It has arrived...

Brisingr, by Christopher Paolini

The Royal Mail have kindly deliver to the Chronicler's house, a copy of Paolini's latest masterpiece, the third book in the four-book-Trilogy. It's a brick of a book, as the old Anti-Shur'tugal forums used to call it. It has yet to be opened and the Chronicler thought perhaps she should record a few thoughts on what she expects before she opens the book.

We're all aware of the very striking similarities between Paolini's work and that of Star Wars, but the reviews of both the books and especially the movie (example) have picked up on this. Whilst Paolini really can't write, he's not utterly retarded and is probably furiously trying to steer his plot away from any similarities. He's the master of retroactive continuity, rewriting the past and very reality of the setting to suit himself. We've seen him pull Great Revelations from bad-cliché-land throughout Eldest. He re-wrote an entire race (the orc-like urgals) in the last chapters of Eldest, a great Twist that, believe me, he had not even dreamt of when writing Eragon, and it shows.

Precisely what horrors will Brisingr bring? Well, besides the fact that I passionately hate the man for butchering my beloved Old Norse in the title (see here for full rant) and as much so for what he did in creating the Ancient Language.

So, what with Paolini actively working to topple ideas of what is going to happen next, some of the Star Wars ideas probably won't float. But I'm fairly sure there will be plenty of creepy love between Arya and Eragon, probably even more ignoring of Saphira as she is treated like an extension of her rider. I'm confident that Paolini's world-building skills won't have gotten better and he probably hasn't taken a course in medieval economics. His language will be even more overwrought and laboured than before. He may or may not have bought a new thesaurus but all the classic crimes of adverb abuse and adjective lists will no doubt be committed.

Oh, and random names from mythology will happen for no good reason.

The Chronicler should probably open the book now...

Cult of the Butcher God

Along time ago, before the forming of the Loinfire Club, when the Chronicler wrote as an ambiguously-gendered poster known as "Theo", there was a theory... The Chronicler is still so very fond of it that she wants to share it yet again as she opens the new chapter of Brisingr.

We were reading Eragon, late one night, after enduring the horror that is the film (very pretty, though) and came up with the following theory, which neatly explains the some of the silly economics ofEragon and what happened to the gods of Alagaesia (as Eragon does repeatedly mention the existence of nonspecific deities.)


A Butcher requires 1200 people
A Blacksmith requires 1500 people 
A Healer requires 1700 people
A Carpenter 550 people
A Tanner 2000 people
From: Medieval Demographics Made Easyhttp://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.49/t.gif


Yet Carvahall has but a population of 300...



The Cult of the Butcher God


The Humans of Alagaesia worship certain gods. One of the most important ones is The Butcher God. He has certain strictures, of which one can deduce by reading the book:


1) Thou shalt eat much meat; thou shalt not survive without eating meat.

This can be seen in Eragon and his family's need for meat to make it through the winter. Despite owning a farm and all its produce, they still need more meat from hunting and eat chicken for breakfast whilst their on the verge of not making it through the winter. Whatever happened to porridge? Or the eggs of the chickens. Or the milk from the cows.

This can also be seen in Eragon's raid of the Butcher when he runs away from Carvahall. He cares nothing for bread or other staple foodstuffs that don't rot in a day. He must have meat.

This also explains why Garrow's farm has such ridiculously small amounts of produce, yet still has excess to be sold off at Carvahall. They scorn the eating of vegetables. (They finished harvesting in about a day.)


2) The priests of the Butcher God shall be known as Butchers. There shalt be one in every settlement and they shalt be Clean.

This neatly explains why there is a butcher in Carvahall, when there is no need for one in a small farming settlement, where everyone can do their own butchering and own their own animals.


3) Thou shalt not kill your own animals. Take thou animals to the butcher so that they may be prepared in the Holy Way. Thou shalt then buy back thou meat.

This explains why the butcher, Sloan, has business. This explains why he has a ready stock of meat and even why he still has a stock of fresh prime cut meat to fill up Eragon's backpack when Horst demanded it, instead of having sold it all during the day.


4) Thou shalt cast aside the cheap cuts as they are unworthy of the Butcher God. Thou shalt eat only prime rump steak and the other good cuts of meat. Not even the dogs are fit to consume the unworthy meat.

It is obvious that everyone, including Horst, Garrow and Eragon, are devout worshippers of the Butcher God. Their concern over meat and their need for it thoughout the books can be seen.

This also explains the consumption of chicken for breakfast and Eragon's fondness of the simple fare of a hunk of meat boiled in salty water. This explains why Garrow isn't carefully boiling oxtails and offal for meaty stock for use in cooking.


5) Fish is not a Meat. Thou shalt not eat Fish instead of Meat.

This explains the curious lack of fishing near the sea or the enormous lakes (more on that later) of Alagaesia. They just don't need it. No one eats fish at any point, only ever cheese, meat or bread.

The second god of Alagaesia is the Smith God. These are his strictures:


1) Priests of the Smith God shalt be smiths. Only they shalt fix and make metal goods. For only they know the holy way.

Explains why every single village has its own smith and why Roran needs to take his chisel into Carvahall to get fixed. Of course, this is discounting the other meaning of chisel-fixing.


2) Thou shalt always take at least two apprentices.

Because one just isn't good enough.

Neatly explains why Horst needs two apprentices when he's working in one small village in the middle of nowhere, with nary a long distance journey horse in sight.


3) All thou horses shalt be shoed.

Gives Horst the business he needs when farm horses often don't need the shoeing due to only ever plodding on soft soil.


4) Thou must be a Master Smith to create complex machinery.

Explains why Horst is consulted for those damn mill parts. It's not a matter of skill, but of religious status. And that's never logical, is it?


5) All things shalt be forged and wrought. Even if they really shouldn't. Thou shalt love all things made of shiny metal. All things of worth shall resemble metals. Liquid and the appearance of liquid makes things more Holy.

This explains the poor starving family can spend money on trinkets, as Garrow repeatly produces not very much money from his pocket and tells Roran to spend it on a trinket. It also explains how the elf's helmet in the prologue is "wrought" out of amber and gold, wrought being a very specific action of folding and beating metal. Nigh impossible with something as soft as gold and as brittle as amber.

This also explains Chris' habit of describing things as "wrought" and "forged" out of something when its a mind-bogglingly stupid mixed metaphor that just doesn't work. Also, it explains Chris' other annoying habit of refering to things resembling liquid metals and gems. "Molten copper", "liquid diamond", "liquid silver"... etc...

This explains why Chris spends more time describing the sword (Ra'zac) than Eragon's angst about his dying uncle or the sheer horror of the death-strewn village. He spends far more time gazing on the arrows and spears.


6) Gold is the most Holy of all metals. All things of Importance shall be made of its brilliance. Next most holy is silver.

Explains why Eragon's armour is made out of gold, the very soft and heavy metal that is useless as practical armour. The helmet of gold in the prologue and assorted other inappropriate objects made from this metal.

There is also the Judgement God, who decides what is good and evil. He is probably often depicted playing chess, with black and white pieces. His strictures are as follows:


1) All Good things shalt be beautiful, shiny and white. All Evil things shalt be black, ugly and smelly.

This explains how Arya can smell of pine trees after months of imprisonment with the Urgals, who smell of fetid flesh.

This also explains the appearance and colour of everything in the book, such as the black arrows of the Urgals vs the swan-feather-fletched arrows of the elves. This explains the white baby on a spear and the black crow about to eat it.


2) Killing is neither good nor evil. If you are good, it is good to kill evil things and evil to kill good things. If you are evil, it is evil to kill both good and evil things.

The elves are fervent worshippers of the Judgment god. His duality can be seen rather prominently in their descriptions. They kill Urgals and other evil characters without reservation. They mutilate enemy corpses and kill envoys, and it's all okay, because they're Good and the enemy is Evil.

