Book Two is Better
A fantasy readthrough podcast with Avery and Travis. Bug us on Reddit/Twitter @BookTwoIsBetter, or email us everything you love or hate at booktwoisbetter@gmail.com
Book Two is Better
The Ice by Ryan Cahill
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Pour out a shot of elder fire, throw on your heartglass jumpsuit, and strap yourself in for a bumpy ride on the weather druid express. We're heading straight to ice town, baby -- and it's a family affair!
We will never fully understand why Aeson chose to bring his two precious sons on this treacherous adventure, but we're always happy to get a book version of the movie K2! This comes in at a close second in our ranking of favorite "ice" novels on B2IB, just behind Moorcock's Schooner.
We're off to Empires and Dust next! Follow along and send us your thoughts or life updates at booktwoisbetter@gmail.com, or on Reddit/Discord @booktwoisbetter.
Quail eggs. I'm putting a I want to put that out there. I'm gonna mention quail eggs later and the fact that you used to be able to buy them from a magazine.
SPEAKER_01What what sort of thing is? Could you buy them a duckdew? Is this like a underwear or Ligma thing that you're trying to do? No. Okay.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna do it because I don't know what the joke is. What's duckdo?
SPEAKER_01Quack.
SPEAKER_00Is that a new one? I learned that I learned that one. I don't think that was a quack sound at all. It's really good. Well, what if losers were big and gentlemen?
SPEAKER_02Um today.
SPEAKER_00It's like our 40th episode. And guess what? We're now gonna start saying right up front what we're talking about. The ice, Ryan Cahill, novella three after book three. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02And you know what? We're gonna talk about it when we're good and goddamn ready. Because right now we want to hang out. Yeah, but do something.
SPEAKER_00How are we gonna make an hour and a half episode without coming up with a really long bit that we did?
SPEAKER_02We'll read one quote per page of this hundred-page book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, we'll get there. But um we're gonna start with uh a kind of ESPN morning show style hot takes segment called Fantasy Hot Takes. They didn't think that shows that. Uh okay. So we'll trade off. You do one, I do one, and then uh we uh we spar in the in the in the court of debate.
SPEAKER_02Much like our virtual public square. You're gonna attack me with magic so I can't uh can't finish the case. Um we're fully referencing books nobody's read because it hasn't actually been reading.
SPEAKER_00What the fuck are you talking about, man? Also spoilers for unnamed book. Um okay. Do you hey you're the guest. Yeah. It's my show.
SPEAKER_02You want to start?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Apparently it is your show because someone reached out for an ad and was like, hey Avery, I'd like to advertise on your show. Let me know if there's somebody else that works in this company. Fuck you. Cable doesn't even check this email.
SPEAKER_00Can you ask your dumbass co-host if he's down too?
SPEAKER_02Um here's my hot take. Uh most fantasy series should not invent their own language because authors aren't smart enough.
SPEAKER_00You had me in the first half. And then you lost me with the smart. Why doesn't why is it a smartness thing? I'm sure they could do it if they applied themselves.
SPEAKER_02Maybe. I actually think Kyle's doing a pretty good job with whatever old dragon is in this book. I forget what it's actually called. The old tongue. He speaks fluent old dragon.
SPEAKER_00Um That's all it is. Is it just the old tongue?
SPEAKER_02It's the old tongue, but it's specifically what you whisper to your dragon when you think nobody else is listening.
SPEAKER_00You are my soulkin. I love you more than anyone here. I don't care if they die. Um okay. My question for you is do you just not like the made-up languages? It's like tedious. It has nothing to do with whether they're smart enough.
SPEAKER_02I think I have two main problems with it. One is that usually they're not actually fleshed out enough to be interesting or impressive. Like they're added in bits, but you don't actually get like a full vocabulary. You don't get a full you say the same like 10 phrases over and over, or it's like in um um when Adrian speaks Japanese.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well that was good.
SPEAKER_02Uh but usually, usually I think they don't commit to the bigger. Do you mean Nipponese? Sorry, Nipponese.
SPEAKER_00There's no Japanese in that book at all.
SPEAKER_02Excuse me. Um so I think that's one part of it. And then I think it can be it can kind of take you out of the immersion when a lot I I feel like sometimes authors kind of have this like half-assed attempt. Like I think um Eilington's rough use of Irish, like poorly done, is a good example of that. Yeah. Where it's like, this is just kind of jarring and I recognize some of the words, but you're not really doing it well. So it's actually like pulling me out of this fantasy world because you just have modern Irish dialect in here.
SPEAKER_00I think there I think this is like a somewhat related point. Um I I mean, I think a lot of the time when people are in either inventing languages or just, you know, foreign words for things that we know, it's supposed to create a sense of place or immersion or whatever. And if it's done badly, I find it has the exact opposite effect. Like I'm wrapping up Red Rising, and I can't remember what the word they use is for light bulbs, but it's like glow lamp bulbs, round glow rounds or something. It's like we I don't know, man. We could just in this world have the same word for light bulb. It doesn't have to be hollow lamp or whatever. Yeah. I hate qubits, Steve. Um Yeah, and sometimes it feels like that. It's like this isn't really helping me. This is, if anything, chafing me a little a little bit. Like I don't feel like I'm on Mars because we have hollow lamps instead of light bulbs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think just wrapping it up, it's like not everyone, not every author needs to be like Tolkien. Like everyone points to Tolkien, like he built like elvish grammar before he even wrote the books. Like he would really want to he wrote the books to have an excuse to put in his like new language system. And it's like you don't it doesn't need to be there. Like I don't need to have that to enjoy my fantasy book.
SPEAKER_00Nah, he's he's like the author equivalent of a guy who has like a really complex model train in his basement. That doesn't mean you need to make a model train too.
SPEAKER_02It's like you like this hot guy Legolas, but he's just gonna say a bunch of elvish.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I'm gonna go with one that has come up many times in our coverage of Cahill. Cutting 90% of fight scenes would improve 90% of fantasy books. Thoughts.
SPEAKER_01I don't disagree.
