Bitterwood Chapter 3 -- Sympathy For the Devil... I Mean Dragons

On we go... Chapter 3, titled "Stone."

King Abracadabra has given orders to the earth-dragon in charge of the guards (why not just say "captain of the guard" instead?) and is now basking in the sun on top of his palace.  We're told his kingdom stretches about three hundred miles wide from the "impassible mountains" to the "endless oceans," and north to south from the "Ghostlands" to the swamps.  I have no idea what Ghostlands are either...

It was said that Albekizan owned the earth and was master of all who flew above it and all who crawled upon it.  In over a half century of rule, he had bent the world to his will and had assured that there was no destiny other than his destiny.  He woke each day secure in the knowledge that if he desired a thing, nothing and no one could deny him.

Until this morning.

Beloved Bodiel was dead.  He'd trade his wealth and power, even his own life, to undo this horrible truth.  But there was no one with whom he could demand such a trade. -- p. 58-59

...I'm confused here.  Maxey seems bound and determined to make his dragons as evil as possible, yet both Bitterwood's savagery in killing dragons and scenes like this seem to paint them as sympathetic creatures.  Perhaps this is Maxey's attempt to make his villains a little more complex?  To show that they can have feelings as well?  I can appreciate the effort, but it comes across as a little muddled here.

King Uzbekistan decides to jump off the roof and fly, soaring up into the sun and... chasing it?  He DOES know that the sun is millions of miles away from Earth, right?  There's a line at the end of his chase saying "there were some things even above a king," so I guess this is supposed to be a metaphor, but it comes across as making the king look like an idiot.

Making the comic extra-large so that the text is readable.  Also I googled 

"it's a metaphor" looking for a specific image but got a lot of

"The Fault In Our Stars" memes instead... 

We get a lovely description of Alakazam's palace as well -- "a vast mound of stone heaped upon stone" that's been under construction for a thousand years, now a complex maze of tunnels and chambers and courtyards so that the old chambers are buried and nearly closed off from the newer parts of the palace.  This seems rather counter-productive -- so many rooms and tunnels are just freaking hard to keep track of and patrol, and seem like it'd make it all the easier for an assassin or saboteur to sneak in and hide while they prepare to do their dirty work.  But James Maxey wants his villains to have a secret-passage-filled labyrinthine lair, so that's what they're going to get, logic be damned.

At least tell me THIS is at the center...

Albekizan landed on the highest rooftop with the lightness of a leaf.  Indeed, as he touched down, the wind of his passage sent a dried leaf skittering across the polished stone before him.  Albekizan took the presence of the dry, dead thing as a sign.  Autumn lay close.  Cold days were coming to the kingdom. -- p. 60-61

Hey Maxey, your readers aren't idiots.  Most of us know what falling leaves mean, even readers from more tropical climes that don't see a traditional autumn.

Azkaban looks out over the fields and spots earth-dragons piling up wood, and realizes they're building his son's funeral pyre.  He has to take a moment to regain his composure before going into the palace so he'll "betray no emotion unbefitting a king."  Seriously, who's supposed to be the sympathetic character here?

At the very heart of the palace, underneath all those extra passages and rooms, is the nest chamber where all the dragon kings and princes have hatched over the years.  I'd think you'd want this room to be a tiny bit more accessible, but still protected, but what do I know?

This was his birthplace.  More, it was the place where he had first gazed upon Bodiel, damp from birth.  He'd licked away the thick, salty fluid that had covered his son's still-closed eyes.  The taste once again lingered on his tongue. -- p. 61

Welp... good thing I haven't eaten yet today.  This book does seem obsessed with all sorts of bodily fluids, and while I know they have their place in fiction and in real life, I really don't want to read about someone licking said fluids up, or reminiscing about how they taste.

Afghanistan isn't alone in the nesting chamber -- his queen, Tanthia, is there as well.  He tells her "Bodiel will be avenged" and expects that to comfort her.  But she's not having any of it.

Tanthia inhaled slowly.  Softly, she asked, "This is all you have to say in comfort?"

"What more need be said?" he said.  "Last night's events demand vengeance."

"Talk of vengeance is not the same as talk of grief," she said, her voice trembling.  "I hear no pain in your voice.  Where are your tears?  Come with me, my king.  Come with me to the Burning Ground.  By now, Bodiel lies in state.  Stand by my side as I go see him."

"No," said Albekizan.  His eyes were fixed on the ancient rock beneath his claws, polished smooth by the passage of his uncountable ancestors.  Could Tanthia not feel the gravity of this place?  Here, at the heart of all history, was no place for weakness.  "Not yet.  At nightfall, perhaps, I will go.  But I've already seen my son dead.  I've held his cold body.  Do not lecture me about the proper way to grieve."  -- p. 62-63

I'm going to be fair to Maxey here and point out what he did right in this scene.  He's shown that his villains, for all their cartoonishly-evil actions, do have some emotional depth to them.  He's shown that different people (or dragons, in this case) grieve in different ways, and that they're still capable of feeling genuine emotion and grief.  And when too many writers seem to want to make their villains one-dimensional and uninteresting, this is a welcome breath of fresh air.

It still doesn't entirely make up for the fact that his dragons are painted so cartoonishly villainous that they set up needlessly bloody and complicated rituals for deciding an heir and FREAKING EAT KITTENS AS SNACKS.  But it's a start.

Also, there was an awful lot of the word "said" there.  There are more ways to indicate conversation than "said," people.  Use some variety.

Azkaban insists that a king can't show signs of weakness, and grief can't be his priority.  He's convened his war council and intends to ready his armies and be rid of Bitterwood once and for all.  Armies?  War Council?  For one dude?  Can we say overkill?

