Page 82 of Song of the Beast

I was. But I had no time to dwell on it. I was rapidly running out of things to ask about the Rider’s garb, and I’d scarcely begun working up to what I needed to know.

            It doesn’t upset them, then, when strangers are about ... doing things they’re not used to? Even if I were to start ringing bells, say, or yelling or screaming?”

            The Rider spit into his firepit and dipped another goblet of wine from the cask, sucking it down in a single breath. “Upset? Do you think these are Senai ladies? There’s nothing in the world can upset a dragon. Can you upset a volcano? Can you disturb a lightning bolt? Can you offend a whirlwind? They do what they do, and lucky for you and everyone like you, I and my brothers don’t let them do it unless we tell them.” He turned his spit once again, then settled himself, still naked, on his bed of furs, sucking down yet another cup of wine.

            I wanted to scream at the man. I wanted to ask him why Callia lay dead, and Gerald and Gwaithir and Alys, and all the rest. Nothing made sense. I’d never been closer to a dragon than the rim of this very valley. I’d never touched a rider  until my feeble attempt on Callia’s attacker. I’d never done anything they could consider a threat. Anything.

            “Aye,” I said. “The Riders protect us all ... even the vile Florin spawn who sits out there in the center of all this.” I pulled on my boots as if to go, then stood up waving my hand at the wintry desolation. “How is it done ... to keep a hostage alive out there with the dragons?”

            Zengal belched and shrugged. “We make another ring,” he said, his words slurred with drink. “Three of us with the brat every hour of every day. Damned waste of time playing nursemaid. They always end up dead, after all.” He stroked the golden cup in his hand and turned it so the firelight made the jewels gleam. “But the rewards are fine enough.”

            “I heard a story once that a hostage escaped from a dragon camp, right past the beasts. How could –”

            In a move so light and quick as to belie his size and state of drunkenness, the naked Rider pinned me to the stone wall with a callused hand

(from a 2011 edition that seems to be out of print)

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My review:

So, the book is called Song of the Beast, and on page 82 we find that Dragon Riders are piggish, violent, arrogant guys who killed some people our hero liked and are more than happy to gloat about dominating the creatures they use as weapons. Knowing no more than this, I can predict that the overall plot of the novel builds toward a revelation that the dragons are actually intelligent and nice, after which the hero finds a way to free them from their unjust servitude.

Right off the bat, this violates one of my key expectations of a good page 82: it shouldn’t make me feel like I can predict pages 1 through 81 with any certainty whatsoever. Sure, I don’t know the details of who Callia, Gerald, Gwaithir and Alys are, but they’re probably some friends or family members who got burned up by the dragons, and since the narrator seems to think that the attack had something to do the Riders holding something against him, he’s obviously on a quest to set things right. No, I don’t know how the Riders control their beasts, or exactly what their role is in society as a whole. But there’s no mistaking the fact that they’re a bunch of a-holes, and that the social structure permits or even encourages them to be a-holes.

I am made curious by the seeming contempt with which the Rider views the dragons. Knights of old certainly respected and valued their horses, and obviously a creature as powerful as a dragon would seem to merit some kind of reverence, especially if your livelihood depends on it. But I’m also made dubious by the Rider’s attitude. If the dragons really are intelligent and capable of “song” as the title implies, then wouldn’t someone in close proximity to them have to be pretty dumb not to recognize that?

Onward, then, to our narrator. What do I know about him by the end of the page? Well, he’s aggrieved at the Riders and is trying to find out why they killed his friends/family. He’s here on some kind of false pretenses, spying and probing for information. But ... he doesn’t seem to be very good at it. Even without knowing what’s gone before, it seems a little over-obvious to be asking repeatedly about hostages and how hostages might escape from dragons when you’re dealing with somebody whose job is apparently watching over the hostages. And sure enough, by the end of the page the Rider is at the guy’s throat. So our hero is brave and determined, but maybe not that competent. Whether he’s likeable, I have no idea.