SPEAKER_02Um I think I think fights should be used to either dramatically progress the plot or to show a new mechanic in fantasy. And when I think about some of the more tedious like fights in our recent series that we read, like John Gwen, where they're just having another ambush in the woods every 34 pages, or Hadrian when they're like fighting in an underground tunnel system that makes no sense, just like stabbing people. Yeah, just it loses its Yeah, it loses the novelty for me, and I'm not like turned on by the gore of it. Just like, ooh, punched another guy, sliced another guy, cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's I don't know. I wonder if it's like somewhat related to people trying to translate film into books. Yeah. Because you know, if you have three big fight scenes in a 90-minute movie, that is a decent amount of the movie, but it's also only 20 minutes. Um but having 200 pages of fight scenes in a 600-page book is like comparatively much more taxing on the reader. Um and I think more often than not, when I'm reading these scenes, like one, they're fighting against people I don't know. And two, there's no real risk of anyone I care about dying. So I don't really know why it's there other than just the action of it. But like the good, you know, I feel like the good ones are one, like you said, we see something new, new magic, new threat, whatever that's gonna have implications for later. You've got characters you know on both sides, that's the best version. Oh, yeah. Um or in like a fun anime kind of way, it's like a problem-solving exercise where it's like you get to see your favorite character coming up with some clever way of defeating an enemy. That's like a that's a Sanderson thing, usually.
SPEAKER_02No, I I think that's a that's a good balance take. Um But then like the ones that that do well in one of those three buckets or even combining all three, like those are epic. Those stay with you, those get you like fired up. But I think you're just like, do I need to read another 10 pages of Carathlin fights? Keats getting knocked out and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. And maybe that's just because I we read a lot of fantasy recently. It might be.
SPEAKER_02Like I'm more interested in I'm more interested in learning like druidic lore, you know, in in Cahill right now than I am like Dane charging his way through a battle.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Give me the Wikipedia. I just want the straight lore into my eyeballs. Yeah. Okay. Give me another. Give me another hot take.
SPEAKER_02I think a lot of series should be a standalone novel or short stories.
SPEAKER_01Really? Yeah. I'm gonna can I can I pause to offer one of my hot takes?
SPEAKER_00Do it. Uh fantasy books aren't long enough. Good. We're on opposite sides here. I think your take here's my here's my response to your take. I don't think that's a hot take. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Yeah. And I'm not even saying you're wrong. You're probably right.
SPEAKER_01But here's my point.
SPEAKER_02Did we need books seven through ten of the Wheel of Time?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Why?
SPEAKER_00Well, spoilers, I can't tell you that. Some really good naive stuff in there. Um well, okay. I think I think that's a straw man. I think pointing at a 14-book series and saying it could have been a little shorter is a bad faith argument. That one could have been shorter. You're right about that one. But especially one that I haven't actually read.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00It's but even then, dude, even then, yes, I really did not enjoy large stretches of the Wheel of Time. It's still my favorite reading experience ever, largely because of the length. It it was like finishing that was like closing this book on a part of my whole life. And there was something very satisfying about being like, damn, I just kind of that was kind of the three years I spent reading the Wheel of Time. Like, I can't believe it's over. Um, and I wouldn't have gotten that feeling if it were a five-book series.
SPEAKER_02So here's like a nuanced sub-argument for me, some rare Sanderson criticism out of these lips is sometimes my beef with this is that big chunks of a novel feel like set up for future series or novellas or future, you know, second eras of novels. Something about like rhythm of war, you know, how like half the book is flashbacks or kind of like character intros that are really setting up for maybe future cycles of the same series, but don't progress the direction of like. And I think it a lot of people call Sanderson like the Cosmere, like the marvel of fantasy, right? And it's that same thing where it's like, look, Doctor Doom is here for 20 pages, like he's gonna be sick in three movies.
SPEAKER_00Doug Shiddo.
SPEAKER_02And I'm like, this hasn't like focus. Focus on delivering one excellent novel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think if I'm gonna flesh out my take to be less of just a hot take, it's more of like I think we've alluded to the fact that I wrote a book, so I've like been looking at sending out, and so like I have a better sense than I used to of what you know, agents and publishers are are looking for. And generally speaking, people kind of want stuff that's like, you know, 100, 150,000 words at most. Um but I feel like when I look at the big successful fantasy novels, a lot of them are big and chunky. And I almost think it's like a selling point, you know, for a very specific audience, which is fantasy readers. It's almost like, I don't want to pick up that 200-page book. Give me the fucking doorstopper, baby. I want to see what's going on in that thing. Um and I think that works. Um so I don't know. Like obviously I have no data to back this up. The publishers are almost certainly right. But speaking for myself and probably a lot of a lot of other readers, give me 700, dude. I'm here for it. I don't care.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think that's fair. Uh yeah, when you find the good one, you don't want it to end, right?
SPEAKER_00Um, okay. Do you want to take about Stormlight or a take about medieval fantasy?
SPEAKER_02Stormlight, because I think we're in agreement that their medieval fantasy isn't overdone and there should be more of it. It's okay to write a medieval fantasy.
SPEAKER_00Medieval fantasy is killing it right now. Like we Yeah, I don't know. We don't need more fantasy with people in like swords, dragging Victoria London with fucking sword canes. Like people real still really like medieval fantasy. Okay. Um here's my take. If you think Stormlight is beginner fantasy, you didn't pay attention while you were reading Stormlight thoughts. This is like an antagonistic, this is uh it's a hot take, you know? It's one that's tough for me to blame people.
SPEAKER_02Stormlight was my beginning fantasy. Like in COVID, I'd made the most basic basic bitch decision to reread Harry Potter, and then I read Stormlight, and I was like, wow, fantasy's great. And now I'm a fucking nerd doing a podcast five years later.
SPEAKER_00Can I can I add some color for the listener? When I say beginner fantasy, I mean there's like a common perspective mostly on Reddit that it's like, okay, like you can check out Storm Stormlight, but like then you then you can go on to the real shit, maybe with real lore. Aaron Powell Then you can read Malazan and hate yourself. Yes, Malazan is harder to read than Stormlight. I completely agree with you there.
SPEAKER_02I I I hear your take. Like one of the ways I'd think about it is actually like Malazan, which requires like a 200-page or 200-slide deck in a podcast to fully actually understand what you're reading for a thousand pages, versus like Pyreneese, which has no like huge lore or history and is just like a very captivating read. And I don't think one's like better than the other in any way. You know, you can get just as much done in 200 pages with no big fancy words or complex characters. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think I think this Sanderson thing is weird because like he writes very, very simply. Um, it's pretty PG for a lot of it. His jokes stink. Sorry, Sanderson. Love you. Um And he does a really good job of hiding his lore. Yeah. The books are incredibly ext. If you just want the plot to figure out what's going to happen to Kaladin, you can absolutely read the book that way. If you are a psychopath and want to talk about like the aethers and the shards and like the fact that there are somehow dragons in that series, that stuff's there. And it's fascinating how many people, like most people, when you read the series, like the sleep who are the sleepless? What are you talking about? So it's like you do kind of have to dig, but once you do dig, there's as much like lore and weird shit in those books as anything. It's just Yeah. He's very clever at hiding it because he doesn't I don't think he wants it to be essential. I think increasingly he's failing at that. Like it's getting to a point where like in for a penny, and for a pound, but um that's my take.
