Technically I'm meant to be studying Japanese right now, but I want to read more Colony, which means I have to write more about Colony or I'll get too far ahead. (I should just write about each chapter as I read it, really. But some of them are only 4 pages long, so I can read about a million in one stretch.)

Chapter 6, in which we are imprisoned in the home of the evil Sheik, oh noes!

This chapter is stupid. Backstory: Dennis McCormick is an Irish-Canadian architect who's building the palace from 1001 Arabian Nights in Baghdad for tourism reasons, and someone tries to assassinate him in the market quarter as he's walking back from the site one day. Not in a sexy Assassin's Creed way, in a hired thugs with knives way. Anyway, he's rescued by a pretty lady in an expensive car, and blacks out.

He wakes up in a room like "the Moslem version of Paradise—or, at the very least, on a movie set for an Arabian Nights scene." Draped silk, luxurious sofas, a view over the rooftops of Baghdad, the works. Turns out it's al-Hashimi's house, and the pretty lady was his daughter, who brought him there instead of the hospital for no particular reason. Well, because it's ~*romantic*~, but she'd presumably have an easier time being allowed to visit him in the hospital than getting past her father's guards. Because yeah, al-Hashimi has totally posted armed guards on his door. He's very "old-fashioned" about his daughter, as the servant girl informs us, but he himself sleeps with a bunch of girls and boys all the time, blah blah blah. We all heard the dun-dun-duns last time, he's totally evil.

Also Bahjat, the daughter, gave Dennis a blood transfusion so he wouldn't die, and then they meet for about three seconds before she goes to Island One to be educated there (and get hit on, probably) and then they are ~*in love*~ and this chapter is just really contrived and I'm bored of them already.

Chapter 7, in which you are a white-ass dude.

Chapter 7 is only 5 pages long, and I really want to just type them all up for you, because they are pretty amazing. It's all about gangsters in Manhattan, and they talk in future gangster slang, which means saying "shee-it!" and asking people if they want to "get zapped", basically. Oh, and it offers a rare insight into future!2008 fashions:

The dude was black, and he wore the right kind of clothes: blood-red shiny plastic jacket with the sleeves torn off, tight-ass bullfighter pants, heavy boots that're good for stomping or running. But the clothes were too right, like somebody'd handed him a uniform. And they were new. Instead of fitting into the First Avenue scene, he stood out like a hooker's pointed bra.

Yessss. The dude is a cop from the "Fuckin' World Guv'mint" who wants to meet Leo. Leo is the uber-boss of the local Neighbourhood Associations: "[W]hen Leo says you do, you do. No matter which association you're with, no matter who's got a war going on with who." The Neighbourhood Association pope, so to speak. He's also got the best food-analogy-skin-colour description so far: he's the colour of an aubergine. He's also pretty badass.

When they meet it's revealed that Leo is actually a World Government agent called Elliot, and his orders are to come back to base, but he likes it too much as a gangster, so he tells the cop to GTFO.

"Listen to me," the cop said. "If you don't come back now, voluntarily, they'll drag you back."

"Take some draggin'," said Leo.

"They can do it. You know that."

Leo slowly got to his feet. It was like a dark storm cloud rising. "No, they only think they can do it, Frank,” he said in a kind of voice that Lacey had never heard out of him before. He sounded almost like the cop! "I've learned quite a bit about how things go out here in the streets, quite a bit about power—how to get it and how to use it. Power does not reside in the government bureaus and agencies. There's no power in those long corridors between offices or among those faceless, interchangeable automatons that you report to. Power is here, in the streets, in the cities, among the people who are hungry enough, scared enough, mean enough, desperate enough to fight."

The cop staggered a step backward. "You're talking nonsense. Madness!"

"Am I?"

"You can't survive out here without us, Elliot. The melanin treatments, the steroids, the hormones—they'll cut off your supply."

Leo shrugged massively. "I've got other sources, Frank. I don't need you people anymore."

[...]

"You're crazy, Elliot. The drugs must be affecting your brain. They'll come and get you..."

"Shee-it, man!" Leo's voice went back to normal, and Lacey felt better for it. "We gonna come an' get you. We got more soldiers than you got, more guns, too. An' we know how t' use 'em. All over the world, man—the underdogs are gonna knock off the white-asses, wherever they are."

Yeah, Leo is badass.

I am actually quite excited about all these bits of plot that keep being set up, but I really hope this is the last one. I'm ready for them to get started moving and actually happening now, ok?


PS: Spellcheck keeps asking me if al-Hashimi shouldn't be "sashimi".
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