Of Blood and Fire by Ryan Cahill: Episode Two

Ch. 20 - End. This is a handsome book -- and even more so after a few shots of wyrm blood. 

Our new dragon papa is fighting fades, traversing tunnels, and ready to risk it all for a dwarven queen. This book is cozy fantasy, and it absolutely ROCKS. 

Send us a note as we continue our Cahill journey at booktwoisbetter@gmail.com or on Reddit/Discord @booktwoisbetter! Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:15

You can fool him once. You're not getting moved this time, bud.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

But he is locked in, ready for the recording. Happy Earth Day, brother. It's Earth Day.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Wow. What better time to read of Blood and Fire?

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Brother, I am channeling my Earth Spark tonight till I meet the Holy Spirit. Obviously.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Sure, he had that in mind. Um what's up with you?

SPEAKER_02 0:49

You know, just ba chillin. Having the time of my life. Are you? Things are good. Things are good. Okay. Um, I want to hear how fish part one in Vegas was.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Really good. We're going in two weeks because I won the sphere lottery twice somehow. Unbelievable. And uh, God forbid I just sell my tickets and go once. No. No. Which I said I was gonna do for like 20 minutes until the tickets hit my account. It's like, but what if? It seemed like you had a great time, though. It was great. It was really good, really fun time. Um, man, there was this guy, there's this lovely fella. I can't remember his name from San Luis Obispo, two rows in front of us. Um, set break, he turned around and sent all of us love in the section. He said he likes sending us love. And uh I'm not gonna lie to you, he's a big, he's a big guy, big fella. And you don't see big fellas move the way that this guy moved. He did a sort of gypsy shimmy, I guess is how I would describe it.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

A warling dervish.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Hands overhead, hips gyrating, very sweaty. Thank God his wife was next to him, because if it were a stranger, it would have just been dodging elbows the whole fucking show. Um, but yeah, you just don't see Big Fellas that limber very often, but man, was he having a good time. Good for him, man. Yeah, he was a real he's he was a real highlight for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Um he must have blessed you at uh the slots, he must have been your good luck.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, I also caught a once-in-a-lifetime heater on slots. Um yeah, I don't know. On a$3 bet, I uh well, I won't tell you how much I won, but uh more than 100x on my$3 bet. It was more than I on the first pull of a slot machine. I just hit the button, the thing exploded, and then I uh withdrew my money and walked away. I was like, I think that machine is cooked. I I don't think it's doing any better for us.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

You took my money because I played that exact same stupid like space planet move slot machine with Angela two weeks ago, and we just lost all our money. I had no idea how slots worked, and I guess I kept pushing the wrong bet buttons, and we just lost our money in like 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

They do try to trick you with the weird interaction of credits and denominations. Yes, um yeah, Planet Moolah is like a space cow themed slot, and they have these cows that sound like uh the Barack Obama cow. I don't know if you noticed that. I say moo. Okay, nice impression teleport there. But yeah, yeah, you know, they get the they get the idea. Go play Planet Moolah. Great time.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Don't we don't endorse gameplay.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Well, 50% of the time, according to our study, it pays out.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

You know what? The tiebreaker is gonna be when somehow the two of us are collectively in Vegas for the third time in four weeks, which I never would have ever guessed for the two of us. But yeah, two weeks from now we'll settle this on the Mula machine. We're gonna see who's gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Yeah, maybe we'll go live on Twitch from Planet Moolah.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

I think casino is a bonus pod episode from the from Caesar's Palace.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yeah, it'll be 30 seconds long. Um, okay, and then other news, uh, very, very briefly. Um, downloaded the demo for Tomodachi Life, Living the Dream. Huge. A really strange game, kind of defies description, but you create Miis, which you may be familiar with from the Nintendo Wii. Indeed. Uh, you name them, you give them a voice, you uh give them faces, obviously. Um, and I think kind of the shtick is to either make your friends and family or make celebs. Um, so my island right now, I have um Hadrian the Half Mortal from Sun Eater, preaching Catholicism to all. Yeah, who is who uh who is uh currently only able to talk about Catholicism, but he does love talking about it. And Elphaba from Wicked loves hearing about Catholicism. They're currently best friends. Wow. And then obviously, um, we had to add Trey Anastasia from Fish to the mix. Not sure what his deal is. Um I'm not either. I am a bit worried that he and Hadrian the Half Mortal are not gonna hit it off.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

So we'll see. I could have predicted that, I think, just based on everything I know about the world.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, they're not a natural fit on paper, but you never know sometimes. Sometimes opposites attract. Um okay. I think that's it. Blood and fire. We're done. We did it, we finished it.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Obaf, part two, chapters 20 till the end of the book. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

You know what's nuts?

SPEAKER_02 5:42

We both liked this book. I wrote a note, I wrote an email to Ryan Cahill this morning.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

And I thought this book was gonna be ass, but it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

I I think I might have like insinuated that in the email. I was like, hey, we we're actually really enjoying this. It's like if you listen to any of our shitty book, and now I'm I'm gonna pronounce your name right out of respect because I actually like you as an author. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Uh Astrophagy in, Cahill out.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

It's it's absolutely ripping. We're both having a great time. It's exactly what the doctor ordered for this point. It I think the only two things that I would enjoy, like it's it's timed so perfectly to have this book in my life. The only thing that's it's potentially better would be like another Pratchett book. Like Night Guard that I recently read was so fun that I ordered two more Pratchetts today. Yeah, yeah, whatever it was. It was great. It didn't have a cover, it fell off, so I didn't know what the book was called.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Well, wait, what other ones did you buy?

SPEAKER_02 6:46

I bought um I think it's Reaper Man, the one after Mort.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And wait, did you read? I read Mort. I loved Mort.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Okay, yeah, Mort is on my very short list.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

And I write I got the second one in the Night Watch lineage. Oh, it is Minute Arms. It's Minute Arms, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Well, those are both supposed to be great. So I'm very excited. Um what? I already started the fall, man.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

So did you we I read uh part one, and I mean it's only 90 pages, so we're gonna be done in like a day.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

But I love being on Kindle and watching that percent go up by one each page. It's like, whoo, I'm cooking.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

I'm so smart, I read so fast.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Look at me. I know dragon stuff.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

But okay, also shout out Ryan Cahill for making it a free ebook on his website. Just a classy move.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Communist King Ryan Cahill. Let's go. Feeding the people. Adrian's been this. Unbelievable. And let me tell you, if it keeps up, I'm gonna be ordering the special edition of that book that comes out June sometime this year. I think we're gonna have to. I know. Yeah, I know, because I accidentally bought the sp the the broken binding edition of the first book. And what am I gonna do? Not have a full set?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

