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readallthenewberys2017-09-11 02:57 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2017-09-11 02:57 pm
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Newbery Honor: Garram the Hunter: A Boy of the Hill Tribes (Herbert Best)
Oh look, one of my interlibrary loans has arrived! Let's see what it's like. :D
* "The Map of Garram's Country" in the front gives us very little -- Plateau of the Hillmen, Big River, The Baboon Hills, and so forth. There are three distinctive words: Kwallak, a region; Fulani, a people; and Yelwa, a town. To the Googles!
* "Kwallak" brings up a region in Nigeria with no additional information. "Fulani" brings up a Wiki entry on the Fula people, an ethnic group of West Africa. "Yelwa" brings up a town in Nigeria. I think we can safely deduce that our story takes place in Nigeria.
* Frontispiece. Garram has more-or-less African features, but is drawn in such a stylized manner that I can't tell whether he has straight hair or no hair.
* We are in the "African bush". Garram has "silken black" skin and wears a leather loincloth. He comes from "the Hills", but is hunting in "the Plains" and, we are told, is "as a stranger liable to be killed on sight if discovered". Okaaaaay then.
* Garram is hunting with his dog, Kon. Kon responds to directional signals given by Garram as "birdlike whistles"; we are told that this is "a method of hunting probably unique, invented after long practice by the boy and his dog". I don't know enough about hunting to know whether this is a possible thing or whether our author is full of shit.
* They are hunting a male kob, a type of antelope. The range map assures me this is indeed found in central Nigeria.
* After a further description of the hunt, Garram jumps out of a tree onto the kob's back as it runs and kills it with his knife. This seems like a hell of a technique to repeat reliably; I suspicion that my author is making up bullshit in order to make Garram seem more speshuler. :P Does anybody here know anything about hunting? Is this even possible?
* Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Garram "had now, for some time, given up the noisy, ineffectual hunts of the other youths of the tribe, who were led by that clumsy boaster, Menud." So Garram is the only competent hunter in a tribe that lives by hunting, got it. :P Fucking racist white authors. Fuck white people, I say; fuck 'em.
* Ahem. Anyway, Garram has been hunting outside his tribe's area so as to avoid Menud et alia, and to save up "a hidden store of brass rods and rolls of native cloth, the currency of the country" against the time his father the chief will die, when Garram will need to... be rich? buy a feast for his village? Something of the sort, in order to secure the chieftainship.
* Oh, great. Garram has trained his dog to do the opposite of every command -- e.g. to pick an object up when ordered "Drop it" -- so that nobody but himself can use the dog. This, we are told, is necessary because Menud, "relying on his clumsy strength and his following of loutish village youths", stole Garram's previous dog, which was then "killed by a chance arrow in one of those hunting parties of yapping curs and still noisier half-grown men which Garram despised". So Garram is not just the only competent hunter but the only decent human being in his village. Blargle.
* Garram dries the meat over a fire, then takes it to a village market and sells it. Then he heads back toward the plateau where his village is. The cave where he has kept his stash of riches, however, has been raided and is empty.
* Ah, Garram's head is shaved. I don't know if this is accurate to the customs of... whatever the hell unspecified tribe he is, or whether it was simply done to make him look less ~savage~ in the art. :P
* Oh, well, there's no mystery as to who stole Garram's shit, because he immediately tells his dog that he's seen Menud watching him all the time. Whatever. Am I interested? I am not.
* We find another cave. Garram goes in, "his face set with the grim killing urge", though we're not now told what or who is inside.
* In the village, the councilors sit on uncomfortable rock-hewn seats, as is Tradition. We are told the village is named "Kwallak the Stony". Menud's dad Sura is yelling at the Council about a thief in the village. Sura is angry that he doesn't get to be on the Council; Garram's dad Walok says Sura is both not old enough and "not of the true descent of the tribe", which puzzles me -- is he an incomer, or a half-breed, or why is he here if he's not part of the tribe?
* Anyway -- oh. Oh. "Sura, his thick lips thrust forward with malicious eagerness"... *headdesk* I'm twenty-nine pages in to a 332-page book. I suppose I have to give it at least a few more pages, but jeez, dude! Way to fucking racism, there. :P
* A-ny-way, so Sura and Menud accuse the absent Garram of stealing all the goats and selling them in exchange for the riches they have stolen from his cave. Menud is somehow "gangling" but also "large built", idek.
* They show a bundle of the riches. Menud claims, with a super-obvious "I'm lying" gulp nobody notices, that this is the whole amount he found.
* Nobody likes Sura and Menud, so one old man tries to defend Garram by telling a lie that he has not lost any goats -- though he had seventeen and now he has two -- then pokes another old man, who tries "to frame, if possible, a better lie. To claim an increase in his herds, perhaps!" Everyone in this village is a FUCKING IDIOT and believes everyone else in the village to be even more of a one. I am so unimpressed. Nobody is speaking in phonetic dialect yet, but that's about the only thing this book has going for it.
* Garram shows up with "gaping wounds in his side", which also nobody seems to notice. His dad, Warok the chief, asks him about the charge of stealing. Garram first points out that Sura and Menud have hidden most of what they stole, then summons a party of men who have brought goat-bones and also a dead leopard, this being what he killed in the other cave. Then searchers bring the loot from Sura's house, and then Garram faints. Warok gives a weird speech forbidding the villagers to punish Sura and Menud for their bullshit? Apparently he wants Garram alone to have revenge? The chapter ends with "But Menud and Sura were still free to plot again." This is a village of bloody idiots. :P
* Garram's wounds have healed, but he is still too weak to hunt, so he's sitting around in the village. We meet the "Rainmaker and Priest of the Tribal Cults", capitalization original. This appears to be a Good Dude, since Garram likes him, and also since his appearance is "impressive" -- he's six foot six, with a "high-bridged nose ... in contrast to the flatter noses of the rest of the tribe", and so on and so forth. You get one more chance, Herbert Best; the next time you use European features to code goodness or African features to code badness, I'm done.
* Ooh, Garram's the speshulest. Everybody is scared of the Rainmaker, but when Garram was a tiny, he walked right up and asked the Rainmaker why everybody feared him! o_O Now they're fast friends because they are "both aloof and uncommunicative, both fearless and rather disdainful of the chattering village". Sure, snobbery is absolutely the best foundation for a friendship... ;P
* Rainmaker -- he is given no other name -- smokes his pipe sententiously and warns Garram by gradual degrees that Menud and Sura have too much influence in the village.
* Sura is "not of the true descent, being a runaway slave from the Plains". Oh, sure. Of course the man who has been enslaved is evil while the man born free is good. Of course the ethnic outsider is evil while the pure-blooded chief's son is good. That's clearly not a pointed allegory at all YOU FLYING MOTHERFUCKER!
* Herbert Best was apparently British, so I don't know how much of this is directly and deliberately paralleling USian rhetoric about slavery, but JESUS CHRIST, MAN! :P
* Aaaanyway. Rainmaker finally gets to the point: there is a secret plot to kill Warok, and Garram is the only one who can save him -- by fleeing the village, so that the plotters will fear his revenge. Am I crazy, or does this make no particle of sense? *pulls hair*
* Anyway, Garram prepares to flee. First he dips his arrows in poison from the Strophanthus plant; the physical descriptions of things are correct, it's just that everybody in this story is bloody idiotic!
