can reading over two decades' worth of drafts of the same novel help you figure out what to do with the next rewrite? one writer finds out [ new post every monday ] el | she/her | also known as @gr8writingtips
Links to all chapters can be found below, in case you want to find a particular post or read them in order without scrolling back through my blog. Enjoy ✨
Just to warn you all, posting may become sporadic across the next couple of months. I'm going to try to stick to posting every week but for reasons (shenanigans) I am trying to rewrite one of my novels in 46 days which will take up most of my time. 🥲🙏
Let's try this again on the correct blog this time...
Sorry for vanishing for... two months. Whoops! I'm still in rewrite hell so I can't say it's going to immediately change. However I do have some holiday coming up in a couple of weeks and I'm very excited to return to this blog as soon as I can.
Before Layane could question her appearance, Roen snatched the letter out of her hand and showed it to Shafinah. “Did you write this?” he said.
Why would Shafinah, who can teleport, respond to an urgent letter by writing one back? Also, how did she even receive the letter? Does she have a P.O. box?
“No, I did not,” Shafinah said.
Oh thank god.
“Something’s happened,” she said. “And I need your help.”
Oh-kay...
Shafinah, what could you possibly want from these idiots? Surely you know how incompetent they are?
Roen laughed. “You need our help? What could we do that you couldn’t?”
Even Roen thinks this is weird!
“Be a human.” She looked straight at Layane, who then realized that by ‘you’, Shafinah didn’t mean both her and Roen. She had just meant her.
“You can look like a human,” Roen said.
“I know I can look like a human, but I’m not a human. And I need to have a look at something, but the people guarding it are expecting me to turn up...”
...
WHAT.
I can remember exactly none of this. Is Shafinah planning a heist? And why does it matter if the people guarding 'it' are expecting you to show up if you can just remove their DNA or whatever it is you can do in this version of the story?
Roen, very sensibly, asks why Shafinah can't just use magic to do whatever she wants to do, rather than using Layane for... whatever this is.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Shafinah said. “I’m sorry, Roenakah, I hope you don’t mind if I take this.”
The next moment was a blur. One second, Layane was standing next to Roen. When she looked up at him, he looked worried. She thought he was about to blurt something out to Shafinah. Then, the scene melted away around her. She could feel one of Shafinah’s spindly hands grasping her shoulder. At first it felt like she was tugging her forwards, but then the area dissolved into darkness.
That's actually kinda funny. Shafinah saying, 'I just need to take this' like she's answering a call and instead she yoinks Layane away.
Layane appears on a gravel path behind a tall, grey wall, very confused and alarmed.
“Where am I?” she blurted out. “Why have you taken me here?” She picked herself up off the ground, and turned to face her. Shafinah’s dark, colourless eyes seemed to stare right though her. Layane wasn’t sure she trusted her yet, so kept her distance.
“I was told that the humans had found something,” Shafinah said. Her voice was calm and clear; she either hadn’t noticed Layane’s distrust of her, or didn’t care. “But I wasn’t allowed to come and look for myself. Isn’t that unfair?”
I thought you couldn't go because someone would be 'expecting you', Shafinah? Another retcon? Or were you just lying?
Also, can you not become invisible, Shafinah? I was pretty sure you could at least turn into a shadow, but maybe that was another version of this book. Never mind. I guess the implication is that someone else, probably a Gevirian leader whose name starts with G, isn't letting her. Why are you letting her push you around like that, Shafinah? And who are 'the humans'? Winchester and his goons? Someone else?
Without explaining anything, Shafinah touches Layane and something... happens.
Wait, I've just realised anyone in this can become invisible! They have those little balls of magic that can turn them invisible! Why couldn't Shafinah just use one of those?
Never mind. Anyway, something happens:
An icy blast spread across [Layane's] chest from the part Shafinah had touched. She looked down, and screamed when she saw her upper body was covered in a thin, black liquid, which had the thick consistency of paint. It clung to her skin; when she touched it to try to move it away, it attached itself to her fingers and spread up and across her arms.
She began to panic, although she didn’t know why exactly. She didn’t want to touch it, but she thrust her black hand down aver her chest, and tried to wipe the darkness off herself.
Magic people love doing shit to Layane without explaining what they're about to do. By now, Layane should just assume weird, magical shit is going to happen to her every second of every day.
I like that she doesn't know why she's panicking as she's coated in fucking... venom goo. (Is 'paint' the right word here, past me?)
Yeah, that's probably fine. No need to worry.
“Shafinah!” she yelled, trying to push the liquid off her. It twisted and bulged as she forced it downwards, but it sank into shape as soon as she released it. Her arms were now completely coated with whatever it was; it rested on her clothes rather than seep into the fabric.
Whatever it was, it had completely covered her. Out of her peripheral vision, she could see the black on her nose and hair. She was still panting, but couldn’t tell if she had any reason to be worried.
Layane right now:
At least she isn't sure whether to be worried or not.
Ignoring that she's just covered Layane in goo, Shafinah explains that there's a building behind the wall they appeared near, and she needs Layane to go inside for her.
Remember just now when Shafinah said that Layane needed to look like a human to walk into... wherever this is? Will it not be a bit odd if the human walking in is coated in goo?
“What is this?” said Layane. She shook her hand hard, and a few droplets of black showered off. The gaps the action created immediately sealed over, and there was no sign it had happened. “What did you do to me?”
“It’s something to protect you. It keeps you tied to me, and if you get stuck, I can pull you back out.” She drew her hand backwards, and Layane felt a tug on her clothes. When she looked, she saw the black liquid was being pulled away from her, forcing her towards Shafinah.
She regained her footing, and turned to Shafinah. “So... I’m on a leash?”
“The way I said it makes you seem less like a domesticated animal. But yes, if you want to put it that way, you are on a leash.”
Hot.
Maybe the goo can only be seen by Layane and Shafinah? That would make sense. No one would question that if I had Shafinah say that was the case. I don't, though, to be clear.
“So... I find the ‘thing’,” Layane said. “And then you pull me out through the solid walls?”
Is Shafinah going to bother telling Layane what the 'thing' is? Is Layane going to bother asking?
Before Layane could say anything, Shafinah flicked her wrist towards the wall. Layane’s feet raked the ground as the black liquid threw her helplessly sideways. She managed to scream “stop!” before colliding with the wall.
But the collision never came. She didn’t have enough time to find her feet, so she landed inelegantly onto a tiled floor on her back. A clean, white wall was behind her, and it showed no sign of being broken. She had passed straight through it.
This is fun. However I am one million percent sure there is a better way to do this plan than throw Layane, who has no idea what is going on, through a wall.
There was a tugging at her stomach. She looked down to see the black liquid being yanked away from her, and – yet again – she was dragged through the wall.
Shafinah was standing exactly where she had left her. Nothing that had happened seemed to surprise her in any way. “That is what we’re doing,” said Shafinah. “I have control over you. I will put you in the building, you will find it, and then I want you to tug on the front of your shirt. Then, I will pull you out.”
Again, hot.
It's really bizarre seeing random elements of this that clearly influenced the later drafts. Shafinah calls this teleporting, and the version of teleporting that stuck in the later drafts involves physically pulling yourself around the world using magic. Maybe this is where that came from. Huh.
“But what am I looking for?”
“You’ll know when you see it.”
“But...?”
With a flick of her hand, Shafinah flung Layane into the building.
She looked around. She was in a corridor. Numerous doors led off it, and the area was deserted. There was a strong smell of chlorine, and something else that Layane wrinkled her nose at. It smelt like rot, and she didn’t want to think about it.
I can't believe that nothing happened for maybe the first third of this draft, and now we're here. Could we have not started with the gang working with Shafinah?
What was she looking for? She was furious with Shafinah that she didn’t tell the whole story. And suddenly she became aware of how stupid she would look if anyone caught the weird teenage girl, painted black.
This isn't exactly inconspicuous, is it? If the only option other than Shafinah going herself is to send a teenager covered in black paint, would it be that much weirder to turn up as a winged woman with four arms?
Layane realises that the 'something' she's looking for might be The Key. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's the only Magical Object Layane is aware of.
All the doors are locked, so Layane continues down the corridor. If only someone who could teleport herself and other people through solid walls was here. Shame no one like that is involved in this.
Finally, Layane comes across a door that isn't locked, and pushes her way inside.
Layane gagged. At the centre of the room, laid out on a gurney, was the body of a dead Gever. A thin sheet was covering the body, but the Gever’s wings and arms were sticking out from under it. The skin was dark and grey. Layane thought the Gever was male, but the body was so discoloured and appeared so misshapen that she couldn’t tell.
Oh! Is this Winchester's doing? Does he have a whole Gever experimentation lab? Why isn't Shafinah doing anything about this?
I just had a thought. With the Venom Goop Layane is covered in, is Shafinah seeing what she sees? Can Shafinah communicate with Layane here, other than feeling if Layane pulls on her shirt? I assume she can at least see Layane, but it's a bit unclear.
Certainly no one communicates with Layane, so she decides to snoop around. She doesn't want to inspect a dead Gever, but realises she must be there to do just that. Layane approaches the gurney to have a poke around, and I have no idea why I described the Gever's body before she does this, seeing as it's under a sheet, even if the sheet is apparently so thin Layane can see the whole body through it from the other side of the room.
Then, Layane hears footsteps. Instead of pulling on her t-shirt, she goes to hide between a cupboard and the wall.
A woman in a labcoat walks in. She pulls back the cloth from the dead Gever, who died in a fire or explosion, and is unrecognisable. Again... why exactly did I describe the body before this? What was the point of the sheet?
Anyway, the woman quickly spots Layane, and Layane pulls the front of her t-shirt and is yoinked away.
Her eyes snapped shut as she flew. The sounds of the building buzzed around her; the permeable walls shot past her with a whooshing sound.
A moment before she slammed into the tree, she could feel a fresh breeze.
“Sorry,” she heard Shafinah say.
