The Valley of Thorns: A 5-Star Review!

Back Cover, The Valley of Thorns
Feel free to print this!

       The prolific Marva Dasef (her Amazon Page) has now read and reviewed all three volumes (to date) of my series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  She gave this one 5 stars, and she doesn't dole out that many stars regularly.  If you want to read something of hers, I recommend The Witches of Galdorheim (see my review of the first volume, Bad Spelling).

       I'm not too worried about the spoilers, because if you recognize the medieval epic on which I based this story (and I've talked about that elsewhere), you'll know the outcome anyway.

 

Now here is Marva's review of The Valley of Thorns:

 

SOME SPOILERS HERE

       Given that I read and enjoyed the first two volumes of this epic series, I had no trepidations jumping into the third volume of the story of Ki'shto'ba and his doughty band of companions.

       Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer (equivalent of a bard or story teller) having invented a written form of the termite language narrates the tale. In the first volume (the Battle for the Stolen Mother), we find Di'fa'kro'mi as an elderly person narrating the story to his scribe. Occasionally, Di'fa'kro'mi breaks out of the narrative to explain a few things to the scribe which were not directly observed by the Remembrancer. I liked these sections since the first person narrative would obviously not cover events where Di'fra'kro'mi was not present.

       In this volume, the companions travel to the Marcher lands where a war is on-going with another tribe of Shshi. The dispute is over religion, a common reason for war. Since Ki'shto'ba's twin, A'zhu'lo had become attached to the Marcher overlord, the Huge-Head reluctantly joins the Marcher side. Going into the Valley of the Thorns to aid a Marcher outpost, the war heats up. A truce is proposed, and the opposing Shshi even say they will switch their method of worship of the Great Mother in accordance with the Marcher beliefs. Unfortunately, it's a ruse with one of the Marcher generals becoming a turncoat.

       The subsequent battle when the traitor is discovered is bloody and vicious. Ki'shto'ba had been leading the way out of the Valley of the Thorns leaving its twin in the rear guard, which was totally destroyed.

       The death of his twin drives Ki'shto'ba mad and it ends up killing innocents in the heat of his insanity. This parallels the story of Hercules' madness and murders for which he must atone with the 12 labors. In the earlier volumes, Ki'shto'ba had already been set on the task of performing 12 wonders.

       I'm going on too long here and possibly introducing too many spoilers, so I'll end the description of the events (maybe I should be a Remembrancer myself).

       Again, I highly recommend this epic story. There are three volumes more according to Ms. Taylor. I will meet them head on and, hopefully, not be driven mad in the process of following the complex names, titles, objects, and places served to the reader in the Shshi language. By the end of the tale, I might very well have a working vocabulary of the marvelous con-lang (constructed language), Ms. Taylor has so carefully developed.

       Definitely start with volume 1 of the tale (you might also want to take on the Termite Queen first since Ki'shto'ba is first introduced in that series.

       Amazingly complex, yet solid storytelling. And, yes, I got misty-eyed at the death of A'zhu'lo. Is that a spoiler too?

The Valley of Thorns: Publishing Progress, and a Word on Adaptation

      

My rendition of Archbishop Turpin
fighting the black Demon Knight
whose name is Abisme.  My version
 is named Sho'choi'jik'a (Abyss Dweller)

I've just about whipped the third volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head into publishing shape.  I done all the peripheral material -- the map (which will be the frontispiece in the paperback), the back of the title page, the Translator's Foreword, the facsimile title page (from where it was first published in the 30th century -- is that a logical contradiction?), a synopsis of v.2 (because this picks up exactly where v.2 leaves off), and a list of characters. 

       For the end matter, I've again included a glossary of words in my termite languages (Shshi language).  I also decided on providing an appendix analyzing the Shkei'akh'zei marching chant word-by-word.  The text includes the chant in the Shshi language, one of the few times I've done that in this series.  Of course, I also put it in English so people who have no interest in conlangs or alien languages in general can simply skip the gobbledegook.

