Post by Horsie on Feb 14, 2015 3:09:45 GMT
Let's talk about Org's Odyssey by "Duke Otterland", a vanity-published furry novel.
That abomination is the main character, Org. He's an otter with flippers for feet, a dolphin tail, wings, and solid gold (actual metal) antlers growing out of his head. And gills. Just roll with it.
This novel. This fucking novel.
I could have gone through my whole life not knowing about this, never hearing the pseudonym "Duke Otterland", I could have died fat and happy, but someone had to mention this novel (not pointing any fingers), and because man is driven by curiosity I hunted for this book for weeks. It's no longer in print, used copies seem to start at around $60US, and I saw another example going for $10'000US (it must have been a typo, because this novel should prove that not everything rare is valuable), but eventually Canuovea managed to find the only online retailer that seemed to carry it, so we got ourselves some PDF copies of the book and away we went.
The only way I think I can do this properly is if I give you a summary of the novel and it’s “high points”, because unlike with Hark’s reviews you can’t look this bastard up on YouTube, you’d have to locate and purchase this book, then read 253 pages of crap.
We’ll start off with a little introduction to the world.
At some point mankind buggered off into space because we felt bad about pollution. After a while a meteor carrying Yggdrasil, a tree from Norse mythology, slams into the earth, Odin sets up Asgard at the North Pole, while the forces of evil set up Nibelheim at the South Pole. Some kind of magic from the meteor turns all of the mammals, birds, and reptiles into sentient, anthropomorphic animal-creatures called Anthropians, and causes all of the insects to grow in size, becoming livestock and mounts for the Anthropians.
This world also has half-castes, after a fashion. Unlike Hark’s half-castes these ones combine the physical aspects of their parents, so most of them are abominations (although they’re not treated differently from other people), and they're even more fucked up if their parents were half-castes too. Org up there is a good example of how ugly this can get after a few generations.
Org's father, Og, travels to Asgard to seek the gods' help after his homeland is attacked by a nebulous enemy. He gets an audience with Odin (in the form of a big, golden-antlered deer), who gives him a "white rune" that will grant the bearer magical powers and can be turned into a sword, Odin also informs Og that he'll father a son who will save the world using that rune. On his way out Og bumps into one of Odin's daughters, Odina, who immediately begs him to marry her and father her children, Og agrees, so she puts on a cloak and tells Og to call her "Dina" so no one will recognize her as the daughter of the king of gods (we’re told she looks just like Odin, but "with breasts and feet". I don't know, maybe all of the palace guards and servants have been huffing paint thinner?).
Og and Dina get married before leaving Asgard to return to “Britannia”, Og hides the rune on Fair Isle, to the north of Scotland, fearing that the nebulous enemy might find and destroy it if they invade his homeland again. We're told right then, in a footnote, that Scotland winds up being a stronghold of the bad guys, so good old Og just buried the thing in the villain's back yard.
In the 20 years between the prologue and the start of the novel proper, Og and Odina have several children including the hero of prophecy, Org. The narrator tells us that they simply forget about the prophecy that states that their son is going to be the "Legendary Hero", Odina simply forgets that she's the daughter of Odin, and Og forgets about the white rune.
We meet Org on his 16th birthday, he spends most of it moping around lamenting his life as the son of royalty, and we see that his father is locked in a struggle with the evil chancellor and parliament for control of the nation. Depressed, Org complains to his girlfriend that he's utterly alone in the world and questions whether or not he has a purpose in life, so she insists he ask a priest for some spiritual guidance. The priest politely informs him that he's this Legendary Hero (who the prophecy actually says will be named Org of Otterland, the son of Og and Odin's daughter), that his mum is Odin’s daughter, and that his father hid a magical rune in a cave on Fair Isle. It’s a good thing that Org’s priest conveniently knows all of these important details, otherwise Org would be SOL.
Org confronts his mum with this information, and it turns out (despite what the narrator said) that his parents didn't actually forget, instead they had second thoughts about having a son who would be the Legendary Hero, they just wanted to raise a "normal, average royal family". They agreed after getting married that they ought to keep their family out of that shit, then 4 years later decided to give one of their sons the same name as the hero of prophesy.
But they can't talk for long, because Org hears the emergency warning bells (he both knows what they are, and acknowledges that he's never heard them in his life) ringing somewhere in Otterland, so off he goes to the church where the priest hides him in a secret room. But not Org's girlfriend, she shape-shifts into a duplicate of Org so the forces of evil will kill her and think they got the real Org. They say goodbye, and she reminds Org, "Don't forget to save the world."
Given what his parents and the author are like, I can understand her concern. I can also understand her desire to die rather than follow this guy around.
From his hiding place Org hears the priest and his girlfriend being killed, and after a few more minutes Org hears the last of Otterland's citizens die, and then the enemy departs. He leaves his hiding place and comes across his young nephew, who managed to avoid the general slaughter because he was out for a walk in the forest, and the boy doesn't have a fucking clue what happened. Everyone was put to the sword except for Org, who could hear the entire population of an area the size of Greater London being murdered from a secret room under a church, and this kid who was out for a leisurely stroll and didn't hear the alarm bells, the fighting, and the screams that were loud enough to be heard through solid rock.
Org helps his young nephew bury their families and everyone else in the capitol of Otterland (they make a point of burying everyone vertically, in a standing position, to “save space”), proclaims himself Duke of Otterland, and then heads out to find the rune that his father tossed away 20years ago.
Remember that struggle for power between the righteous nobility and the evil parliament? Nothing comes of it since everyone is dead. Duke Otterland makes a point of telling us that Org and his nephew were unable to locate the evil chancellor’s corpse, but he never shows up again.
We're treated to several pages of the author describing Org running, getting a cramp in his side, rolling around in the snow until it stops hurting, realizing that he can't remember which way he was going, and then, not wanting to waste time getting his bearings, setting off in a random direction (this is how everyone's thought process works throughout this book; rather than think for a moment they'll rush into situations or take off in a random-ass direction to "save time").
It becomes clear very quickly that the author can't just tell us that Org travels north through a forest until he reaches a town or something, he has to find new and awkward ways to describe things (at one point a road is described as a "treeless ditch", and "Once he reached the city’s entrance, Duke Org noticed that a wall of stone bordered the river, and that another one ran along the city’s southern edge" is his way of saying that the city is fortified).
Org’s first stop is in the Duchy of Hertford, he goes first to the palace to speak with Duke Hrothgar. As luck would have it Hrothgar has another guest, a hero like Org, a purple badger with wings, whose parents obviously weren't daft because he actually has his magical rune/weapon thing. The badger, Brandon, constantly calls Org "young master", a sign of things to come with the other heroes.
The next day the two set out to find the other people bearing the magical runes, and Hrothgar kindly lends them a pair of giant crickets for mounts. Duke Hrothgar calls Brandon his son as they’re getting ready, but three pages earlier Brandon introduced himself to Org as the son of some other ruler, and said he was visiting Hrothgar on business. Hrothgar and his wife aren't badgers either. In three pages the author forgot why Brandon was there, who he was related to, and that even in his fucked up world a pair of deer don't beget a badger with wings.
It turns out that all of the little kingdoms and duchies that cover England have actual, physical borders; every time they reach the edge of a nation they find a huge stone wall with gates to allow passage, and guards who check their passports and ask them their business.
They find the next hero, a bright green winged fox named Forrest, whose ancestors didn't toss away his rune either. This guy constantly says "in my humble opinion", even when he's asking questions.
Their next destination is a kingdom inhabited by dragons. They go to the king to ask after his son, who's another one of these rune-bearing heroes. The king informs them that he stuck his son's rune in a mine because he wanted the boy to earn the damned thing, but the boy became lost along with the search parties sent to find him. He finds out that Brandon and Forrest didn't have to endure "some sort of arduous task" to get their runes, so he decides to "punish" them by ordering them to find his son and help him locate the rune in the mine. Never mind that they’re the sons of foreign rulers, he decides to punish Brandon and Forrest because their parents raised them differently. But first, they have a lunchtime feast.
The king gives them all armour (complete with a scene where Org and company get their new clothes fitted by gay stereotype dragon triplets), and off they go to look for the king's son. After splitting up in the mine (against the advice of his comrades) Org encounters one of the Big Bads, a pig named Gennady, who is apparently the "Satan of Gluttony"; he has a rune kind of like the ones the heroes have and speaks with what I think is supposed to be a Scottish accent.
A fight ensues, with Gennady trying and failing to kill Org with a magical flail, getting the thing jammed in a wall and then the floor, making me wonder what happened to the miners and soldiers, since this clown is a greater danger to himself than anyone else. Org tries attacking Gennady while he struggles to dislodge his flail from the ground, but Org's sword snaps at the hilt. The pig finally gets his flail loose and rushes at Org, but the boy ducks to one side, and the pig, I guess carried by his own considerable momentum, runs headlong down the tunnel leading out of the chamber, howling a battle cry the whole way.
Having a look around the chamber Org finds the missing prince (Drake) and all of the miners and soldiers locked in a prison cell (mines have prison cells, right?), he spots Drake’s rune and gives it to the prince and frees him. The pig comes back, only to have his head knocked clean off by Drake's own magical flail, but rather than dying he swears vengeance and turns into mist. With that adventure over the heroes reunite and return to the surface, ready to plan their next move.
Drake has a catchphrase too, he says "if you ask me" even if nobody asked him anything, even if nobody gives a rat's ass what he thinks.
The next hero is a cat named Christian, the son of the Duchess of Chester. On arrival they find out that he's buggered off to a neighbouring nation controlled by the bad guys so he could assassinate the governor, and he left his magical rune/weapon at home. Understandably his mum is pissed that her son could be so stupid, and she asks the four heroes to go after him before he brings a war down on her head, stressing that time is of the essence... but first they sit down for a lunchtime feast.
After lunch, as they prepare to leave, they remember that when they arrived at the palace some guy in a cloak rushed out, and they think that he was probably the duchess' son. Since every one of them has wings, and Christian would be travelling on foot to avoid drawing attention, they probably could have turned around and stopped the guy before he got too far from the city, but instead they sat down and stuffed their faces.
So off they go, dressed in black cloaks and carrying forged papers that ought to allow them to pass into enemy lands. When they show up at the border (once again an actual, physical border, a big stone wall) they're stopped by the bad guy's border guards, their papers are checked, and they're free to cross into enemy territory. Once on the other side of the wall they notice that there's not a speck of snow, all the trees are dead, and everyone is miserable and lives in squalor. They reach the city where Christian plans to assassinate the governor, and within minutes they spot him because he's acting so suspicious that he sticks out like a sore thumb even from a distance.
You'd think someone who would create forged papers, sneak out of his mum’s palace despite being well known to his subjects and guards, bluff his way through a border crossing held by the enemy, bluff his way into an enemy city, and was about to murder the local governor, would be stubborn and driven, but you'd be wrong. The four heroes approach Christian and say "Your mum sent us, this is a bad idea", and that's all it takes to convince him to give up. He returns with them, saying "yo" in every line of dialogue.