Pfft.
Shafinah evidently cannot see what Layane sees, as Layane has to explain everything she saw in there.
“I see,” said Shafinah. “Yes – I thought so. But I hoped they were bluffing.”
Who is 'they'? Winchester? Some other humans? Someone related to G-slur? Layane does not ask. She just stands there as Shafinah... zones out.
Layane hoped that she would take her back now; she could probably do so in a second. But Shafinah stayed rooted to the spot. She was looking in Layane’s direction, but Layane could not tell if she was looking at her, of had zoned out into the area behind.
“What?” Layane said. Maybe her reacting would snap her out of it for long enough to take her back to the hotel room.
“G-slur heard about it first,” said Shafinah. “There was a rumour. Something in the human news.”
Is this related in any way to the Nicola/Winchester plotline? If it isn't, why did we waste the first third of the book focusing on that?
Apparently an article about a 'mutated body' was floating around online. G-slur found out (somehow), and I guess... didn't want anyone to investigate it other than her? Not suspicious at all.
I've... just realised I have no idea where in the world these characters are currently. Shafinah doesn't even name a country. Are we still in America? Back in the UK? Where is this secret Gever experimentation lab?
“G-slur is trying to find out who it was, but she didn’t know where the body was to check. I wanted to know for myself.” She looked upwards, and Layane followed her gaze. There was nothing above them but the sky. “G-slur is here to find Roen,” she added. “She was looking for him. She will have found him by now.”
So we're... in America? Maybe?
Layane asks to be taken back to Roen. If Shafinah and Layane are still in America, that does make sense. If it transpires that they are currently in the UK, I do find it pretty funny that she's going to be teleported back to El Paso just to get a flight back to England.
“I will,” Shafinah said. “[G-slur] is tracking you, by the way.”
“What? Why didn’t she just... catch us?”
“I don’t think she wants to. I think she just wanted to know what exactly you were doing.” She laughed. “It is a bit odd, you two running off this far across the world. I think she thought he was taking another holiday, and you tagged along.”
Fair assumption, actually. I still find it very funny that G-slur gave them passports.
Layane bit her lip, and gagged when some of the black liquid seeped into her mouth.
Oh yeah, Layane is still covered in black paint. That's what the scientist would have seen: a girl covered in black paint.
Behind a shelf.
So... probably... a pair of eyes in shadow...
Great plan, Shafinah. G-slur is never going to find out you were involved in this.
Layane, again, asks to be sent back to Roen. Shafinah has one more question: how did the Gever die? Layane tells her, and without another word, Shafinah teleports Layane away and the chapter ends.
I really hope Layane is still in Venom Mode when she reaches the hotel room.
This chapter does raise some interesting questions:
Is any of this related to the first book?
Who is running a secret Gever experimentation lab? Do world government/s know about Gever?
Had I watched Spiderman 3 before writing this, and if so, what did I think of it?
I wish I could tell you we're going to get answers for any of these, but I really, truly doubt it.
Just to warn you all, posting may become sporadic across the next couple of months. I'm going to try to stick to posting every week but for reasons (shenanigans) I am trying to rewrite one of my novels in 46 days which will take up most of my time. 🥲🙏
Roen approaches the apartment block which may or may not, but absolutely will not, contain Nicola. Immediately he is presented with a problem: he has no idea which apartment is hers, and has no way to get into the lobby.
Layane asks how he plans to get in, but before Roen can attempt to explain, a cleaner appears. For some reason, he answers the door to these two random Brits who are trying to break in.
“Does this person live here?” Roen asked.
The cleaner squinted at the photograph through the dirty glass. “She did,” he said. Layane felt her heart drop. ‘Did’. What would they do now? “Moved out last week.”
Nicola Thompson, apparently: yeah, I've been made. Yeah, I have no way of trusting the man who discovered me won't tell anyone where I am. Yeah, he apparently knows where I live. No mad rush though, I'll move out in 2-3 business weeks.
Layane and Roen are, naturally, disappointed that their plan that had no hope of working... didn't work.
“Thanks,” [Roen] said. “Did she say where she was going?”
“No. We’ve been getting her mail; she didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
I do love that Nicola was living here so openly. Yeah, she probably used a fake name (we have no proof yet that the cleaner knows her as Nicola), but renting a whole flat in another country is a bit conspicuous, isn't it? Wouldn't you move around?
Also, I know this isn't the point but... why El Paso?
Layane asks if they can have her mail, and the cleaner asks who they are.
Her response was automatic. “I’m her daughter,” she said.
No idea why that's phrased like Layane's lying. I know Layane has complicated feelings about Nicola, but surely the narration should comment on those, rather than... whatever this is?
The cleaner, understandably, is unsure. Then Roen slips him a few dollar bills and the dynamic duo walk away with the post.
I know I've been going on and on about how ridiculous it would be for Nicola to still be here (or even that she was still in this flat last week), but just to throw another perspective into the mix: how do we know she's not there and the cleaner lied for her?
He passed the bundle [of letters] to Layane as they walked. She assumed they were going back to the apartment, at least she hoped so. After the distraction, she realized how hungry she was. And thirsty. And in the sun, just plain hot.
How much post does a woman on the run generally get?
How come Layane hasn't collapsed from heat exhaustion yet?
I assume by apartment I mean hotel room...
She started to sort through the post as she walked. There was a lot of leaflets from local companies and a couple of official-looking letters. She opened them to find letters from two banks. Nothing in them gave any indication that she had moved.
...
Are these letters addressed to Nicola's real name? They can't be, but surely if they were addressed to a fake name, Layane or the narrator would have remarked upon this? How has this woman not been caught yet? I know the Gevirians are incompetent as hell, but the police are looking for them t-
Just remembered how incompetent the police are in these books. Ignore me.
I'm not sure why Layane isn't more interested in the bank letters. Even if there's no indication of where Nicola moved, presumably these are bank statements, which will provide some kind of insight into who Nicola is. Anyway, those don't matter. Another letter, with a handwritten address, catches her eye and she opens it.
Strange, illegible symbols covered the page. They looked similar to those that had lined the Tunnel to Geviria. It confused her. If Gever knew where she was, had she been captured?
I... okay.
I do get what I'm trying to do here. But... you know that Gever know where Nicola is, Layane. I'll give you three guesses to work out how you should already know this.
Layane gives the letter to Roen to translate.
“It says, ‘As far as I know G-slur called off the search for you in America long ago. Her son is the Protector of your daughters and I am not sure why he had followed you. I doubt he was sent there, as G-slur would not let him abandon his normal duties.” He laughed. “It should be nothing to worry about’.”
Nicola logic: I need to urgently let my daughters know someone is after them, so I will send the person who's after them with a message as any other method of communication is too slow! Anyway, better send a letter to Narnia to find out if I'm in danger if I stay here.
Maybe that's harsh. We don't know for sure that she was here the whole time.
Also I guess the Gever were searching for Nicola in America? Any reason why? I genuinely can't remember if there was any rationale given for this at any point, but I assume not. If there was: sorry, past me.
“Is that all?” [Layane said]
“You’re mentioned again. ‘The girls have been missing for a while now. I don’t think it’s anything to panic over, and G-slur is not behind it. I will mail back when there is more news. There could be more Gever coming to England, so I suggest that you don’t return.”
Uh... when was this letter sent? Why would it open with Roen being a protector, if the main news was that Layane and Clemant have been kidnapped? Surely this was sent over a month ago? Didn't the cleaner say Nicola left a couple of weeks back?
(Scrolls up.)
No, it's worse, he said 'last week'. Great. And Nicola left before she received this envelope of exposition?
I assume Roen is meant to be paraphrasing the contents of the letter as he's translating it, but even so, this sounds like a horrible fucking letter. No explanation of what is meant by 'the girls are missing'? Also, surely this letter must have been sent during a very narrow window of time between the (first) kidnap and Layane arriving in Geviria?
Unless... maybe this was sent recently, as an attempt to lure Nicola back, because as far as everyone outside Geviria is aware, the girls are missing?
I doubt it, but that would be nice. Then again, Nicola never received the letter so it doesn't matter.
Layane looked at the envelope, and saw it was properly stamped and addressed. She remembered the letter that Nicola sent her. She hadn’t looked at it in a while. It was apologetic. Loving. But she didn’t believe it. The only real reason Nicola had sent it was to warn Layane that Roen was there.
[Citation needed. Specifically for the letter being 'loving'. We all know Nicola asked Roen to send the letter to tell the girls to run away from him, for some reason]
Layane realises that the letter must have been sent by post, meaning some Gever is outside Geviria sending letters to Nicola. Layane (sensibly) asks if Roen thinks Elint could have sent it.
Remember Elint? He's Roen's father figure slash boss (?) who works smuggling Gever in and out of Geviria on a luxury cruise ship, ride or die for Royane, hates G-slur, etc.
“No,” Roen said, after a pause. “He doesn’t like G-slur, but I don’t think he’d disobey another order. He got into trouble when G-slur found out I went away. And I can’t remember him ever being in America.”
So the letter was sent from within America? Do we know this? How would Roen know that?
Layane tries to deduce what must have happened. Nicola never got the letter, so why did she run? Layane comes up with exactly zero suggestions. She also wonders when the letter was sent, which is a good fucking question that I doubt is going to be answered.
Layane and Roen get back to the hotel. There was no mention of them stopping for food or water, so who knows how Layane made it all the way back without dying. Naturally, having found nothing useful, they decide it's probably time to go back to England.
Great going, guys.
As they're walking up to their room, we get this:
“Do you think the Gever will have caught her, or the kidnappers?” [Layane said]
He shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t know which I would rather her be caught by. Either way, she ends up...”
Layane waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. She assumed he wanted to say ‘dead’. Perhaps he didn’t want to in front of her. It would be surprising to Layane if the Gever killed her; she had thought they wanted to keep her alive to find out where the Key was.
Roen probably knows the Gever better than you, Layane.