Finally, there is the Merchant God. He is less widely worshipped, but we can detect his cult in the major trading cities.


1) Taxes are Evil as they Oppress trade.

This explains why the Empire of Galbatorix is evil, despite having no other obvious act of oppression. Taxes are evil in the eyes of the Merchant God, and that is why the Empire must be deposed.


2)Thou shalt keep records of All thou transactions on Parchment.

This explains why everything is written on parchment instead of paper. (Parchment being expensive things made out of animal skins and paper being the cheaper stuff made out of wood chips and bark.) This also explains why records have been kept about the selling of Acid-Oil to the Ra'zac, which really has no reason to be on records anywhere. Empire owned ships, shipping to locations of the super-secret hideout of the Ra'zac shouldn't really leave a paper trail, yet it does.


Cult of the Farmer God

Thus are the strictures of the Farmer God:


1) All farms must be as far from cities as possible, so as not to be tainted by their civillisation.

Explains why there appear to be no villages or farmhouses or fields near cities. It also explains why Carvahall, little village at the edge of the great and glorious Empire, is featured on the map of it. It is a farming village furthest away from the cities, therefore it is becomes a site of pilgrimage and holy importance. Hence all the traders travelling there every year, why else would they visit? After all, villagers from a community with its own smith and tanner - thereby usurping all possible business from visiting tinkers - should be travelling to a market town yearly instead.

It also explains why Garrow's farm is a whole ten miles away from Carvahall for no real reason.


2)Thou shallt sell your Produce to the first trader thou meetest who will buy it. Thou shalt not hold out for a better deal.

It explains why Garrow sells his produce to random traders instead of travelling to a market town where he would set his own price.

It also explains why Eragon only manages to sell his horse for "a few coins", when it should be worth quite a lot of money, as horses are. (Horses are worth something in the ball-part of 300-600g of silver.)


3) Thou must pick a variety of crops on the same day. Thou shalt pick from each of your crops on each day of the harvest, for all are equal in the Eyes of the Farmer God. And thou shalt store it in a Holy Place.

Explains why Garrow and his helpers pick a little bit of everything: "last of the barley [...] prickly-vined squash, the rutabagas, beets, peas, turnips, and beans" (p.21, Eragon, hardback) all on one day. They should have more produce than that, so, if we give them the benefit of the doubt, they're using some mighty interesting picking tecniques.


4) All produce of the farm is holy in the eyes of the Farmer God and must be preserved for as long as possible. Eat of cheese and bread, the holiest product of the Farm.

This is why they carefully preserve everything for no reason and then neglect to eat it at any point. Or even think about eating it.

This explains why they only ever eat bread and/or cheese, when the characters of Eragon are not hunting. They do occassionally eat porridge or other foodstuffs, like that cherry pie of Eragon's (cherry pie is holy because it contains preserved cherries), but mostly, it's just bread and cheese.

It also explains why Eragon's bread can last over two weeks in the desert.

This also explains why Eragon feels the need to preserve Brom's body. And where Eragon has seen a mummy before (cf. the nitpick of Garrow's description). The Farmer God acts as the God of Death, or at least, death rites, in the bizarre culture of Alagaesia.


5) Thou shalt not improve thou fields with fertilliser or irrigation or any such other unnatural acts.

This explains why there is so much dry grass around Carvahall which should be irrigated and fertillised into good farmland and thus producing amounts which could last them through winter without supplementing. Hence also Garrow and other farmers not needing to have a mixed farm (the most logical sort of farm to have in case crops or animals of one variety fail). Of course, we can assume this is a world where crop rotation hasn't been invented yet.

Not wanting fertilliser would mean not needing to keep animals for that ever useful byproduct. 

Moon Shadow, continues, part four...

Bonegeek: "Are you sitting comfortably?"

Wiping my hands on the skirt of my fitted kirtle, I flung the door open.
The Pedant: "How do you fit a kirtle? It's a shapeless, loose garment."

He had the sexiest voice I'd ever heard. The Star Goddess herself would be weak in the knees with his voice.
The Chronicler: "No, she wouldn't. The Star Goddess is made of tougher stuff than that."
The Pedant: "She doesn't have knees."
Big L (mistaking him for the hero): "She's seen him jerk off in a box."
The Pedant: "What you need is not a prayer or a summoning spell, it's a personal ad."

A face like a fox, angles and laughter.
The Pedant: "Angles plus laughter does not equal fox!"
The Anthropologist:It's a mokosh on his head."

Eyes the color of turquoise stones and just as bright. They very nearly matched the unusual jerkin he wore.
The Balance (who allegedly has fashion scent): "Ewww!"
Big L: "It's always about the jerkin..."

(The Chronicler notes that this seems to suggest fashion-wise, this scene is somewhere in the Renaissance.)

Turquoise leather wasn't something I'd seen before...
The Balance: "That's because it's tasteless!"

... but if designers saw how this man wore it, blue jerkins would be all over the streets.
The Pedant: "Turquoise is not blue!"
Bonegeek: "I think I need to make some turquoise armour now."
Ramble and  diversion about Maelstrom and Bonegeek's desire to get some turquoise marriage armour.

"come in," I said, warmly, "No, the position isn't filled."
The Anthropologist: "Dodgy comments..."
The Anthropologist: "He's wearing a turquoise jerkin, he has to be trustworthy!"

"I hadn't realized from the ad," he said, "but you're a Love Wizard, aren't you?" [...]
Not stupid, then. "What gave it away?"
The Pedant: "Because she's only wearing a kirtle."
The Anthropologist: "Because she has a heart in her pentagram."

Oh, my flier had finally found the guy I needed, the guy I wanted.
The Pedant: "He's literate."
The Anthropologist: "On the bright side, we haven't had any I'm not a Slut moments."

I sent a mental kiss of thanks to the Star Goddess.
The Anthropologist: "Who didn't appreciate it..."
The Pedant: "and washed her face afterwards."

Retrieving the
Wabizi hand mirror from the end table, I settled next to him.
The Anthropologist: "Is that a second wave feminist hand mirror? The ones you use to inspect your own vaginas with?"
The Pedant (in some sort of flashback): "Middle-aged muff!"

If he passed the mirror's test, I'd have the perfect partner. Handing him the mirror, I said, "Look in the depths for a minute while I ask you some questions."
The Anthropologist: "Can you try to find my clit?"

The mirror reflected a truth for him nearly immediately. He had strong magic. [...] He was touching the face of a woman, both gazes filled with an intense love. She was beautiful. Her chestnut-colored hair was twisted at the top of her head.
The Balance: "Like Palin."
The Anthropologist: "Yes, yes, like Palin."

Wispy tendrils had escaped, and they framed her high-cheekboned face.
The Anthropologist: "Like Palin."

Her eyes looked kind.
Bonegeek: "Not like Palin."

"This is amazing magic," he said. "I've never heard of such a thing."
(The Chronicler wonders why, since he lives in the same bloody world setting. Is he part of the underclass? The unmagical masses? Who knows?)

In the depths of the glass, I watched as Fyord presented a box made of rosewood to the beautiful woman.
The Anthropologist: "It's a bomb, isn't it?"
The Pedant: "It's a baby's leg."

A fire crackled in a bedroom...
Big L: "We need to clarify this to be a metaphorical fire..."

...sending cozy shadows dancing across huge tapestries. Bathed in the light of flickering flames, the largest tapestry depicted fair maids picking daisies form a huge field of wildflowers while tall hounds stood at their sides.
(Tapestries are expensive things, dear reader, even today. It rather undermines their later claims of poverty and financial problems.)
The Anthropologist: "I'm making that a new category for Housekeeping fetishes!"
Big L: "You can't ... you're trying to kill us with the sips we'd have to take for that?"
The Balance: "She can, she's got the book."

Lying on a tall four-poster bed made of cherry, the woman wore a filmy gauze of virginal white. More relaxed, Fyord lay naked beside her, holding her hand. She looked ready to bolt...
The Anthropologist: "That's not a good sign."