You gotta get the full set. I might have to get the full set. I might have to go analog by the end of this.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Send him a third email, ask for copies.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

But long story short, this rocked, and I had a lot of fun with the end of this book, despite some very silly tropey bits like the stag emerging from the dark wood, or him training his sword in front of 300 onlookers.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Listen, there's always gonna be a little silliness in these books. And sometimes that silliness just uh hits like a drug, and it really was here.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

It hit like a drug, and also he pulled it off. Like the end was very, very fun. I thought he did a great job with it. I'm very excited for the world to get bigger in book two.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I will say, since we're doing the high-level thing, yeah, I do not think that this is like a uh you can just check out the first book and stop there kind of series. This is not a missborn y thing. Um like I I really can't I can't imagine stopping here, and I wouldn't probably recommend it to someone who's like not the type of person who's gonna at least crank through a couple books.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

So yeah, this is this is one you don't want to put down. You gotta get the whole series. I also think that the way we read it is my preferred way. Obviously, I haven't read all the books, but yeah, reading The Fall First, I don't think would be satisfactory.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, if you're a listener who read The Fall First, I would love to hear your thoughts because I don't know. I just can't imagine reading that without context because it just starts so quick and there's so much terminology that I don't know if it would hit the same. I I'm sure it's it's meant to work, you know, as a as the beginning of the series, but um I'm I'm pleased with the uh the felon seer path, which is the one we chose.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Indeed, the sword form itself.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Um some other I think high-level things before we jump into a plot summary. I I thought I some of the criticism I had from first part, which was that his cities were very for um forgettable. I have completely turned that around in part two. I thought the cities were quite memorable, and I felt very good about the scene, the scenic descriptions of everything that we did.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Um the windsurfing trains is when I I did a full 180. It's like this guy might have the sauce.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

I was pretty into it. I was also a big fan of having an actually well-defended keep at the inside of a castle. You know, you watch all these movies and it's like the last line of defense, and it's just a door, like in a tiny room. That's the opposite. That's a death trap. And the this one that he actually had, it's like perfect. It's like a surrounded, huge plaza that has it's very defensible, unless, of course, you're betrayed, which we'll get to.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

I hate it when you get betrayed by a character who's not in the book really at all. It's one of my least favorite things.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah, maybe the downside, well, and of course we'll we'll get into this, but some real jumping around in character development here. Some some folks are elevated to positions that don't seem fair in terms of like he's the story.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

He almost sewed a beautiful shirt, and there were like four giant fucking holes in it, and he patched them with Ivan POV chapter, Dalin POV chapter. Um, we'll get into that, but that like really did not take away from uh my enjoyment. Yeah. Um okay. Well, I think we're about ready to uh to hit a little summary. Um but uh we did get another sponsor for this episode. Um so uh Travis, if you could do that, just read this copy before I start the summary. Um that would be great.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Yeah, absolutely. Just really appreciative of the folks that are are helping us put the show on.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I mean, this show really would be nothing without our corporate sponsors. Um most of the time I do feel like I do it for them. So uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

And uh, thank god I gotta I don't have to pay that$19 Buzzstrap subscription for another month.

unknown 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

All right, uh kick it off. Boom. This plot summary is brought to you by Buzz Balls Biggies. Get your summer kick started with 60 ounce orb of hot piss. Is there real juice in it? Fuck no. But will it get you really drunk? I don't know. Why don't you chug this piss orb and find out?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Thank you, Buzzballs Biggies. And unironically, I love buzzballs. They're pretty good. They're pretty good, except for the pina colada. Don't get a creamy one. You don't want creamy. You want uh you don't want an opaque buzzball. No, you want to be able to see through it. Yeah, I as a kid, I don't know if I was right about this, but I felt that opaque gummies were much worse than translucent gummies.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

I've never formed an opinion on that, but I'll give it to you.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

The gummy sharks, get the get the opaque ones out of my fucking mouth. I don't want them in my house. But the clear ones, haribo, my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

I'm on that uh I'm on that Lydal store brand game right now for my gummies.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Do you remember there was like this uh these sugar-free haribo gummy bears? Ones that make you shit your pants explode.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

You get the Reddit review, it's like I ate the one-pound gummy. Do not do not follow me.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Uh give that one a Google if you haven't heard it. And anyways, chapters 20 through end of Blood and Fire. Do you like camping? Do you like sparring? Then boy, do I have the book for you. The second half of Blood and Fire sees CDR and their retinue headed to Belduar, the last free city of men, to meet with the lovely King Arthur Bryan, who I hope has a long and peaceful reign. For reasons, the best path to Belduar runs through the aptly named Dark Wood, which is both dark and full of wood. And just when we start to think it was all going to be fun and games and sword forms in Fangorn Forest, those pesky lovable Urachs show up. Thank God there is a stag riding elf warrior waiting nearby to save the day. After a frustrating sequence in which Asen prevents us from visiting what I assume is an incredibly badass elven city in the Forbidden Forest, a bunch of elves swear a blood oath to die for Kalen and the gang heads on to Belduar. As if in response to our complaints about the kind of generic walls and towers fantasy cities in the first half of the book, Cahil puts his whole Cahosi into the Belduir description. We get mountains, lakes with Nordic ass names, we got Urathiru, we got windsurfing. This is that good shit, baby. Kalen meets King Arthur Bryan, who is simply too kind for this miserable world, and his son, who is probably going to suck if and when his dad dies. More on that in a second. Arthur introduces Kalen and his now named dragon, Valeris, to the dwarven queen and a bunch of seemingly important people, and my goodness, do they not fuck with Kalen. I guess 18-year-old farm boy and dog-sized dragon isn't what they had in mind for leaders of a revolutionary force. Kalen heads off to Bed Earth after a real no-regrets sequence that involved asking a dwarven queen to show her his character, Yikes, and screaming at King Arthur for basically no reason, and holy shit, it's assassinating time. Ivan, a character I'm sure we all remember, has committed gross treachery and invited the Imperial assassins, who I guess were nearby, to come do some killing. Fortunately for Kalen, the Empire's finest assassins are fucking terrible at their jobs, and Kalen, Asen, and Co. escape and rush to find King Arthur. They find him in perfect health except for his heart, which has been ripped out of his body by a fade. Asen, Darren, and Kalen try to gangbang the fade, but there's not a ton they can do since it's immune to damage from all weapons and magic. Except for dragon fire. Oh my god, it's Polaris on the top rope, and he's got a hot, nasty throat full of fire that he's ready to puke all over this fade. Oh, the humanity. When the dust settles, Arthur's son is king now, since his heart is still in his chest, and the resistance has rallied around Kalen as their dragon riding farm boy hero. Oh, and Kalen's sister is a widow now, and wrist is in magic school. Fun.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

I never thought I'd hear the word cuz he. Yeah. That got me.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

That got me. I um that's like my break glass in case of emergency. Is if I'm writing a summary and I haven't said something I find amusing in a couple sentences, just say something horrible. Yeah. Just say something I can think of right now. What would get me fired from my job? What's gonna ensure that the author never comes on the show? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

I can't wait to defend that if he ever does. That's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

It's complimentary. He put his cussi into it.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

It is. He really did. He really I loved the cities.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I fucking loved your city, man. Trying to tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

I'm just passionate, man. I love reading.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Fun stuff. Should we start at the start?