Bander, the commander of the royal guard, shows up as Afghan is leaving the nesting chamber, and announces that everyone's convening in the war room except Vortex, who's still in hiding.  He orders Bander to continue the search, despite knowing that Vortex can go invisible and "he would be found only when he wished to be found."  Also, they're rounding up all the castle's human slaves... uh-oh, this can't be good...

Tanthia comes out of the nesting chamber one more time to beg Alakazoo to come to the Burning Ground with her, and when he tells her no she collapses on the floor crying.  This is probably meant to make her more sympathetic, but to me it just makes her come across as whiny and clingy.

"You're so cold," she sobbed.  "So cold.  The stones in the walls are warmer than your heart." -- p. 65

Obligatory dragon picture in the dragon-book sporking...

dang, there are some pretty ice-dragon pics out there

Alakazam storms away, angry, but then goes back and tries to comfort Tanthia.

"Tanthia, my love, it pains me to see you grieve.  Nonetheless, mourning is a mother's burden, and her luxury.  My duty is to avenge my son.  I must go and consult with my advisors as to the swiftest path to achieve justice.  Later, when the moon has risen and the day's work is done, I will join you at the Burning Ground and watch as Metron lights the pyre.  Then I will hold you and assist with the burden of grief.  Go now.  Wait with our fallen son, until the night comes." -- p. 65

...if a book is making me sympathize with its villain far more than its hero, it's failing at its freaking job.  Seriously...

The queen leaves, mollified for now, and the guards report that they still can't find Vortex.  The king mutters something about how "the wizard plots some dramatic entrance" and orders the council to convene without him, and then we get a page break.

And of course the next bit is from Vortex's point of view.  And of COURSE, because this is a bog-standard fantasy book, Vortex is pretty much The Starscream, the royal adviser/vizier with his own secret agenda.  He was even present at the scene where Azeroth and Zanzie were studying the scene of Bodiel's death, just invisible.  Could we have gotten some hint about this?  Because right now it just feels dropped in.

Vortex doesn't follow the rest of the crew to find Bitterwood, though -- he follow's Cron's trail instead, and gives the slave a bag of food, clothes, and a knife.  He also advises Cron to make for the river and find a boat where the other slave, Tulk, will be waiting for them.  Um... why is he helping the slaves escape?  The book gives no motivation.  Maybe it's to establish that Vortex is one of the "good guy" dragons... but Maxey's established that LOTS of these dragons are sympathetic characters, so it's not like Vortex is special in this respect.

Oh, and we get THIS lovely bit where Cron figures out that Vortex is the king's wizard, despite Vortex being invisible at the moment, and runs his mouth:

"What I want to know is what a person has to do to get to be a dragon's pet.  It seems like a pretty soft life."

"I don't believe the girl you speak of is a pet," Vendevorex said.

"She was dressed like a dragon, all those feathers," said Cron.  "What I'm wondering is, is there, you know, sex involved?  Do dragons find humans attractive?  I know some girls get hot over dragons.  I have a sister who--" -- p. 68

Do.  Not.  Want.

What IS it with these books I keep picking up to spork and bestiality?  Didn't we get enough of that in Revealing Eden?  Seriously...

Page break, and then we get Vortex flying back to the palace after having helped both slaves escape.  He's looking for Jandra, his apprentice, but she's not in their rooms, so he examines the wooden shacks at the base of the palace where the human servants live.  It's... not pretty.

Vendevorex landed on the muddy pathway that wound among the shacks, wrinkling his nose.  The shantytown smelled of rotting garbage and excrement.  Within the palace an elaborate and ancient system of aqueducts and pipes carried fresh water to all corners of the edifice, and flushed away waste.  Here, open, stinking ditches served the same purpose.  Filthy children in rags played in the muck, laughing, seemingly unaware of their squalor. -- p. 69

Maxey, what is it with you and your loving descriptions of excrement and filth?

It's in this shantytown that he finds Jandra, talking with Ruth and Mary, two of the human servants.  Oh hey, finally, normal names in this book!  Names that don't sound like caveman names or like they're the result of letting the cat walk across the keyboard.  Too bad they're used on what I'm sure on throwaway characters...

Jandra and the girls are gossiping about Bodiel's death, and Mary points out that Albus-Dumbledore will probably have the slaves' families killed in retaliation.

"But it won't be their fault," said Jandra.

"Do you think that matters to Albekizan?  I've heard that in villages where they can't pay the tax, he takes the babies and devours them as their parents watch."

"That's nonsense.  The king isn't... isn't cruel or unjust," said Jandra, not sounding at all like she believed it. -- p. 71

Okay, so Alakazababa-whatever-his-name-is is only cartoonishly evil to anything not a dragon.  Good to know.  Also, is Jandra really this naive?  Could she have lived among dragons for so long and NOT seen how they mistreat humans?  Or is she just of the camp that "if it's not me or anyone I'm close to, it's okay"?

One of the girls calls Jandra "the wizard's pet," and Jandra retorts that she's not, and goes into a spiel about how she doesn't do everything "the old goat" says.  Cue Vortex going visible right behind Jandra and pulling a Right Behind Me on her, complete with a sarcastic goat noise.  Okay, that was a little funny, I admit...

It may be a cliche trope but it's still amusing to me

Vortex drags Jandra away, saying she's to stay in her room until further notice.  He also confirms that Bodiel is dead and Bitterwood's the killer, and that he's needed in the war room... and of course he needs to prepare a dramatic entrance.  At least Azkaban knows his underling that much...

And end chapter.  If Maxey is aiming to make us hate the dragons and see them as the villains, he's not doing a very good job of it here.  At the moment they're far more sympathetic than Bitterwood...