He did it again, getting closer to that ticklish spot beneath her arm.
Bonegeek: "Oh, how erotic..."

...she picked up a pillow and bopped him over his head.
The Anthropologist: "And then beat him to death with it. Dear God, please!"

He ran his hand over her stomach, her ivory thigh.
The Balance: "She's only go one leg... it's a very expensive prosthetic."

She quivered under his touch, but fear wasn't on her face. Anticipation was.
The Balance: "It's literally there, sitting. It's a little imp by the name..."

On the love seat next to me, Fyord placed his hand over the glass protectively. "That's my wedding night," he said.
Bonegeek: "She's a voyeur."
The Chronicler notes that it's quite an invasion of privacy to look into the memories of a job applicant. Why can't she just ask him questions like a normal person? This is a setting that awknowledges "brainscans" as creepy, but somehow when you're doing it through a mirror and it's the heroine doing it, it's perfectly alright.
The Anthropologist: "This is a lot quicker than installing security cameras into everyone's houses."

From this bed, a tiny kitchen could be seen.
The Anthropologist: "Good housekeeping fetish!"

This image must have been from that morning, because Fyord was wearing his unusual turquoise jerkin...
Bonegeek: "I should hope significant time has passed, since she's thick with child."
Big L: "It could be magic semen."

"You love her, don't you?" I asked, knowing the answer before I heard it.
"With all my heart. Ceara's brother gambled away the family fortune..."
The Anthropologist: "So you have mindrape magic of many varieties, but you choose not to use it for anything useful. Like finding that rapist, instead you go off and pry on other people's honeymoon night."

"Gambling terrorizes some people," I said. "It's an addiction, like alcoholism."
"Can you treat it?" he asked with a sudden rush of hope.
"No," I said, my mind working the problem as it always did.
The Chronicler: "Because no one has asked her this before and she's thought about it before."

"Addictions are hard to treat. Wizards can Sense the illness, we can see the disease in the molecular structures of the cells, but we can't change the cellular structures."
The Balance (pained): "You can see gambling in the cellular structure..."

I looked across the room thinking with frustration of the various addicts who'd sought my help. It didn't matter what they were addicted to – alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling – I couldn't help them.
The Pedant: "But you think a Love Mage would be able to help with sex addiction."
The Chronicler: "But why would you go to a Love Mage for addiction? Maybe you could try a Addiction Mage..."

"Perhaps someday..."
There followed here an explanation about hyphens and ellipsis, how they have complicated relationships across the pages of these books.

"Then you see I need a job, a profession. My parents and I decided a long time ago to ignore my magical aptitude and focus on the family business. I've been trained in banking and investment..."
(The Chronicler: "Yes, this is the pseudo-fantasy pseudo-Renaissance setting with half-orcs, brownstones and banking and investment banking firms.")

...but Ceara's brother... after he did with my signature, well, I've been blackballed from any of the money careers."
The Anthropologist: "Can't he just report the bastard and clear his name?"
Big L: "You have seen the Police in this setting."
The Pedant: "They're only interested in cum-covered hoboes."

"I'm a Tan," he said, his dark hair hanging in his eyes.
The Anthropologist: "That's the lamest magic colour ever."
The Pedant: "Is it better or worse than brown?"

"I can't hire you," I said. The breadth of his shoulders gave me so many reasons to want to hire him.
The Chronicler: "I can only think of one there."

"But you've found your heart's mate. If you take this job with me, the love of your life will be jeopardized. You don't want to put your relationship with your wife on the line for this, believe me."
"But she wants me to get this job as badly as I want it. We have a strong relationship."
Big L: "Waspor would approve of strength."

"Neither of you understand of a Love Wizard's assistant."
Big L: "I think we can guess."
The Pedant: "Maybe she needs love, as a love wizard."

"We didn't' know what kind of Wizard you were, but it's such a respectable line of work...
There are giggles over the word "respectable".

If only he weren't so happily married. "Fyord," I said, taking his hand in mine. I worked hard to ignore the chemistry of his cells whispering to mine.
The Balance: "What? Are they reacting? Fusing together into one horrible mutant?"

If you were to take this job, you and I would have sex frequently [...]It's true that many times you'd think – you'd feel like – you were making love to your wife. Those times probably wouldn't hurt your relationship."
The Chronicler: "Because if you're fantasising of someone else whilst having sex with your boss, it doesn't actually count."

"But there're other times when you'd have to lead the spell. During those times, you'd know exactly who you were having sex with...
The Anthropologist: "Because all the other times, I'd be drugging you to the point of oblivion."

...Very few human relationships can withstand that, and from what I've seen of you in the mirror
...
The Chronicler: "What did you see? Some generic love scenes? There was no personality developed there?!"

...it would kill you and your beloved."
The Chronicler: "Why can't she trust him and his wife to make that decision? Themselves?"
The Anthropologist: "To be fair, most people would argue that having sex with someone else ruins your relationship."
The Chronicler: "True, not everyone has an open relationship... but I'm sure Dan Savage will beg to differ."

... and I wished I'd found him first.
The Chronicler: "There you go. The true reason she doesn't want him is because she can't do with just sex and wants a lover instead of an assistant."

Fyord sat silently for a moment, staring at his hands as if they could help him.
Big L: "It's weird, I feel like I have cum on my hands."

"I need a job," he said finally.
The Anthropologist: "I can sweep the cum off the floor for you when you're done..."

"Fyord, I'm a Love Wizard. I fix relationships – not ruin them."
The Chronicler: "Curious how we're on page 26 and we still don't really know what she means by that."

"I have a friend at the local Guild who might be able to guide you toward a more appropriate apprenticeship."
The Chronicler: "Maybe one in which you work in an environment where everyone wears a mask with your wife's face painted on it. Because you really shouldn't be talking to anyone else... but as long as you think you're talking to your wife. It's all okay."

"That might help," he said. "I'm looking into every possibility."
Big L: "Not looking very hard, clearly."
The Pedant: "We're back to the fact that she needs a personal ad." 

"Also," I added a warning, "Ceara is due within the month."
He looked at me and blinked. "No," he said. "She's due in two months time."
"I saw her only through the mirror, but I Sensed she's due imminently...
The Chronicler: "Imminently =/= a month."

Love Wizards deliver a lot of babies, and I'll happily deliver your child...
The Chronicler: "Because I'm that good. I see her through a mindrape mirror and I can tell... And more importantly, is there anything she doesn't do?"

He'd been so damn perfect. Grabbing the right hormones from his pituitary and his adrenal, pulling proteins from his blood to make love potions would've been so much fun.
Bonegeek: "Because biochemistry makes her hot."
The Anthropologist: "And makes us bleed."

Now I neede to make a new flier.
The Pedant: "Is it going to be described all over again?"

The Loinfire Club doesn't read... About that Night

About that Night, by Jeanie London

The plan is simple. Julienne Blake will use self-hypnosis until she's discovered the sexy woman inside, then she'll seduce Nick Fairfax during an unforgettable night. And with a tantalizing performance for an audience of one, she does just that. But her sensual plan seems to have worked just a little too well, because Nick is begging for a return engagement.

Nick has never met a woman who could capture his attention so completely as Julienne has. Her risqué moves have him pursuing her all over sultry Savannah just to be alone with her. But he's not a long-term kind of guy, so his desire to extend this passionate affair has him completely baffled. Somehow he has to convince her there's more than that night between them....

 

The Chronicler will get back to the joys of My Fair Viking, no doubt, but first just a brief summary of the horrors of About that Night.

The Chronicler admits the use of the word "horror" is largely unjustified; the book was by and large quite s quite dull. The sex scenes were tepid, the choice of words routine (pebbled, check; turgid, check; suckled, check; use of sex to mean cunt, check) and really, even at less than two hundred pages, the London is distinctly running thin of ideas. The book smacks of the sort of three-year-old naughtiness, back when it's edgy to say "damn" when no one's looking.