      

       The origin of the chant is interesting.  The first half of The Valley of Thorns retells the Old French epic poem of Roland and Oliver (Chanson de Roland).  It's amazing how easily that story adapts to the termite culture!  When I read the tale in preparation for using it in my series, I was impressed by the repetition of certain lines.  Here are two different translations of them, followed by the Old French:

 

High are the peaks, the valleys shadowful,

Swarthy the rocks, the narrows wonderful.

 

High are the hills and dark the valleys,

Brown are the rocks and dread the defiles.

 

Halt sunt le pui e li val tenebrus,

Les roches bises, les destreiz merveillus.

And in another place in the poem:

 

 High were the peaks and shadowy and grand,

The valleys deep, the rivers swiftly ran.

 

High are the hills and great and dark,

Deep the valleys, and swift the waters.

 

Halt sunt li pui e tenebrus e grant,

Li val parfunt e les ewes curant.

Parenthetically, it's amazing how much easier it is to read the Old French (if you know a little modern French) than to read Old English.  It's obvious that French has changed less and in a purer line.

Anyway, I took those lines and adapted them into a marching chant as the termite army moves down the Valley of Thorns (my rendition of Roncescalles) toward their hated enemy.  Here's how I did it (even preserving the French poetic form of the half-line break):

The peaks are high   and the valley is shadowed.

Holy Nameless One!    Care for us now!

The boulders are dark    and the defile fearsome.

Holy Sky-Mother!    Stay always with us!

 

The mountains are high    and dark and great.

Hater of infidels!    Give to us mighty victory!

The defiles are deep    and the river runs always.

Creatrix of Warriors!    To the enemies, death!

 

Di'fa'kro'mi comments:
 

        "This went on endlessly and without variation, with the Lieutenants declaiming the forelines and their phalanxes responding with the supplications.  The repetitions contained just enough variety to be confusing, but I could not detect that any Warrior ever made an error in the words it was primed to recite.  When the terrain allowed, they moved in rhythm with the words, a step forward on each half-line.  I was soon falling asleep on my feet, but strangely the litany seemed to speed up the advance and keep everyone moving as one.  I wondered if some separate part of their Warrior-minds remained alert enough to respond in the event of a surprise attack.  I asked who had composed this recitation and my marching companion said it was simply a traditional war prayer, so old that no one any longer remembered its origin.  I found it impressive, but after half a morning of it, I thought I would lose my sanity!"
 

       I would like to print the Shshi version here, but I don't think the WingDings will display on in some browsers, especially Macs, and I haven't yet set up the text using the substitute syllables, so that will have to wait.

       Anyway, I think I'm about ready to begin formatting for publication.  I hope to get it done at least within two months.  If I can, I want to publish the Kindle, Smashwords, and print versions on the same day.  Stay tuned!

 

What Do Intercaste Termites and "The Song of Roland" Have in Common?

       I'm still in the process of preparing v.2 of "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head" for publication. It will be 22 chapters in length (about 111,000 words) and it works well as a unit. I'm still entitling it "The Storm-Wing." I recently realized that the end matter in the first volume refers to it as "The Adventures of Ki'shto'ba Monster Slayer," but it's the same book.  I don't think it's worthwhile republishing everything to fix that detail.  I've rewritten the Translator's Foreword for v.2, although I will probably revise it a bit more, and I'm working on the art for the front cover and on the map.  I'll publish both of those in this blog when they're finished.

       I won't be publishing for a while, though, because I'm waiting for v.1 to accumulate a few more readers and a few reviews.  I would love to have a review (positive, of course!) to quote on the back cover.  So I continue encouraging people to buy "The War of the Stolen Mother" and to read it!

 

Death of Roland, illumination from Grandes Chroniques de France, mid-15th c.
(from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

 

       So what does all this have to do with the title of this blog post?  "The Storm-Wing" is a tale of monsters -- Ki'shto'ba fights five of them, two of them reflecting two of the Labors of the earthly Hercules, one of them a product of my own imagination, and two others drawn from a particular medieval epic tale that shall be nameless at this point.  However, the story also draws on another medieval epic: "The Song of Roland" (Le Chanson de Roland, part of the "Matter of France").  The narrative begins in this volume and concludes in the third volume ("The Tale of the Valley of Thorns").