SPEAKER_02I do think you're I actually agree with you. I think there's like an I think he's done a good job designing it as like a intro and expert version of the series. Like yeah, you can read it and just have fun and it's awesome, and there's gonna be a Sander Lanche, whatever. And I think we've had plenty of friends that just read Mistborn and are like, great, I had a good experience. Like, see you later. But then if you're in like the 17th shard wiki and you're like looking up connections between novellas and different books and like mapping it all together, it's really fun, and it is really complicated and impressive that there's like logic that follows the whole universe, except for Sunlit Man, which was a mistake.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah. I don't want to maybe we should do that one for the show. Man running around a tiny sun to tiny planet to stay in a shadow. Physics, dude. Yeah, he really, man. That was his Andy Weir moment, I guess. It really was. I I think we're I'm in agreement on your hot take there, though. Okay. All right. Uh one more for you.
SPEAKER_01Being a good warrior doesn't absolve your sins. All right. Counterpoint. Well, one, I agree.
SPEAKER_00Are books saying that?
SPEAKER_02I think they often are. I think there's often a redemption arc at the end of a character that if it doesn't outright excuse their behavior, like through a kind of celebration of that character after their death, then it just forgets about the past and you're left with like recency bias. So my example here is Yvonne in Cahill. Like Yvonne sold out Beldwar to the dark side and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Never told anyone about it. But but like did one last heroic charge and killed like 10 dwarves. Yeah. And it was given like a hero's funeral, you know, and and like everybody talks about what a great warrior he was.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, counterpoint Kyle made a mistake and just wrote Ivan out of the story because he didn't know what to do with him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's decent too.
SPEAKER_00Which is my theory.
unknownThat's decent.
SPEAKER_02But that's the most recent one that's come to mind where it's like Or The Odyssey by John Homer. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's one too. Yeah. Um Well, I I mean I definitely agree. I definitely agree. I'm just wondering. I'm just wondering which books are sort of putting that forward. I think we've complained about some books, I don't know if they're glorifying violence, but they're not showing the psychological toll it takes on people. Um I think it's just kind of easy breezy killing in a lot of fantasy books, which I don't love.
SPEAKER_02I have a redemption shortcut example, which is Glocta.
SPEAKER_01Glocta. Glockta the torturer. Redemption arc. That's not how I read Glockta. He he gets like a little emotional payoff redemption arc.
SPEAKER_00He he does, but I I wouldn't I wouldn't expect that to like change the reader's mind. Okay, how about this? It didn't change my mind about him. I think he still participated in heyness shit for most of his life. Um and I mean I liked him a lot. Like there are justifications for the horrible things he does, but he still does them. His whole he has like a mantra. He's like, why am I doing this? It's not literally that, but that's like he asks himself that over and over and over. And uh I liked that. Farda. Farda might be one of those guys. Yeah. You're saying people can't change?
SPEAKER_02I'm saying people can't change. I'll give it, I'll give a counterpoint that I remember is uh Broken Earth trilogy, the Essen, the main like one of the main characters, yeah, is just like there's no redemption. There's no real redemption. It's just like, yeah, I've done terrible things. Like this is just miserable.
SPEAKER_00One thing I have thought about a decent amount, and it I don't know, it's something I'm thinking about like as I'm trying to write a little bit more, is that it's quite rare for a fantasy to be a tragedy. Yeah. It's not that everything always ends well, but there's usually a hopeful note to most fantasy series. And I think that's like part of what you're pointing at is that there might be an all is lost moment, but that's not where the book ends. Yep. Um and yeah, and life and in actual tragedies, sometimes people just die and it doesn't get better. Right. And you don't know where you go from there. But goddamn, do fantasy novels never end there.
SPEAKER_02No, and I hear yeah, I think that's a great point. And also like the reckoning for characters that have done very bad things is often like a violence or fight sequence. Like they often like have their ending is kind of neutered by like the consequence of their actions are neutered by like a death, a glorious or like a villainous death. And it's never like everyone just kind of shuns them because they're a bad person. Like, you know, like can we just have a realistic, like, hey, I don't want to be friends with anybody? Where you kind of suck and I don't forgive you.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. I feel like if there were I'm wondering if like that could have been a more interesting direction for like the name of the wind to have taken. Interesting. Because it's not like I don't know, maybe it's going more towards like global cosmic conflict or whatever, but like most of the first book is pretty small, like about a kid in school. Right. And he probably could have pulled off something like that if Quoth had become an actual anti-hero instead of a guy that the author wanted everyone to like and accidentally wrote someone everyone hated. Okay. Do we have time for one more?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, throw it fire in there. Who wants to talk about this book anyway? I do.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't. No, I do a little bit. I very much do. Because then we can talk about the next book, which is awesome. Yeah. See, that's the you know, eat your veggies. Okay. Um okay, I'm gonna go with the silly one and then a high note. Uh people who refuse to read a series until it's finished are stupid and reactionary. That's my that's my version of you saying authors aren't smart enough to invent a language. It's just fucking very mean. I know. All right, I like it. Yeah, fuck those readers. Hot take. Okay. I've seen a lot of people. Granted, this is Reddit, which is pretty much all dumb people, at least the people who post, except for us. Except for us. Um they'll be like, hey, is it when's the when's the last book coming out? I don't I I started Name of the Wind and I started Game of Thrones, and they're not done, so I'm not going to support this author. Brother, almost every series gets finished. And if you don't want a series to get finished, you know what you should do? Don't buy the book. That's how you make sure a series doesn't get finished is not fucking supporting the author. Just read it. Also, who fucking cares if it doesn't get finished? What you've got a lot of time in your life to read many books, give it a shot. You know what? You also might hate the book and not want to finish the series, period.
SPEAKER_02The Venn diagram of those people and the people who ask for like in-depth reviews of whether this book is worth it for them to read when they bought a copy or something is a circle.