The quality of the writing seems okay. It’s mostly dialogue, and a lot of that is heavy-handedly intended to make the Rider out to be a jerk, clearly. I can’t help but notice the writer’s use of “sucking down” twice to describe how the guy drinks. Did she not have a thesaurus to remind her of the words “chugging” or “guzzling”? Also, if you suck liquid down “with a single breath,” that means you’re aspirating it and trying to drown yourself. What she really means is “without pausing for breath.”

All in all, I end up curious about a world where dragons are apparently crude weapons of war or terror, viewed perhaps with fear but without admiration or esteem. Use of dragons as the tools of thugs is a novel idea to me, so I’m motivated to find out more. But my expectations for the book as a whole are not necessarily through the roof.

Page 82 of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“Papers,” the Switchpoint said in a faint, airy voice. Its eyes were hard brass balls, glinting with judgment.

September fished the little green book that Betsy Basilstalk had given her out of the inner pocket of the smoking jacket. The jacket was deeply pleased to have kept it safe for her. She held it up so the cherubic little face could examine it. It clucked imperiously.

“Ravished, eh? Haven’t seen one of you in a while.” The Switchpoint looked dubiously at A-Through-L, who scratched at the grass with one enormous claw.

“He’s my ... companion. My Wyvern,” said September hurriedly. She hoped he would not be too offended at being called hers.

“Do you have a Deed for him?”

The Wyverary drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable. “True servitude,” he said gently, “can only be voluntary. Surely, you know that. Surely, you once chose to stand here and frown at those who wish only to enter the city. Surely, you once did something else--sold gloves or frightened children at festivals--and chose this instead.”

The Switchpoint squinted up at him. “Were a soldier, we were,” it grumbled.

The great goat-hair gate drew back like a theatre curtain. Four of the hands at the base of the Switchpoint post began to work furiously, so fast the fingers blurred so that September could not even see them moving. Slowly, a deep scarlet scrap began to spread out from the post, weaving itself as it went, a little brass thumb sliding back and forth like a shuttle. It flowed on, raw, shimmering silk, under September’s shadowless feet and through the gate, stopping there, as if to beckon them onward.

September took a step forward. The hands blurred into industry again, and the scarlet path wove swiftly on into Pandemonium.

(From the hardback edition)
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My Review

First off, if all books had titles as wonderful as this one's, I'd be forced to start a blog reviewing just the titles of books. But I don't have such a blog, and most books don't have such good titles, so on with the review.

What a whirl of concepts and characters this page is! In quite a short interval, we have five characters named if you include the smoking jacket ... and how can one not be intrigued at the notion of a smoking jacket as a character? Then there’s the categorization of September as “Ravished,” a fact apparently set forth in her green book of papers, her introduction of her companion, the idea that any mention of possession can imply that one should have a Deed ...

Without benefit of the previous 81 pages, the scene is a bit of a puzzle. We don’t know what a Switchpoint is and have only a few tidbits of description to go by; seemingly, the creature is an amalgam of many parts. Still, the situation is clear; September and her Wyvern are trying to enter a city (Pandemonium, one assumes from the final line), and the gatekeeper has challenged them. More or less everything in the scene is somehow magical, from the Switchpoint to the smoking jacket to the Wyvern (or Wyverary) to the goat-hair gate. The setting recalls the gates of Oz, with their recalcitrant gatekeeper and the magical road leading up to the city. But despite the tonal similarity, all of the details come across as highly original, and provoke one’s curiosity as well. Why are September’s feet shadowless? Why is the Wyvern serving her? What’s inside Pandemonium that attracts the pair?

And on top of all the imaginative details, we find in the middle of the page two elements that elevate this passage above mere fantastical storytelling: the notion that true servitude can only be voluntary, and also the implication that those who find themselves sour and unhappy with their lot in life perhaps have their own past choices to blame.

So: inventive, intriguing, and even philosophical. If I weren’t already reading this book, I would definitely start.

Page 82 of Toonopolis: Gemini

Jimbob, he opened the left side his coat to reveal an array of different watches lining the inside. “Wanna buy a watch?” asked the weasel.

“No,” said Jimbob.

“Genuine fake imports here,” he persisted.

“He said no,” Gemini replied.