But a reader who buys a book marketed containing hot, steamy sex (it is a "Blaze," after all) should really be less easily shocked.

(Or perhaps this all speaks of the youth of today being rubbish. Who knows? But Description Inflation is always a problem that haunts us all...)

London is far too fond of the word "naughty." It comes across as childish, especially from a woman who is three decades in age. Admittedly, that's her theme, but the words "naughty boy" elicits not a the mental image of some unrepentant playboy, it reminds me only of bad governess fantasies and that scene in Child in Time. Really. There is nothing remotely sexy about "naughty boys."

Jules (or Julienne) self-hypnotises. Yes. She repeats uninspiring phrases to herself repeatedly to condition herself to be more "naughty", and the reader has to suffer with her as London threads these phrases in italics throughout the narrative.

Naughty girls feel good about being naughty.

The Anthropologist thought this was a novel about a really sexually repressed woman discovering herself, fighting the expectations of a sexually conservative (probably quite religious, this being set in Savannah, Georgia) society around her. But there is no evidence of this. If anything, the heroine (or the author) has so completely internalised her "nice girl" attitudes that there are not expectations for her to defy and confound besides that of her Uncle Thad (but we'll come to that.) No one even raises an eyebrow over Risqué Theatre, a building allegedly festooned in plaster phallus-wielding cherubs (also an unsexy image, seraphim maybe, but not cherubs. I'm not sure any world of politicians capitalising on the fundamental interest humanity has in sex can really justify government funding for this. Is there no one who thinks its tasteless and pornographic in all of Savannah? In a society so comfortable with its own sexuality, why is Jules so very uptight about hers?

The Chronicler also categorically state here, dear reader, that there is nothing remotely sexy about winged children with erections.)

Where is she getting her "good girl" ideas from? Maybe it's just Uncle Thad and she really has no other friends, thus giving him plenty of space to instil his ideas of womanhood into her. Jules doesn't need to escape the judgement and hypocrisy of the tag "good girl", there simply isn't the chorus of condemnation needed to create that atmosphere. Jules' friends and students and colleges all cheer her on and even the scandal that looms towards the end of the book over her sleeping with Nick is really rather tame. Hardly anyone is scandalised by it; instead the campus coos over how sweet and wonderful it all is. I suppose London has to construct and environment that Jules can later be comfortable in, but it results in creating a heroine with seemingly completely groundless neuroses.

Naughty girls feel naughty.

Jules is, frankly, stupid, when it comes to trying to self-hypnotise herself into self-confidence. For starters, she decides to unleash her inner sex kitten on one man and only man – Nick Fairfax, the man she has stalked for years (technically she's only obsessively read all his articles, books, theses and know about all his projects). This plan is ever so doomed to trample on her poor, poor ego if this book was set anywhere other than RomanceNovelLand. After all, whilst he has a "naughty boy" reputation, he might not be into her type. He might be having a bad night. He might have already made plans. Who knows? But the point is, it opens her up to the very real possibility of rejection and rejection for reasons that have nothing to with her. Hanging all her hopes of self-confidence and self-discovery on Nick flirting back seems unwise, to say the least.

Naughty girls talk the talk.

She is naive to the point of oblivious, especially since she allegedly regularly visits the Risqué (for architectural appreciation, I'll have you know) and has a saucy-speaking stylist. She is ridiculously surprised that phone sex involves masturbation:

"Touch yourself, Jules." [...]

Julienne lost her fragile hold on her growing confidence. Poof. [...] She supposed she should have seen it coming. After all, she was playing naughty with a man who'd honed the concept to a science.

Phone sex really isn't that scandalous. The whole business of Jules running into something and getting entangled deeper than she expected is tedious and rather insulting. I suppose it boils down to "nice girls don't ask for sex", but this never played with in the novel. It really just reinforces the ideas, if anything. "I dress in really provocative clothing and then flirt with a man with a reputation, after a sex show might lead to him trying to get me in bed? I couldn't have guessed." "You mean trying to arouse someone by talking sexy to them on the phone might lead to masturbation? I'm so surprised I get shocked out of my self-hypnosis!"

"I don't see what can be accomplished by making our relationship public? What's the point?"

"To broadcast we like kinky sex."

Dear reader, you misled by the above throwaway line that there is anything other than vanilla sex between the protagonists. There is talk of exploring fantasies about halfway and the Chronicler thought we might dabble in... no, just no. There isn't. London has no idea what she's writing. Maybe she thinks "kinky" means "really hot." The closest they get is the use of a sex swing, which whilst unconventional doesn't qualify as "kinky."

Nick wonders about women-who-you-marry and women-who-you-shag-and-leave. Whilst I'm really not that keen on secret-identity plots this book could actually have benefited from one, because his wondering over the woman is silly when he knows, frankly, both Jules (the naughty girl) and Julienne (the unsexy professor). He knows both of them and sees them work in their capacity, both inside the bedroom and out. 

Most of the self-agonising comes from Jules wondering about how to reconcile the fact that she's now self-hypnotising herself to be with Nick. She thinks that it's a Deception and it makes her an evil woman. Equally she's lying to Uncle Thad as he disapproves of any possible relationship between Nick and herself (EVIL!)... but the argument that self-hypnosis is an external force that obscures the "true self" is somewhat odd. As the Anthropologist pointed out, that makes sentences like this possible: "Oh, I started going to Yoga class and then I met this guy. But he doesn't know the real me, the pre-Yoga me that isn't as calm and flexible. I'm deceiving him!" or the more extreme: "I'm bipolar and I take mood-stabilisers, but I shall never know True Love and no one can possibly know the Real Me that I'm suppressing!"

Incidentally, these neuroses over her own are cured by Nick telling her (talking to her ex, who's the a professor of hypnotherapy) that hypnosis can't make you do anything that isn't "in you" already.

Seriously. It's at the beginning of every book of the subject. A big warning sign to all who think they can use hypnosis to convince a stranger to kill their enemies for them. It's all about giving the control back the patient, not taking it away, accessing inner selves and resources and all that. How can she miss it?

And having sex. Which proves she's actually a passionate woman, deep down. The Anthropologist thinks she's really just a very lazy woman and blames the whole nice/naughty dichotomy for her failure to quite a dull five-year relationship and actually do anything worthwhile with her time.

There are minor wtf?! moments that reminds the reader that this book isn't set anywhere near reality. This is a world that takes active tabloid-sprawling interest in the love lives of its preservation  architects. This is a world where it's unusual for graduate students to be used as a source of cheap labour (seriously, ever spoken to an archaeologist? A biologist?) and instead they hire random, seemingly untrained, locals. This is a world where a radio play called Hush Hush Honeys about an illicit, yet idyllic, love affair is the most popular thing on a student radio station named "Rebel Radio." This is a world where nepotism is perfectly acceptable and normal. This is world where snogging behind the bleachers qualifies as a naughty high school fantasy, where no one complains about students being made to work in a cock-studded theatre (seriously, it's America. Land of Abstinence Education. Surely some interest group will pick up on it.) This is a world without standardised data sheets (yes, this surprises us). This is a world where your professor's uncle can hijack the lecture and tell instead a random unrelated, but cute anecdote about your professor as a child (without anyone complaining that they'd really rather things went back on track. Like really. It might be useful.)

But really, what gets me the most the Great Plot Revelation: the hero and heroine conduct their super secret torrid affair, really rather badly. There is then the radio sensation that is Hush-Hush Honeys, about a pair of illicit lovers named Darling and My Love that seems eerily akin to their affair.

"Damn. That sounds like a guided tour of our weekend. We should check our clothes for surveillance equipment."