I do love how clear it is that I knew this plot made no sense, even as I was writing it. I remember stopping in the middle of a scene, in my relatives' house in Georgia, because I'd reached my limit and realised this was unsalvageable.
God only knows what that scene was. I am slightly afraid to find out.
Then, [Layane] realized what was bothering him. He thought it would be his fault if Nicola was caught. Not much has been going right for you recently, has it? Layane wanted to ask. She felt she had to cheer him up somehow. She didn’t want him to get depressed; he’d probably start to drink again, and then make everything worse for him.
You do realise that your entire role in this is completely optional, Layane? Ditch his ass!
Layane is still trying to figure out how to cheer up Roen (easy, give him a lil smooch) when they finally reach the door to their room. Roen unlocks it.
A Gever – who Layane had only before seen in darkness – was sitting on the bed. Her wings were stretched out behind her, her long, red dress blending into the duvet cover she sat on.
“I was wondering when you would show up,” Shafinah said, and she ushered them inside.
The chapter ends here, if it wasn't already obvious from that post-credits final line.
...
I've just realised that Nicola sent Roen on a transatlantic flight to give Layane a letter that had no impact on the plot in the opening of book 1, and in the opening of book 2, Roen takes a transatlantic flight back just to receive a letter that will also have no impact on the plot. And I think that's beautiful.
I was just looking through the Draft 3 posts for reasons* and realised that Roen doesn't only seem to contradict the timeline in the sequel, but explicitly contradicts it.
Layane's mum was pregnant when this happened, huh?
Or maybe Roen doesn't know how long pregnancy lasts. Anyway, I found this funny, so here you go.
We pause the plot to flash back to two weeks ago, apparently. Yeah. We could have started the book then, or ended The Human Spirit later, but instead we decided to start with:
flashback to Roen before the opening of The Human Spirit
Layane and Roen at an airport and nothing happens
Jezirah and Clemant are at Jezirah's house and nothing happens
Layane and Roen are finally trying to find Nicola! But let's pause that to flash back to two weeks ago
Layane is in Geviria. She realises she wants to know everything about Nicola before they meet, so she asks Jezirah and Roen about her.
No, I have no idea why I also had Layane ask Roen what Nicola was like in the earlier part of this chapter. Another retcon?
“What exactly happened when my parents came here?” Layane asked.
Jezirah looked uncomfortable at first. Layane assumed it was because at the time Nicola and Simon arrived, Jezirah wouldn’t be born for another thirteen years.
I'm not sure I'd bother asking these two, personally. Maybe try...
“You’re better off asking Gy...” [Roen] paused, and scowled. “No, don’t ask her. She’d probably just get mad.”
I like that the dialogue had already censored the name for me.
In all seriousness, what is the point of this? Not only is Layane unlikely to find out anything useful, but we're also pausing a fairly tense scene* for this.
* I suspect that is the intention, anyway.
Roen explains that Layane's parents found the entrance to Geviria before she was born, because they were... 'taking photos around Spain'.
Yep. They were on holiday to take pictures of Spain. That's the best I could come up with. For some reason, they came all the way out to the island to take pictures, which is meant to be so far from the coast the Gever need to arrange cruises to travel in and out. No explanation is given for Layane's parents' decision to sail out there.
If this was written by anyone other than me, I'd start to suspect they already knew Geviria was there, and came up with the lame cover story to trick the Gever into letting them in. Unfortunately, I did write this book, and I truly doubt that's where this is going.
“How did they even get in?” Layane asked. “You said humans needed to be with a Gever.”
“My mother left Geviria when they were still on the island,” Jezirah said. She started to look even more uncomfortable; she reminded Layane of the way Clemant felt when she was in large crowds of people. “They saw her, so she let them in. I think G-slur was angry at first.”
“She was,” said Roen. “But then she began to see a better side to it. Folon – my, er, father – was dead. Geviria was a lot... safer without him. And the Esconios stopped with their ‘humans are soulless’ nonsense for a while. She thought it would be a good idea if – eventually – humans and Gever could coexist.
Roen's father is called what now?
Considering most (if not all) of this information could have been shared by Roen, I have no idea why this isn't a conversation Layane and Roen are having in El Paso or wherever near El Paso they are.
Roen was a very small child when this all happened, apparently. I'd love to interrogate the timeline here a little more. So Layane's parents discovered Geviria, started... opening the path for human-Gever relations, I guess? And then immediately decided to have a baby?
Maybe Layane was unplanned? Just a surprise nine months post-discovering Narnia baby?
G-slur took Nicola and Simon on a tour around Geviria, where their arrival was celebrated as a turning point for human-Gever relations, for some reason. Yep. Just Nicola and Simon Thompson from... Somerset? I think?
“Then when they left, they were given the Key.” [Roen said]
“Did they ever return?” [Layane said]
“No. I think G-slur said Nicola was pregnant when they came here. They probably didn’t have the time.”
Oh. So... they went on a boat trip off the coast of Spain, in no particular direction, when Nicola was pregnant? Interesting.
This does make the whole losing-the-key thing make more sense though. They'd just had a baby! Maybe they noticed the key was gone while they were potty training Layane, and didn't have the time to deal with it, making it super awkward when G-slur showed up asking for it several years later.
But also... if they weren't planning on ever returning, and there was seemingly no expectation to return, WHY ON EARTH GIVE THESE PEOPLE THE KEY? Before now I had the vague impression that they'd visited a number of times, probably while doing something for the Gever? Doing what, I couldn't tell you.
And how did Winchester and his squad even find out about this, if Nicola and Simon never went back to Geviria and presumably didn't tell anyone about it?
After all of that exposition, which ranged from 'stuff we'd already figured out' all the way to 'stuff that contradicts the earlier plot', we get something that might actually be useful:
“G-slur sent Jezirah to get the Key back.” [Roen said]
“She means my mother, not me,” Jezirah confirmed. “She had the same name as me.”
Layane remembered something. It was a memory from her life at home, right before her parents abandoned her. It had lain dormant in her mind, until she thought hard enough to revive it. She had been in the kidnappers’ car when she remembered it.
Ignoring the absolutely deranged way I made Layane connect what the others are saying to her memory (which, as a reminder, is within a flashback), that was so distracting it took me weeks to realise Jezirah misgendered Roen for some reason...
[Insert that polar bear image that gets flagged for pornography here]
...and the fact that Layane could have asked Roen or Jezirah at any point in The Human Spirit who that woman was, finally, we might be getting answers for some of this!
“I think she warned them that G-slur was coming,” said Layane. “I remember when she came... well, a tiny bit. All I heard her say was that ‘she is angry’.”
This... kinda sounds like Layane does know G-slur is evil? I think? A free passport is a free passport, I guess.
“Jezirah’s mother was friends with Nicola,” said Roen. “She probably did. After Jezirah’s visit, your parents ran. They left you at the home, and then we never saw them again.”
This should definitely have all come out earlier. What exactly was the reason for this information being withheld from the first book? Other than the fact that these books should definitely have only been one book, I mean.
Also, how exactly did Nicola and Simon become friends with Jezirah Snr. if they never visited Geviria? Did Jezirah Snr. spend all her free time on the Upper World? Although, knowing that Jezirah Snr. was murdered several years later (presumably by G-slur), this may offer a hint as to what happened to her and why.
Of course, Layane does not make the connection between Jezirah Snr.'s visit and her violent death. And if you're thinking, maybe that's because she doesn't know about Jezirah's parents' murders in great detail, Roen or Jezirah Jnr. do and they don't make the connection, either. Instead, Layane questions why G-slur left her and her sister alone in a kids' home. Why didn't G-slur kidnap them as bait to lure Nicola in?
So, Layane does know G-slur is evil...?
Roen looked thoughtful for a while. “[The Gever] found you easily. They didn’t take you because it wasn’t your fault. Taking you couldn’t be justified.” He paused. “I think that was it... I think it was something like: they couldn’t explain it, and the Esconios would support it if they held you.”
That's a lot of words for, 'the author has no idea, sorry.'
[Layane] paused, taking everything in.
Yeah, it is hard to accept that the author has no idea what she's doing.
We're then dragged out of the flashback, kicking and screaming.
No, I don't know where Layane, Jezirah and Roen were for that flashback, other than somewhere in Geviria (presumably Jezirah's house). Not knowing exactly where the characters are is going to be a recurring theme here, I think.
“Are you okay?”
Layane looked up to see Roen, his eyes filled with worry. She had zoned out as she looked up at the apartments.
Layane says that she's fine, and just wants to get this over with, and the chapter ends. I was so nervous that the next chapter was going to go back to Jezirah and Clemant doing nothing in Geviria that I scrolled down a bit to check.
The relief when I saw Roen's name was immeasurable. (Things Layane has never said, hey-o!)
Roen had become noticeably nervous on the flight. He explained that if Nicola was there, chances are she’d spot them before they saw her. And she had been quite firm when she told him that she didn’t want him coming back.
We've made it to America! This is absolutely the kind of conversation you should have had before coming here, but ignoring that, are we finally going to get some plot? Or at least find out where in America these characters are?
The narration tells us that they arrived late at night, and went straight to a cheap hotel (possibly I mean motel?) to sleep. Layane feels uncomfortable in the area where they're staying. There is not enough evidence to determine if I Only One Bed'd them or not.
“I think I recognize the area,” Roen said. He had woken first, and had looked around the area. “But I didn’t see Nicola anywhere. And there was no one waiting for me.”
“Surely that’s a good thing?”
He bit his lip. “I’m not sure. It could mean she isn’t here.”
“Well, let’s hope that’s not the case!”
I mean. Considering Nicola doesn't want to be found, and Roen found her in... whatever this place is a couple of months back, this is probably the least likely town for her to be. And America is, uh, big.
Not that I'm saying this plan is bad, of course! It's definitely not the worst plan these characters have had!