* Garram goes to the "mighty walled city" of Yelwa. This appears to be a city of Muslims, so it would be in the north of Nigeria. Garram's dog scares a pack of other dogs through the marketplace. A trader tries to stab the dog with a spear (why does a trader in a marketplace have a spear?) and Garram cuts the spearhead off as it passes, then pretends to stab the trader but only cuts his belt. I gather I am supposed to find this badass. Mostly I find it stupidly overdone -- Garram is unrealistically fast, clever, dexterous, and smart compared to any other of the idiots who inhabit this book. He wouldn't last five minutes without the laws of physics rolling over for him to have their tummies scritched.
* The Emir is cranky. He doesn't like pardoning criminals on Friday as is customary. We get a whole page about this, though I can't tell whether I'm supposed to sympathize with him or not. Also, the "Ladan" (muezzin) and the "Liman" (prayer leader) both "had deviated intentionally from the traditional ritual", we are not told how or why. This is so much informed bullshit, I tell you.
* The Emir has an "aristocratic" face, so I assume till further notice that he's meant to be wise and good and correct in all matters. ;P
* Garram, running from the trader, smacks straight into the Liman, who grabs onto the Ladan, and both of the latter fall down. The Emir finds this hilarious. "Cruel the African native may be, but he loves a joke." ...what. Just, WHAT. O_O
* Then the trader comes running, pants flapping, and also falls down. The Emir hoots and hollers. HAHAHA FUNNY HIJINKS. o_O The Emir announces that Garram has been, I kid you not, "sent of Allah to reprove presumptuous Holy Men", I swear to god I cannot make this shit up. JESUS FUCK TO THE WHAT.
* So Garram and his dog are to be "well lodged and fed in the palace", because ahaha funny Muslims WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK AM I READING.
* New chapter. The Emir is passing court judgment upon an insurrectionist governor. To make sure we understand that the Emir is in the right, the prisoner is described as "the cruel tyrant who, when called forth by the Emir to answer for his crimes, had replied by raising an army and attempting war upon the Emir himself".
* Garram sees the Vizier making hidden hand signs to a lurking dude behind a pillar. As the Emir pronounces the death sentence on the ex-governor, lurky dude springs and attempts to assassinate the Emir. Of course Garram and his dog save the Emir and catch the assassin.
* The assassin is a relative of the Emir's, the captain of the guard, and "he faced the wrathful Emir unafraid", thereby indicating that he is not really at fault here and will probably turn out to be a decent fellow. :P It's all the Vizier's fault really, I imagine.
* We don't find out yet, though. The Emir puts off punishing the captain of the guard for a week, making sure to note that this is "lest I pass sentence blinded by anger", and asks for an interpreter who speaks Garram's language. Like Garram with the leopard, he also shows off his nobility by totally ignoring his stab wound.
* ...for some reason the Emir is now headed to a hunting camp two days from Yelwa. There don't seem to be any pages missing, but I sure feel like I missed something. Anyway, Garram gets there early and watches the camp being put up. Then he brings meat to the undernourished workers.
* Garram continues being obnoxiously better than everybody. "Why, it would have taken a hunter of the Plains a fortnight, at least a week, to kill as much as Garram had brought to them in a single day!"
* Once the Emir gets to the hunting camp, he bitches to Garram through the interpreter about how shitty and boring luxury is, then arranges to sneak out in the interpreter's clothes, leaving the interpreter to pretend to be the sleeping Emir while Garram and the Emir go hunting. Blah blah irresponsible monarchs being all manly and shit, whatever.
* They go hunting in the night and shoot down a hartebeest, then cook it. While they eat, the Emir tells Garram he's noticed that Garram has learned to understand the Emir's language, though he doesn't speak it. Garram admits this, but points out that if people knew he understood the local language, they wouldn't let him overhear things.
* Specifically, there is a plot to kill the Emir and also his son, who is a young baby. Garram's people have a taboo against killing babies, saying it will anger the fertility god, so he's super pissed off about this. Garram agrees to help the Emir expose the conspiracy, but in exchange he asks that the captain of the guard be pardoned, and the Emir agrees.
* In the morning there is a "royal hunt", with a line of beaters driving game toward the hunters. The wild boars in this book are not nearly as dangerous as real ones. ;P But all goes well, and the point is, that when all the courtiers receive new robes as awards for their participation in the hunt, the Vizier's new robes are scented with a sort of wildcat musk that only a dog can smell; Garram has procured this musk, of course. Presumably we will use this to prove the Vizier has been somewhere he shouldn't have.
* Now it is time for the captain of the guard, Ibrahim, to stand trial. Because nobody in this book has a poker face, the Vizier is actively wringing his hands in fear as he asks whether Ibrahim has talked (he hasn't).
* Oh, I see. The Emir just announces, after some threats, that Ibrahim will go free, then the Vizier tries to run, which is enough proof of guilt for the Emir. Then the dog noses out everybody who has met with the Vizier and has the musk on them, it being assumed that they and no others comprise the conspiracy. This is not evidence, boys. :P
* Yeah, yeah, everybody confesses, blah de blah, whatever. I am not remotely impressed by this book.
* New chapter. Garram has been accused of something or other and now faces judgment.
* Ah -- he's accused of using witchcraft to unveil the conspiracy. The Liman and Ladan are the accusers, since they resent Garram for being elevated due to their humiliation. "But [the Emir] was first of all a man, and only second a Mohammedan", so he doesn't believe them. I'm really disliking this book's portrayal of Islam and its adherents.
* However, Garram has been sneaking out at night every so often to meet a messenger from the Rainmaker and keep up with the news of his village. His accusers claim his absences are for witchcraft. He admits the absences but refuses to explain them, BECAUSE PLOT; the Emir is thus set against him, also for PLOT.
* We now learn that Garram has a pet pig, sent him by the Rainmaker. He worries lest "these fanatics" should find it in the Emir's disused stable and cause more trouble for him. So... he decides to leave town with Ibrahim (and without the pig), god only knows why! *facepalm*
* Oh, sure, Garram plants the pig on the Liman's property. MOAR FUNNY HIJINKS oh look at these stupid Mohammedans and their stupid dietary restrictions bahahahaaaa! Blargh. :P Do I really have to finish this book? :-( I'm still only halfway through.
* Garram and Ibrahim go hunting, Garram continues to be better than everyone, finally Garram asks Ibrahim's advice on whether to stay in the city or go back to his village. Ibrahim thinks the Liman will not get Garram killed for his supposed witchcraft, only thrown out of the city. However, Ibrahim is uncertain of his counsel.
* The two hunters arrive at Garram's hill country. They try to stalk a klipspringer across its native rocky habitat, but an avalanche interrupts them and breaks both Ibrahim's ankles -- Garram, being better than everybody, jumped for cover in time. According to the chapter title, "Menud 'Troubles Trouble'", this is no ordinary avalanche but a deliberate attack on Garram, who is, however, better than everybody. ;P
* Oh, good lord. Menud, having less sense than God gave a dung beetle, yells out and taunts Garram with his cunning plan: Menud's friends will keep the avalanche going while Menud crawls round to an angle where he can shoot Garram full of holes. "Is not the plan good?" Menud declaims.
* Garram pretends to get shot, luring Menud in, then threatens him with a poison arrow. Somehow, this interacts with the fact that nobody actually likes Menud to cause his followers to help Ibrahim on Garram's orders. Nobody in this book actually has motivations that make any sense.