SPEAKER_00I hate that. It has to stop. You can't go to the Red Rising sub and ask if you should read Red Rising. These are fans who joined a fan community. Of course they want you to read the book. Except I love the people who are like, no, you shouldn't. Honestly, man, not that good. I just I like the memes. I don't know. And I think people people are like so dramatic. Yeah. So what if a series doesn't end? Are you losing sleep over it? Go get a job, dude. Journey before destination. Yeah. Journey before destination, man. Pain before pleasure. Like I love Stormline. If he didn't finish it, I'd be bummed, but there are a lot of books out there, man.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I enjoyed my three books a wheel of time. I don't really care what happens anymore.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think my related take is that people way the way overreacted to the bad ending of Game of Thrones.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Folks, we got like four or five really good seasons.
SPEAKER_02And also when you show it to a new person these days, like um Justin's wife Diane, like she watched it for the first time. It's like it was she had a great time, you know? When you weren't waiting on the edge of your seat for like a year, episode by episode, and then getting cucked. Like when you're just waiting 18 months and then yeah. Yeah. When you're binging and meeting popcorn in like a weekend, it's like, yeah, it's great.
SPEAKER_00Awesome time. Yeah. That that does that was Kathy's response was like she saw it way later. She's like, oh, like people really hated that. I was like, yeah. She's like, yeah, she didn't think the ending was that great, but it's not like I'm going to find George R.R. Martin in Santa Fe and stab him. Like he's he's easy to find. He's got the biggest, most illegal house there. Yeah. Zoning has no power over George Ronald Ronald Martin. Do we ever figure out if R R is for Tolkien? Or it's just a happy accident?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. That's a good question.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Never never read Aswayf, so not on me. Waiting for the series to get finished. No, I just don't care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now I know the ending. I saw the show. It sucks. Okay. Um, ladies and gentlemen, shall we talk about the ice? Welcome to Miami, bitches. It's hot. We got Centaurus. We got dragons. And we'll do this. This is our persona midsummer break beach episode where we get to see everyone in bikinis. Hello. You know what I'm talking about, Travis. It's the chapter you play when the wife isn't home. That chapter among many other chapters. Okay. What do we want to do with the ice? Our options are kind of vaguely talk about how we feel about it or just do the summary to center ourselves. Let's do the summary and people will figure out how we feel about it along the way. Okay, cool. Can you um can you give me some like zoo style sounds? Summary of The Ice by Ryan Cahill. The ice is the story of a man who will do absolutely anything to protect his children, except leave them at home during a suicide mission to the North Pole. The novella follows Asen, Dalin, and Eric on their quest to find a dragon egg in the treacherous Arctic lands of Valesia. The ice opens with a meet the crew sequence that has to set some sort of record for the greatest number of characters introduced in the fewest number of pages. Among the more notable crew members are a woman with severe PTSD from a deadly vacation in Valetia, a bunch of cellswords, and a mage Asen knew from his time in the Order, and an Elven Crafts Mage, names excluded because I'm refusing to remember them as an act of protest. After a relatively uneventful cruise to the shores of Valesia, Asen and Co. set out on foot to carry out Operation Walkaround until we stumble into a dragon egg. As if in response to my complaints about the Grassland sequence in Book 2, Kyle spends most of the novella sending wave after endless wave of previously unknown beasts out to kill Asen and his darling sons. The monsters include ice worms, ice bears, ice ghosts, ice centaurs, saber-toothed tigers of the ice variety, and eventually a pretty friendly druid named Ahmedkai. Amitkai is a seer druid who lives among the ice centaurs known as the Dakar, then he tells Asen that he foresaw his coming, which does make me wonder why he didn't ask the ice centaurs to stop murdering Asen's people as they marched across the continent. After a bit of time in the lower corner, Ahmad Kai and the dragon Kokulkan gift Asen with the dragon egg that may or may not hatch at some point in the next thousand years. Fingers crossed. The gang slips back across the ice to their ship, aptly named the Blood Wake, and they find that most of the remaining crew has been killed by those goddamn ice centaurs. Asen's mercenaries decide to put the cell in cellsword by selling him out to the Empire on account of all the murdering the friendly searcher had failed to prevent. The Blood Wake is intercepted by who else, Farta, who is everywhere at all times. Asen escapes after getting a few more crew members killed, and he returns home with his children and the Valeris egg completely intact. Thank God we didn't know any of the 100 crew members who died, or this book would have been really sad at the end. Kukulkan, the thousand-year-old dragon who gives gifts. What a fucking book. That's my kind of guy. I got rocks. That's my kind of guy.
SPEAKER_02You also forgot about sea snakes. One more uh animal villain that kills people in this. Fuck.
SPEAKER_00Can't believe you didn't write that down. I think I got them mixed up with ice worms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also think the ghosts, weren't the ghosts just the Dakar? Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Except for ghosts. They're silent but deadly. Felt ghosty.
SPEAKER_02Um what do you think of this parenting novel?
SPEAKER_01That feels like a loaded question.
SPEAKER_00You know I didn't like the parenting stuff. Don't ask me shit, you know the answer to.
SPEAKER_02It's tough because Kyle's one of the nicest guys I ever met, and he has a beautiful family.
SPEAKER_00But I feel like he loves his kids so much.
SPEAKER_02He loves his kids so goddamn much, and it's beautiful, and I respect the hell out of that. But he definitely like knew he was having kids and wrote this book as a need to be. Did you do a timeline check? Was this pre- or post?
SPEAKER_00You know, I I've got no idea, actually. That's a great question. It doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter. Because for the purposes of this conversation, he either was a father or was about to be a father when he wrote this. We're not doing any additional research.
SPEAKER_01I man, I have a lot of thoughts. Okay. I'm gonna start I'm gonna start writing level.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Okay. The novellas are weird because it's not a short story where you're like Flannery O'Connor and you're like, I got 30 pages to introduce you to someone and show you an important moment in their life. We know Asen. We know most of these people. And that is the assumption, right? Like that Kyle's making, you've read these books. However, it still felt too quick. I think a lot of the emotion in this book felt outsized and a bit rushed. I just felt like from the moment we saw Asen, he was like, My dead dragon, my dead wife, my boys can't die. I gotta save the planet. Oh my God, I promise you I will keep you safe. And it was just like scalding hot emotion from the jump. And I get why that would happen in a short thing, but I still think it should have been something that he built towards, not started from page one. Thoughts.