Yakety sax plays in distance
Roen admitted that he didn’t actually know where in America he was when he saw Nicola. He explained that he had gone to America from Spain on a whim; the false identification documents G-slur had given him made it easy. He couldn’t remember where exactly he went first, but he had moved around the country a lot afterwards.
Great. He still doesn't even remember which state he was in when he saw Nicola. This is a fantastic plan.
I briefly thought, 'wait, why did Roen even need a new passport if he already had one?' when I realised I'd managed to forget one of the best parts of The Human Spirit: when G-slur decided to punish Roen by taking away his IDs (as well as torturing him for a bit and trying to send a little girl to her death).
The pair of them had to tear apart what remained of Roen’s luggage to find a hint at where he had stayed. Eventually, they found a plane ticket.
Oh! The random jumping around makes this very hard to parse, but Roen admitting he didn't know where in America he went happened before they got on the plane. Got it. That does make sense, seeing as they seemed to know what airport they had to go to in the last Royane chapter.
It was from a day before Layane received the letter, and it showed that Roen’s plane left El Paso International Airport.
Texas! Called it!
This is treated like a major discovery, but even though they've narrowed the city down, Roen still has to remember where exactly he'd seen Nicola in a city with a population of half a million, and the surrounding areas.
C'mon, past me. You could have at least had Roen find a receipt from the hotel! He saw Nicola from the hotel window!
What's infuriating is that I know these characters are going to end up in the right place. It took Layane and Jezirah something like two days to track down one house in a small town in England, and these idiots are going to find Nicola or a clue immediately. Roen has already said he recognises this place! I honestly could not tell you how they manage this. Sheer luck?
Layane spends a long time contemplating how angry she is that Roen was drunk the entire time he was in America, and is now almost completely useless in the hunt for Nicola. At least he's not drinking now, she thinks. She was suspicious when she realised he was gone this morning, but now he's back, and he doesn't seem drunk at all.
See what I mean about the jumping around? In quick succession, we went from Layane and Roen on the flight, to arriving at the hotel and going to bed, to talking after Roen returned from his walk and mentioning he recognises the location, to the discovery of the old plane tickets before they came here, to Layane contemplating Roen's absence (before he returned from his walk, which happened earlier in the chapter).
What were you going for here, past me?
Worth noting that other than knowing Layane is in a hotel room, we haven't had any indication of what she is doing. Everything on the page has been Layane thinking about Roen, Nicola, or past events.
Layane got out of bed.
Okay, I guess she was in bed. I personally would have got up before Roen returned, but that's just me.
The room they were staying in was ‘all right’ at best.
That's... good?
We get confirmation that there are two beds, so I did NOT Only One Bed these characters. I know it's super common for motels/hotels in the US to have multiple double beds in a room, so it would be kinda weird if I did Only One Bed them, but given how little effort I've put in to make this feel like America, I see this as a missed opportunity.
Layane goes into the bathroom to get ready, and when she returns, Roen decides that he does recognise this place, but only because he saw it from Nicola's car when she was driving him to the airport.
Didn't he already say this? Never mind, guess I forgot about that. Also, I do love that Roen couldn't even remember which state he was in, but remembers a road he was driven down once clearly enough that he's certain they're on the right track.
“Why did you come here in the first place?” she asked.
He turned. “Here? I don’t know, I just wandered around and ended up...”
“No – I meant, why did you leave England?”
When he sighed, she regretted asking the question. “I was just...” He paused, a blank expression on his face. “It was a ‘bad time’.”
I'd be more concerned about finding Nicola in a strange city, with no idea where she is, personally. But hell yeah, let's have some angst.
In between writing these posts, I've been working on a draft zero sequel for another novel. The more I read of this, the more I worry that I still do the thing where I start to write a scene and spend the entire time in my character's head rather than describing anything going on around them. Oh well. I guess that's what a draft zero is for...
Layane and Roen set off to try to find a needle in a haystack Nicola in a city. At this stage I feel I should remind everyone that, according to chapter one, Roen doesn't actually know where Nicola lives. Presumably she lives somewhere near the motel he was staying at... but they just had a chance encounter outside it. There's no proof she lives in the area. The next day, Nicola turned up to drive him to the airport, but there's no indication she told him where she lived then, either. Why would she? Nicola could have been staying in another country for all Roen knows, and was just in El Paso for the day.
The hotel was on the side of a wide road. Rows of cars and industrial buildings lined it. As they walked, they kept to the pavement. The heat soon became uncomfortable, and Layane wished she were back in the room.
At least this feels a little more like America.
Layane wished she’d brought a bottle of water with her.
...girl.
Roen suddenly recognises a liquor store, and realises that they're close to where he saw Nicola. Yeah. They've just been walking around.
Walking around for less time than it took Layane and Jezirah to find the Kidnap House in the first book.
Yes, I know, they'd never been to the Kidnap House before, and Roen has been here before, but the guy couldn't even remember which state he was in! I love how selective his memory is.
[Layane] couldn’t imagine Nicola staying in the area they were in. The place didn’t fit the idea of Nicola she had in her mind.
First of all, Layane, you barely know Nicola. Secondly, I don't believe you have any proof that Nicola was staying here for more than a couple of days. Did she tell Roen she lives there? If she did, that would be so stupid I don't even want to look back and check.
Layane asks Roen what Nicola was like, which is fair enough.
“Angry.” [Roen said]
“Angry?”
“Yeah. At me, because I was following her. She tried to shoot me in the head, remember?” He inhaled deeply from his cigarette. “I think she was bitter.”
“What? Why?”
“I think she regrets giving you and Clemant up. I don’t think she can see the reason she did it any more, seeing as she never got caught. And the Gever know where you are.”
I mean... yeah. That was pretty stupid. Roen then admits that Nicola never actually told him the last part, he just guessed. Great.
This, for some reason, reminds Layane that Roen used to stalk her, and once again she spends a paragraph angsting about this. While doing so, they reach a little row of shops, and Layane spots a woman who's looking at Roen. The woman seems to be calling out his name...
...
Do we really have time for this?
To confirm, I am speaking to the writer, rather than the characters. The characters obviously cannot help the daft situations I've stuck them into.
Then, [Layane] heard the shout more clearly: “Ben?”
So she wasn’t calling “Roen”, but that didn’t change the fact that she was looking over at him. Roen was looking across the street, apparently oblivious to the girl, so Layane nudged him on the arm.
“There’s a girl over there calling you ‘Ben’,” she said.
Roen giving the fake name 'Ben' is really funny to me for some reason. Really put a lot of thought into that one.
“You didn’t call me.” [the girl said]
Layane didn’t know whether to be disgusted, or find it hilarious. The girl was quite pretty. She didn’t look the type to want to have anything to do with Roen. Layane quickly concluded that she must have been drunker than he was.
“I’m... sorry?” Roen said. He looked puzzled. “I didn’t have a phone anyway, and I...”
“I wrote the number on your jacket. You must have seen it.” Layane stepped back a little and watched as Roen tried to pull an explanation out of thin air. He deserved the awkward scene.
Now I'm asking the characters: do we really have time for this?
Also, random girl, if you left your one night stand asleep under a bench, should you really be this shocked when he doesn't call?
Roen splutters an apology, for some reason, and the girl storms off. Layane finds this hilarious.
“She was lovely,” said Layane. “It’s nice to know what you were doing on your ‘holiday’...”
Roen’s cheeks were burning. “Forget about that,” he said. He watched the girl leave to make sure she was leaving him alone. “I’ve... I’ve remembered where we are.”
“Lead the way, Ben.”
Okay, I actually find this funny, I'll allow it. It is fun to see Roen getting flustered and to suggest that Layane might be a tiny little bit jealous. I assume that's what I'm doing, anyway.
Roen manages to find the alleyway where Nicola accosted him, and points in the direction Nicola went. Because... it turns out Roen watched her enter an apartment building?
“I think she went in there,” Roen said. He was staring up at a tall, grey apartment building. Around each of the windows was a thick, concrete frame; the sun’s glare made it hard to see through the glass. Layane felt the colour leave her face as she looked up at the building.
Did that happen? I know I didn't want to scroll back up to check, but I have to now. I need to know.
...
No mention. Must have been a retcon. We've all been there.
Still, props to past me for actually describing the building!
Looking up at the building, Layane realises she has been dreading this. She doesn't want to confront Nicola, and the idea she might be so close is horrifying.
Good thing she's definitely not going to be there!
On that note, we...
Well...
I guess we're flashing back to the period of time between The Human Spirit and the sequel then, huh. Any reason we couldn't have started earlier?
Chapter 3: Well, if we can't play boardgames or leave the house, I'm just going to recall my traumatic childhood instead
Jezirah deposited the board games onto a table. They had been in her home for as long as she could remember; supposedly her mother had liked them, but she had no one to ask.
Or... we're playing boardgames. That's nice.
“There,” [Jezirah] said to the small girl sitting on the other side of the table. “We can play these, but you have to tell me how to because I can’t read the boxes...”
At least Clemant is somewhere safe. And no, I'm not sure why Jezirah can't read the boardgames. I assume they're meant to be from the Upper World (so presumably in English), but Jezirah is literally surrounded by magic that makes her learn anything she focuses on automatically. She should definitely be able to read the boxes.
Jezirah and Clemant are in Geviria, in Jezirah's house. Jezirah realises Clemant isn't enthusiastic about the boardgame, and suggests they go explore Geviria instead.
I was going to make a because that went SO well last time joke, except I'm pretty sure when Layane and Jezirah went exploring against G-slur's wishes, nothing bad came to them because of it. Yeah, Roen was tortured a bit, but he probably would have been tortured anyway, and I'm still slightly unclear if Jezirah knows that happened.
“We have to stay in here. Layane said.” [Clemant said]
Jezirah sighed. The reason Layane had told her this was that G-slur didn’t let them out of The Circle. When Layane had stayed with her, they had left and there was a dangerous moment that Layane thought they would get caught. So, she specifically told Jezirah not to leave while she was taking care of her little sister.