The weasel opened the right side of the coat that was lined with a bunch of different types of eyeballs. “How about an eyeball?” the weasel asked.

“Eew, no.” Jimbob shuddered and quickly ushered Gemini away from the shady weasel. “Why would he even have eyeballs?” he muttered to himself. Gemini observed his guide, who looked very disturbed. He could see that Jimbob was continuing to mumble to himself but could not make out what else he was saying.

“So, where to next, Señor Crankypants?” Gemini asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“We need more information on Angel. We need to talk to Madame Rouge.”

“Rouge is an expert on Rogues?”

Jimbob nodded. “Yes, and on spelling the two words correctly. More specifically, she’s an expert on Angel; she used to work here.” Jimbob pointed at a building marked only with red fluorescent lighting.

(Submitted by the author, Jeremy Rodden; ebook available here)

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My Review

This page is a bit of a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I'm nostalgic for the old "Wanna buy a watch" joke, and got a chuckle out of the twist that the other side of his coat had eyeballs. It was a good one-two setup, and Jimbob's queasy reaction evoked both sympathy and amusement. Likewise, the Rouge/Rogues juxtaposition struck me as clever and fun, especially since I've seen that mis-spelling innumerable times and used to commit it myself as a youngster.

On the flip-side, a shady weasel is of course the ultimate in anthropomorphic cliches, and one never likes to encounter two cliches in a single brief piece of writing without strong evidence that the author is trying to puncture the cliches rather than just relying on their time-worn familiarity. The "Wanna buy a watch" cliche was suitably punctured, though, so perhaps on some other page the weasel one will be as well.

The prose is functional and avoids significant mis-steps, though there's a minor that/which error in there. I will say that I'm always sensitive to phrases like, "Gemini observed his guide." Normal people don't "observe" other people; they look at them or watch them or keep an eye on them. Observing is the act of a sleuth or a scientist, and Gemini doesn't sound much like either one when he asks, "So, where to next, Señor Crankypants?" I can't help but notice as well that the questionable phrase accompanies a mid-paragraph shift of point-of-view, in which we move straight from Jimbob's shudder and mutter into Gemini's perspective on those actions. Now, the preceding 81 pages may well establish that Gemini is both formal in his observational habits and casual in his banter, and may consistently use a shifting third-person omniscient POV. So neither of these is a game-ender, and they may not even be flaws in the context of the overall book. But along with the cliches, they set off my warning bells.

Still, I'm a sucker for anything with rogues in it, and this page genuinely amused me twice in a very short space. If I were shopping for kids' books in a store, I would definitely flip through this one further to see if it continued to look promising.

Page 82 of The Fellowship of the Ring

feat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.'

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.

'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it. We should be very hard put to it, even if it were not for this dreadful chance.

'The Enemy still lacks one thing to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance, break the last defences, and cover all the lands in a second darkness. He lacks the One Ring.

'The Three, fairest of all, the Elf-lords hid from him, and his hand never touched them or sullied them. Seven the Dwarf-kings possessed, but three he has recovered, and the others the dragons have consumed. Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants. Long ago. It is many a year since the Nine walked abroad. Yet who knows? As the Shadow grows once more, they too may walk again. But come! We will not speak of such things even in the morning of the Shire.

'So it is now: the Nine he has gathered to himself; the Seven also, or else they are destroyed. The Three are hidden still. But that no longer troubles him. He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, wherever they be, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.

'And this is the dreadful chance, Frodo. He believed that the One had perished; that the Elves had destroyed it, as should have been done. But he knows now that it has


(From the 1974 edition)

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My Review:

Can you get much better than this page? Let's say all you know is that it's from the series The Lord of the Rings. Here, by sheer luck, is the page that tells you what the Lord of the Rings is. Not only that, but five sentences in, you get to one of the best sentences ever written: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." In a handful of paragraphs, Gandalf lays out a vast sweep of history, and also lets you know that some very bad news is going down in the present. The language is poetic, but the sense of threat is real, and as you get to the end of the page, you're speared on the hook of an incomplete sentence that promises to tell you even more about how bad our good guys have it, thanks to the nameless Enemy learning whatever it is he's learned.

Pure magic.