SPEAKER_02I agree. I think the feelings in this book are presented on a platter and they're very external and quote-driven. Like this book is chock full of it feels like quotes he was experimenting with as an author to try to describe different emotions. Like grief has seven different paragraphs, all with their own fancy quotes about, you know, tears are one thing, tears of grief come from a well deep within, you know, it's that kind of stuff. But it's all kind of exposition through character dialogue. And I don't think you uh yeah, it doesn't feel as natural as it could be. Um there's so many heart to hearts, which so many heart to hearts, but then also like the fear stuff. Like the first conversation you have with someone about Falacia is from the Millari PTSD chick, and she's like her opening line is like, Have you seen a man hold his innards in his own hands? It's like, okay. Well, well, yeah, I have. I'm 400 years old, survived the fall. So it does it feels like he immediately frames how he wants the reader's emotional state to be and how he wants to interpret everything, and it's just kind of like, oh, it took took a little bit of the mystery out of it. Compared maybe to the fall, which is unfair to compare to because we know characters in this versus those are all like new characters, but I feel like the fall was very much like we're seeing the response the characters have to events happening, and this was characters telling us how they feel about things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, maybe it is some some version of the old and very annoying show but don't tell conversation. Exactly. And I I don't know, it's something that I like a lot about this series, right? That people talk to each other about their feelings, the whole mental health conversation we had. But sometimes on a writing level, if you are having especially in this book, which is so short, when you have like kind of ten heart to hearts that start with the the book, it can feel like a little bit too much, and you might need to withhold some things from the reader for the uh the sake of art or whatever. And also your point's valid. Why the fuck are you taking your kids on this trip? That just didn't make any sense. Well I know that the reason is they're adults. Yes. But that goes against the other re other thing, which is I must protect my kids. Right. It's like, well, they they're they're good. They're they're grown. You don't need to it's not like you got a little baby chicken and you gotta keep it alive, if that's how people feel about baby chickens.
SPEAKER_02And also knowing what we know about the the larger universes, like he could have sent his sons on a variety of different missions across the continent at this time.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of people. Somebody's gotta be sending letters. Plus, like they're warriors, but they're not like I don't know.
SPEAKER_02They're not verma who can. They don't have the spark. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How do they not have the spark? They should have the spark.
SPEAKER_02Something's gonna happen. I feel like, you know, we well, we'll get in. They're gonna make a knights or some shit. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Um so let's jump in.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's jump. Yeah, you know what? Let's jump in. Yeah. Um, I mean, goddamn, do we get we get we get on the road quick.
SPEAKER_02Cameo city, King Arthur's here.
SPEAKER_00King Arthur, goddamn, I miss him. God damn, is he a lot cooler than his kid? Belina Luna's here. Everybody's here. The classic Belina, she comes in, sexually harasses someone, leaves. Good job. Um, she's gotta stop. It's inappropriate what she does to people. It's wild. Why are all these people here? That was so unnecessary. She needs to stop telling people she will have sex with them. It's not a way to be. And Dane. Good old Dane action.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, yeah, we get everybody here.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, this is fun. I was so excited to see Arthur though.
SPEAKER_02I love some of Acein's early parenting statements. I know we just kind of shit on them, but the first one where he's like, I taught my sons how to kill efficiently. Why don't they love me? It's just like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_00I gave you everything. Sword lessons, 5 a.m. every day. Come on. They never slept at home once in their lives. You know what blew my mind? I texted you about this, so you do know. Man, I thought Eric was older than Dalin. Yeah, isn't that fun? Because Dalin's the one we see fucking up all the time, and Eric is just kind of like a stoic soldier. I know. Who lost his mind in the desert, but alas, who didn't? Preview, book four, Dalin is way cooler. Really? Yep. Oh, I'm so excited for that. This did make me like okay. Talk about some parenting stuff I loved. It was really cool seeing Asen like kind of observe and think about his kids. Like I liked seeing someone who knew them so well get getting the outside perspective of them and talking about like how like Don's very intense and like works super hard at the sword, and he felt like Eric would never probably be on his level. He's like, Eric's a fun guy, man. He didn't got that dog in him.
SPEAKER_02It's amazing how well he did in book one capturing those characters in one like bar sequence. Like Eric throwing axes at the pub, man. Like that's such an iconic scene to stay as a consistent thread through all these novels. I don't know. It's it's well it's well done by Kaha.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's like one of the real joys of multi-P of V thing, is like being with a character and then you pivot and someone else is looking at them and it's like, oh interesting. I didn't thought of them that way. Like it's it's really hard to do, but but lovely when you get it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and I did think the first few scenes here about like fatherhood and loss were good. Yeah. Although to our point, like it came on abruptly. But then it's more just a repetition and not really feeling like we got something different throughout. But uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And on a related note, I mean there's some sweet moments where they're talking about their mom. Like that's a character who, as we've joked about, has really taken a backseat to the dead dragon. But um we did get to think more a bit, you know. Like Eric and Dolin, right? Like that's that's horrible for them. Like they aren't experiencing eternal magical torment like Asen is, but um, you know, sweet moments with the whole uh the whole Apple thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We don't have time for your sweet moments. We're going off on another adventure. Shitty little boat with for some reason sellswords, even though Asen has thousands of people that would fight with him and die for him. He brings 50 merchants on his boat.
SPEAKER_00What's your price? What's your personal prize tag to go to Valencia on this mission?
SPEAKER_02Well, given that the the woman starts her description with uh I'm gonna continue my quote. They like to skin their prey, hack off limbs, and use them as warnings. They're ghosts, demons of the ice.
SPEAKER_00I I'm out I don't yeah, I don't think the prize exists because they all die. So what am I gonna do? You can't hey if you die in debt, you won. Hey, you you know, you can't spend money in hell.
SPEAKER_02Captain Gala has has a good in all this. She just sails the boat, chills out for a couple weeks, and comes on to the game. I mean, she does send her lover on the trip as a sacrifice, but you know, hey.
SPEAKER_00I like that negotiation was started with a someone went to negotiating school, which is start with a completely unreasonable offer. A la Travis in fantasy football. Hey, we made a really good trade this week. Gonna need full payment up front for this five-month journey. Have you heard of a two-for-one trade in fantasy football? I would imagine most of our listeners You think our well, that's a weird thing, because 99% of our listeners are male. Do you think they play fantasy football? I think so. There's a couple of you in there. Welcome. Def definitely a couple. Yeah. Oh well. Okay.
SPEAKER_02We just got my fantasy draft in Chicago. It was amazing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We were forced to attend a rave. Um which I didn't love. But it was a cool cultural experience. How about that?
SPEAKER_02It was a great weekend, and we made it 30 minutes into the rave. So which was a great decision.