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yeah, Fritz is such a little twerp. Yeah. What a dingus. I love Farda though. Farda is like one of my GOAT characters right now.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Farda rips. Uh, big fan, great villain. Love a good villain. Um real mall cop of a name, but he's overcoming it. I can't remember. I know I'd read a little bit ahead when we started recording last episode, and I think I knew that Fritz had come back. I maybe tipped my hand a little bit, but not sure I how I feel about him like probably becoming an inquisitor and just a general thorn in Caitlyn's side. Yeah. Because as established, I don't think their beef is very well grounded.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

The beef is more like schoolyard bully than it is like real revenge plot. He was just kind of jealous of this guy. And obviously, if he had gotten a bigger punishment for the proving stuff, I might understand it. But he what? He had like clean toilets.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Muck stables or something. Yeah. Um, I can't imagine like I mean, there are people I didn't like that much in high school. And he didn't like me. Hard as that is to imagine. I know. I can't imagine them coming back at like age 30 as policemen and being like, I'm going to fucking frame you for murder. Yeah. Because well, I did nothing wrong in high school, but you know, if I had.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

I just had a I had a begonia flashback from Stavia as the cop.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

I have no fucking clue. No. Damn it. I forgot you're not Colt. I know he's not a cop.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Yes, but he plays a cop. Anywho. Um yeah, this this feels like a back pocket storage play. Like this is gonna this nothing else comes of this in book two. And it's also not really that helpful of information. It's just kind of their where Rhett's. Oh, he says where like Rhett's uncle is, right? That's pretty much his his big thing. Well Oh no, he reveals that Ella's alive.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

That's what that's and that like if they want to get Kalen, they should probably find the sister, make it known that they have her, and you're right.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

This is actually a big, a juicy tidbit.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Um I guess that didn't really work, did it? No. Well, it didn't need to work because um that horrible, horrible Ivan we have that betrayal we all saw coming.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah, there's there's a lot of weird villain heel turns in this. Definitely it's not quite SAO level, but some serious heel turning.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, yeah. Um sorted online, unmatched in terms of uh dramatic character pivots. Okay, and then we're pretty much back with the guys. Um he's a dragon papa now. Yeah, fantastic. Um so cute. They got a little mind meld thing going on, which I think we talked about. Did we talk about that last time?

SPEAKER_02 20:21

We didn't need to. We had the connection.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

So he's thinking dragon thoughts now. Yeah, very fourth wing. Love it. Oh god, I hope it's not. Can't wait for Valeris to bang. Why am I bricked up right now? Speaking of bricked up, I gotta I gotta draw everyone's attention to the Red Rising subreddit today.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Whoa. Wildest post I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Hold on, hold on. I I I gotta read this because I'd I need to do this proper justice, and of course I have a screenshot of it. Um here's the post. I'm not gonna name the user. The the title of the post is Did you guys too had already had an erection while reading Red Rising or any other book or novel? Found it interesting to ask because my French and philosophy teacher told me that having that kind of reaction when reading, something soft, you know, isn't common and that it is a bit exceptional. It is exceptional. I have so many questions. Especially not to red rising. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I would have lived in peace, but my enemies brought me war.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

Oh red rocket rising. That's laundry tonight. My goodness. It's such a it's such a wild 13 year old question. I hope 13. I hope that's not a college student in their French and philosophy class.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Why are they talking to their professor about this?

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Yeah, and why is why'd the professor say well, exceptional has multiple meanings. I think they might have misinterpreted it as a good one.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

If they didn't misinterpret it, then that that feels like uh someone might be losing tenure. Yeah. Fascinating. The Red Rising community never fails to surprise and disappoint, I would say. At least on Reddit.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

We're about to launch in the Cahill community. So hopefully y'all are making it here from the Reddit. And hopefully you don't hate us already.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

So Yeah. We're here as fans.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

We come in peace.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

I know we truly, this isn't a Sun Eater situation where we come in as fucking leftist idiots. Here we come with love. Much like Arthur Bryan. Um okay. They're in the woods. We got Valeris, he's cute. He's so cute.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

He's white, he has white scales and lavender eyes. So cute.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Ice dragon, baby. You know what? Kind of wishy blue ice.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

It's too winter wyvern from Dota. I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah. I think Kyle's probably worried about the Dota. The Dota.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah, but played a lot of position five wyvern and you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Um what does Valeris mean? Doesn't that just mean ice? Yeah, yeah, it just means ice. This is my ice dragon ice.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

That's so good. Um, that's great. Yeah. What do you what did you think of the dark wood in their little camping adventure?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Um I didn't love it, man. A little too dark? No, not dark enough. Not dark enough because it was just like, I thought it was really good. I thought I don't know. I thought we were gonna get some spooky shit. I thought we were gonna get sentient trees or something. It's just like more orcs.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

And uh and a very handsome stag riding elf.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

This is one of maybe like three parts of this section that I thought just could have used more. Like this book is not that long, and we're used to obviously reading thousand-page honkers. Um, I don't need that. This definitely should not be a thousand-page book, but like maybe one bonus chapter with a they they acknowledge that there's weird things in the forest, but you don't see any of them. That's kind of a bummer.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

I wonder if this will change in future books, but it does seem like the first thought is to introduce fight sequence whenever like the plot has kind of cooled down a little bit. And I feel like there are other I don't know, that that was sort of a complaint with like John Gwynn in the early books. It's just like it was flea and fight, flea and fight. Yeah, um, I don't know, it'll be interesting to see if in future books there are other ways that he like ratchets up tension a little bit besides just having Urax or assassins show up.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

