#noradz

This is a reminder from the Noradz to wash your hands thoroughly. 

City of the Rats, third book of the Deltora Quest series, book of Reeah the snake and the opal of Hope.

SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILERS AHEAD!

When I first read this book I didn’t particularly liked it, even though I recognized the story was well made and the Deltora spirit was here. I even had a hard time remembering it. After the second reading I remembered the whole story, but still didn’t liked it much, or at least better than the previous ones. And now, after more readings, I grew up to love it. Not as much as the Lake of Tears, but I still like it. 

Here we are back to the fantasy style, but not before a last scene in Thaegan’s territory to take care of one threat that was left looming: the other children of Thaegan. Like I said previously, I love them so much, I wished we had seen more of them. [Note: A stuff I forgot to talk about in the Lake of Tears review. I guess the twin pairs among the monsters must be incestuous. Or at least one of them, Jin and Jod. Come on, we are talking of monster siblings posing as a little couple and living together in a house... Evil is evil. I guess their depravity won’t make them shun the idea of incest after breaking the taboos of murder, domestic abuse and cannibalism.]

But then we go into the opal’s territory, and we get back into the fantasy style. I have to admire the “pictures” of the book, its places, visual and ideas, that really hit you and make things go back to your mind. A mysterious shop filled with magical articles. Enormous shining, spotless kitchen. An abandonned and ruined city filled with swarms of hungry rats. A gigantic snake wearing a crown. There is really some poetry to Deltora. 

When Lief said he thought back bitterly of the Muddlets, I feared the worst, but I was pleased to see that they didn’t die. 

I really like the idea of an entire city of property and cleanliness freaks. Usually we see the typical rat-hole of a medieval city, faithful to historical truth and as a result all dirty and disgusting. Like the city of Del, that is grim, filled with misery, poverty, hunger and filth. And the city of Noradz is its complete opposite and shows the exact opposite nightmare, of obsessive cleanliness and fear of sickness, and its just so... cool in a way. Nightmarishly cool. 

I actually completely forgot about the plot of Noradz being the Shadow Lord’s food source. 

The idea of the Ra-Kacharz being the absolute master of the city by their ancient role of rats catchers, and having been the one orchestrating the rat invasions and “feeding the evil” reminds me a lot of “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents”, a very similar story that is extremely wonderful and extremely dark. It’s a parody of the Hamelin Piper Player myth that plays a lot like “City of the Rats”, just replace the Ra-Kacharz with a regular rat catcher, our heroic trio with a talking cat, talking mouses and a fake piper-player, and Reeah with a... (SPOILER: a malevolent rat-king). 

Talking about the heroic trio I have to say I like how Jasmine is the one breaking the harmony and changing/challenging the groupe’s perspective. I already waited ever since the Forests of Silence to see how her being a “wild/nature girl” would impact their adventures in a urban setting. Her reaction to what a “shop” is was really priceless (pun intended ;) ). And I also like the clash that takes place between Lief and Barda, that put the blame on the Shadow Lord for everything, and Jasmine, who is part of all these Deltoran people that actually blame the king’s neglect, and think the Shadow Lord only came after most of the evil and monsters living in Deltora, pointing out that Thaegan and Reeah were here centuries before the Shadow Lord. And in the end, the truth is revealed to be in between: on one side, yes, the Shadow Lord is in fact the one behind everything that went wrong in Deltora since centuries, with his servants having fed Reeah and keeping the king in an illusion, but on the other side, the Shadow Lord merely fed what was already there, and helped to grow an evil that is natural and original of Del. The Shadow Lord couldn’t have done anything without a good and proper “breeding ground”. 

[Which makes me put here something I forgot to add in the review of the Forests of Silence: I deeply like the theme of “a king needs the trust of his people to reign. He needs their faith. Without it, he is powerless.” While not technically always true in our world, this idea holds a lot of reality. I can see it myself with the current state of France, where know people don’t want to vote because they trust none of the candidats for being President, and people just criticitze automatically everything the President does and mock them mercilessly because they don’t like them, and that ever since the start. Result: we are slowly sinking into chaos. It’s not as bad as Deltora, but it still is.]

And there is something powerful to this simple truth Lief tells Jasmine: they are not fighting to put the king back on his throne and repeat the mistakes of the past. They fight here for their freedom, for the sake of their entire country, and to give back decent living conditions to the people around them and their loved ones, and all the innocents that are suffering. 

But something I hadn’t foresaw was that Jasmine, seeing the becoming of Noradz and how it came to be, would understand how the kings of Del could have been trapped by the Shadow Lord. That was really nice, and totally unexpected (at least for me). 

The swarms of hungry and giant rats devouring everything reminded me of King’s short story with the rats. Gosh, that was a really creepy one. 

I have to say, while I disliked Reeah at first, for being just another random giant animal (like the giant toad and giant slug) that has little personnality and little presence, a bit like Thaegan but without the rumor and the foreshadowing or any kind of presentation, I ended up loving him more. First because I like the picture of a giant snake with a crown (an obvious reference to a basilik), and secondly because this is a villain that feels fresh and breaks the pattern in this series. Most of the villains of the first series of Deltora acts out of greed, or out of a hate for everything good/pure/beautiful. Reeah is different because he (I know in English it’s a “it” maybe a “she” but in French it was translated as a “he” so for me Reeah is male), because he is vain. He is prideful, boasting, egocentric, self-obsessed and arrogant, calling himself strong and unique and master of the city. And it’s simple, but it feels good. 

(As some people pointed out, it’s also the first guardian who guards willingly the stone, knows exactly what it is and uses its power for his own account. Kudos for that.)

And I also grew to love that Reeah’s played such a little role here. Because, in truth, Reeah’s not the real villain here. Until now, Deltora was all about monsters and evil creatures. But here we start seeing the truth. With Tom’s trickery, and the criticism of the kings of Deltora, and the Ra-Kacharz, we start to realize that the true villains here are as much the monsters as the people. The people who willingly feed and serve the monsters, and then use and abuse of their power to torture other people, or commit evil things for personal gain. The Deltora Quest is as much of a mythological tale of getting rid of the monsters symbol of chaos and destruction, that a modern tale of a resistance and rebellion destroying a tyranical government, and fighting a man-made and man-shaped evil. 

The character of Tom is also adding nice shades of gray in this story where we had until now the white heroes/victims and the black monsters/Shadow Lords minions.

Finally, a question I kept having ever since I started to read again and opened the Forests of Silence... The Shadow Lord isn’t in the castle of Del, right? It’s just that I remember clearly that in the final, the Shadow Lord arrives from somewhere else than Del (or maybe it’s the castle of Del? But I felt that it wasn’t that). And yet, ever since the Forests of Silence, it is implied and suggested that the Shadow Lord lives in the Del castle. I guess it will be answered later when I read the rest of the books, but I’m still wondering.

To end this post, my little analysis: the Opal is the stone of Hope. How does it reflects in the book?

I think it reflects in many things. Tom represents the deceived hopes, the heroes thinking they found an ally only to discover that he plays on the two sides. The idea that the people of Deltora lost all hope in their king is also brought up again. The people of Noradz have given up any kind of hope and live in a constant fear of sickness and disease, convinced that doom is constantly looming over them. The City of the Rats itself is the symbol of ruin and destruction, something that seems inevitable and brings a feeling of hopelessness. 

So yeah, there’s quite a lot of hope “talk” in this book. Hidden and not obvious at first sign, but it’s here