* Garram brings the whole squad back to the city. He punishes Menud by making him stand all day in an indigo dye pit -- Ibrahim and Garram both think this is funny as hell, because they are Good People and anything you do to humiliate a Bad Person is by definition funny. o_O Then he sends Menud and his squad home.
* Oh, now we are informed that the trader who tried to stab the dog is in fact a Good Person. The Liman is attempting to plot against Garram with him; the trader, "as brave as he was fat", pretends to acquiesce in the plotting so as to help Garram later. Blergle. All this protagonist-centered morality annoys the fuck out of me.
* Garram, trying to fetch his pig out of the Liman's property, accidentally puts a foot through the roof of the building where the plotters are plotting, and simultaneously somehow drops the pig through the roof. The pig falls on the lamp, putting it out, and there are Hilarious Hijinks with everybody except our Good Trader being scared of the pig in the dark and bumping into each other. Yadda yadda blah blah.
* The pig eventually finds the door, which the humans are not smart enough to do. Garram catches it, having somehow known none of the humans were smart enough to come out and catch him waiting by the door, and takes it away. The trader, of course, is laughing his ass off at all these Shenanigans, because that is the mark of a good person. Jeez! O_O
* The Liman goes to the Emir's court in the morning, and he and his co-conspirators complain of Garram's having summoned devils to plague them. Goshi the trader and the rest of the court all bust up laughing, and Goshi and Garram between them tell the true story. Nobody asks why Garram happened to be fetching his pig home across the Liman's roof.
* The Emir says that Garram embarrassing the Liman was a thing only the Vizier or the Court Jester could do in safety, but that Garram is too mischievous to be vizier and too wise to be jester. Conveniently, Garram has a feeling that he is needed back home, so he leaves with the Emir's blessing.
* Garram also accepts two gifts, a coat of fine chain mail from the Emir and a long spear of Damascus steel from the trader. Presumably these will come in handy as he takes back his kingdom, or whatever the hell it is he's going to be doing.
* At the foot of his home hills, Garram meets a messenger from the Rainmaker, who sent him the telepathic message calling him home -- we're now told this is a thing they could do regularly. Garram's dad has been deposed and is now tied up in his hut awaiting execution. Menud claims Warok had sent Garram to betray the knowledge of the hill trails to the Fulani, the people of the plains, and backs up this claim by describing the city, which supposedly he saw when these Fulani captured him and carried him off.
* Menud also claims that being dyed blue is something he did to himself in order to impersonate a ghost and scare the guards so as to rescue his squad. Garram does not take from this the obvious lesson of "don't give your enemies stupid arbitrary punishments to make them hate you more". Seriously, what the fuck, did you expect Menud would just go calmly home and tell everyone you humiliated him for no purpose but to humiliate him? Don't answer that, of course you did, because like everyone else here including the author you are a FUCKING IDIOT! :P
* Anyway, Garram hands off the pig to the messenger as a sign to the Rainmaker that Garram is back, then takes a secret shortcut up the hill. Because of course Garram is better than everybody and knows paths nobody else does. o_O
* Oh, good grief. Garram takes the shortcut just long enough to get in front of the messenger, then hurries up the main path, laughing to himself about how he tricked the messenger into carrying the pig. I'm starting to really dislike Garram.
* The dog warns Garram of an approaching leopard. Garram decides to kill it, because "what a glorious mad adventure to fight a leopard single handed in the dark!" Garram, babe, the last leopard you fought bloody near killed you. This is not the fucking time. But because Garram is better than everybody, clearly it will all come out all right.
* Garram kills the leopard, skins it, and carrying the skin in a bundle with the chain mail, climbs up a tree and over the village wall (the village suddenly has a wall). He ooches along the branches to the roof of the hut where his father is imprisoned, then cuts his way through the straw roof of the hut, climbs down inside, and frees his father.
* Then Garram puts on the chain mail and the leopard skin, and pretends to be Warok's "totem animal" the leopard, magically materialized inside the hut to set him free. ("Totem" is an Ojibwe Native American term, not properly applied to African beliefs, I pause to note.) When the guards shoot arrows at the supposed leopard, they bounce off. Nobody notices that the leopard's legs are not shaped like a cat's legs.
* Oh, I see. Nobody's looking critically at it, "for it was well known that the mere sight of an angry totem animal would kill". Blaaaaaaaaaah. Fucking excuse-maker. I don't like you.
* How is there still another third of this fucking book to go?!?
* Warok having escaped, Menud decides that in the morning he will gather his supporters from the other villages and have himself declared chief. (Oh, is Warok chief of more than one village? That was not made clear.) The Rainmaker, however, has already summoned Warok's supporters from the other villages, and they control the council clearing and its surrounding woods -- conveniently, the only flat place in the hills big enough to muster an army. I note that we no longer have the "plateau" the map claimed.
* As Menud's supporters come to the council hill by ones and twos, Warok's supporters surround and disarm them. Presumably they gag them, because nobody yells?
* Warok sits in state on the hilltop, dressed in the fancy chain mail Garram brought. Menud's own group is not ambushed, but is allowed to swagger through; presumably Menud thinks the wood is full of his own men, and plans to summon them at a dramatic moment. That must be a hell of a wood to conceal all these dudes so neatly while the entire rest of the hill is barren.
* Ah, nothing so fancy. Menud and Sura, seeing that their own men are not gathered and that Warok sits in state, fall silent, and their remaining followers leave them and blend with the crowd.
* Warok and the other elders speechify for a while. The author explains to us that if Warok just kills Menud and Sura, they will become "first-class martyrs for liberty" and their deaths will lead to civil war. This does not seem to me to square with the idea that nobody actually likes them, which keeps being repeated, but whatever. I assume the solution is to humiliate them in An Hilarious Manner, which will cause them to never return, and also cause these Schroedinger's supporters of theirs to settle on the side of not liking them. Whatever. o_O
* Warok interrogates each of Menud's followers individually while the others wait "beyond earshot"; they all tell the truth, because nobody in this book except our few named dudes does anything for any purpose except sucking up to whomever's got the upper hand at the moment. Bleh. I'm not exactly going to say that you wouldn't get this behavior from a book full of white dudes, because I've read some pretty terrible books in this project, but -- it really reminds me of Charles Boardman Hawes. Not quite as cardboardy characters, but the weird flip-floppy behavior of the pirates in... whichever one of his I actually finished. *pokes* The Dark Frigate, that was it. The character motivations, such as they are, really remind me of that.
* The council elders come up and apologize to Warok for turning against him, saying, "Ours is the blame that, forgetting that these two were runaway slaves from the Plains, we believed their word as though they had been of the tribe." Whoops, there we are again -- the once-enslaved outsiders are the bad guys, opposing our pure-blooded heroes. *loud sigh*
* The lead elder calls for Menud and Sura to die by mob torture. Garram et alia are horrified, because they are Good People and that is Barbaric. You can't laugh at mob torture, therefore it is Wrong. ...I don't even know what I'm saying here anymore. ;P
* Anyway, our villain dudes are saved for the moment, because the eastern Fulani -- somehow unrelated, I genuinely do not know how, to the western Fulani our friendly Emir rules -- attack in a slave-taking raid. The village's fortifications are in bad shape because something something Menud and Sura; I swear to god, I'm conveying this as clearly as I bloody can. The book has gone back and forth between saying the fortifications have been worn down by time and saying that the main appeal Menud and Sura made to their followers was "you won't have to fix the fortifications if we're in charge". Did Warok just always threaten to have the fortifications fixed but never actually order anyone to do it? I am so perplexed.