Who would go to such efforts to tacitly expose (or threaten exposure) their rather sedate sexual escapades? Is it the desperate debt-worn student who runs Rebel Radio and can benefit from the programme's phenomenal success? Is it Jules' bitter ex who wants to tear apart the couple by threatening exposure and thus shaming the hussy into getting together with him again?

No, it's Uncle Thad. The man who raised Jules himself. His source was listening to their phone conversations which he taped. He didn't just listen to some idle chatter and suggestive weekend plans. He was spying on their phone sex. And he didn't just end up listening to them out of a morbid and masochistic curiosity, a sort of inability to press the stop button when realised what the voice mail accidentally picked up. He listens to all their conversations, repeatedly to write the scripts of Hush Hush Honeys.

And instead of being horrified and saying something along the lines of "I understand you did this because you care. I love you, but I really don't think I can face you right now. And I'm moving out," Jules swiftly reconciled herself (after a brief bout of shame and mortification) with Uncle Thad and is understanding of his motives. He made her fling all about him and his relationship with her (as though everything in her life was about him) and then claims that he's actually letting her go.

His admission filled the ensuing silence with such richness of emotion that Nick had never before seen the like. Jules seemed to melt before his very eyes, her gaze suddenly bright with tears. She lifted trembling fingers to her mouth and blew her uncle a kiss. With a wink, he pretended to catch it in some private game. A charming little girl and her devoted uncle.

The whole confrontation scene is riddled with unintentional creepiness.

...as long as his dating Julienne hadn't harmed her relationship with her uncle...

No, Nick. Your dating Julienne doesn't and shouldn't harm her relationship with her uncle. His listening to the two of you having phone sex repeatedly, however, is a different matter altogether.

I can't really explain as well as Uncle Thad himself why he did it:

"I didn't write the serial to throw you to the wolves. I wrote it because I couldn't see another way of getting you both to wise up. You seemed quite content to treat your relationship with very little respect, like you were conducting some sort of sordid affair. I hoped if other people vied it with an equal lack of respect you might just come your senses."

And at the end of the day, the book doesn't celebrate "naughtiness," all it does is tell us what we all know already. Good little heroines are allowed to have good sex with the hero, but they must buckle down, get serious and get married at the end of the day. And it's not an affair coming maturity (forgetting to end, even) so much as showing how very damaging the assumption of no-strings-sex can be and that a Conscious Decision must be made before a relationship can be truly considered "serious."

 

Afterthought: Why is it that heroines are almost inevitably in the careers of their fathers/mothers/uncles? There's a creepy little bonding moment between Nick and Uncle Thad as Nick tells him that he'd always admired and been inspired by the veritable Titan of preservation  architecture that was Uncle Thad, even from a young age. And Uncle Thad confesses that he greatly admired Nick even though he disapprove of his personal life. Now, Uncle Thad alo has a protégé in Jules, who admires and is inspired by Nick... There is something to be said for male bonding through an exchange of women.

Not to mention he plans her future life and job with Uncle Thad before he consults her about it.

"As much as I enjoy our sexy phone conversations, I want to be with you, which is why I spent the afternoon talking to your uncle about a solution."

Unsure whether to smile or cringe when she imagined Nick and Uncle Thad with their heads together over a drafting table, Julienne braced herself for the worst.

Seriously, if you're searching for a solution as to how to best avoid a long distance relationship with the woman you love, shouldn't you talk to her instead of anyone else? Even if he is her respected and revered uncle who spies on your phone sex?

My Fair Viking, continued, part two

Part one of this masochistic dissection was here.

Clash between slapstick and gritty plot

My Fair Viking strains between gritty realism and wacky matchmaking-driven slapstick. The result is a book that jumps from one to the other in no logical emotionally true order, trying to elicit sympathy for one thing that is later laughed off as inconsequential.

Here, the winters were long and bitter, often with only one or two hours of daylight; survival took precedence over all else… or it should have.

No one at Stoneheim cares about survival. But more to the point, the slapstick: we're treated with a scene intended to elicit heart-wrenching grief, the scene that should be setting up Adam's inner turmoil and reasons why he doesn't easily open up to people anymore.

Adam the Healer dropped to his knees and beat his breast.

It is the Big Reason why he doesn't want to ever heal again, why he is willing to just sit on his estate and write his book... but then we leap straight into a scene of Rashid (the wacky, comical relief Muslim) pestering to have a harem. The change is simply too abrupt.

And this happens repeatedly. Bolthor (the comedy relief skald) entertains us all with a terrible, terrible poem about how Trya captured Adam and hurled him over her shoulder (in order to get him to save her father, of course):

Now, some say she needed his talent,
That a miracle in him the gods sent.
That very well may be true,
But on this idea you should chew:
Exactly which talent of the knave
Did the fair maid crave?

But this is whilst Thorvald is still in a coma, his life still at risk and no one knows whether or not he'll survive. If he dies , the succession will be in question; whilst Tyra is supposed to take over and has been groomed to take over by her father, but the reader is given no indication that she is capable (because the narrative is too busy grooming her to be Adam's bride and helpmeet, see below) of that responsibility. But more to the point, it's fundamentally tasteless to be suggesting that an action done out of filial piety is done for sexual desire when the fate of her father is still unknown, when in theory they're all bracing themselves for his possible death and consequent political turmoil. Perhaps afterwards there can be some ribbing about it, when the danger has passed (not all danger, of course, that would be silly)but joking during, and especially when everyone knows Tyra is uncomfortable with the idea of being with Adam, it seems... yes, tasteless.

Tykir and Alinor declared it the best poem Bolthor had ever created.

Of course, some may find it amusing, this undermining of their commander's power in a time of potential invasion. The humour isn't even potentially bracing or encouraging. Bolthor is singing this to Tyra's family (all about to suffer personal loss) and the three hundred fighting men of Stoneheim. These men are about to put their lives on the line to defend the place; they need to be utterly confident that Tyra is the best warrior to lead them.

The second day, she'd taken a bath, willingly, in a marble tub big enough to hold twelve people. Then it took eight eunuchs of considerable size to hold her down while every single hair on her body was plucked off.

Tyra is plucked clean of hairs at the harem where she was held captive. This is clearly quite a traumatic experience for her since she was held down during it and afterwards her shaved crotch is enough to drive her to run away from Adam so that he won't see it.

"They plucked all the hair off my body. So there! Now you know." She started to weep again, this time with mortification.

But this incident isn't treated as a violation of her, only actual rape counts as that. Adam reacts violently to the possibility that Tyra may have been raped during her stay at the harem:

He immediately stiffened. "You were raped? My God, I will go back and kill the old buzzard. I thought you said you had not been touched."

However, having hairs plucked from her body, is something to be laughed off until the woman realises she's being silly. It surprises him that the experience bothers her. That being held down by burly eunuchs and plucked, chicken-like, is a physically painful and traumatic experience whilst being held captive in a land where no one speaks her language surprises him. He does not even bother assuring her that she is still attractive without hairs and simply wouldn't stop the stream of chicken-jokes – under the impression, no doubt, that such humour will shame her out of feeling violated. Hill seems to share this opinion as Tyra's mortification is played for laughs and it really doesn't make me feel inclined to like Hill.

My Fair Viking is simply surreal in the characters' inability to react to the gritty reality around them and the author's refusal to acknowledge that the reader may find some of these details harrowing. There isn't even a show of stoical survivalist ethic against the hardships. They are simply forgotten within the chapter. No one remembers the women and children who were taken in the raid. Dagma's rape, difficult labour and consequent stillborn child is brought up in the middle of a sex scene. (I know Hill's going for unsexy, irrelevant conversation to contrast with the "sexplay" but it's unpleasant to point of reminding us of... well, see below)...

 

The Rapist Hero

It's often the case that one hero or another is described as having dubious ideas about consent (Decadent's hero comes to mind) or is a little too forceful for one to be actually comfortable with him.