       Many of you may remember some of the plot of "The Song of Roland" from literature courses.  The hero Roland and his loyal friend Oliver lead an army in the name of the great French King Charlemagne to stop the Saracen's advance into Europe.  They clash in the Roncevalles Pass in the Pyrenees. 

       (Parenthetically, when I wrote this story a number of years back, I attempted to discover the derivation of the name "Roncevalles" or "Roncevaux."  Obviously valles or vaux means "vales" or "valleys."  Ronce, I finally determined, means "bramble," a prickly bush.  That's where the title "Tale of the Valley of Thorns" came from.  In the Shshi language, it's Pol'ki'shtot, literally, "Valley of Thorns.")

       Charlemagne has a reserve force, which has already gone ahead of Roland's small band that makes up the rear guard.  If Roland should need backup, he is supposed to blow his horn to summon the King, but he is a proud knight who refuses to concede that he cannot do the work by himself and delays blowing the horn until it is too late.  By the time Charlemagne arrives, the whole band has been slaughtered and the Saracens have prevailed.

       Now how does that work with termites?  In the first place, they can't blow a horn; they are totally deaf.  I came up with an answer that I won't disclose here, but I thought it was pretty ingenious.  And I created a species of Shshi called the Marchers (Roland was a march lord), who guard the region between the Northern Nasutes and the Southern Nasutes.  The Northern Nasutes are the people of Sa'ti'a'i'a from "Termite Queen."  The Southern Nasutes are a different animal entirely.  The Marchers and the Northern Nasutes and the Shshi of the Plains (the people of Ki'shto'ba and Di'fa'kro'mi) all worship the Sky-Mother (their Goddess lives in the sky).  The Southern Nasutes worship a Nameless Mother who lives underground; they use volcanic fumes as their prophetic stimulus (the oracle at Delphi?) instead of ingesting hallucinogenic vegetable matter.

       The Marchers and the Southern Nasutes have been at war for as long as anyone remembers.  It's Franks vs. Saracens, Christians vs. Muslims,  all over again.  Infidel fighting infidel!  And all on the basis of where their goddess resides.  I'll have a lot more to say on that subject at another time.

       So what is this intercaste thing in the title of this post?  In "The Song of Roland" a major member of Roland's band is Archbishop Turpin, the Warrior Bishop.  Fighting and praying with equal ferocity, he is clearly a kind of hybrid.  At one point he fights a Black Champion, who obviously represents Satan, and prevails.

       So how do I portray Archibishop Turpin? 

       I've mentioned Dr. Timothy Myles before -- he's the entomologist whose website taught me a large part of what I know about termites.  At one point I ran into an abstract of a paper he did in 1980 describing experiments changing the hormonal makeup of termite nymphs.  The resultant final molt produced "an individual with perfect notal and wing development, normal compound eyes and ocelli, complete sclerotization and full-length prognathous soldier mandibles. I have designated this laboratory freak a double caste. Its existence has endocrinological, developmental and social implications."  In other words, it produces an Intercaste -- an individual with the jaws of a Warrior and the wings and eyes of an Alate.  If this can be induced in the laboratory, why couldn't it occur in nature as a genetic aberration, especially if the native stock experienced a lot of inbreeding?  

       Such an hybridized individual would likely have a strange psychological mindset, and so we get Lug'tei'a (whose name means Thunder-Seer") -- a Warrior/Priest/Seer, the Chief Priest (Archbishop?) of the Marchers, who is a great Champion in his own right (imagine a sighted Warrior fighting normal ones who are eyeless!) but who is also gifted with unusual powers of prophecy and suffers from many conflicted feelings about his own aberrant existence.  I found him a fascinating character and I'm sure you will, too, after I publish v.2 and 3 and you get to meet the character in person.