* ANYWAY, so the guys of warrior age go fight the raiders. Garram beats the war drum to summon the rest of the warriors from other villages, presumably those who didn't take sides in the Warok vs Menud conflict, and everyone gets ready to march.
* Some of the hill people built villages on the plains to farm there, "in a false sense of security". Maybe because none of them barring Garram can fucking hunt? I really don't like this author. Anyway, the raiders from the east have burnt all three villages, and are now looking for the way into the hills.
* Warok sends out a couple of scouting parties, breaks up his army by village so each chief will command his own men -- yes, it seems Warok is the top-level chief over all the other chiefs -- and makes a Strategy.
* The Strategy is that warriors sneak up to each watchfire, then on a signal they all throw water-pots on the watchfires at once, put them out, and kill the sentries. Then the warriors give a war cry, causing the sleeping Fulani to wake up and un-bank their cooking fires to give more light. The warriors kill a few Fulani, then retreat, and now that the cooking fires give good light, the hillmen's archers shoot them. STRATEGY.
* Whoop, got to make sure we note that the Fulani raiders are "rallying in the name of the Prophet". This guy really doesn't like Islam, does he? O_O
* Sura, for some fucking reason, is in the council of elders with Warok. Sura proposes that Warok send the hillmen's army to charge the Fulani in the dark, getting the hill warriors massacred by the Fulani's superior numbers, and then claim he didn't know that would happen. Then, he claims, the remaining Fulani will for some reason be scared of the hill warriors, at which point they can send out women dressed as warriors and scare the Fulani into running.
* For SOME FUCKING IDIOTIC REASON, the elders are all convinced this plan (1) will totally work and (2) is the only way any of them will survive??? I really want to whap this author on the head with his own book -- it's a nice thick hardcover. Possibly also whap the 1931 Newbery committee. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, DUDES.
* Anyway. Warok stops this plan by saying he'll only do it if he and Sura lead the charge while tied together at the wrists. Sura, of course, being A Coward, backs down, but rather than slink off in shame, he attacks Warok with his knife. Warok, being also better than everybody (Garram must have inherited this quality), throws a spear without standing up or even leaning forward from his seat, and it goes clear through Sura's body. One down, one to go. But of course Menud has always been the bigger threat.
* All the elders sit silently, scared of Sura's ghost. Warok isn't bothered by ghosts. We get most of a page expounding on this, swear to god.
* The scouts return. The Fulani have set up a massive war camp, closer to the hills than usual, but Garram (who of course snuck right into and through the camp by himself) reports that it is half empty. He has also brought back a pet monkey with golden collar and chain. The other scouts, not realizing that Garram is better than everybody, claim it was so dark no one could have seen anything and that the monkey must have gotten loose and been caught by Garram's dog.
* The hillmen's army head down toward the plains. Menud finds his dead father's corpse, considers dropping an avalanche on the army by way of revenge, then decides avenging his father is pointless since Sura is "no longer of use to him" -- I assume revenge would've been too heroic by Mr Herbert Best's inexplicable standards -- and cooks up "a more paying plan".
* This plan is, to betray the hill folk by showing the Fulani the way up the path, assuming they will then leave him, Menud, as puppet ruler of the hill country. BECAUSE OF REASONS. o_O
* Ooh, we have a bridge, an aged wooden "nightmare scaffolding" of a thing. One surmises Menud will die of falling from this; the description is too long and convoluted for it to not be a Chekhov's gun.
* Warok has, of course, a Strategy for this fight too. This strategy is, to place his army east of the Fulani army (the book says west but I will graciously assume that is a typo), and then attack at sunrise so as to have the sun at his men's backs, shining in the eyes of the Fulani warriors. This is his whole strategy.
* Of course Garram shoots twice as fast as anybody else. We literally have to be told that. Otherwise we might forget that Garram is better than everybody. ;P
* The... entire army sort of... clinches? We're told that the pressure of the chests of the people in the back ranks against the warriors in front is so strong as to break some people's ribs, that there isn't room to move an arm to stab or cut. WHAT THE FUCK SIR. I have never in my life heard of a battle anything like that, and also why would anybody do that? Is it supposed to be a Tactic, or just caused by everybody jostling to get to the front and engage the enemy? I honestly never supposed that I would say this, but sirrah, CS Lewis writes better battles than you do. O_O CS fucking Lewis, I say! Whom I never compliment if I can avoid it! But by god, he writes battles in which everybody is sort of jumbled up on the ground fighting whoever's in front of them, and in none of them does anybody do this sort of reverse-tug-of-war bullshit. -- wait, I lie, there is in fact one "battle", the one where they push the sea serpent off the Dawn Treader, where in fact this sort of tactic wins the day. But I would like to point out that this is a specialized technique against A FUCKING SEA SERPENT and technically not a battle at all!
* WHAT THE FLYING FUCK SIR. I reiterate, sir, WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING FUCK.
* At the end of the battle, Garram faints. We're told that he'd had no sleep or food or water for two days, which if so is bloody stupid of him, since he's been in and out of the village, and the shit that's been going on has been pretty intermittent. Also, we were explicitly told that after the scouts got back Garram was asleep for all the time except when his report was wanted. Mr Best, you need a better editor.
* We now find out that Menud did in fact get through to the Fulani and that they've been going up the trail in single file while their rearguard held off the hill warriors. How the shit do they expect to get down again?
* Now everybody is angry at Warok for leaving the pass unguarded, though Garram noted earlier that this was a brave stroke to increase the size of the hillmen's army, and Garram is always right. ;P Therefore, there is a solution: Warok has some of his men go and set parts of the Fulani camp on fire, so that the Fulani will come back and defend it.
* Somebody up top had the sensible idea to set the wooden bridge on fire, which might actually save the hill villages. Warok, being a strange and peculiar war chief, decides to set the other wooden bridge on fire behind the Fulani, trapping them in the mountain pass for some weird reason. STRATEGY.
* Ah, it was the Rainmaker who set the top bridge on fire. Now that the Fulani are trapped, he leads the village women in sending down an avalanche to kill them. We've not had a woman either named or given a spoken line this whole book, you know; they have to be led by a man. ;P
* For some reason the Fulani brought with them "pale soft women of the harem", now politely imprisoned. I assume they'll be let go, because that's what Nice People do.
* The Rainmaker tells how Menud died -- the Fulani leader, when he realized he was trapped, assumed Menud had betrayed him and had him killed.
* Now Ibrahim shows up. Somehow he doesn't know Garram's fucking name? Buddy, you need a better editor by far.
* Anyway, the Emir wants to ally with the hill people and has sent Ibrahim as his messenger. The eastern Fulani, the raiders, had planned to cross the hills and attack the Emir, it seems. But the hill people explain that the eastern army is already dead, because Garram and Warok are better than everybody. ;P
* Yeah, Warok et al send the Fulani women back, calling them "ugly" and "weak stock". I don't know quite what to make of that. It's not exactly "haha these different customs are so weird and funny". I'm extremely aware, though I don't know if Herbert Best was, that of course you can't have Good black men marrying "pale" women, not in 1930s America; Good blacks know their place and marry only among their own kind. :P I don't know, it just feels to me very much like one of those things that happen because they have to happen, not just the letting the women go, but the extended notation that Our Heroes find them unattractive. *frowns*
* Then Garram goes to sleep again, happy ending.