They decide to continue north to Birkenhead and Liverpool (“Birch” and “Love”), not knowing where they'll find the other two heroes, but as luck would have it they spot a somewhat suspicious-looking character as they're leaving Chester; he’s suspicious because every plebeian in the city seems to be following him, and he's shouting at the peasants to leave him be. The guy is a winged squirrel named Israel, another hero, and he’s travelling to Birkenhead himself
When they reach Birkenhead they choose to spend money to take a ship across the Mersey, rather than flying less than a kilometre to cross the river. On the way Israel nervously tells them that he's going to Liverpool to get married to this 13year-old princess (he's 16, but still!), and immediately the others start giving him advice on marriage. The short and sweet is that we get a bunch of virginal bachelors telling Israel that he should keep his woman in line lest she ruin the marriage, and that he should be the single greatest influence on his children, because as their father he'll be their creator (creator=god, Org tells him), while the mother is nothing more than a "delivery girl", and he should remind her of that if she ever acts up. But it’ll be okay they tell him, at least he’s older than her, that’s a good start.
Org starts calling Israel “boy” and “lad”, even though they’re the same age and Israel is a prince who’s set to inherit two kingdoms, while Org is the ruler of a duchy with a population of himself, his nephew, and thousands of bloody corpses. They stop for dinner before going to the church for the wedding, and everyone has mead except for Israel, because the others tell him he shouldn’t drink before his wedding; up until this point Org has had water with every meal, so it's as if he's trying to put on a show for Israel.
When they escort Israel to the church they find out that he's apparently there already. They sneak in through a cellar and find a pair of guards locked in a trunk who tell them that somebody showed up and attacked them, and turned himself into a double of Israel. They pull the old trick with Israel objecting when the priest asks if anyone has a problem with the marriage, and when Israel confronts the imposter the guy just owns up and turns into a big yellow frog, introduces himself as Gerhard the "Satan of Greed", and leaves. Israel's 13year-old bride and her father agree to hold off on the wedding until after the forces of evil have been defeated, and the group learns that the last hero can be found in Lancashire.
They try to go to Lancashire the next day, but are turned away at the border; apparently the bad guys are planning to invade Lancashire from their stronghold on the Isle of Man (“Malice Island”), and so the border guards have been instructed to turn away suspicious persons with foreign passports (they threaten to attack Org and company when asked what they would do about suspicious persons with Lancashire passports). The group turns back and decides to try again the next day (one of the group points out that they could just fly over the damned wall and the guards would be none the wiser, but Org dismisses that out of hand).
They have lunch at an abbey/outpost of Asgard and recount their stories to the monks, the “head monk” says that two of his siblings presided over Org’s parents’ wedding, and both were completely fooled by his mum’s “disguise” of taking the first letter out of her name and wearing a hood. He informs the heroes that because they bear the runes they’re some sort of special nobility in Odin’s court, so they could call upon vast holy armies to aid them in their fight.
The oddest thing during this exchange is that the abbot refers to Og hiding the rune that Odin gave him as being a sin, the tone of the conversation, both what the abbot and Org say, implies “Og fucked up”, but in earlier instances Og’s decision had been treated as the best course of action, a wise choice on the otter’s part.
After eating they make their way to the Marsh Republic (Greater Manchester) and spend the night in the capitol, Swamp (Salford). It turns out that they won’t be able to travel on to Lancashire that same day because all nations with coastlines refuse entry on Sabbaths, and Lancashire has access to the sea.
They decide to rent a room at an inn and continue on the next day, passing through the border without trouble, and stop in Bolton for lunch. Bolton, we are told, is at the foot of a mountain range...
Moving right along.
They reach the capitol of Lancashire and meet the king, the father of the last hero. It seems that the bad guys from Malice Island wanted to use a river under Lancashire’s control to invade their eastern neighbour, but wound up in a standoff with Lancashire’s navy instead. Org and the king figure that if they sink the enemy flagship and make it look like an accident, the enemy will give up and go home. Org recruits the prince, a blue, winged otter named Newton, and together they go out to wreck shit.
The two of them take a boat out to the Irish Sea and from there swim out to the enemy flagship. Just when they’re about to try piercing the hull with Newton’s rune/trident they find themselves under attack by a singing, naked, aquatic blue cow; Barbarossa, the Satan of Lust. She starts lobbing magical ice darts at the two otters, but they keep dodging them until the cow has shredded the hull of her own ship.
Newton freezes Barbarossa solid with magic ice from his trident, and then shatters her. The two otters make their escape, and in the morning we’re told that the enemy did indeed retreat as soon as their flagship mysteriously sank and their commander disappeared during a standoff with another navy, convinced that it was an accident rather than an act of war. The plan is now for the heroes to travel to the Channel Coast, to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and hire a ship to take them up the coast of Scotland to collect Org’s rune.
They set off in a covered wagon, driven by a huge, masked horse in platinum armour. He’s silent, menacing, and kind of creepy, but the king’s soldiers say it’s okay; he’s a new recruit and just a little odd.
The first sign that something is wrong comes when their driver slams the wagon through the wooden gates of one of those national borders. Soon after that the heroes figure out that this is in fact one of the Satans, Hillary, the “Satan of Pride” to be exact. They pile out of the wagon and prepare to face her, but she tears her helmet apart revealing that she’s Twilight Sparkle (purple eyes, fur, and mane. Good enough for me), and flings the helmet shards at the two giant cockroaches that were pulling the wagon, causing them to grow in size and attack the heroes.
Hillary teleports away (yep, Twilight Sparkle) and the heroes fight and defeat the two giant insects, although the drama is kind of ruined since the roaches are named "Bubba" and "Chuck", and referred to as such by the narrator and heroes during the fight.
After defeating Bubba and Chuck they’re approached by another wagon being driven by a donkey named Jack (clever!). He explains that they were never supposed to have left with “that weird guy” in the platinum armour, but rather he was supposed to drive them to their destination.
They reach Berwick and stay the night, planning to hire a boat in the morning, but that plan goes pear-shaped when they awake to find every ship in the harbour sunk and their driver kidnapped by “Wraiths”, cloaked servants of the bad guys from Malice Island (just imagine Nazghul, but as useless mooks). They try to stop them but are confronted by a green dog named Perozi, she’s the “Satan of Envy”. She informs Org that the bad guys know he’s alive, they were never fooled by Org’s girlfriend disguising herself as him.
Org fights her completely unarmed while his friends hold back and watch until he manages to knock her over, then the six of them attack her with their weapons for a bit while she’s laying on the ground, their attacks tear her clothes off rather than kill her. She flies away and orders the Wraiths to attack Org and company, but Org’s friends just stand around and watch Perozi fly off into the distance, forcing an unarmed Org to fight and kill the 6 Wraiths with his bare hands.
There’s no mention of Jack the donkey in all of this, but the group makes it clear that he was indeed kidnapped, so I guess we’ll assume that Org’s friends were distracted by the sight of a heavily wounded and stark naked woman flying away with a terrified man in her arms.
The crew gather up the cloaks that the Wraiths had been wearing (they disappear when they “die” leaving only their cloaks), to use as disguises so they can travel through the Shadowlands (Scotland) to collect Org’s rune, since all of the boats are destroyed. They head back to the inn to have breakfast, and Org decides that his golden antlers have to go, they’re too obvious. The next part is just surreal.
Org asks Christian, to cut them off, so Christian uses his rune/battleaxe to chop the solid gold antlers off in one swing, as close to Org’s head as he can, while Org is standing. That done they go downstairs and insist on paying for the damage done to Jack’s room when he was kidnapped and drop the antlers on the desk as payment. The Innkeeper insists that they don’t have to pay for something they didn’t even do, and is freaked the fuck out when they try to pay him in body parts, but he insists on helping them get into the Shadowlands by providing fake Shadowlands passports. Org asks;
“Fake identification papers? Tell us more, sir. Are they authentic?”
The innkeeper gets a stack of real, but blank, enemy passports out of the front desk, and the boys get to work filling out the documents with fake information and “dark-sounding” names like “Dark Boding”, “Zero Zorbal”, and “Lan Nothingness”.
With their disguises and passports they cross into the Shadowlands without a hitch, and all seems to be going well until they pass through a town and ask for directions. The peasant they ask doesn’t seem to believe their disguises, he even asks what kind of Wraith would need directions, and then suddenly he becomes terrified and convinced that Org and company really are Wraiths who plan to inform on him, which causes the entire town to chase the heroes with pitchforks and torches.
They run into some real Wraiths as they escape, and when the real ones try to stop the peasants they get killed by Brandon, potentially blowing the group’s cover. From this point on Brandon keeps trying to pull this shit, looking like he’ll draw his weapon at the mere sight of enemy nobles or soldiers, never mind that they’re trying to keep a low profile because they’re outnumbered and behind enemy lines.
They start talking about food too; it seems they didn’t bring provisions, and they’re all getting hungry. They travelled across England without a scrap of food or flask of water between them, safe in the knowledge that they could rely on pubs, restaurants, and inns for food and drink, but now they’re in disguise and don’t even know if pubs, restaurants, or inns exist in the Shadowlands. They figure they can worry about food after they get Org’s white rune, they’ll just ignore their pangs of hunger until they reach the north of Scotland.
I was curious and looked up how long this would take; the directions I got said it would be a trip of over 500km, taking around 5 days if they didn’t stop for any reason, all in the dead of winter. I wonder if Duke Otterland is familiar with the term “death march”?
Fortunately our heroes manage to find an inn, and because they’re idiots they try using a motley collection of pounds from several English nations to pay for their rooms, rather than the currency of the Shadowlands. The innkeeper gets suspicious and angry, but suddenly notices that he’s screaming at a group of Wraiths and begins begging for his life, accepts the money, and shows them to their rooms.
In the next town they witness the arrival of several boats and join a crowd that’s gathered to greet a reanimated Gennady. He immediately notices Org because of his flipper feet sticking out from under his cloak, and he goes ape, producing his flail and trying to rush Org, ordering his men to aid him. Instead his bodyguards and assistants restrain him, saying that Org had been killed in Otterland (never mind what Perozi said, never mind that Org has been seen by no less than 5 “Satans”), and eventually his manservant just uses magic to knock Gennady out before apologizing to Org and his friends.
Org convinces the Wraith captain of one of the boats to take him and his comrades across the Firth of Forth to save time in their journey, and he’s happy to do so. In the next city they're told that the local governor, Blythe, the “Satan of Anger”, is going to give a speech in the main square.
Before the rally they chat with a winged wolf child, who tells Org and company that a winged wolf on Blythe’s balcony, the governor’s right-hand man, is his own father. Blythe appears (he’s a big red bear by the way) and announces that the Shadowlands are planning to attack the nations of England, this proves too much for Brandon the badger, and he grabs the wolf child and tries to kill him with a bolt of magic from his rune. Org manages to kick Brandon’s hands and cause the shot to go wide and nearly take out Blythe, but he gets half of his foot blown off in the process.