"Nay, I will not kill you immediately. [...] I have other plans for you first. [...] First, I intend to tup you till your toenails curl.[...] Then I will tup you again till your eyes roll up into your head. [...] And then I will make love to you again and again till you beg for more. That should take, oh, a sennight or two… or five. [...] Then… and only then… will I kill you," he concluded, and grinned mirthlessly at her.

Azrael: "It is creepy. It is not a piece of hero dialogue. That is cheap villain dialogue. Normally, in this genre, I would expect that paragraph to be eventually followed by a revelation that the speaker is secretly an evil gay paedophile."

After he is captured by Tyra, he is tied to the mast and part of their merry banter includes his threats of raping her when he gets free. Now, granted, he's held captive against his will and there is some obvious physical attraction between them – but attraction is certainly not consent. And from his point of view, without the aid of an omniscient narrator, he's just issuing threats of repeated rape that ends in murder. That's neither sympathetic, justified nor sexy. 

The dialogue must also be placed in the context of a world in which rape is a very real threat. Dagma, a fourteen-year-old girl, we are told, has been raped by a passing tradesman. Women and children were captured by Danes and you can imagine what will follow. Tyra is held captive in some sultan's harem and whilst not actually raped, felt violated and it was a distinct possibility in her time there. 

When he was done stitching her wound, he acted quickly. Grabbing her by the waist, he tossed her onto the table face down and flipped up her tunic. She was screaming like a banshee and trying to rise, but he had one hand firmly on her neck and the rest of his body weight pressed over her bottom. Leaning back, he noted that she was not wearing a codpiece, but she did have on some kind of loin cloth. He ripped it off so that he could examine her arrow wound. 

For a bit of context, this takes place right after Tyra has claimed she word a codpiece under her clothes. Tyra had specifically stated last time he offered to look at the wound that she doesn't want his hands on her. Adam is "examining" the arrow wound her on her ass (from Alrek's careless bowmanship; because Vikings never bother teaching their children the common sense of not firing when there's someone between you and the target) without her consent. I really don't care that he's a doctor and is more qualified than the blacksmith. He simply didn't even bother asking her to show it him before flipping her over and ripping her loincloth off. As Azrael put it, "Well, he's clearly a cock."

 

Chronology and Internal Inconsistencies

It's October throughout the book. Despite constantly being informed that sennight after sennight has past in the italics before a chapter, it's always, always October. Adam arrives in Norway in October, sees "Butchering Day" (early October, we're informed) and after the wacky adventures in the Byzantine Empire (taking at least seven sennights of travel or something like that, it's still October.

Exactly when does Adam earn his fame as a healer? I know people have long memories, but he was in the East learning medicine from "the world's best physicians" (but not a university the way a real medieval physician would have) for several years, during which he wasn't practicing and therefore can't be reputation-earning. After returning and finding Adela dead, he hides for two years – It's upwards of five years he spends away from the West. How is it that he is still the most far-famed and allegedly best Healer in the West? Is his absence making him into some sort of living myth? Have people forgotten about his failures? Is it because he's related to Rain?

Also, why does Adam have a dozen changes of clothes, his sword, his books and his shield with him at Stoneheim? He was kidnapped and wasn't exactly given any time to pack for his trip and his captors are hardly the considerate sort that would helpfully gather his belongs for him. Even if they gathered whatever looked like medical equipment, why would they pack his weapons? He's not going to need it on a trip to heal the king of Stoneheim.

Ingrith sniffed the air that morning, noticed the frost on the herbs in her kitchen garden and a few snow flurries in the sky. Clear signs that winter was almost here.
Satisfied, she gave a hearty shout of "Butchering day!" in the great hall where everyone was breaking fast.

Yes, but different cattle and pigs were butchered at different times during the year. Given that we're in October, it should be cattle and sheep that meet the fatal knife, not pigs. Swine get butchered later, somewhere in November, usually.

 

Wacky Muslims

"Nay, master, do not speak such sacrilege. Only Allah, or your Christian God, should make such destiny-decisions," his assistant Rashid cautioned softly, putting a comforting hand on Adam's shoulder.

Rashid is the wacky Muslim sidekick of Adam. He specialises in obsessing over harems and doling out Arabic proverbs. It's a walking, talking insultingly simplistic stereotype. He's also really, really annoying.

To all of these, Rashid nodded and replied, "I swear on the feet of Allah!"

Islam is an iconoclastic religion. Among many other things, it doesn't do humanoid depictions of its deity. Allah doesn't have feet. Even a quick swing onto The Godchecker could tell you that.

The odd thing about Rashid is his sheer inability to get along with anyone. He cites his god Allah with great frequency, he tries to get every attractive woman to join his harem and generally makes a nuisance of himself by offering unwanted advice. The real question is, why hasn't he been chased out of whatever settlement he's in with pitchforks? He's obviously foreign, speaks in some unknown language (possibly of curses) and keeps calling on his heathen God. The Norse might put up with him, what with being polytheistic and quite far travelled (the men, at least), but why are the Anglo-Saxons putting up with him? It's mind-boggling how no one regards him with even the slightest bit of suspicion. Especially since he's doing a lot of dodgy things: he utters a constant stream of blasphemy; he almost certainly doesn't attend church and he's been hitting on all the woman.

"Perhaps you could travel partway with me… you and Rashid. He speaks often of a yearning to return to the warmer clime of his homeland."

And why does Rashid return with Adam to Hawkshire at the end of the book? He's been trying to get Adam to travel back with him home for most of the book, but then when he's in the East... he comes back?

 

Names, oh, the names!

Yes, England has shires, Sandra Hill. Well done. But none with names like "Hawkshire" and "Ravenshire." They stick out like sore thumbs and in a bad way. Shires, sorry to disappoint, don't have romantic names like that. Just to name a few: Bedfordshire (Shire of Beda's Ford), Legeceastershire (Shire of the city of legions), Grantbridgeshire, Wiltonshire (shire of Wilton, name of town, which is named after the river Wylye), Hertfordshire (Shire of hart's fjord), Buckinghamshire (Shire of Bucca's home), etc, etc...

Stoneheim's keep was a wood fortress, like most others throughout Norway. But that was the only way in which it was similar.

Stoneheim. What sort of a name is that? Heima is Old Norse for "home," which is why it appears in mythological place names like Jötunheimr (home/homeland of the giants). The settlement of Stoneheim is certainly not made of stone and the fields of its holdings are stone-studded. Are the people of Stoneheim made of stone? Where is the stone? And why mix an English word (Stone) with an Old Norse one (heima) in this jarring way? What reason has she to do so?

Dragonstead. Stead is English. Staðr, however, is Old Norse, meaning "place" or "stead," so pretty much the same thing. But why mix it with "Dragon"? (The Old Norse word would be Draki.) Dragons aren't really a good thing in Germanic myth and legend. You put it on the front of your longship because it's fearsome and scary, not because it's cuddly and lovely.

Fagrfjord. Here, we have an Old Norse word. But Fagr? Fair Ford?

Now, not all places in Norway or England or the rest of the world have prosaic names. After all, there's a Ravenswood and a Seven Oaks... but there's also the places in Iceland named by Ingimund when he got there: Saudadal (Sheep valley), Svinavatn (Swine lake), Hunavatn (Cub's lake), Hof (Temple), Stigandahrof (Stigandi's Shed), Hrutafjord (Rams' fjord), Vididal (Willow valley), Bordeyri (Plank headland) and Thordisarholt (Thordis' wood).

In fact, all of Tyra's sisters were legitimate. Her father had a tendency to marry his women, even more than one at a time.

Breanne, Drifa, Vana, Ingrith, Tyra. All legitimate daughters of Thorvald.

That makes no sense given the Germanic alliterating naming traditions for royal families. That's all I can say. They should all begin with same letter, if not the same component.


To be continued...

