maxey giving these dragons their own culture and traditions, they have to make sense.  Most traditions in the real world have some basis, whether it's religious or flat-out common sense.  Here it feels inserted just to ensure the dragons are especially barbaric, when in reality a tradition like this would wipe out the royal line within a couple generations.

As the sun set, few in the great hall doubted that before dawn Bodiel would defeat his brother... Jandra saw no reason to doubt the consensus of the crowd.  She believed that one day Bodiel would return and vanquish his father to seize the kingdom.  She hoped he would be a fair and wise ruler. -- p. 33

Yup, Bodiel's gonna die... 

The contest itself involves releasing the two human slaves -- Cron and Tulk, which sound more like cave men than anything else -- and having the dragon princes hunt down their assigned slave and kill it.  So the future of the kingdom rests on who can best squish a human.  Lovely.  I get that these ARE predators, and they'd probably want the ultimate predator on their throne... but here it just feels like Maxey's doing everything possible to make his dragons EVIL and bloodthirsty and entirely against humans.

The humans are released and run away.  Albatross grumps that "humans these days are worthless" and why can't they find any more good prey.  Metron points out that they've always culled the best men from the human villages for hunts, so it only makes sense that humanity's in decline.  I have a feeling I might actually like Metron -- it sounds like he may be one of the few logical characters in the book.

Vortex suggests banning the sport of human-hunting to let "the human stock" recover, but Albus blows him off and accuses him of being soft.  He says they make "fine pets and adequate game" but he hates how their stench sullies his kingdom, even though Vortex points out that humans provide dragonkind with food and gold.  Can we make these dragons any more Obviously Evil?

Albeedo declares that the hunt can begin, and Bodiel flies off.  Shandrazel stays where he is, though, and refuses to join in the ceremony.

"Father," Shandrazel said, then paused to take a breath.  After a moment he looked up, facing the king squarely.  He said in a firm but respectful tone, "You know my feelings.  I do not desire your throne.  I will not hunt Tulk.  This ceremony is archaic and cruel.  There is no need for blood to be shed.  Simply appoint Bodiel as your successor.  Your word is law." -- p. 35

Looks like we have our token sympathetic dragon here.  I predict that at some point he runs into Bant and forces Bant to overcome his prejudice against dragons to make an alliance of some kind with him.  (This is not a spoiler -- it's legitimately been so long since I read this book the first time that much of the plot is foggy to me...)

Afghanistan rages at Shandrazel, spit flying -- you know a character is the bad guy when they go into a literal spitting rage.  But while the king's distracted yelling at his son, lightning flashes and Bodiel can be seen diving into the trees beyond the hall... and the queen screams.

"Oh!" Queen Tanthia cried.  "Oh no!"

"What is it, my love?" Albekizan asked.  "Is our rebellious son breaking your heart?"

"It's the shadows," Tanthia said, quivering.  "The shadows in the room have grown so dark.  I feel their chill in my soul." -- p. 36

First off, while dramatic lightning is cool, it is a bit of an overused trope.  Second of all, unless it's been established that the queen is clairvoyant, having the cliched premonition of doom is tiring and a bad way to foreshadow something bad happening.  Just my thought.

At that moment, a mournful, anguished howl rose from the distant forest.  Lightning flashed and thunder washed away the voice.  The wind twisted, whipping back into the hall with a harsh blast of cold rain, sending the torch flames dancing wildly.  Tanthia gasped as one of the torches extinguished, a soul forever lost.

"He's dead!" Tanthia cried.  "My son is dead!" -- p. 37

Okay, it was NOT established that the torches are linked to the dragon's lives at all.  Why would a torch going out be proof that Bodiel's dead?  I get that it's a clumsy attempt at being symbolic and all, but it just feels melodramatic and cliche here.

The king and the other prince stop fighting and fly off to go find Bodiel.  Vortex tells Jandra they should go and sprinkles some silver dust that apparently makes them invisible, then leads her away... and another page break.

THIS section is from Shandrazel's point of view, and here the author hammers home how he's one of the few good dragons in a species of complete villainy.

Shandrazel hated flying in the rain... yet duty drove him, duty and love.  Despite their differences, he loved his father and cherished his spirited younger brother.  He hoped that no harm had come to either of them.  -- p. 38

Because no other dragon can be capable of love, am I right?  But wait, there's more... and we get THIS doozy of a line.

Despite his father's keenness for the sport of hunting humans, Shandrazel saw no more challenge in it than he did in his mother's appetite for devouring baskets of white kittens. -- p. 38

Delicious and nutritious, taste just like chicken!*

BWAHAHAHAHAAH seriously?  It's not enough that the dragons hunt and oppress humans -- Maxey literally has to make them so evil that they eat kittens!  This is so cartoonishly evil that it ceases to be at all believable.  Maxey is obviously not interested in making compelling, complex villains.  He just wants to take the shortcuts to make his characters as obviously, cartoonishly evil as possible.  Even if kittens have to be sacrificed to ensure it.

Sorry... I'm a firm believer that villains can be complex and even sympathetic, and it drives me nuts when writers don't even bother to develop their villains beyond "hahaha, look at me, I'm EVIL!"

Shan (just gonna call him Shan from here on out) spots a dead dragon in a tree, but it's the sky-dragon Bant killed much earlier.  Also, the corpse stinks because "the sky-dragons bowels had loosened after death."  Fair warning -- Maxey is obsessed with poop.  It'll come up quite a bit in this novel...

"His name was Dacorn," said Shandrazel.  "A biologian.  He taught me botany during my summer on the Isle of Horses.  Who would do such a thing?  He was a gentle soul.  He had no enemies." -- p. 39

Who is Shan talking to?  I know people talk out loud to themselves on occasion, but I think musings like this work better as private thoughts.  Also, having the dead dragon be a "gentle soul" doesn't exactly endear Bant to me any more...

When Shan finally finds his father, he's holding the "arrow-riddled" body of Bodiel to his chest.  Called it...

The king dropped Bodiel into the mud and rose to his full length.  In his fore-talon he held a single arrow and he studied the bright red fletching of the arrow as if he were studying his soul. Lightning struck nearby, again and again, shaking the ground.  Fire spouted from the tops of the tallest, most ancient trees.  Albekizan didn't flinch.  Shandrazel couldn't move.  As the thunder faded from their ringing ears, Albekizan held the arrow to the sky and shouted a single, bone-chilling word.

"Bitterwood!" -- p. 41

Skyward Scream?  Check.  Say My Name?  Check.  Dramatic Thunder and Empathic Environment, complete with Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Death?  Check, check, and mate.  Maxey evidently leaves no cliche unturned when creating a dramatic death scene.

So far we've gotten a handful of characters, but none that are terribly sympathetic or developed at the moment.  And the few moments of worldbuilding we've gotten have been cliche or don't make a lot of sense.  Not a promising start...

*The author of this spork does not condone the actual consumption of kittens and makes no guarantees as to their taste and nutritional value.  The author claims no responsibility or liability for anyone who attempts to eat kittens.