It’s only at this point, with the crowd running away screaming and the soldiers and the child's father closing in, that Brandon realizes that he made a mistake. When the wolf approaches and demands to know who was responsible, Org comes up with a brilliant plan; he pushes his comrade to the ground, repeatedly stomps on his head, and tells the wolf that his son’s would-be killer is Baron Brandon, that Brandon defected to the Shadowlands and was under Org’s command. The wolf commends Org for saving his son and kills Brandon on the spot.
The party leaves town with Brandon’s corpse, when they find a suitable place they set him down and put his rune on his chest, which causes his corpse to bury itself, sinking into the earth.
They walk north for the rest of the day (Org doesn’t seem to have any trouble walking on that stump of a foot), and stay the night at a really fancy hotel, but are awoken by the secret police hammering on their door. They manage to escape and even flee the city, but when they try to fly away Org is shot down with a couple of spears through his wings, and the whole group is captured by Gerhard, the yellow frog that tried to impersonate Israel.
They’re taken to a prison where the guards cut their wings off and whip them, demanding to know who they are and where they’re from, which is something I would have expected the bad guys to know by this point. The executioners get tired of whipping them after a while and finally decide to execute them, but not before having lunch, leaving the group unattended.
When they were captured Gerhard joked about letting the group go if they gave him their runes, but apparently he forgot to disarm them, because they all have their runes in their coat pockets. Moments after the guards are out of sight they free themselves and fight their way out of the prison and down to a dock.
Christian the cat insists on staying behind to hold off the enemy, and the last we see of Christian is him spinning in circles cleaving enemy soldiers and Wraiths in two as they run into his blade. It’s kind of a waste though, because the others are still attacked by enemy soldiers riding flies, and Gerhard chases them using his own wings, eventually blowing the boat to pieces with a bolt of lightning.
Prince Newton, the other otter, dies in this attack, but a few hours later Org finds the other four sleeping on a beach, the forces of evil having apparently given up the chase after the boat was sunk, not bothering with the survivors swimming to the nearby island. Org comes to the conclusion that this island must be Fair Isle, the place where his rune was hidden.
They find the cave, they reach the spot where the rune is hidden, but when Org starts digging he’s jumped by a big black goat; Gogh, the “Satan of Sloth”.
Gogh reveals that he’s been waiting in the cave since Otterland was destroyed (2 weeks prior), because he knew Org would survive the attack and make his way to Fair Isle to find his rune. Org manages to grab the rune out of the ground, which emits a blinding light as it turns into a sword, heals Org’s wounds (it even regenerates his wings, foot, and antlers), and melts Gogh’s eyes.
Gogh admits defeat in this encounter, and before he flies away he shouts “See you at Malice Island, unless you’re too scared to come!” like so many schoolyard bullies from my childhood. They follow him to Malice Island (Isle of Man is over 600km away, and they fly there in no time at all), noticing along the way that the population of the Shadowlands has risen up to overthrow the government, an event somehow connected to Org finding his rune.
When they arrive at Malice Island’s central fortress they find it protected by a magical dome, seemingly projected from a series of coloured towers that are located outside of the barrier. They begin making their way around the towers, starting with a blue one that apparently houses Barbarossa, the Satan of Lust. A waterfall pours from an upper room, so Princes Drake and Israel boil and electrocute the water, killing Barbarossa. They destroy a magic sphere in the tower and move on, with Org defeating all of the other Satans single-handedly, and destroying more of those spheres, bringing down the barrier.
The fight with Gennady once again involves him getting his fucking flail stuck in the floor like an idiot, giving Org the chance to kill him.
After exploring the empty fortress they find their way into a large hall on the top floor and are faced with the big black goat again, with his eyes restored. The first thing he does is whisk Org’s companions away to another dimension, promising that they’ll be safe and can be returned if Org defeats him (it’s not like they did anything up to this point anyway). The fight ends up being like something from a video game.
They duel for a bit, Org somehow managing to hold his own against a man who has significantly more experience than Org, but eventually Gogh gets the better of the otter and slices off one of Org’s wings and breaks his back. Rather than finishing the boy off he floats around gloating, not noticing when Org’s severed wing grows back, not noticing Org get up and sneak close enough to lop the goat’s head off.
Gogh’s body flails around wildly while Org hacks at it, eventually seeming to defeat it, but instead it jams its own sword down its neck, causing both the body and the severed head to burst into flames, burning away all of the flesh, and the skull shoots across the room and reattach itself to the skeleton.
This time Org can land blows, but they do nothing, so he starts positioning himself in front of the roof supports and dodging the skeleton’s attacks until the roof caves in. When even this doesn’t work Org gets an epiphany; clearly the skeleton has a brain!
He uses his sword to fire a magic laser beam through the skeletons “eyeholes”, melting its brain, and finally killing Gogh.
His last words are “I…disagree…with…the outcome…”
True to the goat’s words, Org’s friends appear beside him, and they continue into the next room, where they come face to face with the leader of the Shadowlands… Jack Duncan, their kidnapped carriage driver!
Jack's real name is Alucard (I guess he’s a vampire), King of the Shadowlands, and he is poised to be the next leader of Nibelheim (in case you forgot, it’s the opposite number to Asgard in this novel). He explains that he and his girlfriend Hilary sneaked into England to figure out what the nations there were like, eventually working their way into the employ of the King of Lancaster, and that everyone fell for their clever ruse.
Before he can engage Org and company in battle he’s struck by a bolt of magic lightning and tossed into a fire by another guy who had a bit part earlier in the novel (the manservant of the Satan of Gluttony, the guy who knocked him out), but this time he’s dressed like a priest in a chef’s hat. I guess he’s the Archbishop of Evil or something, and he decided to step in before Org and company defeated the king, because his idea of sparing his leader the humiliation of defeat is to pick the king up and toss him into a goddamned fire while he begs for his life. The priest jokes that he’s just saved the day and tells the heroes that the forces of evil will regroup and “come up with a better plan for once”, he then bids the heroes farewell and uses magic to make the whole fortress sink into the earth.
When the heroes arrive in England they run into Christian, who we last saw swinging an axe into an oncoming army. The heroes go on to force the bad guys out of the British Isles over the next few months, with Forrest coming to rule Ireland, Christian ruling Scotland, and Drake ruling Wales. The narrator doesn't mention Israel, because fuck that guy.
Org returns to Otterland where he discovers that his girlfriend isn’t dead, she just (using her chameleon powers) made the bad guys think they killed her before sneaking away and letting Org think she was dead for a year, but all is well and Org proposes to her. Org is also mobbed by ambassadors from all the nations of England; they want to give up their sovereignty and allow Org to rule them!
In the end Org’s wife dies many years later, so Org decides to leave the throne to his son while he goes to Asgard. When he gets to the northern tip of Scotland he runs into his four surviving comrades, who all had the same idea to leave their runes with their heirs and bugger off to Asgard.
Even at this point, 50 years later, it's clear that Org likes being a knob to poor Israel; when Israel says he abdicated Org essentially asks him what the hell he was ruling, as if Israel is full of shit (remember, Org now controls both kingdoms Israel was to inherit). It turns out that Israel made himself king of the Isle of Man, so for 50 years Org didn't bother keeping track of what was going on around the former headquarters of evil in Britain, England didn't engage in trade with them, and Org didn't care to find out what his old "friend" had been up to.
They all fly off to the North Pole.
The end, thank Christ.
There are a lot of things wrong with this novel, obviously. For the first few chapters Canuovea and I weren’t even sure if it was serious, or if Duke Otterland had set out to write an awful book as a joke, but at some point we realized that no, Duke Otterland was dead serious about this shit.
Let’s start with the writing itself.
A lot of the dialogue is peppered with vaguely "medieval-sounding" words and speech; for example royalty and palace guards use words like "sooth", "beseech", "hither", or "garbs" constantly. This is especially jarring since it doesn't fit well with the rest of the dialogue, which is largely modern English, we even have a character constantly say "yo" for Christ's sake!
The "plebeians" that Org encounters along the way usually talk like this; "Y'ain't from ‘round here, are ya boy? Ah'd recognise an otter with antlers, 't ain't something Ah've ever seen before".
Org’s 6 companions have their own catchphrases, which they use in most lines of dialogue. I suspect it’s because Duke Otterland couldn’t think of a better way to tell us which character is speaking. Anyway, I counted;
Brandon; "Young master"= 121
Forrest; "In my humble opinion"= 146
Drake; "If you ask me"= 108
Christian; "Yo"= 101
Israel; "Pardon me"= 70
Newton; “There’s no question”=35
The last two don’t use their catchphrases as much. I think it's because Israel is quieter than the others, and Newton is found last, and doesn’t say much between then and when he gets killed.
The narrative itself is extremely stilted; he appears to have written this book with a thesaurus open in front of him, swapping out ordinary words for “fancier-sounding” words, and he was a little hit or miss with using words correctly (I guess he was under the assumption that “similar” meant “interchangeable”). I believe we’re told about a character’s “elevation” rather than height at one point, and characters never walk quickly towards the large gate, instead they’ll wander rapidly towards the voluminous portal.
Surprisingly, I didn’t pick up any typos until I got to the final stretch. Canuovea and I both got the impression that things became a little rushed at that point, at least it felt rushed.
When it comes to descriptions we either get too much, or not enough.
We get to know exactly what the group orders for lunch every time they stop to eat (incidentally, it’s the same thing every time), and they do that a lot. We get to know the species, fur/skin colour, eye colour, and hair colour of practically every character with a bit of dialogue, including background characters with only a few lines and little to no influence on the plot.
In the prologue we get a detailed description of one of the Valkyries, the most detailed character description in the whole novel in fact, but she only says a few lines, only appears in two paragraphs, and isn't seen again.
Meanwhile some important things aren’t described at all; I don’t think we actually find out what one of these "runes" looks like until Org finds his in the last chapter, and we never find out what Israel’s weapon actually is, we just know that it has blades, a shaft, and is called “Swallow”.
In some spots the narrative stops dead so the author can tell us about some detail of the world, in other cases we get footnotes. I've seen this in other novels, it worked in those ones, but the problem with Org's Odyssey is that most of what the author has to tell us is pointless; stuff that has no bearing on the plot, confused and unnecessary information about the world, often things we could go the whole novel without knowing and be no worse for it. Some of the best examples;
-Early on in the novel we’re told that the Anthropians measure time slightly differently; “New days, in Anthropia, begin after sundown, with the twelve hours afterward being the Twilight Period and the twelve hours after that being the Daylight Period.” Presumably it’s an equinox 365 days a year if they can divide the day like that in Britain. Whenever they bring up stuff about when the new day starts it gets confusing, both because this new clock is stupid, and because Duke Otterland himself doesn’t use it consistently.