Jesus motherfucking Christ, what WAS that? O_O
* "The Map of Garram's Country" in the front gives us very little -- Plateau of the Hillmen, Big River, The Baboon Hills, and so forth. There are three distinctive words: Kwallak, a region; Fulani, a people; and Yelwa, a town. To the Googles!
* "Kwallak" brings up a region in Nigeria with no additional information. "Fulani" brings up a Wiki entry on the Fula people, an ethnic group of West Africa. "Yelwa" brings up a town in Nigeria. I think we can safely deduce that our story takes place in Nigeria.
* Frontispiece. Garram has more-or-less African features, but is drawn in such a stylized manner that I can't tell whether he has straight hair or no hair.
* We are in the "African bush". Garram has "silken black" skin and wears a leather loincloth. He comes from "the Hills", but is hunting in "the Plains" and, we are told, is "as a stranger liable to be killed on sight if discovered". Okaaaaay then.
* Garram is hunting with his dog, Kon. Kon responds to directional signals given by Garram as "birdlike whistles"; we are told that this is "a method of hunting probably unique, invented after long practice by the boy and his dog". I don't know enough about hunting to know whether this is a possible thing or whether our author is full of shit.
* They are hunting a male kob, a type of antelope. The range map assures me this is indeed found in central Nigeria.
* After a further description of the hunt, Garram jumps out of a tree onto the kob's back as it runs and kills it with his knife. This seems like a hell of a technique to repeat reliably; I suspicion that my author is making up bullshit in order to make Garram seem more speshuler. :P Does anybody here know anything about hunting? Is this even possible?
* Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Garram "had now, for some time, given up the noisy, ineffectual hunts of the other youths of the tribe, who were led by that clumsy boaster, Menud." So Garram is the only competent hunter in a tribe that lives by hunting, got it. :P Fucking racist white authors. Fuck white people, I say; fuck 'em.
* Ahem. Anyway, Garram has been hunting outside his tribe's area so as to avoid Menud et alia, and to save up "a hidden store of brass rods and rolls of native cloth, the currency of the country" against the time his father the chief will die, when Garram will need to... be rich? buy a feast for his village? Something of the sort, in order to secure the chieftainship.
* Oh, great. Garram has trained his dog to do the opposite of every command -- e.g. to pick an object up when ordered "Drop it" -- so that nobody but himself can use the dog. This, we are told, is necessary because Menud, "relying on his clumsy strength and his following of loutish village youths", stole Garram's previous dog, which was then "killed by a chance arrow in one of those hunting parties of yapping curs and still noisier half-grown men which Garram despised". So Garram is not just the only competent hunter but the only decent human being in his village. Blargle.
* Garram dries the meat over a fire, then takes it to a village market and sells it. Then he heads back toward the plateau where his village is. The cave where he has kept his stash of riches, however, has been raided and is empty.
* Ah, Garram's head is shaved. I don't know if this is accurate to the customs of... whatever the hell unspecified tribe he is, or whether it was simply done to make him look less ~savage~ in the art. :P
* Oh, well, there's no mystery as to who stole Garram's shit, because he immediately tells his dog that he's seen Menud watching him all the time. Whatever. Am I interested? I am not.
* We find another cave. Garram goes in, "his face set with the grim killing urge", though we're not now told what or who is inside.
* In the village, the councilors sit on uncomfortable rock-hewn seats, as is Tradition. We are told the village is named "Kwallak the Stony". Menud's dad Sura is yelling at the Council about a thief in the village. Sura is angry that he doesn't get to be on the Council; Garram's dad Walok says Sura is both not old enough and "not of the true descent of the tribe", which puzzles me -- is he an incomer, or a half-breed, or why is he here if he's not part of the tribe?
* Anyway -- oh. Oh. "Sura, his thick lips thrust forward with malicious eagerness"... *headdesk* I'm twenty-nine pages in to a 332-page book. I suppose I have to give it at least a few more pages, but jeez, dude! Way to fucking racism, there. :P
* A-ny-way, so Sura and Menud accuse the absent Garram of stealing all the goats and selling them in exchange for the riches they have stolen from his cave. Menud is somehow "gangling" but also "large built", idek.
* They show a bundle of the riches. Menud claims, with a super-obvious "I'm lying" gulp nobody notices, that this is the whole amount he found.
* Nobody likes Sura and Menud, so one old man tries to defend Garram by telling a lie that he has not lost any goats -- though he had seventeen and now he has two -- then pokes another old man, who tries "to frame, if possible, a better lie. To claim an increase in his herds, perhaps!" Everyone in this village is a FUCKING IDIOT and believes everyone else in the village to be even more of a one. I am so unimpressed. Nobody is speaking in phonetic dialect yet, but that's about the only thing this book has going for it.
* Garram shows up with "gaping wounds in his side", which also nobody seems to notice. His dad, Warok the chief, asks him about the charge of stealing. Garram first points out that Sura and Menud have hidden most of what they stole, then summons a party of men who have brought goat-bones and also a dead leopard, this being what he killed in the other cave. Then searchers bring the loot from Sura's house, and then Garram faints. Warok gives a weird speech forbidding the villagers to punish Sura and Menud for their bullshit? Apparently he wants Garram alone to have revenge? The chapter ends with "But Menud and Sura were still free to plot again." This is a village of bloody idiots. :P
* Garram's wounds have healed, but he is still too weak to hunt, so he's sitting around in the village. We meet the "Rainmaker and Priest of the Tribal Cults", capitalization original. This appears to be a Good Dude, since Garram likes him, and also since his appearance is "impressive" -- he's six foot six, with a "high-bridged nose ... in contrast to the flatter noses of the rest of the tribe", and so on and so forth. You get one more chance, Herbert Best; the next time you use European features to code goodness or African features to code badness, I'm done.
* Ooh, Garram's the speshulest. Everybody is scared of the Rainmaker, but when Garram was a tiny, he walked right up and asked the Rainmaker why everybody feared him! o_O Now they're fast friends because they are "both aloof and uncommunicative, both fearless and rather disdainful of the chattering village". Sure, snobbery is absolutely the best foundation for a friendship... ;P
* Rainmaker -- he is given no other name -- smokes his pipe sententiously and warns Garram by gradual degrees that Menud and Sura have too much influence in the village.
* Sura is "not of the true descent, being a runaway slave from the Plains". Oh, sure. Of course the man who has been enslaved is evil while the man born free is good. Of course the ethnic outsider is evil while the pure-blooded chief's son is good. That's clearly not a pointed allegory at all YOU FLYING MOTHERFUCKER!
* Herbert Best was apparently British, so I don't know how much of this is directly and deliberately paralleling USian rhetoric about slavery, but JESUS CHRIST, MAN! :P
* Aaaanyway. Rainmaker finally gets to the point: there is a secret plot to kill Warok, and Garram is the only one who can save him -- by fleeing the village, so that the plotters will fear his revenge. Am I crazy, or does this make no particle of sense? *pulls hair*
* Anyway, Garram prepares to flee. First he dips his arrows in poison from the Strophanthus plant; the physical descriptions of things are correct, it's just that everybody in this story is bloody idiotic!
* Garram goes to the "mighty walled city" of Yelwa. This appears to be a city of Muslims, so it would be in the north of Nigeria. Garram's dog scares a pack of other dogs through the marketplace. A trader tries to stab the dog with a spear (why does a trader in a marketplace have a spear?) and Garram cuts the spearhead off as it passes, then pretends to stab the trader but only cuts his belt. I gather I am supposed to find this badass. Mostly I find it stupidly overdone -- Garram is unrealistically fast, clever, dexterous, and smart compared to any other of the idiots who inhabit this book. He wouldn't last five minutes without the laws of physics rolling over for him to have their tummies scritched.