SPEAKER_00Not an exaggeration. No. Really did leave after 30 minutes. That's all good. No. Okay. Uh we're on the we're on the water. We're sailing. Honestly, man, ain't much till we get there. No? I was really confused when so when they disembark, they're like, be back in two moons. Right. And I read that as two nights. Moons have been a little bit more than a big thing. It's a three-day, two-night vacation, baby. It's a month. It's always been a month. Yeah. I figured that out quickly, but at first, like, I don't think it has enough time to go find an egg, man. And you told them to leave if you weren't there. They don't have much of a plan besides following this clearly deranged woman who doesn't want to. That was the crazy part is I'm not knocking them for trying. But just to show up on like a continent, be like, we gotta find a dragon egg. I imagine just like sailing up to North America. Right. All right, gotta be an egg here somewhere. We gotta go. This looks like India to me. I wonder if he thought there would be more dragons. Because when they got the description of Lace, yeah, they were like, there were fucking dragons everywhere, man. You couldn't spit without hitting one of them. Um, which wasn't the case. They're only five. No, certainly not. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But they are big. But anyway. Before we get the dragons, we have to fight off a lot of different attacks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Have you ever have you ever played like an old RPG with a random encounter rate that's way too high?
SPEAKER_02Yes. I mean, it reminds me of like Pokemon when you're trying to walk somewhere fast and you're just constantly giving the fucking heal. I'm poisoned, weedle poisoned me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, retata number 400. Yeah. And I'm just like, I don't want to beat. What happened to Ace in on this journey?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like fucking sea snakes. Oh no. And then 20, 20 people get like their throat slit on watch, which was dramatic. Yeah, see, that one was pretty badass. Yeah. Um, but yeah, and then we get like the Lord of the Rings mountain path sequence. Like K Tumb. There's some funny I don't know. I don't have a ton to say about this, other than they should have brought more healers. Uh crafts mages are really cool.
SPEAKER_00Uh I need all crafts mages in this because we've got this person, and then we got the person who helped complete the sewers and ticketka.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which wasn't as cool as what we got here, but alas, I want to see what they're up to. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But those those are like my big highlights from the early attack sequences here.
SPEAKER_00Can I talk about the Dakar a little bit and their um border enforcement policy? Yes, yes, you may. I think it's I think it's too harsh. What to be able to do? I feel like they're a bit reactionary from the Elven invasion that they won eight million years ago. Yeah, it's probably true. Like just ask at least once. Yeah, what do you do in here?
SPEAKER_02But like you also have druids that know what's up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Ahmed Kai, there's blood on his hands, man. Yeah. He was looking through the magical flock camera.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there were there's some explanations offered here, but certainly not enough. Like Not enough, no. Yeah. It's this passive like non-intervention thing.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, this is just like the classic many problems that you run into when you try to have people see the future. Which is fine. Like, obviously, I don't give it this affected my experience not at all. No. But yeah. It is what it is.
SPEAKER_02Um it's a chaos theory nod in the multiverse. And I understand that because he has a separate quote, which is uh as much fault, your as much your fault as a hurricane and Loria is the fault of a butterfly flapping their wings in Carvos. So I know that Kahill knows the butterfly effect movie.
SPEAKER_00He does know this, yes. Um, unrelated note, I was reading the end of third book of Red Rising. Do you remember him quoting Goodwill Hunting? I don't think so. There's a whole scene where a character hugs Darrow and says, It's not your fault, and he's like, fuck you. And then he's like, get away from don't touch, and then he cries. Stop it. It's not your fault five times in a row.
SPEAKER_02It's true to the true to the film. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So funny. I mean, classic scene. There's nothing wrong with it. Don't put hey, don't if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Put that on my TV watched again. That's maybe don't put it in your book. Yeah, I tried. Did I say that on the pod that I made Kathy watch Goodwill Hunting before the Grateful Dead cover show? Yeah. Somewhat as a somewhat as a prank. She'd never seen it before. I bet that was a put her in a good mood. The other time that I kind of tried to prank her with a sad movie, because she's a crier, was I um put on Grave of the Fireflies and I was like, oh, it's a Ghibli movie. Oh like truly like 20 minutes in. Um I think we had to turn it off because she was like already crying. And she's like, I think I know where this is going and I don't want to watch this.
SPEAKER_02That's what killed our spy family wholesome viewing experience in this household. Is spoiler alert, but the newer season of Spy Family starts with like a horrific war sequence for two episodes. Oh, what the fuck? I'm like, well, this is supposed to be supposed to be cute.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to feel things.
SPEAKER_02We've got them far away.
SPEAKER_00We're really off topic here. So I called them centaurs. I'm aware, listen, centaurs got four four hooved legs. These guys got two. I don't even know. Do they have hooves, man? Why am I so you're really fixated on that?
SPEAKER_02No, I think that I think they're bipedal, just seven feet tall and with black scales everywhere.
SPEAKER_00Big fellas. Yeah. Which they uh they make themselves. And uh stick into themselves like when little Uzi Bird put that diamond in his head.
SPEAKER_02Which got snatched at a concert, I think.
SPEAKER_00That's the grossest thing in the world. Give me your forehead diamond. I don't want to yeah, I don't even want to talk about it. Moving on. It's gross, so gross. Um Okay. So these people have a real strong border policy because the elves at some man, malicious elves in this universe, by the way. These are not like chill. I feel like they're they're always up to shit. They're kind of violent. Everybody's violent, man. That's the truth. Yeah. I mean, that's a little racist of us, but listen, we're just going on what we've been told by every character in this book when they're talking about elves. Um so yes, they are now they've retreated into the ice, they put crazy scales on themselves, and they're like the tenders really of the dragons. Um I guess we do a our little lure corner on the nature of Valisian dragons here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're pretty much uh once they make it through the K2 movie reenactments. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Someone falling off a cliff, snatching that, you know. It's tried and true, man.
SPEAKER_02Clearly a weather druid just throwing storms at them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But actually, my favorite part of this, I have to say before I forget, is like 90 people die in the sequence of their expedition crew, and they make sure to talk about the one guy who rolls his ankle and give him like five sentences.
SPEAKER_00More pages on sacrifice than on the giant people. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02But um, but yeah, then we get Asen face to face with uh Kugulkan, the largest dragon on the king.
SPEAKER_00Big chungus. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Big chungus. Thousand years old, sound like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um so what do we know? One. These guys are less dependent on being bonded to people. Yes. So they said, I g did we know this that dragons needed to be bonded to people to find their fire?