-Every single location has a corresponding footnote to tell us what the location's name was "in the time of the Ancient Race", even though there are a few locations where the “new” name is only seen written on a sign or map, and no one (narrator included) uses the new name. In most cases they’re “cute” little names that sound vaguely similar to the old names (Liverpool is now "Love", Cheshunt is now "Chestnut"), so somehow the Anthropians knew the old names despite there being no sign of human presence in their world, let alone legible signs in the tiniest villages to let them know what they were once called.
-3/4 of the way through the novel a character makes an offhand remark about Halflings, and we get a footnote explaining that there are small Anthropians known as dwarves, hobbits, and faeries. This is the first we hear of these people, and the last we hear of these people.
The world itself doesn’t make sense, either in the context of this quasi-medieval setting, or just in general.
As I mentioned in the synopsis, every country has an actual, physical border, a big stone wall with gates and guards at the crossing points, where citizens have to present passports and declare their business, which seems really odd for a medieval fantasy setting. Stranger still, we’re told that every nation with access to the coast closes its border on holidays and the Sabbath, but it seems that none of the landlocked nations do this.
Imagine if for 365 days a year you could travel around every county of England as you please, but every Sunday and on every holiday no one can enter or leave any county with a coastline; live in Lincolnshire and spent Saturday night broken down on the way home from Stoke? Well fuck you, you’re not allowed home until Monday! Visiting Liverpool and you missed the last train back to London before Easter? I guess somebody isn't going home today.
Every nation has a local currency; they’re all called pounds, but each nation mints its own pounds. Every time a character pays for something we’re told that they’re paying in the local currency, or if they pay using pounds from even a neighbouring nation they ask the innkeeper if their money will be accepted. This would make sense for larger nations in a larger geographical area, but we’re talking about close to 30 countries in an area the size of England. At several points the heroes visit banks to convert the pounds they’re carrying into local pounds, which seems far too modern.
The entire population of Otterland is put to the sword in the span of a morning; that's the bad guys showing up, defeating Otterland's army, murdering civilians, and rooting out everyone who's hiding (except for Org, and his nephew who's just wandering around in the fucking woods), and doing it all with your average medieval infantry weapons. For a bit of perspective, the Roman settlement of Londinium had a population of around 30'000 in 60AD, and even if the population density of Otterland is less, Londinium was still only 0.08% the size the area of Otterland.
When the heroes take a boat ride after meeting the reanimated Gennady, Org starts chatting with the boat’s captain, a Wraith. The captain asks why Gennady went sideways on the docks. Org explains that it was because of his flipper feet reminding Gennady of the Legendary Hero, the Wraith then pulls up his cloak and reveals that he’s got feet like Org’s, and thinks Gennady was just jumping to conclusions. The guy mentions that he’s got gills too, and likes to sit at the bottom of the Firth of Forth in warmer months (like Org did back home).
Canuovea thinks this scene was supposed to draw parallels between the different sides of the conflict, like scene in a war film where a soldier discovers that his enemies are mostly just guys like him, but by this point it’s be established that everyone in the Shadowlands is evil except for the peasants and slaves, and the Wraiths are among the worst.
Also, weren’t Wraiths supposed to be supernatural demon things? They speak in raspy voices, they use telekinesis, float around, they never show their faces, it’s implied that they don’t actually die, and their cloaks just fall to the ground empty when they’re “killed”, but this dude on the boat is just that, a guy in a cloak.
I never understood why Asgard doesn’t get involved if the war for Britannia is so important; Asgard has legions of immortal Valkyries and Odin has been keeping a close eye on things for generations, but he doesn’t send out the troops to do something. Maybe it’s because Org and company, who can apparently call upon the forces of Asgard to aid them, didn’t ask for help.
I guess you could argue that they don’t need help, since Org killed 6 of the seven Satans and caused the death of the King of the Shadowlands and future ruler of Nibelheim within a fortnight of leaving home, and the people of Britain defeated all of the bad guys in less than a year. Still, you’d think that if Org and his idiot friends could do that, perhaps Asgard could have sent a few battalions of Valkyries and achieved the same results in a couple of weeks.
Duke Otterland didn’t seem to have a clue when it came to the “Satans”, all of them named for a deadly sin.
Gogh was supposed to be the Satan of Sloth, but overall the guy was a real go-getter, the only Satan that actually proved challenging in single combat. The only thing he did that might be slothful was when he spent a fortnight sitting in a cave waiting for Org to show up, rather than going out and looking for Org.
Perozi can be identified as the Satan of Envy only because she’s green and constantly tells people that she envies this or that, even when the context is completely wrong. For example, “I envy you for coming so far to Malice Island, Org and friends, but alas, it shall be your resting place!” or, a few passages later, “I envy the squirrel’s ability to agree with me, for a change, so SHUT UP, friends of Org!”
Blythe, the Satan of Anger, actually seems like a nice enough guy; sure, the heroes find him inside a tower made from flesh and bone, bathing in a tub filled with blood, but when he sees them he puts on a bathrobe, bows, and greets them as friends. When he realizes who they are he strikes up a polite conversation with Org and asks if they’ll excuse him while he fishes his own rune/weapon out of the bath, and for his troubles he gets stabbed in the back by Org.
Gennady, the Satan of Gluttony, is never seen eating, he never speaks of food, but every single encounter with the guy involves him going apeshit and screaming at Org in capital letters, so why this guy isn’t the Satan of Wrath is beyond me.
The only one that’s well-played is Hilary, because she’s incredibly conceited.
Speaking of Hilary, we learned that the reason why she and Jack drove Org and friends around was because they were In England as spies; they went on a secret mission behind enemy lines to drive people around in carriages and learn what the people of England were like, rather than leading their nation. Both would presumably be recognizable to anyone familiar with the Shadowlands (as presumably the leaders in England would be), but Jack and Hilary (who pretends to be a man) wind up in the personal employ of a king, something that I would assume takes time to do.
Imagine if Adolf Hitler and Joseph Gobbels (in drag) went to England under false names and worked as taxi drivers to figure out what Englishmen were like, then managed to get themselves employed as personal drivers to Churchill and other members of the war cabinet.
I think the heroes really shouldn't have won, they were just so bloody stunned the whole time. Aside from the thing with sinking the enemy flagship, or Christian trying to murder a governor (while leaving his magic rune at home), the heroes didn't try to find other boats in another city after the ones in Berwick-upon-Tweed were sunk, they just decided to go overland through enemy territory within minutes of seeing that the boats were gone. Once they started to get hungry on this journey (since they didn't bother stocking up on provisions) they wondered if they could buy food and spend the night somewhere, although they weren't sure if they could find food or beds in the Shadowlands, or if Wraith ate or slept (in fact the innkeeper at the first place they stay at comments that he's never heard of Wraiths eating or sleeping).
Despite knowing that they can't spend pounds from one nation of England even in a neighbouring nation, the heroes didn't think twice about trying to pay for stuff in the Shadowlands using a sack of English pounds, and when they realized that this could be an issue they went to a bank and sweet-talked the teller into exchanging the pounds for "Shadowmarks", despite this being illegal.
I'd say it was a miracle that the heroes got as far as they did before the secret police found them, but the whole reason why they won was because the bad guys were so incompetent. I think most of that came down to them having no communication; only a few people seemed to know that the Legendary hero wasn't dead, even though several big bads had faced him, and rather than preparing for .
The Satans themselves didn't seem to be involved in any sort of concerted effort to make sure the heroes were stopped; Gennady tried to kill Org before he was a threat, Hilary tried to kill the whole group when she got the chance, and Perozi tried (and succeeded) to throw a spanner in the works by sinking the ships, but her real purpose seemed to be to recover the king of the Shadowlands from his long-term deep cover operation. Gogh also tried to deal with Org, but he did that by sitting around and waiting.
Barbarossa was content to lead her own little war with no connection to what the Shadowlands were doing, and how Gerhard's plan to trick a child into marrying him fit in anywhere is beyond me.
The author, a guy from Texas, thinks democracy is bullshit and inferior to absolute monarchy.
The start of the novel shows Org’s father locked in a battle of wills with the elected parliament of Otterland, and we’re all but told that the parliament is evil and bad for the nation. When Org visits the priest they discuss how evil forces are at work even in Otterland, because Duke Og is starting to compromise with the parliament rather than telling them to get stuffed and ruling by decree.
Swamp, the capitol of the Marsh Republic, is the first and only location outside of enemy hands that’s described as seeming hostile, Christian actually questions if perhaps the locals are working for the enemy, it’s also the first and only democratic nation they visit. Unlike with every other capitol they’ve visited in their journey, in Swamp they make a point of avoiding the head of state and paying out of their own pockets for food and a place to spend the night.
Probably the best example is during the trip to Berwick-upon-Tweed (when they’re travelling with Hilary). They pass through the former capitol of Lancashire, and Prince Newton tells his friends a bit about the history of the kingdom.
It was once a republic many generations ago, but a kind and wise president was appalled by what saw as a bloated and corrupt government, so he asked the parliament to make him president for life and grant him the power of rule by decree. Naturally they refused, so he led a coup that installed him as king and had everyone involved with the deposed government rounded up by mobs and exiled without trial. Prince Newton is a direct descendant of this man. This is all played completely straight, despite it sounding like something from the history of most failed states in Africa.
And of course, at the very end of the novel, Org finds that every single nation in England, including the democracies, want to be ruled by a single hereditary king based in London. Org is immortal because he's the grandson of Odin, his children would be immortal too, so the son he left on the throne when he went to Asgard could theoretically rule England until the heat death of the universe, the same goes for Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, so I guess it's a good thing that monarchs are inherently benevolent (unless they're not).
Just an additional note; Duke Otterland promised a sequel to Org's Odyssey, and I though that never materialized. This was not the case. It seems that he's publish 5 books, the Saga Terra series, under his real name. The first is a rewrite of Org's Odyssey, called "Odysseus".
I got a digital copy of Odysseus, and it seems that he learned how to write and/or started having someone read through his work before he published it, because the new version of Org's Odyssey seems to have less general weirdness and gaping plot holes, at least what I've read (the prologue and part of the first chapter).
He kept the stilted narrative with it's unusual word choice, but overall it seems that even the parts lifted from Org's Odyssey were cleaned up a bit. For some reason though he chose to change the names of most of the characters (for example, Org's father is now name Franklin (Frankie) rather than Og, and Org is now named Ieremia (otherwise know as Mia)) and he even changed the species of some characters too.
Of course, for someone who's just read the original Org's Odyssey and is expecting Odysseus to be a sequel, reading this book is a complete mindfuck; things are just different enough that at first it isn't entirely clear if the book is a rewrite of Org's Odyssey or if the author was just making less than subtle nods towards his fist novel.
Anyway, what I've seen of Odysseus seems to be more readable (that is less cringe-inducing and painful), but still terrible. I'm going to read a bit more, but I fear the rewrite may have cause the book to go from being a train wreck from start to finish, the absolute worst book I've ever read by a huge margin, to being just another awful book.
