This chapter follows nicely on the previous one. There’s the mystery of how the whole Ziphoa tribe was murdered so easily and it ties in with the witches and their songs. I’m reminded again of the God prologue and the temple order in the first Jin’Cathul chapter. The magic system you began to reveal there has been long absent so far and this chapter reminded me I’d like to see it again.
What I’m getting most from this chapter is actually two problems, one an enduring one and the other purely local.
First, I still don’t see the main plotline. From the prologue and the title of the book I’m getting that God’s name has to be discovered and returned to him. I’m assuming Jin’Cathul, Anaiah, Guli (with a ‘G’, I remember this time
), and Zulbane are going to have to do it somehow because they are the main characters.
These assumptions I’ve made from the prologue and the title alone. If it is the main thread it’s still obscured in all subsequent chapters, but by the end of this chapter Anaiah is moving to the bazaar. This means we can finally get two of the main characters to meet and that feels like progress.
The second problem I had was the believability of the chapter. Reading about the aftermath of the Ziphoa massacre bothered me all the way through and I think it’s because of one thing:
acceptance.
I had to look back a chapter to make sure I got the impression right, but Hilva and Glubon seem to feel what most of the Ziphoa feel or should feel – an uneasy and tenuous acceptance of Anaiah. On one hand she’s part of the tribe and expected to marry Amoz, but on the other she is and always will be a witch. Their whole culture is based on how evil witches are after all; they’ll never see her without also seeing a witch.
In chapter six, though they aren’t friends, Hilva and Glubon follow her rather easily. Now the three of them are the only ones left. While I get that necessity can create strange alliances the underlying bias against Anaiah should still exist. In fact, it should be at a boiling point right now. As far as they know it was her father’s fault the tribe was killed.
Then you have parts like this:
Anaiah nodded. “You are correct. I am not. At the Bazaar my father had a friend, a witchborn man.”
“He was friends with witches?” Hilva asked. Her eyes were wide.
“Not when he fought,” Anaiah retorted. “My father was the best warrior I have ever seen. The Apara killed him because the witches seduced him with their ways.”
Anaiah is a witch and her father consorted with witches and witchborn – why isn’t Hilva exploding in anger? Why isn’t she trying to beat the tar out of Anaiah? Don’t the Stones demand justice, and wasn’t it they who warned against taking Anaiah in in the first place?
Witches bring nothing but bad luck and now the tribe is dead. Instead Hilva’s fine with violating all their traditions, follow Anaiah willy-nilly, and find a witchborn man. It doesn’t fit with what we’ve been told about the Ziphoa.
I was expecting conflict between Anaiah and Hilva and Glubon in this chapter. The combination of grief and anger in Anaiah, and anger and retribution in Hilva and Glubon, could make a hard situation even worse. How would Anaiah convince the other two not to abandon her; can she focus enough through her own raw emotions to make a convincing argument?
That would have been interesting, but instead we get some unhappiness and then it’s on to the next order of business. The chapter doesn’t feel natural to me, it's all too easy. You can really spice things up here, even though in the end Hilva and Glubon are still going to follow her. If Anaiah has to work hard to keep what little she has left together it can make this chapter that much more powerful.