Yeah, and I I will say, despite my kind of lack of interest in the Darkwood, there we do get some valuable character developments in here. Like you get the Theron backstory, you get the fact that Dralin or Dalin sucks.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, it's funny because we in the first half we were like, he does seem a lot less fun than Eric. Uh yeah. Eric gets totally sidelined in this part. Yeah, what happened to Eric, man? I miss Eric. I thought he was like our number one dude. Yeah. Um, he's feeling like number three right now. Um, yeah, but we should do the we should do a brief lore corner on Theron and Ace, who are both um, I don't know, 10,000 years old, give or take.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

Yeah, from what we know here, Asen was also a draw lid. Um, he was bound to a dragon, but an evil guy killed his dragon.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

And we got it, we got a little shout out to the uh title of the series. There's a little bound and broken shit going on. The broken. Yeah, bound when you're uh to the dragon, broken when uh your dragon is uh viciously murdered.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah, becomes emotionally crippling and often physically crippling. And um yeah, just fun fact A son's like a thousand years old, crazy.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah, and kind of a badass for uh persevering. That's another very wheel of timey thing. Very Iced on warder. Interesting. Um, but that's a great dynamic there. Yep, it's a great dynamic here.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

And Theron in his little lore corner was the elven ambassador to the order, which were the historical drawids before the order was broken.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah. Um more to come in our coverage of the fall, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Very much so.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Based on the 25% of it I read this morning, which is quite an accomplishment.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

We also get kind of our magic explanation system here, yeah, more so than we have at any other part in the book. Um there's threads, there's a spark, you channel, you drain, it's wheel of time.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Freeze a river by imagining imagining it being frozen, which I've tried.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Doesn't work. Uh yeah, the five elements that we know so far air, fire, earth, spirit, water. It's just avatar, but with God.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Were you is that like a Sanderson thing where you're like, there's secretly a seventh element called ether.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Well, I I'm curious. I mean, there's blood magic, which we've which seems different somehow.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

It is, it does seem different. Yeah, but it doesn't explain it. Perhaps, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Better also evil. Um, I think the interesting maybe difference in this magic is it doesn't appear you need a source to draw from. Like they can just be running down a hallway and draw fire. Like you don't need a avatar, you have to hold your little pouch of water.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Or in Black Prism, you've got to put on funny sunglasses and look at a tree.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Yeah. Color spectrum. That's silly with that look in a TV adaptation. Let me put on my fucking spectacles.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Everyone's it's just daredevil, but every character has sunglasses.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

I've got on fucking cool shades and I'm ready to kill. Yep. Um, yeah. I guess the big limitation I gotta stop saying like in the wheel time. Um, but I won't. Yeah, it's just uh it's like addictive, and you can go too hard in the paint and overdose on the magic, uh, which Kalen almost does about five times.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Yeah, he has a lot of power that he can draw from, but it knocks him out pretty quick. Yeah, that's tough. You're a big big week sleeping baby for like a week if you if you do the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

I love freezing this river, man. That was good. Um that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Yeah, I mean, we get an Urak scene in the middle of the nights. Um, I mean, for me, the only we've seen this before. The interesting part is that Kalen is now just a killing machine. Like he really he's really adept at at the murder at this point.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

He's pretty good. And uh coming into a magic fight with no magic is just such a no.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yeah. We see this so many times, like four guys are running at a character, and he's like, earth magic, and they just all get impaled by spikes.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

I don't know if it's OP because I guess a lot of people have mages, but Jesus Christ, mage versus basically any number of normal people is not fair.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

It really, I guess it's just the the you have a limit, you know. You've got a cup and you're gonna run out of water in that cup, but that's about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

But you're not gonna run out if you're just faced with like 10 guys. Yeah, you're gonna be just fine. Um why why was it so funny when an elf burst out of the woods on a beautiful golden stag?

SPEAKER_02 29:41

It was awesome, man.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Why was it funny?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

I we both I think laughed when we saw it. I was like, actually laughed out loud. Did a bunch of bow-wielding elves on deer just save this motherfucker? Hark! We have arrived. Yeah, I mean, this is back to my maybe Lord of the Rings call-outs. Like, this is very much, you know, we're good, we're going to the elven fortress, and they have some mystery magic, and they're ancient, and they worship the stag. It's it's pretty standard stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, it's still cool though. I mean it was sick. It worked then, it works now. Um, yeah, I was bummed, dude. I thought we were gonna end our little travelogue book. We're gonna get to go to the elven city and uh in the woods. Asen says no. Yeah, eat your vegetables, go to Bald Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Yeah, we meet we meet our first kind of elven culture outside of Theron. There's some weird backstory here that we're not privy to, but no, Theron probably left the or left the elves at some point, blah blah blah. He he didn't want to come back to the city, but um they don't seem like they hate him. No, they just don't really fuck with him that much.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

He's just not part of their you ain't with us. Yeah, yeah, you could never be with us. Um, but they do pick up a a handful of bodyguards.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I really like the five elven guard honor guards. They must swear the oath. I think they're cool, they have different personalities. You got hot twins that Dan is instantly attracted to. You need that.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

Yeah, they um God, you haven't gotten far enough. They do sort of rem these this version of Elves reminds me a lot of the IEL, the very like honor bound warrior society. They're unlike the peaceful, chill, pot smoking elves of your. Yeah, they know how to fight. When they said they were gonna swear an oath, I thought it was gonna be like a magic oath where it's like, if you ever even think about betraying Calen, you'll explode.

unknown 31:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Um but no, it's just a normal uh human promise.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah, we should have some more conditional magic. I I love conditional magic, man, because you can really tie yourself up into a knot with it.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Yeah. They, man. There's uh you know about the oath rod in the wheel of time? No, you gotta get off wheel of time. I'll give you one. No, I can't because it keeps coming up. It naturally comes up. But yeah, there's a magical rod. Hold that bad boy swear an oath. You ain't breaking it. Or you'll explode.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

But thankfully they they don't explode, but their honor would be harmed, which is just as good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

And then uh off to Belduar.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Um so we we exit our troop of merry travelers, which is a good group now. It's a good solid group of dudes and two twin ladies.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Um did you also feel no need to learn the names of the elves? Saw them and decided I wasn't gonna know them.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Let me see if I wrote down. Nope, didn't write down a single one of their names. Oh, brother Garamon. Yes. Nope, that's the guy for that's the answer.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

That's a good pull. Yeah. Um I don't know. I don't know their names, but I I promise if they're important in book two, I will learn them.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

I did write down Thalanel of the Avril Rangers, who was the elf on the stag with the bow.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Sounds like an EPL team.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