That abomination is the main character, Org. He's an otter with flippers for feet, a dolphin tail, wings, and solid gold (actual metal) antlers growing out of his head. And gills. Just roll with it.
This novel. This fucking novel.
I could have gone through my whole life not knowing about this, never hearing the pseudonym "Duke Otterland", I could have died fat and happy, but someone had to mention this novel (not pointing any fingers), and because man is driven by curiosity I hunted for this book for weeks. It's no longer in print, used copies seem to start at around $60US, and I saw another example going for $10'000US (it must have been a typo, because this novel should prove that not everything rare is valuable), but eventually Canuovea managed to find the only online retailer that seemed to carry it, so we got ourselves some PDF copies of the book and away we went.
The only way I think I can do this properly is if I give you a summary of the novel and it’s “high points”, because unlike with Hark’s reviews you can’t look this bastard up on YouTube, you’d have to locate and purchase this book, then read 253 pages of crap.
We’ll start off with a little introduction to the world.
At some point mankind buggered off into space because we felt bad about pollution. After a while a meteor carrying Yggdrasil, a tree from Norse mythology, slams into the earth, Odin sets up Asgard at the North Pole, while the forces of evil set up Nibelheim at the South Pole. Some kind of magic from the meteor turns all of the mammals, birds, and reptiles into sentient, anthropomorphic animal-creatures called Anthropians, and causes all of the insects to grow in size, becoming livestock and mounts for the Anthropians.
This world also has half-castes, after a fashion. Unlike Hark’s half-castes these ones combine the physical aspects of their parents, so most of them are abominations (although they’re not treated differently from other people), and they're even more fucked up if their parents were half-castes too. Org up there is a good example of how ugly this can get after a few generations.
Org's father, Og, travels to Asgard to seek the gods' help after his homeland is attacked by a nebulous enemy. He gets an audience with Odin (in the form of a big, golden-antlered deer), who gives him a "white rune" that will grant the bearer magical powers and can be turned into a sword, Odin also informs Og that he'll father a son who will save the world using that rune. On his way out Og bumps into one of Odin's daughters, Odina, who immediately begs him to marry her and father her children, Og agrees, so she puts on a cloak and tells Og to call her "Dina" so no one will recognize her as the daughter of the king of gods (we’re told she looks just like Odin, but "with breasts and feet". I don't know, maybe all of the palace guards and servants have been huffing paint thinner?).
Og and Dina get married before leaving Asgard to return to “Britannia”, Og hides the rune on Fair Isle, to the north of Scotland, fearing that the nebulous enemy might find and destroy it if they invade his homeland again. We're told right then, in a footnote, that Scotland winds up being a stronghold of the bad guys, so good old Og just buried the thing in the villain's back yard.
In the 20 years between the prologue and the start of the novel proper, Og and Odina have several children including the hero of prophecy, Org. The narrator tells us that they simply forget about the prophecy that states that their son is going to be the "Legendary Hero", Odina simply forgets that she's the daughter of Odin, and Og forgets about the white rune.
We meet Org on his 16th birthday, he spends most of it moping around lamenting his life as the son of royalty, and we see that his father is locked in a struggle with the evil chancellor and parliament for control of the nation. Depressed, Org complains to his girlfriend that he's utterly alone in the world and questions whether or not he has a purpose in life, so she insists he ask a priest for some spiritual guidance. The priest politely informs him that he's this Legendary Hero (who the prophecy actually says will be named Org of Otterland, the son of Og and Odin's daughter), that his mum is Odin’s daughter, and that his father hid a magical rune in a cave on Fair Isle. It’s a good thing that Org’s priest conveniently knows all of these important details, otherwise Org would be SOL.
Org confronts his mum with this information, and it turns out (despite what the narrator said) that his parents didn't actually forget, instead they had second thoughts about having a son who would be the Legendary Hero, they just wanted to raise a "normal, average royal family". They agreed after getting married that they ought to keep their family out of that shit, then 4 years later decided to give one of their sons the same name as the hero of prophesy.
But they can't talk for long, because Org hears the emergency warning bells (he both knows what they are, and acknowledges that he's never heard them in his life) ringing somewhere in Otterland, so off he goes to the church where the priest hides him in a secret room. But not Org's girlfriend, she shape-shifts into a duplicate of Org so the forces of evil will kill her and think they got the real Org. They say goodbye, and she reminds Org, "Don't forget to save the world."
Given what his parents and the author are like, I can understand her concern. I can also understand her desire to die rather than follow this guy around.
From his hiding place Org hears the priest and his girlfriend being killed, and after a few more minutes Org hears the last of Otterland's citizens die, and then the enemy departs. He leaves his hiding place and comes across his young nephew, who managed to avoid the general slaughter because he was out for a walk in the forest, and the boy doesn't have a fucking clue what happened. Everyone was put to the sword except for Org, who could hear the entire population of an area the size of Greater London being murdered from a secret room under a church, and this kid who was out for a leisurely stroll and didn't hear the alarm bells, the fighting, and the screams that were loud enough to be heard through solid rock.
Org helps his young nephew bury their families and everyone else in the capitol of Otterland (they make a point of burying everyone vertically, in a standing position, to “save space”), proclaims himself Duke of Otterland, and then heads out to find the rune that his father tossed away 20years ago.
Remember that struggle for power between the righteous nobility and the evil parliament? Nothing comes of it since everyone is dead. Duke Otterland makes a point of telling us that Org and his nephew were unable to locate the evil chancellor’s corpse, but he never shows up again.
We're treated to several pages of the author describing Org running, getting a cramp in his side, rolling around in the snow until it stops hurting, realizing that he can't remember which way he was going, and then, not wanting to waste time getting his bearings, setting off in a random direction (this is how everyone's thought process works throughout this book; rather than think for a moment they'll rush into situations or take off in a random-ass direction to "save time").
It becomes clear very quickly that the author can't just tell us that Org travels north through a forest until he reaches a town or something, he has to find new and awkward ways to describe things (at one point a road is described as a "treeless ditch", and "Once he reached the city’s entrance, Duke Org noticed that a wall of stone bordered the river, and that another one ran along the city’s southern edge" is his way of saying that the city is fortified).
Org’s first stop is in the Duchy of Hertford, he goes first to the palace to speak with Duke Hrothgar. As luck would have it Hrothgar has another guest, a hero like Org, a purple badger with wings, whose parents obviously weren't daft because he actually has his magical rune/weapon thing. The badger, Brandon, constantly calls Org "young master", a sign of things to come with the other heroes.
The next day the two set out to find the other people bearing the magical runes, and Hrothgar kindly lends them a pair of giant crickets for mounts. Duke Hrothgar calls Brandon his son as they’re getting ready, but three pages earlier Brandon introduced himself to Org as the son of some other ruler, and said he was visiting Hrothgar on business. Hrothgar and his wife aren't badgers either. In three pages the author forgot why Brandon was there, who he was related to, and that even in his fucked up world a pair of deer don't beget a badger with wings.
It turns out that all of the little kingdoms and duchies that cover England have actual, physical borders; every time they reach the edge of a nation they find a huge stone wall with gates to allow passage, and guards who check their passports and ask them their business.
They find the next hero, a bright green winged fox named Forrest, whose ancestors didn't toss away his rune either. This guy constantly says "in my humble opinion", even when he's asking questions.
Their next destination is a kingdom inhabited by dragons. They go to the king to ask after his son, who's another one of these rune-bearing heroes. The king informs them that he stuck his son's rune in a mine because he wanted the boy to earn the damned thing, but the boy became lost along with the search parties sent to find him. He finds out that Brandon and Forrest didn't have to endure "some sort of arduous task" to get their runes, so he decides to "punish" them by ordering them to find his son and help him locate the rune in the mine. Never mind that they’re the sons of foreign rulers, he decides to punish Brandon and Forrest because their parents raised them differently. But first, they have a lunchtime feast.
The king gives them all armour (complete with a scene where Org and company get their new clothes fitted by gay stereotype dragon triplets), and off they go to look for the king's son. After splitting up in the mine (against the advice of his comrades) Org encounters one of the Big Bads, a pig named Gennady, who is apparently the "Satan of Gluttony"; he has a rune kind of like the ones the heroes have and speaks with what I think is supposed to be a Scottish accent.
A fight ensues, with Gennady trying and failing to kill Org with a magical flail, getting the thing jammed in a wall and then the floor, making me wonder what happened to the miners and soldiers, since this clown is a greater danger to himself than anyone else. Org tries attacking Gennady while he struggles to dislodge his flail from the ground, but Org's sword snaps at the hilt. The pig finally gets his flail loose and rushes at Org, but the boy ducks to one side, and the pig, I guess carried by his own considerable momentum, runs headlong down the tunnel leading out of the chamber, howling a battle cry the whole way.
Having a look around the chamber Org finds the missing prince (Drake) and all of the miners and soldiers locked in a prison cell (mines have prison cells, right?), he spots Drake’s rune and gives it to the prince and frees him. The pig comes back, only to have his head knocked clean off by Drake's own magical flail, but rather than dying he swears vengeance and turns into mist. With that adventure over the heroes reunite and return to the surface, ready to plan their next move.
Drake has a catchphrase too, he says "if you ask me" even if nobody asked him anything, even if nobody gives a rat's ass what he thinks.
The next hero is a cat named Christian, the son of the Duchess of Chester. On arrival they find out that he's buggered off to a neighbouring nation controlled by the bad guys so he could assassinate the governor, and he left his magical rune/weapon at home. Understandably his mum is pissed that her son could be so stupid, and she asks the four heroes to go after him before he brings a war down on her head, stressing that time is of the essence... but first they sit down for a lunchtime feast.
After lunch, as they prepare to leave, they remember that when they arrived at the palace some guy in a cloak rushed out, and they think that he was probably the duchess' son. Since every one of them has wings, and Christian would be travelling on foot to avoid drawing attention, they probably could have turned around and stopped the guy before he got too far from the city, but instead they sat down and stuffed their faces.
So off they go, dressed in black cloaks and carrying forged papers that ought to allow them to pass into enemy lands. When they show up at the border (once again an actual, physical border, a big stone wall) they're stopped by the bad guy's border guards, their papers are checked, and they're free to cross into enemy territory. Once on the other side of the wall they notice that there's not a speck of snow, all the trees are dead, and everyone is miserable and lives in squalor. They reach the city where Christian plans to assassinate the governor, and within minutes they spot him because he's acting so suspicious that he sticks out like a sore thumb even from a distance.
You'd think someone who would create forged papers, sneak out of his mum’s palace despite being well known to his subjects and guards, bluff his way through a border crossing held by the enemy, bluff his way into an enemy city, and was about to murder the local governor, would be stubborn and driven, but you'd be wrong. The four heroes approach Christian and say "Your mum sent us, this is a bad idea", and that's all it takes to convince him to give up. He returns with them, saying "yo" in every line of dialogue.