I did remember that. Never mind.
Jezirah relents and decides they should stay in, and because nothing interesting is happening, we go straight into a flashback. Yay! So glad we interrupted the Layane and Roen plotline for this.
I'm honest to god starting to picture the characters doing this every time there's a pointless flashback:
It's just over four years ago. No timestamp, which means, of course, we're in Geviria.
She opened her eyes and stared up at the vast, white space. Her mind was empty for a blissful moment.
Then, there was a flash. She shut her eyes tightly as a booming sound erupted in front of her; she attempted to move her hands to protect her face, but her arms were rigid and refused to move.
Everything plummeted into her. Different shapes and smells, sounds and colours leapt into her memory. Everything was wild for a moment. Endless thoughts pounded against the empty shell that had been her mind.
Her taut limbs began to shake. Panic flooded her as a thousand pieces of information threw themselves at her at once.
Words. Pictures. Faces. How to coordinate her stricken limbs into a run. A hazy history of Gever. That’s what she must have been. A Gever. And she lived... in Geviria, which was ruled by four leaders.
OH. Is this finally becoming relevant to the plot? This is horrible! I like it!
As the world materialises in front of Jezirah, she hears a voice. It asks her if she understands, and not only does Jezirah understand, she also knows the voice belongs to G-slur.
“Who are you?” G-slur said.
Her mind blurred for a second. She didn’t know. She just – was. Many things had entered her mind, but nothing had told her who or what she was.
Then, there was another bright flash. A clap of sound. It wasn’t as jarring this time, and her mind settled comfortably afterwards. At the front of her mind was a name. Her own name. Now, she knew who she was.
“Jezirah,” she said. “My name is Jezirah.”
Again, horrible!
G-slur tells Jezirah to get out of bed and walk towards her. It hurts to move, but Jezirah obeys.
Before she reached G-slur, another sight met her. And for a moment, she didn’t recognize the alien creature in the mirror to be herself.
Her skin was taut, red, and sore; it was completely unlike the pale skin of the other Gever. She was very thin, and her elbows jutted out sharply. Instead of having huge wings at her back, all that was there was a patch of infected-looking skin. She wondered if this was normal. Almost immediately, her mind told her not.
I'm not sure why this isn't the entire book.
“What do you remember?” G-slur asked.
“Nothing.”
“I thought so.” G-slur put one of her hands on Jezirah’s shoulder, and led her from the room. “I’m going to take you to your new home,” she said. “And then, you can meet your subjects.”
How hard would this hit later on, if we saw all this, then found out G-slur was evil? I really fumbled the bag here.
The flashback ends, and we're back with Jezirah and Clemant. Jezirah briefly considers that she had no real life experience before Layane turned up, which makes sense considering she is around four years old. Jezirah thinks about being on the Upper World, feeling useful for the first time in her life.
Useful. Let's recap Jezirah's role in the ending of The Human Spirit:
Went to buy Roen cigarettes and failed to do so
Managed to teleport twice at the hospital
Disappeared after that and went... home?
Kept Layane awake because she was worried about Roen
Ran around town for hours trying to save Roen while yakety sax played in the background
Teleported into the house where Roen was being held
I mean, the teleporting stuff was useful!*
* When she remembered she could do it.
Suddenly, Clemant asks if Jezirah wants to go outside. Jezirah is surprised, seeing as just one flashback ago she was against it. I'm surprised too, to be honest. In between Clemant saying they should stay put and now, there has been zero other dialogue.
Then Clemant asks when Layane is coming back.
Jezirah didn’t know what to say. Layane and Roen had left quickly; possibly G-slur wasn’t letting them leave, but she wasn’t sure. At any rate, they had given her no indication of when they would return.
“I don’t know,” said Jezirah. “Come on, let’s go.”
...
'Possibly G-slur wasn't letting them leave'? Didn't she give them passports?
Okay, so I did realise it was weird that G-slur let Layane and Roen go on their little American trip, even as I was writing it. I'm not sure why I didn't amend the plot in light of that, seeing as it wouldn't be too difficult to change it so Elint gave them passports, but oh well.
Jezirah saying 'let's go' was the chapter ending. I'm not sure why I bothered to include all this, seeing as it could have been covered off with a quick reference to Clemant staying with Jezirah in the Layane chapter, maybe with some commentary around how worried Layane is because of Jezirah's age. Obviously I really wanted to include some Jezirah backstory horror and didn't know where else to wedge it, so I put it in a chapter where:
Jezirah suggests a boardgame, but they never actually play one
Jezirah suggests leaving the house, but Clemant says no
Clemant suggests leaving the house (immediately after saying no), but the chapter ends before they do
I forgot how annoying it is that the chapters aren't numbered. Chapter two is so short that I scrolled down too far and almost started writing this post about chapter four. And then chapter three. And now here we are.
It is 10th November 2010, at exactly 15:37, which is around three weeks after the ending of The Human Spirit. Hey, maybe we'll get some plot!
“It’s great that you have money now, but you didn’t have to waste it on that thing.”
Layane didn’t want to get lost in another country. She didn’t think Roen would be a lot of help – he had already told her he had been wasted most of the time he was in America – but the least they could do was not become separated.
Good god. I remembered that the first chapter/flashback was set in America, but I had no idea that more of the book was. I have the feeling that the setting will add absolutely nothing, and the whole thing will feel like it's set in Generic British Town, but here's hoping otherwise.
If you're confused about the opening, because it provides absolutely zero context to what Layane is talking about, you wouldn't be alone.
The narrative tells us that Layane managed to dig out her old phone. You know, the one that guy who found her on the side of the road gave her in book 1, before it never came up in the plot again.
Was that weird interaction included just so Layane already had a phone in the sequel?
I'm not sure why I didn't make it clearer immediately after the first line of dialogue that we're talking about phones, nor why we're given no indication of where the characters are. Layane is, of course, talking to Roen. Rather than getting a cheap, functional phone as she expected, Roen has got the newest smartphone he could get his many hands on. So I guess they're in a phone shop in the USA? Maybe a shopping mall?
“I like it,” he said. Whatever he was doing was causing the phone to make loud, bleeping sounds. Layane wondered what he was doing; she knew he couldn’t read English.
This tracks, actually. I'm okay with it.
If you were thinking, wow, we're starting in media res, so the plot is obviously coming! you would be mistaken. Instead of telling us where Roen and Layane are (presumably somewhere in America), we're reminded that at the end of The Human Spirit, Roen was badly injured and it took him a long time to recover (three weeks, I guess). He's got loads of scars, but conveniently for everyone, the tagliatelle covers them up as well as his extra arms and wings.
We also find out that after the end of the last book, they hid out in Geviria for a while for Roen to recover, but he'd been dying to leave the whole time.
That last part is unsurprising, seeing as his sort-of-mother is evil. What is surprising is that he chose to go to Geviria, seeing as his sort-of-mother is evil. Surely it would have made more sense for him to recover in that flat they had at the end of book 1?
Also... doesn't Layane know that G-slur lied to her now? G-slur told Layane that there was a search party looking for Clemant, but there actually wasn't, because she wanted Roen to fail at finding Clemant as a punishment, or something. It's super unclear. I guess Layane is totally chill with this?
She must be, or certainly if Layane has any thoughts or opinions about being around the woman who was willing to let her sister die to get revenge on Roen, they clearly aren't relevant to this story, as none of them are mentioned.
Instead, this is what I choose to focus on:
Layane had spent the time trying to get used to the idea of having to spend time with [Roen] alone. It was starting to get a little easier. All she had to do was forget about everything that had happened before she and Roen had officially met; but she still felt an awkward twinge every time she remembered.
Yeah. This is definitely more important. Layane spending time to learn how to spend time with her love interest who used to stalk her.
It's okay, past me. You want them to get together. You do not have to keep reminding the reader that pining over a girl you are effectively stalking isn't great.
I love that I gave Roen a plot-relevant and mostly understandable reason to be 'stalking' Layane, and still feel the need to keep repeating I KNOW IT'S WEIRD, OKAY!
Knowing that he had been a well-meaning stalker for years put a lot of strain on their almost-friendship. She had almost forgiven him for saving her instead of Clemant; but knowing that he was drunk when it happened – and when he let Sue die in an attempt to save her – couldn’t be forgiven. She just had to try to forget about it.
WE GET IT. LET IT GO.
We also learn that Roen has stopped drinking, which is good. G-slur is finally mentioned, but only to reference that Layane and Roen stayed with Jezirah, so they rarely saw her. And then:
Now, they were at an airport. Layane stood next to their large suitcase as they waited in line to be checked in. She was scared that the fake passports and documents G-slur gave them wouldn’t work, but tried not to let worry cross her face.
Wait... were they always at an airport? So they're not even in America yet? Did Roen buy his phone at the airport, or is the implication that he bought the phone elsewhere and then met Layane here, even though it doesn't make any sense for them to be travelling separately?
...
Also, am I going mad? Why the fuck is G-slur an afterthought? Layane is worried the documents G-slur gave her won't work... but why? It could be because G-slur is evil... or that the documents are forgeries and Layane's concern has nothing to do with G-slur's obvious evilness at all! Does Layane not care that G-slur was willing to let her sister die?
Roen did tell Layane that G-slur lied about the search party, right?
Found the post! He totally did! Layane barely reacted but he did tell her! Did everyone forget this?
I love that in draft 2, G-slur was clearly meant to be a good guy, but had this intense vibe that she was about to be revealed as the villain every other chapter. In this book, I'm clearly aiming for that, but it doesn't really work if Layane is repeatedly told she is evil and just chooses not to think about it.
Also... why exactly is G-slur allowing them to go on this trip? She can't know that Roen knows where Nicola is, because G-slur wants to find Nicola, and explicitly doesn't trust Roen to do anything right! Surely she'd send someone else instead of Roen? And if she doesn't know they're looking for Nicola, why has she given them passports?
Sigh. It doesn't matter. Nothing in this matters.