* The Emir is cranky. He doesn't like pardoning criminals on Friday as is customary. We get a whole page about this, though I can't tell whether I'm supposed to sympathize with him or not. Also, the "Ladan" (muezzin) and the "Liman" (prayer leader) both "had deviated intentionally from the traditional ritual", we are not told how or why. This is so much informed bullshit, I tell you.
* The Emir has an "aristocratic" face, so I assume till further notice that he's meant to be wise and good and correct in all matters. ;P
* Garram, running from the trader, smacks straight into the Liman, who grabs onto the Ladan, and both of the latter fall down. The Emir finds this hilarious. "Cruel the African native may be, but he loves a joke." ...what. Just, WHAT. O_O
* Then the trader comes running, pants flapping, and also falls down. The Emir hoots and hollers. HAHAHA FUNNY HIJINKS. o_O The Emir announces that Garram has been, I kid you not, "sent of Allah to reprove presumptuous Holy Men", I swear to god I cannot make this shit up. JESUS FUCK TO THE WHAT.
* So Garram and his dog are to be "well lodged and fed in the palace", because ahaha funny Muslims WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK AM I READING.
* New chapter. The Emir is passing court judgment upon an insurrectionist governor. To make sure we understand that the Emir is in the right, the prisoner is described as "the cruel tyrant who, when called forth by the Emir to answer for his crimes, had replied by raising an army and attempting war upon the Emir himself".
* Garram sees the Vizier making hidden hand signs to a lurking dude behind a pillar. As the Emir pronounces the death sentence on the ex-governor, lurky dude springs and attempts to assassinate the Emir. Of course Garram and his dog save the Emir and catch the assassin.
* The assassin is a relative of the Emir's, the captain of the guard, and "he faced the wrathful Emir unafraid", thereby indicating that he is not really at fault here and will probably turn out to be a decent fellow. :P It's all the Vizier's fault really, I imagine.
* We don't find out yet, though. The Emir puts off punishing the captain of the guard for a week, making sure to note that this is "lest I pass sentence blinded by anger", and asks for an interpreter who speaks Garram's language. Like Garram with the leopard, he also shows off his nobility by totally ignoring his stab wound.
* ...for some reason the Emir is now headed to a hunting camp two days from Yelwa. There don't seem to be any pages missing, but I sure feel like I missed something. Anyway, Garram gets there early and watches the camp being put up. Then he brings meat to the undernourished workers.
* Garram continues being obnoxiously better than everybody. "Why, it would have taken a hunter of the Plains a fortnight, at least a week, to kill as much as Garram had brought to them in a single day!"
* Once the Emir gets to the hunting camp, he bitches to Garram through the interpreter about how shitty and boring luxury is, then arranges to sneak out in the interpreter's clothes, leaving the interpreter to pretend to be the sleeping Emir while Garram and the Emir go hunting. Blah blah irresponsible monarchs being all manly and shit, whatever.
* They go hunting in the night and shoot down a hartebeest, then cook it. While they eat, the Emir tells Garram he's noticed that Garram has learned to understand the Emir's language, though he doesn't speak it. Garram admits this, but points out that if people knew he understood the local language, they wouldn't let him overhear things.
* Specifically, there is a plot to kill the Emir and also his son, who is a young baby. Garram's people have a taboo against killing babies, saying it will anger the fertility god, so he's super pissed off about this. Garram agrees to help the Emir expose the conspiracy, but in exchange he asks that the captain of the guard be pardoned, and the Emir agrees.
* In the morning there is a "royal hunt", with a line of beaters driving game toward the hunters. The wild boars in this book are not nearly as dangerous as real ones. ;P But all goes well, and the point is, that when all the courtiers receive new robes as awards for their participation in the hunt, the Vizier's new robes are scented with a sort of wildcat musk that only a dog can smell; Garram has procured this musk, of course. Presumably we will use this to prove the Vizier has been somewhere he shouldn't have.
* Now it is time for the captain of the guard, Ibrahim, to stand trial. Because nobody in this book has a poker face, the Vizier is actively wringing his hands in fear as he asks whether Ibrahim has talked (he hasn't).
* Oh, I see. The Emir just announces, after some threats, that Ibrahim will go free, then the Vizier tries to run, which is enough proof of guilt for the Emir. Then the dog noses out everybody who has met with the Vizier and has the musk on them, it being assumed that they and no others comprise the conspiracy. This is not evidence, boys. :P
* Yeah, yeah, everybody confesses, blah de blah, whatever. I am not remotely impressed by this book.
* New chapter. Garram has been accused of something or other and now faces judgment.
* Ah -- he's accused of using witchcraft to unveil the conspiracy. The Liman and Ladan are the accusers, since they resent Garram for being elevated due to their humiliation. "But [the Emir] was first of all a man, and only second a Mohammedan", so he doesn't believe them. I'm really disliking this book's portrayal of Islam and its adherents.
* However, Garram has been sneaking out at night every so often to meet a messenger from the Rainmaker and keep up with the news of his village. His accusers claim his absences are for witchcraft. He admits the absences but refuses to explain them, BECAUSE PLOT; the Emir is thus set against him, also for PLOT.
* We now learn that Garram has a pet pig, sent him by the Rainmaker. He worries lest "these fanatics" should find it in the Emir's disused stable and cause more trouble for him. So... he decides to leave town with Ibrahim (and without the pig), god only knows why! *facepalm*
* Oh, sure, Garram plants the pig on the Liman's property. MOAR FUNNY HIJINKS oh look at these stupid Mohammedans and their stupid dietary restrictions bahahahaaaa! Blargh. :P Do I really have to finish this book? :-( I'm still only halfway through.
* Garram and Ibrahim go hunting, Garram continues to be better than everyone, finally Garram asks Ibrahim's advice on whether to stay in the city or go back to his village. Ibrahim thinks the Liman will not get Garram killed for his supposed witchcraft, only thrown out of the city. However, Ibrahim is uncertain of his counsel.
* The two hunters arrive at Garram's hill country. They try to stalk a klipspringer across its native rocky habitat, but an avalanche interrupts them and breaks both Ibrahim's ankles -- Garram, being better than everybody, jumped for cover in time. According to the chapter title, "Menud 'Troubles Trouble'", this is no ordinary avalanche but a deliberate attack on Garram, who is, however, better than everybody. ;P
* Oh, good lord. Menud, having less sense than God gave a dung beetle, yells out and taunts Garram with his cunning plan: Menud's friends will keep the avalanche going while Menud crawls round to an angle where he can shoot Garram full of holes. "Is not the plan good?" Menud declaims.
* Garram pretends to get shot, luring Menud in, then threatens him with a poison arrow. Somehow, this interacts with the fact that nobody actually likes Menud to cause his followers to help Ibrahim on Garram's orders. Nobody in this book actually has motivations that make any sense.
* Garram brings the whole squad back to the city. He punishes Menud by making him stand all day in an indigo dye pit -- Ibrahim and Garram both think this is funny as hell, because they are Good People and anything you do to humiliate a Bad Person is by definition funny. o_O Then he sends Menud and his squad home.