They decide to continue north to Birkenhead and Liverpool (“Birch” and “Love”), not knowing where they'll find the other two heroes, but as luck would have it they spot a somewhat suspicious-looking character as they're leaving Chester; he’s suspicious because every plebeian in the city seems to be following him, and he's shouting at the peasants to leave him be. The guy is a winged squirrel named Israel, another hero, and he’s travelling to Birkenhead himself
When they reach Birkenhead they choose to spend money to take a ship across the Mersey, rather than flying less than a kilometre to cross the river. On the way Israel nervously tells them that he's going to Liverpool to get married to this 13year-old princess (he's 16, but still!), and immediately the others start giving him advice on marriage. The short and sweet is that we get a bunch of virginal bachelors telling Israel that he should keep his woman in line lest she ruin the marriage, and that he should be the single greatest influence on his children, because as their father he'll be their creator (creator=god, Org tells him), while the mother is nothing more than a "delivery girl", and he should remind her of that if she ever acts up. But it’ll be okay they tell him, at least he’s older than her, that’s a good start.
Org starts calling Israel “boy” and “lad”, even though they’re the same age and Israel is a prince who’s set to inherit two kingdoms, while Org is the ruler of a duchy with a population of himself, his nephew, and thousands of bloody corpses. They stop for dinner before going to the church for the wedding, and everyone has mead except for Israel, because the others tell him he shouldn’t drink before his wedding; up until this point Org has had water with every meal, so it's as if he's trying to put on a show for Israel.
When they escort Israel to the church they find out that he's apparently there already. They sneak in through a cellar and find a pair of guards locked in a trunk who tell them that somebody showed up and attacked them, and turned himself into a double of Israel. They pull the old trick with Israel objecting when the priest asks if anyone has a problem with the marriage, and when Israel confronts the imposter the guy just owns up and turns into a big yellow frog, introduces himself as Gerhard the "Satan of Greed", and leaves. Israel's 13year-old bride and her father agree to hold off on the wedding until after the forces of evil have been defeated, and the group learns that the last hero can be found in Lancashire.
They try to go to Lancashire the next day, but are turned away at the border; apparently the bad guys are planning to invade Lancashire from their stronghold on the Isle of Man (“Malice Island”), and so the border guards have been instructed to turn away suspicious persons with foreign passports (they threaten to attack Org and company when asked what they would do about suspicious persons with Lancashire passports). The group turns back and decides to try again the next day (one of the group points out that they could just fly over the damned wall and the guards would be none the wiser, but Org dismisses that out of hand).
They have lunch at an abbey/outpost of Asgard and recount their stories to the monks, the “head monk” says that two of his siblings presided over Org’s parents’ wedding, and both were completely fooled by his mum’s “disguise” of taking the first letter out of her name and wearing a hood. He informs the heroes that because they bear the runes they’re some sort of special nobility in Odin’s court, so they could call upon vast holy armies to aid them in their fight.
The oddest thing during this exchange is that the abbot refers to Og hiding the rune that Odin gave him as being a sin, the tone of the conversation, both what the abbot and Org say, implies “Og fucked up”, but in earlier instances Og’s decision had been treated as the best course of action, a wise choice on the otter’s part.
After eating they make their way to the Marsh Republic (Greater Manchester) and spend the night in the capitol, Swamp (Salford). It turns out that they won’t be able to travel on to Lancashire that same day because all nations with coastlines refuse entry on Sabbaths, and Lancashire has access to the sea.
They decide to rent a room at an inn and continue on the next day, passing through the border without trouble, and stop in Bolton for lunch. Bolton, we are told, is at the foot of a mountain range...
Moving right along.
They reach the capitol of Lancashire and meet the king, the father of the last hero. It seems that the bad guys from Malice Island wanted to use a river under Lancashire’s control to invade their eastern neighbour, but wound up in a standoff with Lancashire’s navy instead. Org and the king figure that if they sink the enemy flagship and make it look like an accident, the enemy will give up and go home. Org recruits the prince, a blue, winged otter named Newton, and together they go out to wreck shit.
The two of them take a boat out to the Irish Sea and from there swim out to the enemy flagship. Just when they’re about to try piercing the hull with Newton’s rune/trident they find themselves under attack by a singing, naked, aquatic blue cow; Barbarossa, the Satan of Lust. She starts lobbing magical ice darts at the two otters, but they keep dodging them until the cow has shredded the hull of her own ship.
Newton freezes Barbarossa solid with magic ice from his trident, and then shatters her. The two otters make their escape, and in the morning we’re told that the enemy did indeed retreat as soon as their flagship mysteriously sank and their commander disappeared during a standoff with another navy, convinced that it was an accident rather than an act of war. The plan is now for the heroes to travel to the Channel Coast, to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and hire a ship to take them up the coast of Scotland to collect Org’s rune.
They set off in a covered wagon, driven by a huge, masked horse in platinum armour. He’s silent, menacing, and kind of creepy, but the king’s soldiers say it’s okay; he’s a new recruit and just a little odd.
The first sign that something is wrong comes when their driver slams the wagon through the wooden gates of one of those national borders. Soon after that the heroes figure out that this is in fact one of the Satans, Hillary, the “Satan of Pride” to be exact. They pile out of the wagon and prepare to face her, but she tears her helmet apart revealing that she’s Twilight Sparkle (purple eyes, fur, and mane. Good enough for me), and flings the helmet shards at the two giant cockroaches that were pulling the wagon, causing them to grow in size and attack the heroes.
Hillary teleports away (yep, Twilight Sparkle) and the heroes fight and defeat the two giant insects, although the drama is kind of ruined since the roaches are named "Bubba" and "Chuck", and referred to as such by the narrator and heroes during the fight.
After defeating Bubba and Chuck they’re approached by another wagon being driven by a donkey named Jack (clever!). He explains that they were never supposed to have left with “that weird guy” in the platinum armour, but rather he was supposed to drive them to their destination.
They reach Berwick and stay the night, planning to hire a boat in the morning, but that plan goes pear-shaped when they awake to find every ship in the harbour sunk and their driver kidnapped by “Wraiths”, cloaked servants of the bad guys from Malice Island (just imagine Nazghul, but as useless mooks). They try to stop them but are confronted by a green dog named Perozi, she’s the “Satan of Envy”. She informs Org that the bad guys know he’s alive, they were never fooled by Org’s girlfriend disguising herself as him.
Org fights her completely unarmed while his friends hold back and watch until he manages to knock her over, then the six of them attack her with their weapons for a bit while she’s laying on the ground, their attacks tear her clothes off rather than kill her. She flies away and orders the Wraiths to attack Org and company, but Org’s friends just stand around and watch Perozi fly off into the distance, forcing an unarmed Org to fight and kill the 6 Wraiths with his bare hands.
There’s no mention of Jack the donkey in all of this, but the group makes it clear that he was indeed kidnapped, so I guess we’ll assume that Org’s friends were distracted by the sight of a heavily wounded and stark naked woman flying away with a terrified man in her arms.
The crew gather up the cloaks that the Wraiths had been wearing (they disappear when they “die” leaving only their cloaks), to use as disguises so they can travel through the Shadowlands (Scotland) to collect Org’s rune, since all of the boats are destroyed. They head back to the inn to have breakfast, and Org decides that his golden antlers have to go, they’re too obvious. The next part is just surreal.
Org asks Christian, to cut them off, so Christian uses his rune/battleaxe to chop the solid gold antlers off in one swing, as close to Org’s head as he can, while Org is standing. That done they go downstairs and insist on paying for the damage done to Jack’s room when he was kidnapped and drop the antlers on the desk as payment. The Innkeeper insists that they don’t have to pay for something they didn’t even do, and is freaked the fuck out when they try to pay him in body parts, but he insists on helping them get into the Shadowlands by providing fake Shadowlands passports. Org asks;
“Fake identification papers? Tell us more, sir. Are they authentic?”
The innkeeper gets a stack of real, but blank, enemy passports out of the front desk, and the boys get to work filling out the documents with fake information and “dark-sounding” names like “Dark Boding”, “Zero Zorbal”, and “Lan Nothingness”.
With their disguises and passports they cross into the Shadowlands without a hitch, and all seems to be going well until they pass through a town and ask for directions. The peasant they ask doesn’t seem to believe their disguises, he even asks what kind of Wraith would need directions, and then suddenly he becomes terrified and convinced that Org and company really are Wraiths who plan to inform on him, which causes the entire town to chase the heroes with pitchforks and torches.
They run into some real Wraiths as they escape, and when the real ones try to stop the peasants they get killed by Brandon, potentially blowing the group’s cover. From this point on Brandon keeps trying to pull this shit, looking like he’ll draw his weapon at the mere sight of enemy nobles or soldiers, never mind that they’re trying to keep a low profile because they’re outnumbered and behind enemy lines.
They start talking about food too; it seems they didn’t bring provisions, and they’re all getting hungry. They travelled across England without a scrap of food or flask of water between them, safe in the knowledge that they could rely on pubs, restaurants, and inns for food and drink, but now they’re in disguise and don’t even know if pubs, restaurants, or inns exist in the Shadowlands. They figure they can worry about food after they get Org’s white rune, they’ll just ignore their pangs of hunger until they reach the north of Scotland.
I was curious and looked up how long this would take; the directions I got said it would be a trip of over 500km, taking around 5 days if they didn’t stop for any reason, all in the dead of winter. I wonder if Duke Otterland is familiar with the term “death march”?
Fortunately our heroes manage to find an inn, and because they’re idiots they try using a motley collection of pounds from several English nations to pay for their rooms, rather than the currency of the Shadowlands. The innkeeper gets suspicious and angry, but suddenly notices that he’s screaming at a group of Wraiths and begins begging for his life, accepts the money, and shows them to their rooms.
In the next town they witness the arrival of several boats and join a crowd that’s gathered to greet a reanimated Gennady. He immediately notices Org because of his flipper feet sticking out from under his cloak, and he goes ape, producing his flail and trying to rush Org, ordering his men to aid him. Instead his bodyguards and assistants restrain him, saying that Org had been killed in Otterland (never mind what Perozi said, never mind that Org has been seen by no less than 5 “Satans”), and eventually his manservant just uses magic to knock Gennady out before apologizing to Org and his friends.
Org convinces the Wraith captain of one of the boats to take him and his comrades across the Firth of Forth to save time in their journey, and he’s happy to do so. In the next city they're told that the local governor, Blythe, the “Satan of Anger”, is going to give a speech in the main square.
Before the rally they chat with a winged wolf child, who tells Org and company that a winged wolf on Blythe’s balcony, the governor’s right-hand man, is his own father. Blythe appears (he’s a big red bear by the way) and announces that the Shadowlands are planning to attack the nations of England, this proves too much for Brandon the badger, and he grabs the wolf child and tries to kill him with a bolt of magic from his rune. Org manages to kick Brandon’s hands and cause the shot to go wide and nearly take out Blythe, but he gets half of his foot blown off in the process.