The Avril Rangers.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

M in the back of the net for the Avril Rangers! Oh, it's the FA cop. They've knocked off Tottenham. Tottenham is done.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Oh man. Do we want to do wrists now? I was off to Ella. Okay, that's out. Yeah. Let's let's get Ella out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah, because one, just this is our whole scene. This is our whole part.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Bing bang. Yeah. Um stop talking to the cops, you guys. Jesus. Okay. Or stop fighting the cops.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

I I had such a problem here. What's up with this? Because we live in a society in this book, they don't have photo IDs, they don't have a criminal database. And so when a cop walks up to you and says, We're looking for someone, what's your name? Why not? Why not say Sarah?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Uh Trey Anastasia. And uh further questions.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

It's just like you don't have to show my own.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

We did not do crimes. God, this is so what was up with that. That was a big fuck up by uh my sister.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Yeah, but it was funny to this was our first exposure to racism in the book, as the guard goes, Southern scum. I hate you, southern scum. I'll never forget uh when I studied abroad in Milan, Italy. Ha ha ha fantastic. Uh my Italian professor absolutely fucking hated people from southern Italy. And that's what I discovered.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Yeah, they're stinky and they they make bad pasta.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

They're like, they don't contribute to the economy, they're dirty, they're corrupt. And I was like, my god.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

That's amazing. I don't know why it sounds so absurd when you're when someone's saying about southern Italians, but like New Yorkers like you, just real like out of touch libs are always dogging on the American South, you know? Yeah, same thing that you do.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

They consider like, you know, people from Rome as like the Florida man of Italy.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Odd. The guy who gave me a tour of Rome was a Florida man of Italy. See? Worst walking tour I've ever had. Well, um anywho. Okay. Well uh, yeah. I mean, it was sad. I was sad to see right go, obviously. We barely knew him. Uh it just leaves me with uh a whole bunch of questions about how she's gonna matter moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, I'm actually I'm kind of glad he didn't force a lot of development into her at the tail end of this book, uh, because it gives him time to breathe and actually write a good character, and I think he will. I have some faith that in book two Ella's gonna be cool. Uh right now she's kind of just dainty running around, naive, but she's got a hot best friend now, which is interesting. She has a hot best friend, and she has get down, Mrs. President. Yeah, I am Funrear, the wolf.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, Fanier is a very good tracker. I will give him that. He's good at ripping throats. He's great at staying off screen for seven weeks. That I that's sort of the wolf thing. Shout out Diago from Wheel of the Many. Yeah. Dog Diago. Um, what did you think about her decision to continue on her journey to go to Barona or wherever she's going? I don't even know where she's going anymore.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

I fucking loved it, man. She just goes pure like YOLO gapier vibes. Like, well, we already bought the tickets.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

I have two.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Top girls here. She could come.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Can my dog come with me?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

No. Uh, and then Farda drops by flipping a coin, uh, so the dog can come. Wait, so what is that gonna mean? What is that gonna mean?

SPEAKER_02 36:59

I don't know, but I would love. I mean, I love Farda. I can't wait for him to get some weird interaction with Albert.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

It's sort of giving me shades of uh Arya being Tywin Lannister's cupbearer.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

You know, I wonder if it's gonna be that sort of plot line.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Yeah, like she'll travel with him until it becomes clear he's functionally evil, and then it'll be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Let's hope she learns to not give her real name. When in that little sequence, someone showed up wearing a cape looking kind of swaggy. I thought it was gonna be that random handsome knight of Archeon or whatever, but uh that guy has not made another appearance in this book.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

That's a good call out because assumedly they're gonna come back. It'd be more important.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

What if they don't? Stupid. I'm gonna level with you guys. I had a whole Knights of Archeon thing going and uh got cut for time.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Yeah, it did it did take me by surprise a bit when he flipped the coin, and I was like, oh my god, I know who that is. Yeah, very funny.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Um and then wrist. Yep. He's a priest now. Yeah. Yes, brother.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

They're honey potting the shit out of him.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Kind of good. You think they're actually sending letters to his family?

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Oh, no guy. I definitely don't think they are. But you can you can feel the inevitable builds that he's gonna feel like his friends abandoned him for years and then be kind of mad when he finally meets them. That's my prediction for Rick.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

I was wondering if he's gonna go to the rookery. The rookery. Is that what they call it? The rookery? What is a fucking rookery? They're keeping birds in there, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:35

I was gonna say that's where the red wall sparrows, sparrows were. The fast talking sparrows.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

A rookery is a crowded communal breeding ground or nesting colony for gregarious animals, typically birds. Okay, so that's where they keep the hawks. They'd have them in a rookery. Yeah. Fantastic. Anyways, more on that in book two.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

But a bum. But yeah, that's that's it. He's getting trained with brother Garamon, who's definitely evil.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Yeah. That's a that man. There's a lot of spicy shit wrapped up in there. I'm excited to see uh if they successfully uh draft him into CIA, or if uh he still loves his friends.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

And also, I think a good choice by Cahill, just taking a step back into the meta of the book, to like not have to force these storylines. Like he really only gave them one chapter, maybe two, of screen time in the whole second half of the the whole last two-thirds of the book, really. And uh I'm actually glad he did. I don't I don't I don't need it to be just forced in here and be a super long book one.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

So he must have been quite confident he was gonna continue writing this series.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Or he he needed a book deal for book two.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

So well, he's self-pubbed, so he had a book deal with uh himself. Um okay, I think that's it. And now Beldwar. Beldoir. Welcome. What a cool city. Yeah. A little minas tireth, a little urathiro with bolt throwers. I fucking love bolt throwers. Killing fields. Yeah. Love a killing field. Um, yeah, this was cool. Um we meet Ivan at the gate. Uh noting that because honestly, when we got the Ivan chapter, I didn't remember who he was and had to go back in the book and figure out what who is this man who betrayed our friends.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

I noted him down because I had three candidates for betrayal. I knew I had a hunch at this point in the book somebody was going to betray somebody.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

He was one of my three candidates, but he was actually third on the list.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

My the thing that got my hackles up was the uh there was like a really weird thing where they were visiting the dwarves and the king was like, my son got sick. I like need to go home. I was wondering if there's something fucky going on with that, and maybe like the is there a queen also?

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Yes, but she's off-screen the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Okay, I was wondering if there was an off-scene, off-screen queen who was uh rigging shit and wanted like Arthur to come back and get out of the dwarven area because shit was gonna go down.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Who's your favorite queen of all time?

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Um hint she don't got any clothes on. The Emperor's new groove. The Emperor has no clothes. The dwarven queen has no clothes, but she does have an axe.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Oh, I was actually giving you like all of everything.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Oh, favorite queen?