[Layane] turned to Roen, and whispered, “How can you even get on a plane?”
“Eh?”
“Y’know, metal detectors, x-rays...”
He shrugged. “I never thought about it. I just... hope for the best.”
At least it was acknowledged.
They had to find Nicola – Layane’s mother – to find out what happened to the Key. They didn’t know if she would know anything about it, but it was the only decent plan they had. Nicola claimed the Key that G-slur had given to her and her husband – Simon – had been stolen.
Layane's dad continues to be completely irrelevant, I see. He's not even described as Layane's dad here, but 'Nicola's husband'!
Maybe he's going to be revealed as the villain of this whole thing.
I do love that the narration openly admits that the plan is a terrible fucking idea. Hey, this woman was asked to return a Magical Object, said she lost it, then was forced to go on the run because people were so angry she lost it... so let's find the woman and ask if she knows what happened to it!
The narrator then reminds us that the reason they need to find Nicola is that until someone does, those bad men from the first book will keep coming after them [citation needed].
Let's ignore the fact that the only reason they were after Nicola was so they could get into Geviria, and then they kidnapped Roen, who could let them into Geviria, and they let him get away due to
It was pathetic, Layane thought, that they would torture her sister for money. Pathetic and cruel. They found out that all they wanted was to break into Geviria for its diamond. Blood for money.
Pathetic and cruel. Blood for money.
This is going to be a slog.
At least it's been re-confirmed that the bad guys' entire aim is to steal diamonds. I was honestly unsure after taking such a long break from this blog.
Layane asks Roen where exactly he saw Nicola. He isn't sure, but remembers which city it was. The city is not named. Neither is the state. Or anything even vaguely specific.
Um... why didn't you talk about this before you were at the airport, guys? Do you even know which airport you need to fly from, or into? Aren't you literally checking in your bags for a flight?
Ignoring the fact that they should have talked about this weeks ago, Layane then brings up a very good point: what if Nicola is no longer there?
“I don’t know.” [said Roen] Crowds slowly started to surround them. “Let’s just hope she’s still there.”
It made sense that no one had found Nicola hiding out in America, when she was assumed to have never left Britain. Layane wondered what meeting her would be like.
Somehow, none of the scenarios her mind created were particularly good ones.
The chapter ends here. With Layane and Roen... slowly being surrounded by crowds, I guess?
Are they still checking in their bags? In airport security, in a queue? Standing in the middle of the terminal? In duty free? About to get on a plane, destination unknown?
WHERE ARE THESE CHARACTERS?
And yeah, I have no earthly idea why the Gevirians and/or the bad men assumed Nicola couldn't possibly be abroad. That feels like a pretty major oversight. This is especially funny given the fact that Geviria is canonically closer to Spain than England, so there's no reason for Geviria's apparent obsession with England and several of its residents.
So. All we, the readers, find out from the first chapter that wasn't a flashback is:
what happened at the end of the last book
Roen has a smartphone
they are somewhere in an airport, evidently with no idea where they're going
Chapter 1, part 3: I demand you return to my daughters to tell them they need to run away from you
This is the file I'm going through, which appears to be the most complete draft I have:
The file is just over 50,000 words long and (spoiler alert) ends in the middle of a sentence. Like the first book, I don't number the chapters, but use bold timestamps for chapter breaks and non-bold timestamps for page breaks. I figured because of the length of the draft, this story couldn't possibly be two very long chapters as the filename suggests, but after the second non-bold page break I did start to get concerned that it might be.
Then I realised this third section is relatively short, and ends with a bold timestamp, and felt a great sense of relief.
Let's crack on.
It is now 4th October 2010, presumably because it used to be 5th October 2010 and changing a 4 to a 5 doesn't impact the date format. Yay!
It's 7am, and I'm feeling more and more secure in my guess that I shifted the dates after realising I hadn't given Roen enough time for a transatlantic flight. Presumably 7am is CST, which means it's around 1pm in England, so if this was 5th October it would only be a couple of hours before Roen delivers the letter to Layane.
Speaking of, someone knocks on Roen's door. He wakes in a drunken stupor.
No one ever visited him. No one knew where he was. For this reason, he was wary of answering the door.
So true.
Initially he ignores the knocking, assuming someone must have got the wrong door, but it doesn't stop. If he was thinking clearly, it would be obvious that it's Nicola, but Roen is either hungover or still drunk. The knocking gets louder, and eventually he picks himself up and looks through the peephole. Shock horror, it's Nicola.
Suddenly worried that she still had the gun on her, he hastily opened the door.
I can only assume what I was going for here was: 'Nicola has a gun, so she might start shooting this place up to force me out, causing a huge commotion that will draw attention to me at best and kill me at worst if I don't let her in!'
Unfortunately, it comes across as more: 'That person could have a gun! I need to let them in my room!'
Nicola steps into the room and looks around at the chaos of Roen's clothes, bottles and cigarettes. Roen feels self-conscious, and he should, because this is presumably his future mother-in-law. He's also shirtless, and hastily pulls on a hoodie to cover himself up.
“How did you know where I was?” he asked. He took his hipflask from his pocket, and took long gulps from it as he watched her.
“You’re not the only one who can follow people,” she said. “Or Gever, I guess.”
Nicola explains that she's here to make sure he goes back to England, because she really, really wants this drunk disaster of a man to protect her daughters again. She wants him to return so badly that she bought him plane tickets, plans to drive him to the airport herself, and is packing up his belongings for him as she explains this. Roen just watches her.
“Look... there’s sort of a reason I’ve been away...” [Roen said]
If she'd let him finish, hearing, 'I am in love with your daughter' would probably have changed her mind about sending him back. Alas, Nicola interrupts him.
“And is that reason enough to put my daughters in danger?”
I know, I know. It's clear to anyone who's read the first book that the reason she's doing this is to get him to post the letter Layane receives at the beginning of The Human Spirit
But... it's pretty funny that a) she keeps acting like this man can actually to protect her daughters, and b) Roen doesn't realise how weird it is that she wants him to.
Instead, Roen accepts that he doesn't want Layane to be in danger, and agrees to go. Nicola says the flight is in two hours, so they have to leave now.
“Yes. Oh, but first...” She searched in her handbag for something, and pulled out two envelopes. She held the first one out to him. “Money for tickets. I’m guessing you have a passport.”
Money for... I thought she bought him the tickets?
(Scrolls up.)
“But I bought you tickets. And (...)
These lines of dialogue were less than 200 words apart. This bodes well.
The other envelope is, of course, the letter. If you don't remember, it contained a generic 'mother misses you' note, along with a message hidden in the back of a photograph, telling Layane to run because 'angels were watching over her'.
Now, Layane did not run, and was then kidnapped by someone who was... completely unrelated to what Nicola was telling her to run from (Roen).
So just to recap:
Nicola sent a letter to Layane, which included a coded message telling her to run away from a threat (the Gever)
She asks a Gever (Roen) (the threat) to send the letter
Roen (the threat) was actually nowhere near Layane at the time the letter was written
So... Nicola told Layane to run from something that... Nicola sent after her
Layane was then kidnapped by someone unrelated, and only got away because Roen (the threat Nicola told her to run from) saved her
Incredible.
I'm sure there's a very good reason* that Nicola couldn't just send the letter another way.
* Author wanted the opening of The Human Spirit to be creepier and more dramatic
Roen tells Nicola that he cannot give Layane the letter, because she's not allowed to see him. Suddenly the rules he was given are very important to him, even though he's abandoned his duties entirely for over a year, and at one point sold Clemant a box at a car boot sale*.
* That he'd stolen from G-slur**
** That G-slur had presumably stolen from Layane and Clemant's childhood home
“I guessed she can’t see you,” said Nicola. “Just... post it through the door or something. It’d be quicker than me mailing it, and I can know it’ll definitely reach her.”
Do you... actually know it'll reach her, Nicola? This man abandoned his post, is drunk most of the time, and you have no reason to trust that he won't open the note or give it to G-slur. He told you he hates G-slur, but you were holding a gun to his head!* You even hid the real message, which suggests you expect him to open the envelope! Who's to say he wouldn't notice the hidden message, too?**
* At least he knows what a gun is in this draft, hey-o
** Yeah, he can't read English, but it's unclear if Nicola knows this
Ignoring all of that: it's 2010! There are definitely ways you could get a coded message to Layane faster than sending Roen as your messenger! Even if Layane is internet-savvy enough to suspect an email claiming to be from Nicola might be a scam, it wouldn't matter, because she assumes the letter is fake too!
Anyway. Of course, Roen agrees to post the letter.
Roen was annoyed more than anything. In the years he had carried out his Protector job, nothing [bad] had happened to Layane.
I think this is meant to be dramatic irony, but all it does is remind me that it's a massive coincidence that the kidnappers arrived the same day that Roen returned to his post. If anyone other than me had written this, I'd assume there must be a reason (maybe he led them there?), but alas, I truly doubt it.
Not to mention, I have no idea how Roen knows that nothing bad has happened to Layane. How the hell would he, unless what happened was so bad it made international news?
Roen considers abandoning his post immediately after sending the letter, but...
An odd excitement filled him when it hit him that he was going to see Layane again. He quickly pushed it away. He knew Elint wouldn’t be happy if he started to think about that again.
In case you've forgotten, the most important part of these novels is the love story between... an alcoholic teenager and a girl he follows around who he's never even spoken to. Even though this is the most important part, we don't get any indication of what Roen likes about Layane, other than the fact she's cute. He's been following her for years. Surely he must find something other than her appearance endearing? Do they have any Upper World interests in common? Has he acknowledged their shared trauma at the many hands of G-slur? Does he see himself in her? Anything?
Nah, they're just meant to be together.
On that note, the chapter ends. The good news is: the next chapter might actually advance the plot.*
Chapter 1, part 2: Handcuffing myself so I don't get handsy in the club
It's now 9:32 on 3th October 2010. My best guess is that I put 4th October 2010, then realised I hadn't given Roen enough time to travel back to the UK before the opening of The Human Spirit, and used ctrl+h to replace the 4s with 3s.