It’s only at this point, with the crowd running away screaming and the soldiers and the child's father closing in, that Brandon realizes that he made a mistake. When the wolf approaches and demands to know who was responsible, Org comes up with a brilliant plan; he pushes his comrade to the ground, repeatedly stomps on his head, and tells the wolf that his son’s would-be killer is Baron Brandon, that Brandon defected to the Shadowlands and was under Org’s command. The wolf commends Org for saving his son and kills Brandon on the spot.
The party leaves town with Brandon’s corpse, when they find a suitable place they set him down and put his rune on his chest, which causes his corpse to bury itself, sinking into the earth.
They walk north for the rest of the day (Org doesn’t seem to have any trouble walking on that stump of a foot), and stay the night at a really fancy hotel, but are awoken by the secret police hammering on their door. They manage to escape and even flee the city, but when they try to fly away Org is shot down with a couple of spears through his wings, and the whole group is captured by Gerhard, the yellow frog that tried to impersonate Israel.
They’re taken to a prison where the guards cut their wings off and whip them, demanding to know who they are and where they’re from, which is something I would have expected the bad guys to know by this point. The executioners get tired of whipping them after a while and finally decide to execute them, but not before having lunch, leaving the group unattended.
When they were captured Gerhard joked about letting the group go if they gave him their runes, but apparently he forgot to disarm them, because they all have their runes in their coat pockets. Moments after the guards are out of sight they free themselves and fight their way out of the prison and down to a dock.
Christian the cat insists on staying behind to hold off the enemy, and the last we see of Christian is him spinning in circles cleaving enemy soldiers and Wraiths in two as they run into his blade. It’s kind of a waste though, because the others are still attacked by enemy soldiers riding flies, and Gerhard chases them using his own wings, eventually blowing the boat to pieces with a bolt of lightning.
Prince Newton, the other otter, dies in this attack, but a few hours later Org finds the other four sleeping on a beach, the forces of evil having apparently given up the chase after the boat was sunk, not bothering with the survivors swimming to the nearby island. Org comes to the conclusion that this island must be Fair Isle, the place where his rune was hidden.
They find the cave, they reach the spot where the rune is hidden, but when Org starts digging he’s jumped by a big black goat; Gogh, the “Satan of Sloth”.
Gogh reveals that he’s been waiting in the cave since Otterland was destroyed (2 weeks prior), because he knew Org would survive the attack and make his way to Fair Isle to find his rune. Org manages to grab the rune out of the ground, which emits a blinding light as it turns into a sword, heals Org’s wounds (it even regenerates his wings, foot, and antlers), and melts Gogh’s eyes.
Gogh admits defeat in this encounter, and before he flies away he shouts “See you at Malice Island, unless you’re too scared to come!” like so many schoolyard bullies from my childhood. They follow him to Malice Island (Isle of Man is over 600km away, and they fly there in no time at all), noticing along the way that the population of the Shadowlands has risen up to overthrow the government, an event somehow connected to Org finding his rune.
When they arrive at Malice Island’s central fortress they find it protected by a magical dome, seemingly projected from a series of coloured towers that are located outside of the barrier. They begin making their way around the towers, starting with a blue one that apparently houses Barbarossa, the Satan of Lust. A waterfall pours from an upper room, so Princes Drake and Israel boil and electrocute the water, killing Barbarossa. They destroy a magic sphere in the tower and move on, with Org defeating all of the other Satans single-handedly, and destroying more of those spheres, bringing down the barrier.
The fight with Gennady once again involves him getting his fucking flail stuck in the floor like an idiot, giving Org the chance to kill him.
After exploring the empty fortress they find their way into a large hall on the top floor and are faced with the big black goat again, with his eyes restored. The first thing he does is whisk Org’s companions away to another dimension, promising that they’ll be safe and can be returned if Org defeats him (it’s not like they did anything up to this point anyway). The fight ends up being like something from a video game.
They duel for a bit, Org somehow managing to hold his own against a man who has significantly more experience than Org, but eventually Gogh gets the better of the otter and slices off one of Org’s wings and breaks his back. Rather than finishing the boy off he floats around gloating, not noticing when Org’s severed wing grows back, not noticing Org get up and sneak close enough to lop the goat’s head off.
Gogh’s body flails around wildly while Org hacks at it, eventually seeming to defeat it, but instead it jams its own sword down its neck, causing both the body and the severed head to burst into flames, burning away all of the flesh, and the skull shoots across the room and reattach itself to the skeleton.
This time Org can land blows, but they do nothing, so he starts positioning himself in front of the roof supports and dodging the skeleton’s attacks until the roof caves in. When even this doesn’t work Org gets an epiphany; clearly the skeleton has a brain!
He uses his sword to fire a magic laser beam through the skeletons “eyeholes”, melting its brain, and finally killing Gogh.
His last words are “I…disagree…with…the outcome…”
True to the goat’s words, Org’s friends appear beside him, and they continue into the next room, where they come face to face with the leader of the Shadowlands… Jack Duncan, their kidnapped carriage driver!
Jack's real name is Alucard (I guess he’s a vampire), King of the Shadowlands, and he is poised to be the next leader of Nibelheim (in case you forgot, it’s the opposite number to Asgard in this novel). He explains that he and his girlfriend Hilary sneaked into England to figure out what the nations there were like, eventually working their way into the employ of the King of Lancaster, and that everyone fell for their clever ruse.
Before he can engage Org and company in battle he’s struck by a bolt of magic lightning and tossed into a fire by another guy who had a bit part earlier in the novel (the manservant of the Satan of Gluttony, the guy who knocked him out), but this time he’s dressed like a priest in a chef’s hat. I guess he’s the Archbishop of Evil or something, and he decided to step in before Org and company defeated the king, because his idea of sparing his leader the humiliation of defeat is to pick the king up and toss him into a goddamned fire while he begs for his life. The priest jokes that he’s just saved the day and tells the heroes that the forces of evil will regroup and “come up with a better plan for once”, he then bids the heroes farewell and uses magic to make the whole fortress sink into the earth.
When the heroes arrive in England they run into Christian, who we last saw swinging an axe into an oncoming army. The heroes go on to force the bad guys out of the British Isles over the next few months, with Forrest coming to rule Ireland, Christian ruling Scotland, and Drake ruling Wales. The narrator doesn't mention Israel, because fuck that guy.
Org returns to Otterland where he discovers that his girlfriend isn’t dead, she just (using her chameleon powers) made the bad guys think they killed her before sneaking away and letting Org think she was dead for a year, but all is well and Org proposes to her. Org is also mobbed by ambassadors from all the nations of England; they want to give up their sovereignty and allow Org to rule them!
In the end Org’s wife dies many years later, so Org decides to leave the throne to his son while he goes to Asgard. When he gets to the northern tip of Scotland he runs into his four surviving comrades, who all had the same idea to leave their runes with their heirs and bugger off to Asgard.
Even at this point, 50 years later, it's clear that Org likes being a knob to poor Israel; when Israel says he abdicated Org essentially asks him what the hell he was ruling, as if Israel is full of shit (remember, Org now controls both kingdoms Israel was to inherit). It turns out that Israel made himself king of the Isle of Man, so for 50 years Org didn't bother keeping track of what was going on around the former headquarters of evil in Britain, England didn't engage in trade with them, and Org didn't care to find out what his old "friend" had been up to.
They all fly off to the North Pole.
The end, thank Christ.
There are a lot of things wrong with this novel, obviously. For the first few chapters Canuovea and I weren’t even sure if it was serious, or if Duke Otterland had set out to write an awful book as a joke, but at some point we realized that no, Duke Otterland was dead serious about this shit.
Let’s start with the writing itself.
A lot of the dialogue is peppered with vaguely "medieval-sounding" words and speech; for example royalty and palace guards use words like "sooth", "beseech", "hither", or "garbs" constantly. This is especially jarring since it doesn't fit well with the rest of the dialogue, which is largely modern English, we even have a character constantly say "yo" for Christ's sake!
The "plebeians" that Org encounters along the way usually talk like this; "Y'ain't from ‘round here, are ya boy? Ah'd recognise an otter with antlers, 't ain't something Ah've ever seen before".
Org’s 6 companions have their own catchphrases, which they use in most lines of dialogue. I suspect it’s because Duke Otterland couldn’t think of a better way to tell us which character is speaking. Anyway, I counted;
Brandon; "Young master"= 121
Forrest; "In my humble opinion"= 146
Drake; "If you ask me"= 108
Christian; "Yo"= 101
Israel; "Pardon me"= 70
Newton; “There’s no question”=35
The last two don’t use their catchphrases as much. I think it's because Israel is quieter than the others, and Newton is found last, and doesn’t say much between then and when he gets killed.
The narrative itself is extremely stilted; he appears to have written this book with a thesaurus open in front of him, swapping out ordinary words for “fancier-sounding” words, and he was a little hit or miss with using words correctly (I guess he was under the assumption that “similar” meant “interchangeable”). I believe we’re told about a character’s “elevation” rather than height at one point, and characters never walk quickly towards the large gate, instead they’ll wander rapidly towards the voluminous portal.
Surprisingly, I didn’t pick up any typos until I got to the final stretch. Canuovea and I both got the impression that things became a little rushed at that point, at least it felt rushed.
When it comes to descriptions we either get too much, or not enough.
We get to know exactly what the group orders for lunch every time they stop to eat (incidentally, it’s the same thing every time), and they do that a lot. We get to know the species, fur/skin colour, eye colour, and hair colour of practically every character with a bit of dialogue, including background characters with only a few lines and little to no influence on the plot.
In the prologue we get a detailed description of one of the Valkyries, the most detailed character description in the whole novel in fact, but she only says a few lines, only appears in two paragraphs, and isn't seen again.
Meanwhile some important things aren’t described at all; I don’t think we actually find out what one of these "runes" looks like until Org finds his in the last chapter, and we never find out what Israel’s weapon actually is, we just know that it has blades, a shaft, and is called “Swallow”.
In some spots the narrative stops dead so the author can tell us about some detail of the world, in other cases we get footnotes. I've seen this in other novels, it worked in those ones, but the problem with Org's Odyssey is that most of what the author has to tell us is pointless; stuff that has no bearing on the plot, confused and unnecessary information about the world, often things we could go the whole novel without knowing and be no worse for it. Some of the best examples;
-Early on in the novel we’re told that the Anthropians measure time slightly differently; “New days, in Anthropia, begin after sundown, with the twelve hours afterward being the Twilight Period and the twelve hours after that being the Daylight Period.” Presumably it’s an equinox 365 days a year if they can divide the day like that in Britain. Whenever they bring up stuff about when the new day starts it gets confusing, both because this new clock is stupid, and because Duke Otterland himself doesn’t use it consistently.