SPEAKER_02Yes. That was a big plot point of book three that you ignored.
SPEAKER_00Really?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02That the god Varen took their fire away because they were too angry.
SPEAKER_00Oh shit, yeah, yeah. They're tempered now by the yeah. Okay. Yeah, when you say it that way, we absolutely knew that and talked about that. Anyways, not so with the Valasian dragons. So uh they got some different god stuff going on, which uh They do. And can you can you answer me this because you've read a little bit of book four? Are we getting into more god stuff? Because I've done it. We definitely are.
SPEAKER_02I'm very excited about that. But what's fascinating to me here is that like I didn't know gods were continent-based, you know? Like No, see, we did know this. No, no, but I know. But like it feels funny to have a universe where gods are only purveyors of like a I am the official god of Dallas Fort Worth.
SPEAKER_00I will not go to Houston. Yeah. I can't.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm the Oceania god. You may you may have forgotten about me all the way over here. It's funny because it's like not really that foreign of a concept when you say it like I'm the god of the water, I am the god of the wind, or whatever. But it's like, I can't leave this land, man.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but apparently they can immigrate. So, you know, they can't.
SPEAKER_00If their people bring them along or something.
SPEAKER_02We do get a little bit of this in in book four, but um anyway. Like there are gods. There's also like a little multiverse nod, Ahmad Kaiasine, many futures, many different paths. I thought he had a funny intro where he's like, he meets Asa and he's like, please do not burn me alive again.
SPEAKER_00That was very funny. I did a bit of a double, I think, because I'm dumb. I was like, what the fuck is this man talking about? Very funny. Oh, okay, I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Um I mean, and this guy knows the stew god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I initially thought he was Rokah, the stew god. Um he will never be referred to as anybody.
SPEAKER_00The god of stews and pies, yeah, because I won't remember his actual name.
SPEAKER_02Um but what okay, what was interesting, there's like a throwaway line where Asen's like, I've seen this guy before, but there's no way that was 400 years ago. Which is silly because he recognizes all his friends from 600 years ago.
SPEAKER_00But um Yeah, they still all hang out.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Um So clearly this I don't know. There's clearly something happening there. The Druids had some involvement in the fall that we're not aware of.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um my only note is every time the Druids get involved, I'm in, and it's fun. And so I'm glad that they're like pretty consistently a part of this series now. 100%. Bring it on, baby. Okay. So he's pretty down with the mission, by the way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um gives him an egg. Uh and now I perform my greatest feat. Quail eggs. I'm bringing it all back, baby. When my brother and I were very young, we ordered quail eggs and an incubator from a magazine, and it just got mailed to us. And we had like four or five quail eggs in this hot light, and we just set it up in my brother's bedroom. And they were like, turn it on, rotate them every once in a while. Congrats. You got quails. Wow. And at that age, it didn't even cross my mind. I was like, what the fuck am I going to do with the quail? I almost don't want it to hatch. Um, none of them hatched. But we did, after a period of time had elapsed where like these things ain't coming out. I like, I guess we gotta crack open these eggs and see what what's going on in there. And something formed in one of the eggs. Like an embryo? Like a hideous, a little hideous bird embryo with uh something like a beak in the leg or whatever, but it just couldn't couldn't get over the goal line. So um that was our fucked up version of sea monkeys that we had as a kid.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's all that's like half a deliverance story from your fucked up childhood. Like it's like on the way to it. You didn't buy quail eggs? No.
SPEAKER_00Have you heard of anyone buying this sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02No, we did like sea monkeys, like normal weird millennials.
SPEAKER_00From the Great Salt Lake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's true. Millions of years old.
SPEAKER_00Bryan shrimp. Great salt lake, stinky. If you've never been, folks, so nasty. Very stinky. Wow. All those lakes are stinky. At max like 20 feet deep. It's fucking crazy. And you're like oh yeah, so buoyant. Yeah. Kakul Kai. Kakul's name?
SPEAKER_02Were you confused when Asen got the egg and he didn't say this egg is worth 40 eggs?
SPEAKER_00You should be able to you should be able to watch a little porn at work. I've never gotten this far. Um so that what okay, what did you think about the whole it could take 10 million years for this egg to hatch. I don't know. Good luck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It seemed like they gave him the most primed egg they could think of. This thing's juicy.
SPEAKER_00This is a good one. You're gonna like this one. It's funny because it's such an interesting idea, except we already know that it did hatch. So it's uh it's not that interesting for us.
SPEAKER_02I know it kind of did, it takes a little bit of the intrigue away. But yeah, I guess it's it's fun if you think about how fast the events occurred immediately after this book. Like he was like, Yeah, this may not hatch in my lifetime, but I'm I'm putting my cards on the table for the future. And then he meets Kaylin and it hatches in like two weeks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, okay. Can I detour us to talk more broadly about the series?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We talked so well, we talked a lot at the start about Asen wanting to protect his kids, and there's a lot about like, I don't want them to live in a world like the blah, blah, blah. I'm still after then million pages, kind of wondering if the Empire is that bad. Is the Lorian Empire that bad? It's like his children aren't slaves. They live a pretty good life. Except for that Asen drags them around and is trying to incite rebellion. But like they could have a normal life if they wanted to. Yeah. They just won't because of because of Asen. But like there that is something I still find myself thinking about is like the urgency that our characters feel versus the on-the-ground reality of being a Lorien citizen, which doesn't seem that bad.
SPEAKER_02It's tough because we don't know how it's been for like 200 years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And what I'm what we're seeing now is like more like racks are actually the biggest problem of anything.
SPEAKER_00Like slaughtering literally just everyone in towns. And the end of the events of the end of book three are very troubling. Yeah. Of course. But this is before all that. So Right.
SPEAKER_02And fame is kind of like, yeah, like we've had good peace. Like empire means peace. This is good. He's a scholar. Yeah. He's a true believer, I think. Maybe. I don't know. We've seen him in like four chapters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. More to come on that. More to come. Anyways, that's something I was thinking about as he was really willing to sacrifice many lives for this for this cause.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell I was also thinking like this adds a little bit more weight to like Dolin's frustration that he's not the chosen one. Like going on the dragon egg trip.
SPEAKER_00Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_02Like you'd go through all of this miserable shit, and then two weeks later this farm boy shows up.
SPEAKER_00The stupid fuck from the axe throwing bar is now the leader of the revolution.
SPEAKER_02It really puts it into his perspective.
SPEAKER_00I get his frustration.