I get it, past me. Drafting is hard.
Roen wakes up under a bench when someone throws a handful of coins at him. He's not particularly perturbed by this. I do wonder why he didn't just go home with his one-night stand. Maybe they had sex on the bench or something.
His wrist hurts for some reason, but it's one of his extra wrists, so he can't currently see why because it's invisible. He picks up the coins and sets off. He isn't sure where he's going, because normally he sleeps in the woods, but there aren't any here.
Again, I have no idea where in the US he is, but considering my relatives live in Georgia and most of my friends in the US lived in Texas at the time, I have to assume it's either Georgia or Texas. I truly cannot get any more specific than that.
He stood up, his legs shaking slightly, and looked at his surroundings. He was on a city street. It looked familiar, which was a good sign. The hotel he was staying at might be nearby.
Wait... what? Literally two paragraphs ago he was annoyed there weren't any woods nearby for him to sleep in, but he's... staying at a hotel?
I do love that I went from making up the most generic-sounding fake places ever to just putting TOWN NAME with a highlight.
Roen considers his small amount of money (stolen, after the money Elint gave him ran out), and that he prefers to sleep in the woods, because he's less worried that someone will steal his things in the woods than in a sleazy hotel, I guess? There are several paragraphs of this and I'm not sure why.
He gets back to his messy disaster of a room, locks the door, and uses a tagehteh tagliatelle on himself to reveal his extra arms and wings. Oh, and the sub-dermal piercings he has all over his face and arms (that were ripped out at the end of The Human Spirit), because the magic humanification aura makes those invisible too for some reason.
He pulled off his hoodie. Underneath was a large pair of brown wings; they looked like huge eagle wings. He had belted them to his back with a thick, leather strap. Two extra arms rested on top of them. They left his body from two elbows on his back, just behind his first pair. He had chained them together with a pair of metal handcuffs at his wrists.
It was a precaution. He couldn’t control himself easily when drunk, and worried that if someone accidentally felt his wings or extra arms brush up against them, he would be exposed. So he chained them to his back.
There would be no chance of him telling the humans about Gever if he couldn’t get handsy.
He... wait.
He literally chains his arms together to stop himself from using them during sex? Is that what we're getting at here?
Firstly, past me:
Secondly... to make his two extra arms less obvious, he restrains himself so... he can't move them out of the way if anyone was going to touch them, and introduces a loud, invisible piece of metal into the mix? Is that really the best you can come up with, Roen?
(It probably is.)
I'm not even going to touch the fact that if he can't control his body when drunk, surely he can't control the words that come out of his mouth, either? We literally saw him almost admit to Geviria's existence in the first part of this chapter!
There's no logical reason for him to handcuff himself, and I don't want to think about why I chose to do this in any more detail.
Obviously, the pain in his wrist is a cut from the handcuffs (yet another reason the handcuffs are a stupid idea). It looks bad, but Roen can't do anything about it other than wash it, although the narrative tells us he did go to the hospital once, when he woke up to find one of his fingers missing. He doesn't know how it happened. Good thing it was on one of the visible hands, though!
You know, I assumed he lost a finger because of G-slur, for some reason. Good to know he just lost it off-page because he was drunk. It's never come up since Layane spotted it when she first met Roen, so I'm actually surprised I remembered it here.
Roen cleans himself up. Both because of the injury, and because he slept under a bench last night. Once he looks a bit more presentable, he realises he's out of booze, and goes to steal some more from a liquor store.
There were security cameras, but he didn’t worry about them. He had never actually been told about the strange effect the tagehteh had on some cameras, but once he caught a glimpse of himself in a television screen showing security footage in a supermarket. His shape was clearly there on the screen. However, there was very little detail. His features seem to blur together.
This is interesting. I wonder if it will ever come up again? It certainly complicates the throwaway lines in The Human Spirit that suggest notable people have Protectors following them. Surely someone would notice the massive blur following the Prime Minister around on security footage?
Anyway, it doesn't really matter that Roen is a blur on security cameras, because he steals by grabbing the bottles with his invisible hands, because the bottles then turn invisible. Not a bad strategy.
Having successfully stolen several bottles, Roen returns to the hotel to get wasted and people-watch from the window.
It was a fair day, and the sky was grey and cloudy. He leant against the window frame to watch the people pass in packs. Shoppers bustled along, carrying bags of groceries. Groups of friends lingered to chat.
The day was okay, I guess. I'd rate it 6/10.
This is no different to how I would have described Generic British Town. Why did I choose to set this in Generic American Town if I didn't want to do anything interesting with the setting? Other than the fact I was going to the US on holiday, I mean.
Then, someone caught his eye.
She was walking along the pavement across the road from the hotel. Her pace was slow, and she looking into the shop windows as she went. The woman looked remarkably familiar. As he squinted at her, he realized from where.
Guess who!
Nicola Thompson had to be one of Geviria’s most wanted. She and her husband, Simon, were wanted after they vanished. He remembered G-slur telling him that the couple had lost a Key she had gifted them with, and had ran for fear of persecution. Persecution that they would no doubt receive is any Gever managed to find them.
Ah yes. A timely reminder that The Human Spirit only happened because G-slur gave Layane's parents the Key.
I shouldn't make fun. That paragraph is a good enough summary of the situation.
Roen is stunned. One of his tasks as a Protector was to look out for Nicola (and irrelevant Simon), and report back to G-slur if he spotted them, but he never thought he'd actually see either of them, especially not here.
He leaves the hotel room and runs after her, but as he follows he becomes less convinced the woman he saw was Nicola. It must just be a lookalike, surely.
Early on in The Human Spirit, Layane mentioned a time she thought the police had found her mother, but it turned out to be an American tourist who had turned up at the waterlogged house for some True Crime Snooping, to her psychiatrist. It was such a brief throwaway line I don't think I even bothered mentioning it in the chapter one post, but here it is:
(Yeah, I have no idea what's going on with the formatting either.)
But the specificity of Roen now thinking he's found an American Nicola lookalike, when canonically there is an American lookalike out there, makes me wonder if I was trying to Do Something here.
God only knows what.
Roen follows her down the busy street anyway, and at one point she looks directly at him, before continuing on her way, gripping her handbag to her side.
He assumes she thinks he's going to mug her. Considering how he must look to most people, it's a fair assumption.
Then, she vanished down a small alleyway. Her behaviour confused him, as no one could see her in there. If the woman did think he was going to attack her, why would she have walked into an area where she would be completely hidden from passing eyes?
You idiot.
He slowly approached the corner, and turned into the alleyway.
A gun, held at his eye level, greeted him.
Yeah.
Nicola tells him, in Gevirian, that he has five seconds to explain who he is or she'll shoot him. Roen panics, because he's the author's little baby boy, and can't get the words out.
“Five...” [Nicola said]
“What? I don’t...”
“Four. Spit it out, or the cops are going to find a very unusual corpse.”
“I...”
“Three. Do you want to die? Because it sort of seems like you want to die.”
He spat out the truth as fast as his mouth would allow him. “I was sent to the Upper World as a Protector for your daughters!”
Just like the first book, this is turning out to be mostly incomprehensible, with the odd sprinkling of dialogue that is actually pretty good. I like this. Nicola seems fun.
Nicola panics, assuming Roen means her daughters are in America and might see her. Roen explains that they're back in England.
“Then why the hell are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be their glorified stalker?” she snarled.
“I’m sort of on a... break! A holiday!”
She lowered the gun. Just as Roen started to think he was out of the woods, she punched him in the face.
Good.
Nicola asks who he is protecting Layane and Clemant from. She's clearly asking because the girls are in danger from the Gever, so it's weird a Gever would be protecting them, but Roen doesn't question why she's asking. I guess he is in a stressful situation.
“The uh... the Esconios Gever! But they’re fine! They’ve always been fine, nothing’s after them! I’m just a... precaution...”
“But basically – my daughters lives are in your hands, and you’ve come swanning over here, smelling like a brewery?”
Does she... want the Gever to protect them?
Nicola correctly identifies that Roen must have been sent by G-slur. I was a bit surprised she doesn't recognise Roen considering his status in Geviria, but although the timeline is murky, Nicola likely wouldn't have seen Roen since he was a child, so that does makes sense.
Nicola aims the gun at Roen again, and Roen tries to defuse the situation by saying that G-slur isn't angry with Layane and Clemant, and that the girls are okay. This just pisses Nicola off more, because if Roen is in the US, how the hell would he know?
At this point I am starting to question why no one in the busy city street has noticed this little alleyway stand-off.
“Who are you, anyway?” Her icy tone had not left.
“I’m... I’m Roen.” He grimaced. The name probably meant nothing to her. She probably wanted to know where he came from, how he got his Protector job...
Her arm started to bend upwards, and she pointed the gun at his chest. “Roenakah?”
Roen sighed. “Yes, that’s my whole na...”
“You’re G-slur’s son, aren’t you?”
Oh good, she does know who he is. I was about to call shennanigans.
As soon as Roen confirms he is (or sort-of is) G-slur's son, Nicola demands proof that he wasn't sent to capture her, and that more Gever aren't about to appear.
“No – no. There’s no one coming, and I wasn’t sent here to find you! This is just a... coincidence!”
“Bit of a big fucking coincidence.” She carried on looking around; she looked up through the tall buildings and everywhere where someone could have hidden.
“Well – yes, but it is! I am honestly only here because I’m... having a break!”
She seemed satisfied that there was no one there, but she didn’t lower the gun.
If I'd put some actual effort into choosing a location, I could have chosen a significant place that both of these characters would be drawn to, but no, they are in Generic American Town and yes, it does feel like a pretty big coincidence.
I do love that Roen repeating that he's on his holibobs is somehow enough to convince Nicola he might be telling the truth, though. No actual threat would use such a terrible excuse, surely, is what I can only assume is running through her head.