-Every single location has a corresponding footnote to tell us what the location's name was "in the time of the Ancient Race", even though there are a few locations where the “new” name is only seen written on a sign or map, and no one (narrator included) uses the new name. In most cases they’re “cute” little names that sound vaguely similar to the old names (Liverpool is now "Love", Cheshunt is now "Chestnut"), so somehow the Anthropians knew the old names despite there being no sign of human presence in their world, let alone legible signs in the tiniest villages to let them know what they were once called.
-3/4 of the way through the novel a character makes an offhand remark about Halflings, and we get a footnote explaining that there are small Anthropians known as dwarves, hobbits, and faeries. This is the first we hear of these people, and the last we hear of these people.
The world itself doesn’t make sense, either in the context of this quasi-medieval setting, or just in general.
As I mentioned in the synopsis, every country has an actual, physical border, a big stone wall with gates and guards at the crossing points, where citizens have to present passports and declare their business, which seems really odd for a medieval fantasy setting. Stranger still, we’re told that every nation with access to the coast closes its border on holidays and the Sabbath, but it seems that none of the landlocked nations do this.
Imagine if for 365 days a year you could travel around every county of England as you please, but every Sunday and on every holiday no one can enter or leave any county with a coastline; live in Lincolnshire and spent Saturday night broken down on the way home from Stoke? Well fuck you, you’re not allowed home until Monday! Visiting Liverpool and you missed the last train back to London before Easter? I guess somebody isn't going home today.
Every nation has a local currency; they’re all called pounds, but each nation mints its own pounds. Every time a character pays for something we’re told that they’re paying in the local currency, or if they pay using pounds from even a neighbouring nation they ask the innkeeper if their money will be accepted. This would make sense for larger nations in a larger geographical area, but we’re talking about close to 30 countries in an area the size of England. At several points the heroes visit banks to convert the pounds they’re carrying into local pounds, which seems far too modern.
The entire population of Otterland is put to the sword in the span of a morning; that's the bad guys showing up, defeating Otterland's army, murdering civilians, and rooting out everyone who's hiding (except for Org, and his nephew who's just wandering around in the fucking woods), and doing it all with your average medieval infantry weapons. For a bit of perspective, the Roman settlement of Londinium had a population of around 30'000 in 60AD, and even if the population density of Otterland is less, Londinium was still only 0.08% the size the area of Otterland.
When the heroes take a boat ride after meeting the reanimated Gennady, Org starts chatting with the boat’s captain, a Wraith. The captain asks why Gennady went sideways on the docks. Org explains that it was because of his flipper feet reminding Gennady of the Legendary Hero, the Wraith then pulls up his cloak and reveals that he’s got feet like Org’s, and thinks Gennady was just jumping to conclusions. The guy mentions that he’s got gills too, and likes to sit at the bottom of the Firth of Forth in warmer months (like Org did back home).
Canuovea thinks this scene was supposed to draw parallels between the different sides of the conflict, like scene in a war film where a soldier discovers that his enemies are mostly just guys like him, but by this point it’s be established that everyone in the Shadowlands is evil except for the peasants and slaves, and the Wraiths are among the worst.
Also, weren’t Wraiths supposed to be supernatural demon things? They speak in raspy voices, they use telekinesis, float around, they never show their faces, it’s implied that they don’t actually die, and their cloaks just fall to the ground empty when they’re “killed”, but this dude on the boat is just that, a guy in a cloak.
I never understood why Asgard doesn’t get involved if the war for Britannia is so important; Asgard has legions of immortal Valkyries and Odin has been keeping a close eye on things for generations, but he doesn’t send out the troops to do something. Maybe it’s because Org and company, who can apparently call upon the forces of Asgard to aid them, didn’t ask for help.
I guess you could argue that they don’t need help, since Org killed 6 of the seven Satans and caused the death of the King of the Shadowlands and future ruler of Nibelheim within a fortnight of leaving home, and the people of Britain defeated all of the bad guys in less than a year. Still, you’d think that if Org and his idiot friends could do that, perhaps Asgard could have sent a few battalions of Valkyries and achieved the same results in a couple of weeks.
Duke Otterland didn’t seem to have a clue when it came to the “Satans”, all of them named for a deadly sin.
Gogh was supposed to be the Satan of Sloth, but overall the guy was a real go-getter, the only Satan that actually proved challenging in single combat. The only thing he did that might be slothful was when he spent a fortnight sitting in a cave waiting for Org to show up, rather than going out and looking for Org.
Perozi can be identified as the Satan of Envy only because she’s green and constantly tells people that she envies this or that, even when the context is completely wrong. For example, “I envy you for coming so far to Malice Island, Org and friends, but alas, it shall be your resting place!” or, a few passages later, “I envy the squirrel’s ability to agree with me, for a change, so SHUT UP, friends of Org!”
Blythe, the Satan of Anger, actually seems like a nice enough guy; sure, the heroes find him inside a tower made from flesh and bone, bathing in a tub filled with blood, but when he sees them he puts on a bathrobe, bows, and greets them as friends. When he realizes who they are he strikes up a polite conversation with Org and asks if they’ll excuse him while he fishes his own rune/weapon out of the bath, and for his troubles he gets stabbed in the back by Org.
Gennady, the Satan of Gluttony, is never seen eating, he never speaks of food, but every single encounter with the guy involves him going apeshit and screaming at Org in capital letters, so why this guy isn’t the Satan of Wrath is beyond me.
The only one that’s well-played is Hilary, because she’s incredibly conceited.
Speaking of Hilary, we learned that the reason why she and Jack drove Org and friends around was because they were In England as spies; they went on a secret mission behind enemy lines to drive people around in carriages and learn what the people of England were like, rather than leading their nation. Both would presumably be recognizable to anyone familiar with the Shadowlands (as presumably the leaders in England would be), but Jack and Hilary (who pretends to be a man) wind up in the personal employ of a king, something that I would assume takes time to do.
Imagine if Adolf Hitler and Joseph Gobbels (in drag) went to England under false names and worked as taxi drivers to figure out what Englishmen were like, then managed to get themselves employed as personal drivers to Churchill and other members of the war cabinet.
I think the heroes really shouldn't have won, they were just so bloody stunned the whole time. Aside from the thing with sinking the enemy flagship, or Christian trying to murder a governor (while leaving his magic rune at home), the heroes didn't try to find other boats in another city after the ones in Berwick-upon-Tweed were sunk, they just decided to go overland through enemy territory within minutes of seeing that the boats were gone. Once they started to get hungry on this journey (since they didn't bother stocking up on provisions) they wondered if they could buy food and spend the night somewhere, although they weren't sure if they could find food or beds in the Shadowlands, or if Wraith ate or slept (in fact the innkeeper at the first place they stay at comments that he's never heard of Wraiths eating or sleeping).
Despite knowing that they can't spend pounds from one nation of England even in a neighbouring nation, the heroes didn't think twice about trying to pay for stuff in the Shadowlands using a sack of English pounds, and when they realized that this could be an issue they went to a bank and sweet-talked the teller into exchanging the pounds for "Shadowmarks", despite this being illegal.
I'd say it was a miracle that the heroes got as far as they did before the secret police found them, but the whole reason why they won was because the bad guys were so incompetent. I think most of that came down to them having no communication; only a few people seemed to know that the Legendary hero wasn't dead, even though several big bads had faced him, and rather than preparing for .
The Satans themselves didn't seem to be involved in any sort of concerted effort to make sure the heroes were stopped; Gennady tried to kill Org before he was a threat, Hilary tried to kill the whole group when she got the chance, and Perozi tried (and succeeded) to throw a spanner in the works by sinking the ships, but her real purpose seemed to be to recover the king of the Shadowlands from his long-term deep cover operation. Gogh also tried to deal with Org, but he did that by sitting around and waiting.
Barbarossa was content to lead her own little war with no connection to what the Shadowlands were doing, and how Gerhard's plan to trick a child into marrying him fit in anywhere is beyond me.
The author, a guy from Texas, thinks democracy is bullshit and inferior to absolute monarchy.
The start of the novel shows Org’s father locked in a battle of wills with the elected parliament of Otterland, and we’re all but told that the parliament is evil and bad for the nation. When Org visits the priest they discuss how evil forces are at work even in Otterland, because Duke Og is starting to compromise with the parliament rather than telling them to get stuffed and ruling by decree.
Swamp, the capitol of the Marsh Republic, is the first and only location outside of enemy hands that’s described as seeming hostile, Christian actually questions if perhaps the locals are working for the enemy, it’s also the first and only democratic nation they visit. Unlike with every other capitol they’ve visited in their journey, in Swamp they make a point of avoiding the head of state and paying out of their own pockets for food and a place to spend the night.
Probably the best example is during the trip to Berwick-upon-Tweed (when they’re travelling with Hilary). They pass through the former capitol of Lancashire, and Prince Newton tells his friends a bit about the history of the kingdom.
It was once a republic many generations ago, but a kind and wise president was appalled by what saw as a bloated and corrupt government, so he asked the parliament to make him president for life and grant him the power of rule by decree. Naturally they refused, so he led a coup that installed him as king and had everyone involved with the deposed government rounded up by mobs and exiled without trial. Prince Newton is a direct descendant of this man. This is all played completely straight, despite it sounding like something from the history of most failed states in Africa.
And of course, at the very end of the novel, Org finds that every single nation in England, including the democracies, want to be ruled by a single hereditary king based in London. Org is immortal because he's the grandson of Odin, his children would be immortal too, so the son he left on the throne when he went to Asgard could theoretically rule England until the heat death of the universe, the same goes for Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, so I guess it's a good thing that monarchs are inherently benevolent (unless they're not).
Just an additional note; Duke Otterland promised a sequel to Org's Odyssey, and I though that never materialized. This was not the case. It seems that he's publish 5 books, the Saga Terra series, under his real name. The first is a rewrite of Org's Odyssey, called "Odysseus".
I got a digital copy of Odysseus, and it seems that he learned how to write and/or started having someone read through his work before he published it, because the new version of Org's Odyssey seems to have less general weirdness and gaping plot holes, at least what I've read (the prologue and part of the first chapter).
He kept the stilted narrative with it's unusual word choice, but overall it seems that even the parts lifted from Org's Odyssey were cleaned up a bit. For some reason though he chose to change the names of most of the characters (for example, Org's father is now name Franklin (Frankie) rather than Og, and Org is now named Ieremia (otherwise know as Mia)) and he even changed the species of some characters too.
Of course, for someone who's just read the original Org's Odyssey and is expecting Odysseus to be a sequel, reading this book is a complete mindfuck; things are just different enough that at first it isn't entirely clear if the book is a rewrite of Org's Odyssey or if the author was just making less than subtle nods towards his fist novel.
Anyway, what I've seen of Odysseus seems to be more readable (that is less cringe-inducing and painful), but still terrible. I'm going to read a bit more, but I fear the rewrite may have cause the book to go from being a train wreck from start to finish, the absolute worst book I've ever read by a huge margin, to being just another awful book.