My Fair Viking... let me count the ways

My Fair Viking, by Sandra Hill

The captain is everything a Viking warrior should be -- tall, fierce, blond, and curved in all the right places. Hold it -- curved in all the right places? That's right. This Viking captain, Tyra, is a woman, and a lovely one at that. For years her height and strength and sharp tongue have daunted any Norseman with marriage on his mind. But now, faced with her ailing father's vow that her sisters (all smaller, sweeter, and younger than she) will remain maidens until Tyra weds, the bold captain decides it's time to find herself a husband. That's when she meets Adam the Healer, the twofold answer to this maiden's prayers. The skilled physician can use his expertise to cure her father, and Tyra's more than willing for the tall, handsome man to warm her marriage bed as well. There's just one problem. It seems that Adam isn't inclined to take orders from anyone.... But Tyra isn't the first Viking captain to kidnap a likely-looking mate -- though even she admits it's generally the groom who wears the armor on such occasions. My Fair Viking is fun and fast-paced -- and, when Adam finally realizes what he's being offered, things get even funnier and faster.

It is hard to describe everything that's wrong with My Fair Viking, (the book that the Chronicler, the Anthropologist and the Balance ended up reading one day) but the Chronicler will valiantly try. These points are roughly – very roughly – organised in terms of their jarring and irritating nature.


Adam's Priority Chart

The characters have very bizarre priorities that boggle the mind and strips the reader of any sense of sympathy for them. What is more jarring is the way Sandra Hill seems utterly oblivious to the phenomenon of her characters behaving like... well, bastards.

Adam realises his calling in the field of medicine as he, at the age of ten, watches in amazement at his stepmother-to-be help a woman give birth (by making "a small cut in the place between her woman-folds"). He decides that it was his destiny to become a doctor and that was that.

(The use of the word "doctor" is jarring in and of itself, as it wasn't until late 14th century that it was used to mean a medical doctor rather than a learned man or teacher  - some four hundred years after when this book is set.)

Of course, the hold this destiny has on him is weak, at best, as at the death of his sister, Adela, he decides he to give up medicine forever: "One thing is certain. No longer will I answer to the name of healer. I am forswearing medicine." He says this as he cradles his dead sister (he seems to care little for his step-parents) and as hundreds more lie dying around him. Now, I understand that he's really distraught and that his sister means a lot to him. However, it seems callous to the point of inhumanity that Adam could just walk away from these people dying of the wasting sickness.

Over and over, the sufferers called for Adam and his healing skills, but he had nothing left to give.

I could but assume he's collapsing out of exhaustion, but how about tomorrow and the day after? It's an epidemic. "The toll in lives thus far was horrible to contemplate," we're told. Doesn't Adam want to anything about it? If he went into medicine for more selfish reasons (like a fascination with the subject) rather than a desire to help people, it might have been more sympathetic, but now it seems only to highlight his lack of conviction and the sheer shallowness of his calling. He doesn't doubt his skill in healing or find it traumatic to deal with patients... he just stops, abandoning hundreds to their fate. He doesn't even try to console himself that there are monks and priests aplenty to deal with the dying, or that most are too far gone to be tended and need divine intervention and peace rather than a healer. He spares not a single thought or a smidgen of guilt to " the rows of pallets where dozens of people lay sick and dying of the wasting disease" when he renounces medicine.

(Incidentally, not to undermine the tragedy, but 27 really isn't that young for a woman to be dying in the early middle ages. Considering the very real threat of death that comes with pregnancy. Another question is why in the world isn't she married? Was she really that ugly? Also, we never find out why Adela was still in Jorvik when the epidemic hit, since most rich people knew to evacuate to the country when things look a bit sickly. Rain, "far-famed healer", may have felt compelled to stay, but Adela could have left.)

Arguably this isn't exactly distant from the expensive and elite medieval physicians that Adam may have been modelled on. University-educated and very rare, a physician could only be afforded by the very rich during the middle ages. Most simply sought out the local midwife, monks, nuns, folk healers and saints, which were cheaper and more widespread. But then, as pointed out, his calling was to heal and not to covet.

"Don't you want to know about my father's illness… so that you may be prepared to cure him when we arrive at Stoneheim?"

"Why should I inquire about his symptoms when I do not intend to treat him?"

Even as Tyra kidnaps him in hopes that he will save her father, Adam maintains that he has renounced medicine and he would do the dying comatose man no good, which at least shows he is committed to his cause and will not be swayed by tales of dying men. However, when Tyra is shot in the behind with an arrow (really, really stupid slapstick, I refer you to that section), Adam offers to remove it and Tyra is shocked and horrified at the concept.

"Nay, I do not want you touching any part of my body, and certainly not that part. Besides, I thought you had given up medicine."

"For this, I would be willing to make an exception." He was still grinning, but he meant it. For a view of her naked backside, he would do just about anything.

This exchange undermines any credulity that Adam has as a virtuous and selfless healer. He is later reluctant to treat the many who flock to Stoneheim to be healed by him, but leaps to the chance of seeing Trya's ass. It really isn't encouraging or endearing an action. It seems to show that he puts the chance of seeing an attractive ass above his solemn vow to his dead sister on his list of priorities, which is above healing the sick and weak. I would really be more suspicious of a man who's more concerned with seeing ass than healing head wounds.

More work for him, though, he presumed. 

At the sight of the dying, all Adam could think of is that. More work for him to do. More bodies to operate on. He doesn't even wonder at the attack or what may have transpired.

Even Adam's book, his great legacy, he forgets soon after he puts down his quill.


More on Medieval Medicine and Midwives

The thing that enthralled Adam was what Rain was doing inside the hut. She was a healer, apparently. Not just a midwife, as some old crones were, but an actual trained physician.

I hated every word of that sentence. Mostly because the likelihood of Adam having seen "an actual trained physician" in his lifetime to know what one looked like is unlikely to the point of impossible. Him being a street urchin and physicians being part of the elite. In the 13th century, there were only 3 in all of Worchester. Secondly, counting on Adam's ingrained medieval misogyny in later chapters, women were never physicians.  They were midwives, folk healers and nuns, but not physicians as a physician implies a university education (that was where the training comes from) and that required one to be male. A woman being a physician is about as preposterous as her joining the Varangian Guard – an idea that Adam finds so ludicrous he laughs for hours. Literally.

Of course, he might not have meant university-trained with those words, but rather some sort of folk healer, but then, what would the difference be? Both were trained as apprentices by masters, so it seems bizarre to privilege one over the other. Especially insulting is the way midwives are described as "just a midwife" and described as old crones. Where is he getting this inane prejudice from?

And how many times has the young boy seen midwives at work? Did he think Rain wasn't one simply because she wasn't old and ugly? How did he know most midwives didn't work with such magical efficiency? Episiotomies were first used in the 18th century, so is rather anachronistic in and of itself, but on top of all that, it also seems odd that Rain comes from the 20th century where the practice has been falling out of use and questioned since the 1960s.


The Cheerleader Attitude

"Cheerleaders" is what Mrs Giggles calls them in her review, and I think it's a good term for what the character do. They are all – yes, all of them, from Tyra's sisters to Adam's uncle to the precocious children – obsessed with getting Adam and Tyra, the hero and the heroine, together. Nothing is more important than scheming to get them into each others' "bed furs," as Hill puts it. Not only is this annoying, but the matchmaking shenanigans is set against the backdrop of Danish outlaws pillaging village outposts.

"Unless my father awakens soon and begins to show his face in public, this will be the first of many such strikes, and not just by Ejnar, either," Tyra told Rafn. "Every malcontent from here to Birka will be on the move, sniffing out any weakness in our flanks."

The Danes can smell weakness like a shark. Which is all well and good. But no one seems to care much. The matchmaking continues at Stoneheim. The sisters gossip exclusively about Tyra and Adam; nary a word about their dying father or worries about his comatose state crosses their lips. There are patrols, but only after  the attack, which seems silly since they all know of the perceived weakness and should have been working hard to counter it.