Then Roen tells her he hates G-slur, and Nicola is sold. She doesn't fully trust him, but at least believes he's not about to call in a Gevirian SWAT team or kill her if she lowers the gun, so she does.
“Where are my daughters?” she asked.
“Ah... at a ‘foster home’ in England.”
“Well, that’s where you should be going.”
Again: does she want him Protecting her daughters?
Roen agrees to return to his stalking job, and on that note, Nicola puts her gun away and leaves the alleyway. Roen stands dumbly for a few seconds, trying to work out what the hell just happened, before returning to his hotel room to drink.
Earlier this year (this actual year, 2026, not the year this draft was written or the year of 3th October 2010), I finished editing a draft of one of my novels. I think it's quite good, but the editing process did involve cutting over 50% of the wordcount, so I've sent it out to beta readers to check it still makes sense.
But although I'm not entirely sure I haven't cut something loadbearing, I still want to get started on the sequel. Who cares if I end up having to change the plot of the first book? I can always then change the plot of the second!
So seeing as my notes suggest I planned to entirely change the plot of The Human Spirit even as I was still writing it: fundamentally I haven't changed since I started to write its unnamed sequel in 2011.
It's probably worth me doing a quick summary of The Human Spirit, seeing as it's been a while.
Layane and her sister, Clemant, were abandoned by their parents years ago after a Netflix Unsolved mystery in which their house was found full of water. They now live a children's home
Layane always hears wings around her. Creepy, right?
She gets a letter from her mother telling her to run. Her mother who she hasn't heard from in a decade, and who she... hates? I think? She's barely mentioned beyond the novel's opening. The message is coded but suggests something with wings is after her
That night, after Layane does nothing about the letter, Layane and Clemant are kidnapped. Oh no!
Layane is rescued by a homeless boy who turns out to be a Gever, a magical person with four arms and wings (which he can make invisible using magic) who lives in an underground civilisation that her parents stumbled upon years before. Turns out her parents were given a key to get in and out of Geviria for some reason, and Layane and Clemant were probably targeted because of that. How their attackers found out about their involvement in Geviria is unclear
The boy, Roen, was assigned as Layane's Protector, and he's doing a real bang-up job! Turns out he abandoned her for years to go travelling, before happening to return right before the kidnap, to deliver the letter from Layane's mother (or at least this is implied... it was never confirmed). He also has a serious drinking problem
Roen says he needs to bring Layane to Geviria to get help from the ruler of the country, who is also sort-of-but-not-really his mother, Gypsrah G-slur
He's also blatantly in love with Layane
Layane, naturally, despises him
Geviria's entrance is in the middle of the ocean so they get there by cruise, and we meet Roen's superior/father figure (?) Elint who works on the cruise and desperately tries to make Layne feel sympathetic towards Roen, who she perceives as a creepy stalker
They reach Geviria, and instead of helping, G-slur is antagonistic and tells Roen he has to find the people who took Clemant, as if they know about the key, Geviria could be at risk. But also she knows Roen won't succeed because he's useless, and she wants to punish him for being useless, and there would be no greater punishment than his failure to protect Layane. BUT failure isn't an option because Geviria would be at risk if he fails! But she's not sending him any help even though she commands armies, because she wants him to fail, because that's his punishment. But it's imperative he succeeds! But he can't beca–
Layane also meets Jezirah, a future Gevirian leader who was 'aged up' as a child so she could rule but... is still not a ruler because she's too young, so I'm not sure what the point of that was
We also find out that Roen's parents were terrorists (from 'the Esconios region' of Geviria) who G-slur killed, before adopting Roen as a fuck you to everyone who supported his parents
Also, G-slur was having an affair with Jezirah's dad, who, along with Jezirah's mother, was brutally murdered, right after someone (Roen) discovered the affair
And she has water powers, which definitely isn't related to whatever happened to Layane's parents' house before their disappearance
Oh, and she also tortures Roen. But she's definitely not a bad guy don't be silly
Roen, Jezirah and Layane leave Geviria to save Clemant. They have no plan, but turns out that doesn't matter, as the bad guys have already released Clemant as bait to capture the others, so they find her easily. Yay!
Roen has a one-night stand so readers know he fucks. It's unclear how his one-night stands don't feel his wings and extra arms
Layane uses herself as bait to try to find out what the bad guys are up to, because she realises she and Clemant can't go back to their normal lives until this mystery is solved
Roen turns up to help, because of the whole painfully in love with her thing
It works, but Roen is captured by the bad guys! Oh no!
They torture him for a long time, and he hallucinates various scenes from his traumatic past and a beaten version of Layane
We find out that the bad guys are trying to break into Geviria for... money? Because one of them blames Geviria for the death of his wife in a shipwreck near the entrance to the country? Or something?
Now that Roen has been kidnapped, Layane suddenly realises she kinda likes the guy. Or at least tolerates him, and doesn't want him to be harmed because he was trying to help her
Layane and Jezirah run around the town trying to find where Roen is being held based on extremely tenuous evidence. They actually do, but again, by the time they find the house he was tied up in, Roen has escaped
They find him, nurse him back to health, and they decide they need to find Nicola. Layane's mother. Who hasn't really been mentioned since the opening of the book. For... reasons
The end.
The unnamed sequel opens in the early hours of 3th October 2010, and so you don't have to go wading through this blog for context, that means we open two days before Layane and Clemant's kidnap in The Human Spirit.
In other words, of course, we open with a flashback.
“So... do you like it here?”
Roen looked over at the girl, who had just broken their long silence. She was very beautiful but he hardly cared that she was there. He liked the company, but didn’t even know her name. It was something beginning with ‘a’ – Angela perhaps, he thought. Or at least, he had heard that name recently.
A flashback that serves as a reminder that Roen fucks.
Roen and the girl are sitting on 'a deserted, concrete road' after being kicked out of a bar. I have some idea of what to picture, because unfortunately I remember how I decided to open this, but this is the only description readers get.
“What?” he asked.
“In America, silly.”
“Oh,” said Roen. “S’great.”
And despite his unenthusiastic tone, it really was. The freedom he had been experiencing was so new to him, so wonderful that he could not help but love everywhere he travelled to.
Yep. Roen is in America. Nothing to do with the fact I'd just made some American friends online, and was going there in 2011 to stay with my relatives (hence the 20oz can of Redbull in the previous post), I'm sure.
I can see the thought process for this scene: I'll keep the description of America vague, and then update it all after I've been there!
It's kinda poetic that I opened this novel with a chapter set in America, and stopped writing it in America after realising I hated it.
I don't think Roen mentioned he'd been to America in The Human Spirit, just that Elint sent him to Spain. Presumably he travelled to the US by plane, which means a man with four arms and wings somehow managed to get through airport security in 2010.
Eh, I guess he can turn himself invisible. I'll let that one slide.
I do want to know where this girl thinks he's from, though. I'm pretty sure he's meant to have an accent that isn't British. Generic European, I guess?
Turns out Roen has been travelling the world for a while. Elint made him, but Elint had been right - getting some distance from his problems back home has been good for him.
He was sure he had not thought of Layane for several days now.
Layane. Internally cursing that he had reminded himself of the one thing he was not supposed to let his mind linger to, he took a swig from the bottle of clear liquor that lay between him and his unnamed companion.
This isn't a terrible place to open the novel. The most important part of these books to me was the love story between Layane and Roen. Seeing Roen pining for her a couple of days before their terrible first meeting is a nice reintroduction to the whole thing.
But I do question if travelling has really been good for Roen, if he's spent the entire time drinking, hooking up with random girls whose names he can't remember and pining.
“Wha’s your favourite thing about being here?” said the girl, her speech noticeably slurred. She pulled herself up and attempted to put her arms around Roen’s shoulders, but in a swift motion he took her hands and held them in his own.
That awkward moment when your one-night stand (I can only assume) almost touches your invisible wings.
We've all been there.
“The sky.”
“The sky?” said the girl, laughing. “S’the same sky you have at home!”
“Look,” he said to the girl, “imagine tha’... there is no sky. Just a wall up above you. S’like you’re... like you’re trapped. When you do go outside of the trap and see the sky for the first time... s’beautiful. You’re... free. And you wonder why all the people walk around with their faces down when the sky is above them.
“You should be happy to have such an amazing thing.”
Ignoring the annoying phonetic slurring, this is actually nice! Roen is sympathetic! The pair of them sitting on a road staring up at the sky is a nice visual! Or I guess it would be, if you had any idea what to picture other than 'concrete road' and 'deserted' and 'sky'.
Roen panics, thinking he might have accidentally admitted to a drunk girl who might be called Angela that he's a magical being with four arms and wings who lives underground without meaning to. Then she starts making out with him, because she assumed he was being deep and poetic, or maybe she thinks Generic European Country is literally under a dome.
Roen is pleased that he's clearly getting over Layane, because otherwise he wouldn't be making out with this random American girl, before ruining it by realising she actually looks quite a bit like Layane.
Angry with himself, Roen makes a sweeping internal declaration.
He was never going to go back to Britain as and his infatuation could never lead to anything. After all, one of the only four rules G-slur had given him before living amongst the humans, was to never speak – or even reveal that he or the rest of his species existed – to the girl she had assigned him to Protect.
That's right. He's never going back! He's too in love with Layane for that!
Yeah, I gave up writing The Human Spirit's sequel halfway through because I realised it was awful. Yeah, it was one of the first times I can remember feeling deeply self-conscious about this story. And yeah, I have a vivid memory of sitting in my relatives' living room, laptop in front of me, 20oz can of Redbull on the side table, and seeing for the first time with a sudden, glaring clarity that this novel was a waste of time.
So what?
That doesn't mean it's going to be lower in quality than any of the other drafts I've shared on this blog. Maybe it'll be better than I remember, considering what I thought was good at the time. Maybe it will inspire me to start working on these books again. Maybe i–
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