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Queen character. Freddie Mercury.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

Okay. I thought you might say uh Princess Dona, the Queen Anne Chonk.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

You know, I think the inclusion of the of the word chonk in her name is one of the worst jokes in in that series. Thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 42:03

The fact that you have to say it every three pages in the book. Um, I it doesn't bother me that much. It doesn't bother me that much.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Didn't hit me right. That's okay. Love the series. Could have done without that one. That's okay though. Um okay. Where do we go from here? What do you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Um, I would like to mention the research that I did here, which is that Arthur, of course, besides being kind and charismatic and a great leader, is described as handsome. Would you like to know how many times characters are described as handsome in this book?

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Oh, is it a lot? Yeah. Damn, we got a book full of hotties. Okay, I'm gonna go 12. 27 times.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

Really? 27 times Cahill describes a character as handsome. It is his crutch. I I got onto it in part one. I was gonna talk about it in the first episode.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

It was 11 times in the first half, and it's it's it's only picking up the the the characters are only getting more handsome as we go along.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Everyone is handsome, that's the trick.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Was it was it all people, or was it like that's a handsome horse you up there?

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Uh I would actually look it up, but I lost my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I don't have the book anymore.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Okay, buy it by the fucking book. I'm gonna buy the book, but I already finished it, so I'm not gonna buy it again right now. Um fascinating. Yeah. You know, it is it's probably hard to find a word that doesn't seem incredibly anachronistic to make someone sound attractive, you know? Yeah, you're not gonna do sexy.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Dashing, maybe Arthur Bryan had a fat ass. Oh man. Yeah, I don't know. Um so I don't know. Where where are we going? So we get the we get the description. Do you want to talk about the the the train?

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Yeah, I mean I I love a secret tunnel more than almost anything in the world. And secret wind tunnel with wind vessels that are flown by magic.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

How do they work? I don't get it. They got rings? They got there's a tunnel, circular tunnel, track. Right. Three rings. Concentric. Yeah. Other than that, I don't get it. So the outermost one is like grabbing the edges of the tunnel. Right. I think it's like rolling basically. And then I guess the inner ones allow it to turn on an axis.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Yep. That's all I got.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

There's no sail.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

There's no sail, but some of the rings start spinning really fast. Right. And the captain is both kind of moving it forward and building an air bubble so that people aren't slapped by the wind too hard.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Yeah. Yeah. Valeris would have gone flying. Yeah. He's put a leash on that dog. No. His wings are giant sails. It's probably not great for a. Yeah. Um, you know what did bother me? Why were there like five pages of prep for them to launch? I'm so scared. Grab the railing, buckle up, hold on. A couple more minutes of breakfast. Jesus, fucking go. I want to see this thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

This part was actually my least favorite of the whole book, which is where they keep repeating uh we have to leave within the hour. They say within the hour, like ten times.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

And I thought there was like, is there gonna be a time-bound crisis like within the next hour? No, they just get on the ship and everything's fine.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

I think they're trying to build up this like kind of wacky steampunk captain or whatever who's by his own rules, you know. But um what it ended up being was me pretty frustrated trying to flip pages till they till they launch.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

Yeah, and we we do meet Oleg, I think that's his name, who is the ambassador to the dwarves.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

A human ambassador.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

Human ambassador. He was actually number one on my list of characters to betray them. That's a good call. I like that a lot. Because there's the end of the chapter here where I think it's actually Ivan or somebody is like Oleg, he's a good guy. Like he's a good man. It's like that's that feels on.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

There's only one good man, and it's Arthur Brown. Arthur King Arthur. Not on my list, the humble giants, who we kind of forgot to mention in the first pot episode. Seemed very peaceful. Yeah, the guy rocks. I really like him. Saying I would be pleased to warm your heart is a very strange thing to say to another person. But if that's their culture, then let it ride. It's a polite culture. You gotta give it credit. My new email sign out. That's a good that's a good one. Yeah. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Yeah, so we get we get through the tunnels, we entered dwarven paradise.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

Yeah. I do like that he leaned into that dwarven trope where they can create fucking robots and tech and all that kind of shit. Very Skyrim. That's fun.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

And they have like a diverse city, it's lit by flower lamps.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Like it's a cool spot. Yeah, really cool. Um, and yeah, so they have like a whole cadre of people who are here to meet Kaylin.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Um and the worst kept secret in the entire universe, which is that there's a dragon. They've now just paraded it by hundreds of people.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Yeah, yeah. I guess word is out. Um, notably not in attendance, Dan and Dalin, who uh bond over being uh not plot relevant at this point.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, and Dan's just a little bit mopey. Dalin, it seems like this could be a bit more of a thing.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Yeah, Dan is like, I kind of wish I were there, but I support my friend. Dalin's like, what if we killed him? Yeah, it's like, I was the chosen one. There's like a really bizarre scene where he's like with Eric and he screams, Fuck, and then smashes a pot on a table. It's like Jesus. He's so brooding.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

He's so brooding.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

I mean, Erickson is the killer of joy or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Yeah, he's clearly still on like, you know, team good guys, but yeah, put put him in the back of your your your head for like guys who are gonna turn to the dark side by book two.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Don, where's your where's your dragon? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I do like that they uh get on the lash. That's fun. That's class, listen, classic Dan, man.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Dan's just the best. And uh again, Kyle Hill's uh Ella has a great drinking scene, uh Dan has a great drinking scene. Kyle would be a lot of fun to tie one on with. That's what I gotta say.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

That boy's been out drinking, I know he has. And if he hasn't, he's got a great imagination. Okay, so the meeting with the Dwarven Queen goes badly. Yeah, this was his first attempt at politics.

unknown 48:58

Eh.

SPEAKER_02 48:59

Forgettable. We'll give we'll give him another try the next time.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

I okay, I'll just go.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

So I get where the queen's coming from. It's sort of like a pretty ambitious plan they have to fight the empire and uh a teenager with a small dragon.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

He had a dragon the size of a schnitzel what the what word, what fucking dog was I trying to say? Schnauzer. Schnitzel. Yeah, all I could think of was schnitzel.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Um dragon's the size of a schnitzel. What are you gonna do with that thing?

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Also, we forgot to mention Dan and Dalin were drinking Wyrmblood.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

Oh my god, yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, it's the N World Everclear.

SPEAKER_02 49:37

Uh okay, back to Dwarf Town. Uh I think in all of the like chosen one speeches that I've read, like this is probably on the tier of like Adeline in the Sprin castle. This is this is like upper tier for me. Oh, you liked this one? I did. I did. I thought I thought it felt pretty good. It I mean, it has to be cheesy, it has to be this like rallying cry. But it was more just like I'm a little pissed off.