They'd burned some timber longhouses, stolen cattle and sheep, taken a few women and children who were unable to run to the mountains, and killed a half dozen fighting men.

This is serious business. If one worries not about the lives that were lost, the captives that have been taken, then surely one must worry about the valuable cattle that were stolen. But the inhabitants of Stoneheim are above such petty cares.

"But we caught this raid early on. Now that we are forewarned, we will send reinforcements to man all of our vulnerable border lines."

Lies. Rafn says "we caught this raid early on" as though that piece of intelligence made any difference to the dead fighting men, the captured women and children and the stolen cattle. It didn't. The Danes had come and gone by the time they arrived. Incidentally, just before she departed Tyra ended up in a long and protracted discussion with Adam about Alrek's annual pay, their relationship and him wanting her to not go. It is utterly irresponsible that she delay going

...she turned and walked stiffly toward the groups of men and horses waiting for her.

It is made clear that her men were ready and waiting for her, but she feels that talking to Adam is more important than the possibility of a burning village. Again, she does not reprimand herself for delaying setting off. Though arguably, it's only ten, twenty minutes, it may be enough to see away the Danes, to engage them in combat – vengeance is better than nothing, after all.

The king was especially engrossed by the events surrounding Tyra and Adam, but he was also more than interested in the outlaws who'd attacked his holdings the night before.

It really reads as though he finds Tyra and Adam more interesting than the outlaw attacking his holdings. Despite having been informed that attacks have been made, and presumably, being the wily old king he is, Thorvald would know that a show of strength in his recovery is essential at this point. He feels no guilt for keeping his recovery a secret from the world because he's too busy perusing some "mush-brained" plot to get Tyra and Adam together. That this very secret is costing him the lives of his people and cattle from his holdings. Though arguably, him making a show of awakening a couple of days earlier might not have made a difference (as the news would not travel as fast) surely he feels the responsibility of his kingdom keenly enough to be ashamed of putting such a petty thing above his people.

Furthermore, he had already trained Tyra to be the warrior that succeeds him. Why does he need her to get married?

After Tyra runs away with her hesirs (further weakening the defences of Stoneheim), Thorvald insists on making the journey to go after her. A rescue and all that. Whilst his kingdom is still under the Danish threat. Whilst it is rather late in the season for an attack, but it seems foolish to underestimate the people who've dealt you a near-fatal blow and successfully raided your village.

The matchmaking plans are not even slightly dented by the attacks or the possibility of more attacks. Especially when the plans seems to involve undermining Tyra's authority as head of the hesirs (see below). It is inane to think making this match is worth undermining the authority of their father's successor in protecting them all. Have they really so much faith that their father would recover and thereby make Tyra's rule redundant? Or do they really have no understanding of how authority works?

All of the secondary characters sound the same after a few chapters as what little personality they have (usually a hobby that borders on obsession) is soon eclipsed by the all-consuming desire to see Adam and Tyra get it on. The stability of the realm, international relations, politics, the safety and wellbeing of others, all rank after.

 

Inexplicable Wandering Accents

Sandra  Hill cannot do accents, so she should have just given up on them. The characters wander Cockney Street Urchin to Somerset Pirate to Yorkshire Farmhand to Modern American. The children, especially, are susceptible to this. The accent won't stay still halfway through a sentence. The uses of the "dost", "nay", "mayhap", "methinks" all sound as though she went through with a find and replace. These pseudo-Shakespearean words are used willy-nilly with less than archaic words like "barmy." The result is a mess and the sentences simply don't scan.

Women! 'Twas hard to figure them out.

The usage of "dost" makes even less bizarre since Hill uses it in the place of "do you", so "Do you think she would consent to wearing pierced bells on her breasts?" becomes:

Dost think she would consent to wearing pierced bells on her breasts? 

But "dost" is the second-person singular simple present form of do. It's used with "thou". Dropping the "thou" consistently makes no sense. It's like saying the "do" without the "you."

Also, she uses "methinks" as a cipher for "I think" rather than "it seems to me", which is telling in certain sentences.

 

Incestuous Overtones

The Chronicler would be the first to admit that we are all too ready to read these into texts, but Adam the Healer's relationship with his sister is rather alarming:

Despite her being covered with filth from bare feet to lice-infested head, as he was, too, Adam thought she was more comely than a harem princess... not that he'd ever seen a harem princess, but he'd heard sailors speak of such.

Arguably, Adam has never seen a harem princess and doesn't know that they are objects of sexual beauty, despite listening in on the talk of sailors who would hardly be reticent about such things. He could have chosen other things of beauty – such as a memorable statue of the Virgin Mary, perhaps, or a folktale princess – which would be less inherently and blatantly sexual. Hill made a conscious decision here to compare the young Adela to a harem princess, in a book which features harems as a prominent fantasy, seems rather alarming.

 

Small Precocious Children

The Anthropologist and The Chronicler are hardly the sort to go cooing over small children, but they are quite confident that even the most soft-hearted of women would be repulsed by the sheer cutesiness of the children in My Fair Viking. Alrek, aged ten, is at the head of his tiny household, all of whom are younger than him.

Ten is not considered adulthood in Viking terms. Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen is the age most heroes in sagas (both legendary and historical) start out and that seems to be a good age. Puberty should be well underway (though bearing in mind it happens later in ye olde times) and they can handle adult-sized sword and armour. Ten, however, is nowhere near this and Alrek is described in especially tiny and undergrown terms.

As such, Alrek is not only too young to go aviking, he is also too rubbish. He is a walking hazard. No self-respecting captain would let him onto their ship and they would especially not give them special attention the way Tyra does. He isn't trained with a sword and is unable to row. He isn't used as a cabin boy or equivalent, so why he's allowed on is beyond the Chronicler.

"Me father left when I was five. Some say he is a fighting man in the Rus lands; some say he is dead." He shrugged with indifference. "Me mother died last year of the childbed fever. She were a kitchen helper. Two sisters and a brother I have back at Stoneheim. I am the oldest, so I mus' support them with the silver coin King Thorvald pays me each year."

(The Chronicler also wonders how in the world the littlest, Besji, who is two survived her mother getting "childbed fever" since there is no alternative to breastmilk. What was the little tyke drinking all the time its mother was lying dying?)

Furthermore, the idea of Alrek as head of his family is stupid given the communal living arrangements of Stoneheim and Viking society as a whole. They all lived in an enormous longhouse, ate together in the one enormous room and slept in the same enormous room. The idea that he is alone responsible for his siblings is preposterous. This is a society that is knit together with hand-me-downs. Soldiers aren't paid predominately annual fees but live off their lord and are given gold at his will ("ring-giver" and all that) and portions of booty.

If he's being trained to be a Viking warrior, then he should be trained with all the other children at Stonehiem. There are three hundred fighting men at Stoneheim, at least some of whom are married. I could but assume some of them have sprogged and want their offspring to follow in their footsteps. And if I recall correctly, they would be trained by the women when the men are away.

Alrek and his brood already have a family. The women of Stoneheim should be taking care of them along with all the other children. Especially given that they are increasingly incompetent as the story goes on. At first, they are described as clumsy but able to fend for themselves – tough, even – since, they've survived this long. And yet, they're not. At first, Alrek claims Besji is toilet trained and that they used to have to change her linens ever five minutes (incidentally, why are they using linens?!) but later they are shown unable to cope with Besji soiling herself and are harassing Adam to do it. 

The children's shenanigans are supposed to be humorous, but it's annoying. Really annoying. And at times, very disturbing as we hear Alrek talk all sorts about virgins and sex. He peers into the room as Tyra and Adam have sex in an obviously supposed-to-be-funny way, but all it elicits in this audience is horror. The communal living should have made it into a matter-of-fact issue, but he gawks at it all in an annoying way.

Also, "youthling" is a stupid, stupid word. Worse than "youngling" and that's saying a lot.


To be continued...

(The Horror is not over Yet.)