* Oh, now we are informed that the trader who tried to stab the dog is in fact a Good Person. The Liman is attempting to plot against Garram with him; the trader, "as brave as he was fat", pretends to acquiesce in the plotting so as to help Garram later. Blergle. All this protagonist-centered morality annoys the fuck out of me.
* Garram, trying to fetch his pig out of the Liman's property, accidentally puts a foot through the roof of the building where the plotters are plotting, and simultaneously somehow drops the pig through the roof. The pig falls on the lamp, putting it out, and there are Hilarious Hijinks with everybody except our Good Trader being scared of the pig in the dark and bumping into each other. Yadda yadda blah blah.
* The pig eventually finds the door, which the humans are not smart enough to do. Garram catches it, having somehow known none of the humans were smart enough to come out and catch him waiting by the door, and takes it away. The trader, of course, is laughing his ass off at all these Shenanigans, because that is the mark of a good person. Jeez! O_O
* The Liman goes to the Emir's court in the morning, and he and his co-conspirators complain of Garram's having summoned devils to plague them. Goshi the trader and the rest of the court all bust up laughing, and Goshi and Garram between them tell the true story. Nobody asks why Garram happened to be fetching his pig home across the Liman's roof.
* The Emir says that Garram embarrassing the Liman was a thing only the Vizier or the Court Jester could do in safety, but that Garram is too mischievous to be vizier and too wise to be jester. Conveniently, Garram has a feeling that he is needed back home, so he leaves with the Emir's blessing.
* Garram also accepts two gifts, a coat of fine chain mail from the Emir and a long spear of Damascus steel from the trader. Presumably these will come in handy as he takes back his kingdom, or whatever the hell it is he's going to be doing.
* At the foot of his home hills, Garram meets a messenger from the Rainmaker, who sent him the telepathic message calling him home -- we're now told this is a thing they could do regularly. Garram's dad has been deposed and is now tied up in his hut awaiting execution. Menud claims Warok had sent Garram to betray the knowledge of the hill trails to the Fulani, the people of the plains, and backs up this claim by describing the city, which supposedly he saw when these Fulani captured him and carried him off.
* Menud also claims that being dyed blue is something he did to himself in order to impersonate a ghost and scare the guards so as to rescue his squad. Garram does not take from this the obvious lesson of "don't give your enemies stupid arbitrary punishments to make them hate you more". Seriously, what the fuck, did you expect Menud would just go calmly home and tell everyone you humiliated him for no purpose but to humiliate him? Don't answer that, of course you did, because like everyone else here including the author you are a FUCKING IDIOT! :P
* Anyway, Garram hands off the pig to the messenger as a sign to the Rainmaker that Garram is back, then takes a secret shortcut up the hill. Because of course Garram is better than everybody and knows paths nobody else does. o_O
* Oh, good grief. Garram takes the shortcut just long enough to get in front of the messenger, then hurries up the main path, laughing to himself about how he tricked the messenger into carrying the pig. I'm starting to really dislike Garram.
* The dog warns Garram of an approaching leopard. Garram decides to kill it, because "what a glorious mad adventure to fight a leopard single handed in the dark!" Garram, babe, the last leopard you fought bloody near killed you. This is not the fucking time. But because Garram is better than everybody, clearly it will all come out all right.
* Garram kills the leopard, skins it, and carrying the skin in a bundle with the chain mail, climbs up a tree and over the village wall (the village suddenly has a wall). He ooches along the branches to the roof of the hut where his father is imprisoned, then cuts his way through the straw roof of the hut, climbs down inside, and frees his father.
* Then Garram puts on the chain mail and the leopard skin, and pretends to be Warok's "totem animal" the leopard, magically materialized inside the hut to set him free. ("Totem" is an Ojibwe Native American term, not properly applied to African beliefs, I pause to note.) When the guards shoot arrows at the supposed leopard, they bounce off. Nobody notices that the leopard's legs are not shaped like a cat's legs.
* Oh, I see. Nobody's looking critically at it, "for it was well known that the mere sight of an angry totem animal would kill". Blaaaaaaaaaah. Fucking excuse-maker. I don't like you.
* How is there still another third of this fucking book to go?!?
* Warok having escaped, Menud decides that in the morning he will gather his supporters from the other villages and have himself declared chief. (Oh, is Warok chief of more than one village? That was not made clear.) The Rainmaker, however, has already summoned Warok's supporters from the other villages, and they control the council clearing and its surrounding woods -- conveniently, the only flat place in the hills big enough to muster an army. I note that we no longer have the "plateau" the map claimed.
* As Menud's supporters come to the council hill by ones and twos, Warok's supporters surround and disarm them. Presumably they gag them, because nobody yells?
* Warok sits in state on the hilltop, dressed in the fancy chain mail Garram brought. Menud's own group is not ambushed, but is allowed to swagger through; presumably Menud thinks the wood is full of his own men, and plans to summon them at a dramatic moment. That must be a hell of a wood to conceal all these dudes so neatly while the entire rest of the hill is barren.
* Ah, nothing so fancy. Menud and Sura, seeing that their own men are not gathered and that Warok sits in state, fall silent, and their remaining followers leave them and blend with the crowd.
* Warok and the other elders speechify for a while. The author explains to us that if Warok just kills Menud and Sura, they will become "first-class martyrs for liberty" and their deaths will lead to civil war. This does not seem to me to square with the idea that nobody actually likes them, which keeps being repeated, but whatever. I assume the solution is to humiliate them in An Hilarious Manner, which will cause them to never return, and also cause these Schroedinger's supporters of theirs to settle on the side of not liking them. Whatever. o_O
* Warok interrogates each of Menud's followers individually while the others wait "beyond earshot"; they all tell the truth, because nobody in this book except our few named dudes does anything for any purpose except sucking up to whomever's got the upper hand at the moment. Bleh. I'm not exactly going to say that you wouldn't get this behavior from a book full of white dudes, because I've read some pretty terrible books in this project, but -- it really reminds me of Charles Boardman Hawes. Not quite as cardboardy characters, but the weird flip-floppy behavior of the pirates in... whichever one of his I actually finished. *pokes* The Dark Frigate, that was it. The character motivations, such as they are, really remind me of that.
* The council elders come up and apologize to Warok for turning against him, saying, "Ours is the blame that, forgetting that these two were runaway slaves from the Plains, we believed their word as though they had been of the tribe." Whoops, there we are again -- the once-enslaved outsiders are the bad guys, opposing our pure-blooded heroes. *loud sigh*
* The lead elder calls for Menud and Sura to die by mob torture. Garram et alia are horrified, because they are Good People and that is Barbaric. You can't laugh at mob torture, therefore it is Wrong. ...I don't even know what I'm saying here anymore. ;P
* Anyway, our villain dudes are saved for the moment, because the eastern Fulani -- somehow unrelated, I genuinely do not know how, to the western Fulani our friendly Emir rules -- attack in a slave-taking raid. The village's fortifications are in bad shape because something something Menud and Sura; I swear to god, I'm conveying this as clearly as I bloody can. The book has gone back and forth between saying the fortifications have been worn down by time and saying that the main appeal Menud and Sura made to their followers was "you won't have to fix the fortifications if we're in charge". Did Warok just always threaten to have the fortifications fixed but never actually order anyone to do it? I am so perplexed.
* ANYWAY, so the guys of warrior age go fight the raiders. Garram beats the war drum to summon the rest of the warriors from other villages, presumably those who didn't take sides in the Warok vs Menud conflict, and everyone gets ready to march.