SPEAKER_01 50:09

It was interesting that like I I agree. I don't think the speech was bad, but it it was interesting that Cajo, like, once we get away from that scene, he he did want us to think of it as like a kind of outburst. Yeah, I he's like embarrassed by it.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Yeah, if you imagine like yes, fucking 18-year-old kind of shouting at you know, maybe shouting wasn't the answer, but yeah, but it turns out, I mean, it turns out one, it didn't really matter that much, but it also stuck with them enough that when real danger presents itself, uh, they rally.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Maybe the queen was trying to fuck with him. So I'm just gonna add Haman on this guy like crazy and see how he goes.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

You're not gonna you're not gonna just get hand it over to him, yeah. No, but him is Schnitzel dog thing, but I was surprised by the post-speech downtime of like his training arc with the crowd of people and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

That was interesting. Yeah. Um so much training, man. Just a lot of what's your favorite swords? I don't know. Mine? Felonseer, because that's um the reading path we're on. Wrong. What is it? Dog bounce through the rushes? Patient wolf. That's my favorite. We definitely could do a two truths and a lie with uh sword sword form names.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

I've the ones I wrote down, at least from this part, were Patient Wolf, Crouching Bear, Burning Winds, and Svidaria.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

Which one is not like the other.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Svidaria is the other uh reading order. Right. Um time to say that this is such a wheel of time thing. No, it's never time for it. Moving on. Yeah. Uh so Arthur Bryan drops by Kalen's bedroom. Kind of not appropriate, but whatever. Um, to try to make amends after he got uh lit up by the Dwarven Queen. And uh Kalen says You're not my dad. Yeah. I hear your apology, and I'm responding with no thank you.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

I I respect him for sticking to his petty teenage guns, man.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

It is it feels like a thing that would be tedious in a book like this, but at the same time, his whole family died, and he's been on a pretty fucking crazy quest across the country. And I can't really expect an eight eighteen-year-old to be uh diplomatic at all times here.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

Yeah. Getting thrust into your first public speaking engagement without having any prep is not fun.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Yeah, that was a tough one. Um, and that's pretty much it before uh the final sequence here.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Yeah, yeah. Final sequence, I I did have like kind of the countdown in my head of like now that you've started parading this dragon around, when does the assassination attempt happen? Yeah, and it wasn't actually because of that, it was more of a coordinated effort across cities. But yep, we get a little, we get there's not much of it in this book. There's uh there's a little bit, but this was our first villain malpractice, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

Are you talking about the talking assassins? I am okay. Yeah, they got you can't talk, you just gotta do the job. Just do the job, man. Do the job, man. Yeah, it's just uh that that's uh put that in the fantasy trope bucket. Assassins who cannot assassinate.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

I'm gonna kill you so good.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Hey, puppet.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

You like to have a little fun.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

He's just a little one. Yeah, that was bad. Um and then he bazook is them with magic.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Yeah, yeah, he's he's gotten real good at fighting. I'll give him again. He's doing well.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

No, yeah, no, he is a tough out, but he's a lot tougher if you talk to him and tell him that you're gonna kill him.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

Yeah, so give him plenty of time.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Um yeah, um, and it's like a whole ass. This is not just uh trying to kill Kalen. There are a bunch of people in the palace.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

So yep. And he he does also save the dwarven queen, Kira.

SPEAKER_01 54:21

Ooh, I'm blushing. Dude, Kalen got a little nosebleed going on there. Yeah. Um interesting decision from Kyle, but it is what it is, man. I mean, you gotta give the teenager something to look forward to. Hey, if you're ever nervous public speaking, just imagine the dwarf and queen naked. They're not at eye height. You have to look somewhere. Look at my eyes. Are you looking at my eyes? I'm pretty sure. Um, yeah, that's about it. Okay, meets up at the gang and they decide they need to go to the king.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Yeah, well, I'm curious your thoughts on this like big fight sequence. This is his first like large-scale battle that we've seen.

SPEAKER_01 55:07

I was having a great time. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

Me too. I yeah, I thought it I was a little worried because it started a bit slow, like when they first get up to the city, and it's it was more of like describing the scene, first actually feeling fairly like emotionally connected to it. It was like very passive, and then it just gets he just goes into it and he pulls off, I think, very Gwen-esque. Like, damn, I'm I'm in this fight. This was fun.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

Yeah, and it gets pretty nasty in a fun way once the fade shows up. Like, I think things got ratcheted up a little bit, which I appreciated. Um it's also I mean, we'll talk about it, but I mean, I I imagine a lot of readers saw this coming that this is uh dragon fire time, but yeah, but still like a very nice way to have Valeris uh find his fire for the first time. So I thought it was very good. It was very fun. And it's like a good uh clearing the decks. We get our you know, the fade kind of was one of the two villains for this whole book. Um we got bigger, badder things to deal with.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

Yeah, and now we know how to kill a fade.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

There gotta be other ways to kill fades, right? That's my question.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

I think there are, but it's a spoiler for the fall that I don't want to talk about yet.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

Yes, yeah. I'm I'm interested to see one, how many fades are there? Two, how exactly are they made? I want to see that. Three, there's gotta be some other way to kill them besides uh dragon fire, right? And four, what is this connection to this fallen god? Yeah, the fallen god, man. I do not like to look at glossaries um when I'm reading because I made this mistake with uh Black Prism. If you read the glossaries in those books, it spoils like half the series.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

Yeah. Sanderson was kind of like that, like it would spoil the book. He was pretty good about not going too far forward with like the magic description in the back, but I didn't know about Brent Weeks.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

It's yeah, yeah. It's almost like I don't even want to say what is in it, because I think even just alluding to it, like, well, that's a shame fuck up someone's experience with those books. But yeah, yeah. So now I feel like I have to stay away. And it because I wanted to look and see if there was stuff about the gods while I was reading. I was like, I don't know. I don't even want to know like how real these fuckers are. Um back later. So I've been avoiding the yeah, very excited about this uh traitor god.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

Oh, but actual shout out to the wiki. Um the Sun Eater wiki, surprisingly, was very sparse our whole time reading it.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Uh that was the only one character in that book.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

Yeah, true. But uh this one actually has a great chapter-by-chapter plot summary that I went back and looked at.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

Kaiho looking out for fans.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

Or whatever person with a decent amount of time on their hands wrote that. Good job.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

I credit CEOs. I do not credit workers. No, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

Why they deserve a 350 to one pay ratio.

