Yes, I am alive. I’m sorry I took so long to update. I won’t bother explaining, since I don’t really have an excuse. I’m back, though, and I’ve got more sporky goodness for you. To make up for how long I took, I’m doing two chapters this time. Enjoy!
…well, I will, once my Nook charges enough to be usable. This might take a while.
Alright, it’s charged. This is Accidently In Love with a God, chapters 2 and 3.
So Emma is suddenly somewhere entirely different. She’s on the balcony of a three-story villa on a hill. The scenery is full of flowers and grapevines. A “familiar female voice” is calling to her. She realizes that this is her mother, but she thinks she’s in heaven and doesn’t want to leave.
Then she hears ridiculously loud music that apparently causes her physical pain. Except for the vocals. She seems to like those.
No seriously, that’s pretty much her reaction. She wakes up in a hospital, with tubes stuck down her throat and her parents standing over her. When she asks what happened, her mother reminds her that she was hit by a car. Apparently she’s been in a coma for the last month, and it’s a miracle that she’s awake. Upon hearing the word “miracle,” her mind jumps to whether getting hit by the car got rid of the voice in her head, who she now seems to be calling “Guy.”
Are you kidding me? You’ve been in a coma for a month, and that’s all you can think about? What about what happened during that time? What about telling your overly protective roommates that you’re OK?
Ugh. Anyway, her still-blubbering parents are taken outside to fill out paperwork. Suddenly, Guy tells her that he has unfinished business with her, establishing that he’s still there. She reacts about as well as you’d think, saying she wished it had been a big red double-decker bus. He informs her that they were about to pull the plug on her (and makes some snide remark about organ harvesters), at the same time informing her that he’s the reason she woke up.
He also seems to realize that he can’t stick around in her head forever. So he tells her that if she wants to “free” him, she has to travel south.
“Mexico.”
“Sorry?”
“Mexico. You know, that little country on the map below yours. Home of tequila and the taco.”
Apparently his physical body is off in the jungle somewhere. Emma is surprised (“Holy pickles”) that he has one, because she thought he was some disembodied spirit who’d taken a liking to her.
Of course, the first thing she starts wondering about is what he looks like. Apparently this is something that she’s thought about on “hundreds of occasions.” She then elaborates, describing a couple of her ideas. Like this one.
Sounds like a JRPG villain.
That’s exactly what he looks like. Calling it now.
Emma has a “what am I thinking” moment. She asks what exactly he is, and he just tells her that she’s not in danger from him. She’s still confused (you know, the reaction she probably should be having), and she says she’s not going anywhere until she knows who he really is. He just chuckles and tells her she needs her rest. He also apologizes for putting her in this position when he’s supposed to be protecting her.
She demands to know what she’s being protected from. He says first off, from herself. She reminds him that she’s a grown woman and doesn’t need a babysitter. His reaction is…umm…
…the hell?
Congratulations, book, you just smashed my Willing Suspension of Disbelief on the floor and jumped on top of it. Frozen heads? Twenty of them? Are you kidding me? This is too ridiculous to be taken seriously, and it’s too stupid to be funny. Given the reaction it elicits, I think it was actually meant to be serious.
-sigh- Moving on. Emma is shocked and horrified, as she realizes she would’ve gone home with Jake if she’d had the chance. No, she’s not easy, she just wanted to stick it to Guy. And also he was hot.
Emma realizes that if Guy was serious about Jake being messed up, he was also serious about protecting her from whatever else is after her. She tells him that she’ll do what he wants…but it’s because she wants to get rid of him, [[Tsundere not because she’s grateful or anything.]] That’s the end of the second chapter. I’m still getting serious Internet vibes from this author. Seriously, this thing feels like it could’ve been pulled right off Fictionpress. And if I remember right, the next chapter only makes it worse. Let’s take a look.
Chapter Three begins by informing the reader that this is 1940, Bacalar, Southern Mexico. Y’know, because specifying a region is too much work. A quick look at Wikipedia tells me it’s Quintana Roo. See how easy that was?
Anyway. We open with a “towering naked god” named Votan. He’s lost in the middle of a jungle. Apparently, he’s using a human-like form, and doesn’t like it. A goddess named Cimil is currently trolling him. Within the next paragraph, we learn that she loves to make people suffer. Also she can see the future.
Oh gee, I wonder. Votan wonders who this woman is and what kind of powers she has, because she’d need to be “a force of nature” to control him. He’s not too happy about the thought of this.
A bit of exposition reveals that he came to the human world through what the Mayans called a “cenote,” which is some kind of deep limestone pool. Apparently they’re connected to the “River of Tlaloc,” which is a flow of energy that connects the human world to the world of the gods. Something like that.
OK, I know nothing about Maya mythology, but somehow I doubt the author knows what she’s talking about. Another look at Wikipedia confirms this. The two gods mentioned here are a part of said mythology, except that they weren’t gods. It sounds like Votan was human, but I didn’t look carefully enough to be sure. Closest thing I can find to Cimil is Chimalmat, and it sounds like she was some kind of giant. So yeah, this is totally BSed. To the author’s credit, though, she’s got the location right.
Anyway, it sounds like the gods are engaged in conflict with a bunch of evil priests or something. Mentions are made of them kidnapping young women. Said evil priests have found a way to stop the gods from watching them from their realm. That’s probably why Votan is in the human world in the first place.
He climbs a tree to look for the place where the priests are camped out. The branch breaks and he falls. Chapter over.
I guess that chapter was supposed to be one of those cryptic interludes that you don’t totally understand until later, but it’s all pretty obvious. Votan clearly got stuck outside of the body he was using at some point, and he’s trying to get back. This Cimil person is probably the one that Emma needs to be protected from.
This is not improving. In fact, the second chapter may have been even more ridiculous than the first. I’m not sure how much of this is supposed to be comedy and how much is supposed to be serious, but right now it’s failing at both. I doubt it’ll get any better, so I guess all I can do is hope it doesn’t get worse. Not that I mind reading it, because if I did I wouldn’t be writing this in the first place.
Hope you’re enjoying this. Again, please feel free to let me know how I’m doing. I’d love to hear what you think.
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