* Some of the hill people built villages on the plains to farm there, "in a false sense of security". Maybe because none of them barring Garram can fucking hunt? I really don't like this author. Anyway, the raiders from the east have burnt all three villages, and are now looking for the way into the hills.
* Warok sends out a couple of scouting parties, breaks up his army by village so each chief will command his own men -- yes, it seems Warok is the top-level chief over all the other chiefs -- and makes a Strategy.
* The Strategy is that warriors sneak up to each watchfire, then on a signal they all throw water-pots on the watchfires at once, put them out, and kill the sentries. Then the warriors give a war cry, causing the sleeping Fulani to wake up and un-bank their cooking fires to give more light. The warriors kill a few Fulani, then retreat, and now that the cooking fires give good light, the hillmen's archers shoot them. STRATEGY.
* Whoop, got to make sure we note that the Fulani raiders are "rallying in the name of the Prophet". This guy really doesn't like Islam, does he? O_O
* Sura, for some fucking reason, is in the council of elders with Warok. Sura proposes that Warok send the hillmen's army to charge the Fulani in the dark, getting the hill warriors massacred by the Fulani's superior numbers, and then claim he didn't know that would happen. Then, he claims, the remaining Fulani will for some reason be scared of the hill warriors, at which point they can send out women dressed as warriors and scare the Fulani into running.
* For SOME FUCKING IDIOTIC REASON, the elders are all convinced this plan (1) will totally work and (2) is the only way any of them will survive??? I really want to whap this author on the head with his own book -- it's a nice thick hardcover. Possibly also whap the 1931 Newbery committee. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, DUDES.
* Anyway. Warok stops this plan by saying he'll only do it if he and Sura lead the charge while tied together at the wrists. Sura, of course, being A Coward, backs down, but rather than slink off in shame, he attacks Warok with his knife. Warok, being also better than everybody (Garram must have inherited this quality), throws a spear without standing up or even leaning forward from his seat, and it goes clear through Sura's body. One down, one to go. But of course Menud has always been the bigger threat.
* All the elders sit silently, scared of Sura's ghost. Warok isn't bothered by ghosts. We get most of a page expounding on this, swear to god.
* The scouts return. The Fulani have set up a massive war camp, closer to the hills than usual, but Garram (who of course snuck right into and through the camp by himself) reports that it is half empty. He has also brought back a pet monkey with golden collar and chain. The other scouts, not realizing that Garram is better than everybody, claim it was so dark no one could have seen anything and that the monkey must have gotten loose and been caught by Garram's dog.
* The hillmen's army head down toward the plains. Menud finds his dead father's corpse, considers dropping an avalanche on the army by way of revenge, then decides avenging his father is pointless since Sura is "no longer of use to him" -- I assume revenge would've been too heroic by Mr Herbert Best's inexplicable standards -- and cooks up "a more paying plan".
* This plan is, to betray the hill folk by showing the Fulani the way up the path, assuming they will then leave him, Menud, as puppet ruler of the hill country. BECAUSE OF REASONS. o_O
* Ooh, we have a bridge, an aged wooden "nightmare scaffolding" of a thing. One surmises Menud will die of falling from this; the description is too long and convoluted for it to not be a Chekhov's gun.
* Warok has, of course, a Strategy for this fight too. This strategy is, to place his army east of the Fulani army (the book says west but I will graciously assume that is a typo), and then attack at sunrise so as to have the sun at his men's backs, shining in the eyes of the Fulani warriors. This is his whole strategy.
* Of course Garram shoots twice as fast as anybody else. We literally have to be told that. Otherwise we might forget that Garram is better than everybody. ;P
* The... entire army sort of... clinches? We're told that the pressure of the chests of the people in the back ranks against the warriors in front is so strong as to break some people's ribs, that there isn't room to move an arm to stab or cut. WHAT THE FUCK SIR. I have never in my life heard of a battle anything like that, and also why would anybody do that? Is it supposed to be a Tactic, or just caused by everybody jostling to get to the front and engage the enemy? I honestly never supposed that I would say this, but sirrah, CS Lewis writes better battles than you do. O_O CS fucking Lewis, I say! Whom I never compliment if I can avoid it! But by god, he writes battles in which everybody is sort of jumbled up on the ground fighting whoever's in front of them, and in none of them does anybody do this sort of reverse-tug-of-war bullshit. -- wait, I lie, there is in fact one "battle", the one where they push the sea serpent off the Dawn Treader, where in fact this sort of tactic wins the day. But I would like to point out that this is a specialized technique against A FUCKING SEA SERPENT and technically not a battle at all!
* WHAT THE FLYING FUCK SIR. I reiterate, sir, WHAT IN THE EVERLOVING FUCK.
* At the end of the battle, Garram faints. We're told that he'd had no sleep or food or water for two days, which if so is bloody stupid of him, since he's been in and out of the village, and the shit that's been going on has been pretty intermittent. Also, we were explicitly told that after the scouts got back Garram was asleep for all the time except when his report was wanted. Mr Best, you need a better editor.
* We now find out that Menud did in fact get through to the Fulani and that they've been going up the trail in single file while their rearguard held off the hill warriors. How the shit do they expect to get down again?
* Now everybody is angry at Warok for leaving the pass unguarded, though Garram noted earlier that this was a brave stroke to increase the size of the hillmen's army, and Garram is always right. ;P Therefore, there is a solution: Warok has some of his men go and set parts of the Fulani camp on fire, so that the Fulani will come back and defend it.
* Somebody up top had the sensible idea to set the wooden bridge on fire, which might actually save the hill villages. Warok, being a strange and peculiar war chief, decides to set the other wooden bridge on fire behind the Fulani, trapping them in the mountain pass for some weird reason. STRATEGY.
* Ah, it was the Rainmaker who set the top bridge on fire. Now that the Fulani are trapped, he leads the village women in sending down an avalanche to kill them. We've not had a woman either named or given a spoken line this whole book, you know; they have to be led by a man. ;P
* For some reason the Fulani brought with them "pale soft women of the harem", now politely imprisoned. I assume they'll be let go, because that's what Nice People do.
* The Rainmaker tells how Menud died -- the Fulani leader, when he realized he was trapped, assumed Menud had betrayed him and had him killed.
* Now Ibrahim shows up. Somehow he doesn't know Garram's fucking name? Buddy, you need a better editor by far.
* Anyway, the Emir wants to ally with the hill people and has sent Ibrahim as his messenger. The eastern Fulani, the raiders, had planned to cross the hills and attack the Emir, it seems. But the hill people explain that the eastern army is already dead, because Garram and Warok are better than everybody. ;P
* Yeah, Warok et al send the Fulani women back, calling them "ugly" and "weak stock". I don't know quite what to make of that. It's not exactly "haha these different customs are so weird and funny". I'm extremely aware, though I don't know if Herbert Best was, that of course you can't have Good black men marrying "pale" women, not in 1930s America; Good blacks know their place and marry only among their own kind. :P I don't know, it just feels to me very much like one of those things that happen because they have to happen, not just the letting the women go, but the extended notation that Our Heroes find them unattractive. *frowns*
* Then Garram goes to sleep again, happy ending.
Jesus motherfucking Christ, what WAS that? O_O
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the laws of physics rolling over for him to have their tummies scritched
I like your turn of phrase there.
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And really impressively terrible, too. I think it could just about stand up to The Old Tobacco Shop for the sheer WTFery of its terribleness. O_O
I like your turn of phrase there
Aw, thank you! :-)