SPEAKER_01 58:19

Bill Gates invented windows. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_02 58:22

Um I guess a couple of funny things coming out of this fight. I mean, obviously, yeah. The climax was awesome. We killed the fade. Uh Dan leaving his lightning scar for the babes. Peak.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

On brand. That was peak. No question. That was great. Dan. I know exactly who this boy is at this point. What I want to know. Surely he's gonna have a shtick, right? Wrist is the mage, Caelan's Dragon Rider. What is Dan's little quirk gonna be? What's what spells he gonna be casting?

SPEAKER_02 58:57

I think he apprentices with the elves and learns to be a really even better ranger.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

What if he's like one of those D D classes that gets better at fighting the more drunk they get?

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Oh, like it. Oh my god, that'd be so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

Yeah, that's like a there's like a monk subclass is you have to get drunk and then fight. Yeah, tavern brawler. In Dota, it's brewmaster. Yeah, yeah. Kyle just keeps fucking ripping off Dota. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

Um, I feel like we're kind of at the end here.

SPEAKER_02 59:33

I guess the one thing we're not certain on it here, but let's talk about his son, the son of King Arthur.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Um, I got my questions about this boy.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

Yeah, I mean, he by the way, he was the third person on my list of potential betrayers, obviously. We don't know much about him. We don't really get a lot of conversation in the initial hours, I guess, when he becomes king. He seems competent. He gives a nice speech. Yeah. Maybe a little too polished.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Not sad enough. A little Erica Kirk situation.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Yeah, but also like he's trying to be strong for his papa and his country.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Yeah, you know, just what we got at the end is like he might be good. Then again, he might not. I don't know. That just like set off all kinds of uh alarms uh in my brain as a reader.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

It will be right on the trope highway for him to be, you know, the the queen is manipulating him in the background, blah, blah, blah. But we could subvert expectations, and he's from a loving family, just like uh Kaylin.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Got a fat ass just like his dad, also nice. Handsome, yeah. He's a handsome boy. Is he handsome? He must be handsome. No chance he's not handsome.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:51

He's handsome.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Yeah. Okay. I kind of think that's the end of the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

Yeah, I mean, we're left on like a little plot cliff. We already talked about wrists and Ella, but um, the cliffhanger is that the the Imperial soldiers are now about to attack. They've given up their blockade, and with them is the Dragon Guard.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:14

So here's my question going into book two. What is this series even about, man? What's the larger conflict? Because we I I think it's just, yeah, it could be a story of it could be a Star Wars y resistance story, but we got a traitor god.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:31

We have a traitor god, we have an evil emperor. I mean, the evil emperor alone is a big enough storyline that it could take three books to get to another. Um but then I I do think like the gods are the next level up. Are we gonna find like a whole nest of dragon eggs? There's a couple ways. We could get into like dragon warrior conflicts, we could get into god conflict.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:59

We could just have corrupt men. I don't know, man. I can't imagine we're gonna continue with only one friendly dragon. I guess they could convert the other dragon riders, but I feel like we're gonna have to find some more.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:11

I'm really curious about the dragon guard. Like, are they all also a thousand years old? Are these new recruits? How does this work?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

That's interesting. Yeah. Well, they could be because they can all use the spark, so I guess the spark means you basically don't die. Um maybe that's maybe that's what we do with Dan. Maybe we send him on a quest to find more dragons because he's not immediately useful.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Or do you think like Aesun is gonna convince a few of the dragon guard to betray the Empire?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

Yeah, very possible. Valeris survives the series, yes or no? Gun to your head. No. I'm going no. Cahil's shown he's willing to kill some fuckers.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

He's willing to kill him, and he's also shown that it's not like is it in fourth wing it's like instant death? Like if your dragon dies. I have no idea. Not that we need to compare these two series, but it's only in a dragon series I've read in the last one.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

He's ripping off fourth wing. Yeah, it's topic, guy. Dota and fourth wing.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:16

No, but I was like, he's he's shown us a path where you can still use magic, you can still fight if your dragon dies. And I think he might get so powerful that he could survive it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:27

That's interesting. I wonder if I wonder if Asen had the spark before becoming a dragon rider, or if you get to keep the spark even if your dragon dies.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:37

Yeah, and I'm a little unclear how people get the spark. So that'd be nice to clear up.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

You can't look smacks your way into having sparks. Clavicular. Dragon rider. Clavicular spark maxes weaves air and fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

Um, but no, I'm I'm pumped. We we have a nice cliffhanger. We know there's gonna be some spicy plot. Um, I guess I mean we're scarred from Hadrian, but time skip or no time skip?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Nah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:09

Yeah, I think we're straight in.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

Straight in, baby. That'd be weird. Nah, there's too much that needs to offer now. Maybe like a couple months or whatever, like let wrist be in magic school for a while and then check back in. But um, nah, this isn't gonna be uh a 400-year time skip, I would guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

No, that would be wild. But uh I guess speaking of time skips, just for the listener's sake, we are not jumping straight into book two of the series. We are jumping into the novella, which we talked about earlier, but just to give you a heads up.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:40

Yeah. Um, one ep on that. I bet it'll come out a week after this one, if I had to guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

We're very on pace right now. We're just gonna keep crushing this.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

We're kind of killing it, dude. Doing a podcast about books you like is insane.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:55

And also that are 450 pages or 90.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

And have no thoughts on communism. Man. Yet. Yet. Oh my god, that would be nuts. Okay. Well, we're not gonna talk about that. Uh, any parting thoughts on Blood and Fire?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

No, I'm just impressed by our ability to always record for 65 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

It is weird every time I look it up. Yeah. When I think we're going long, it goes an hour 10. Short, it's still this length. So okay. Uh, all in all, great read. Good time. Check it out. You probably already have, but if you haven't.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:35

I can't imagine someone putting this down. So keep reading with us. Shoot us a note, let us know what you think. We're excited to be in a new community of readers.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

So uh hopefully like I'm scared because uh this was the book that everyone said wasn't as good, which I always like. And then now we're getting into the books everyone loves, and that's a surefire I'm gonna be weirdly critical. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:05

But it's going to be great. It's going to be great.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:08

Um okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

Yeah, I was trying to think. No, no. By book two, we'll have gone to fish in Vegas. So we're going to do a bonus review of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:19

Whether you like it or not, if you're listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

For those of you who loved our Red Wall plus Goose at MSG episode, man, are you going to love the fall plus sphere? That's definitely our highest performing. Yeah. In some ways. Um, okay, and yeah, thank you again to our corporate sponsors. Like, we could not do this without you guys. Um, thank you so much for all the money and um everything else you do for us. So um on that note, um Dracaris.