SPEAKER_02I get it a lot more now.
SPEAKER_00Completely reasonable.
SPEAKER_02But I'm also curious how they didn't tell this story to anyone. Like, you'd think you'd talk a little bit about your trip to Valetia.
SPEAKER_00That is funny because like we get a narration of the fall. We get like a brief st version of the chainbreaker story, all this stuff. We've had so many fireside chats in this book. Like you guys would not fucking believe how hard it was to get this egg man.
SPEAKER_02Eric has walked 3,000 miles with Caitlin across the burnt lands and back.
SPEAKER_00They should know every moment of your life that you remember.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02He would have talked like if you walked the whole Pacific Coast Trail with someone, you'd probably tell them about that one time you went to the continent nobody's ever come back from.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What what journey do you think was worse for Eric? Burnt Lands or Valetia?
SPEAKER_02Valetia, because Burnt Lands, he wasn't really in full capacity of mind. This one he remembers everything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's this one does seem scarier. Yeah. It really does. There's no moment of peace.
SPEAKER_02I would love to have seen like when Asen just leaves with the car. Like the crew's just standing there. Like, what do you think is going through their heads, man? He's gone for a few hours.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I think at that point they're just so fucking over this whole journey that I don't even care. Oh man. Just kill me. Yeah. And every journey in this fucking book is an out and back. They gotta stop doing out and backs. So many. I hate out and backs more than that. Burnlands, Valetia. Jesus.
SPEAKER_02I'll do almost anything to avoid an out and back hike. And they just love going the same path twice. I guess when you don't really have like maps or anything, it's probably helpful. That's a good point.
SPEAKER_00Also, they had a Centaur guard on the way back. So it's a lot easier.
SPEAKER_02But anyway, we all really only have the journey home and the wrap-up here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anything before we leave the land of ice and snow? Do you think these Dekar people are going to matter at all?
SPEAKER_02It's hard to tell. It's hard to say.
SPEAKER_00They're real far away. They're real far away. I have no sense of how many they there are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, clearly they're amazing warriors.
SPEAKER_00They don't use the spark, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell But the the two things, like yeah, they can they're craftsmages without the spark, and Heart Glass was like another name for that like black obsidian glass, which appears to be like quite an important it's gonna come up somewhere, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You think it's resistant to dragon fire?
SPEAKER_02I think that's what it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I would imagine, yeah. Yeah. Um Okay. Yeah. Treachery on the high seas. Folks, people don't like getting killed. Even if you get paid for it, which is w I mean it was part of the contract. You can't break a contract.
SPEAKER_02Why didn't Asen kill Blu-Ren, the sellsword lady? Kill who? The the chick who sells them out eventually.
SPEAKER_00The rabble rousing sellsword who was obviously gonna sell them out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's the most obvious thing I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not great.
SPEAKER_02It's like, bro, you just sacrificed a lot of people for less and just kill the one person who's clearly gonna rat you all out.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, Fardy Farda is like doing Coast Guard stuff for some reason.
SPEAKER_02Why is Farda Do you okay? I've had this weird thing. You know, like one piece where if you eat like a um devil fruit, you can't swim.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I for some reason I have that assumption with Rakina and Farda is that they shouldn't be allowed to swim. That feels so right. And so when Farda's on a boat, he's been on two boats in the series, in the two novellas. He's always on a boat.
SPEAKER_00Don't let him fall off.
SPEAKER_02I'm like, he shouldn't be here. He should be on land. Farda can't swim.
SPEAKER_00That would be such a funny thing to directly pull from One Piece.
SPEAKER_02They should. He's pulled enough from tropes from other other books, you know. Yeah. Throw it in there.
SPEAKER_00Um geez, I mean, I don't even like have that much to say about it other than kind of intense fight sequence. Yes. Rest in peace, the blood wake goes down.
SPEAKER_02I know.
SPEAKER_01Um I guess the one question I have is like, why would they want to destroy the egg? Like they want to take the egg.
SPEAKER_02But the one Lorien general guy was like, fuck it, I'll burn this egg with everybody else. I don't care about this thing.
SPEAKER_00Well, I I just assume that's like the division we've seen between Dragon Guard and Rank and File Lorien guy. Yeah. Because the Dragon Guard are like they're a club, man. They wanna they wanna persist. They want new members.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I feel like Farda would like I guess Farda's not in his emotional state now. He's in his like emotionless era. Yeah, zombie mode. Yeah, so he doesn't care.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But if like alternate reality were L2R were on this boat, that would have been much. He'd kill the general for talking about. Yeah. Maybe that's who they should have put on the boat, was it L2R? That would have been fascinating. Except there's no way he's there's no way he continues to do like customs duty. None of the Dragon Guard are doing customs duty. No. They're riding their dragons and whispering sweet nothings. Whispering sweet nothings to the dragons, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well yeah, they escape on a little rowboat somehow. I I didn't I didn't really care for that. Doesn't matter, who cares? It doesn't matter. They get told.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully they were close to home.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then um we run into wrist at the very end of the book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I it's funny because I had the passage highlighted and it was one of the on Do you have it set on Kindle so it shows you stuff that everybody's highlighted? Yeah, yeah. It's like every underline, like, oh my god. Well, yeah, ten billion people have highlighted this little uh little snippet from the end of the book. Yep. Um I've got it here. Asen twisted to avoid a young man who moved awkwardly around a merchant's stand. He looked thin as a reed with a shock of dark hair and an utter unawareness of the world around him. His eyes were fixed on a stack of books that sat atop the merchant's table. There you go.
SPEAKER_02There you go. And therefore, they run into Kayland, wrist, and Dan in about two minutes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, axe throwing. They should have been the thunk thunk sound of an axe throwing bar uh drifted its way towards the box. Man, I could really go for some Weirm's blood right now. Oh, speaking of which, new liquor. New drink. I'm so glad. We got a new, yes. Do you have the name written down? Elderfire. That sounds real nice. That one was. Sounds like it's got a little sweetness to it.
SPEAKER_02I think they drink that right after Asen uh jams his hand into an ice wall to stop their fall. Which is so metal. That sequence was out of control. It's really like, have you watched K2? It's like a it's a like when I was a kid. Yeah, it's such a campy, like crappy action movie. But the opening sequence is like, that's all I could picture in my mind is this dramatic, like, I have to cut the rope.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember? Do you remember the kind of cartoon Indiana Jones ripoff, Johnny Quest? Oh yeah. Whenever this shit happens, it just feels so Johnny Quest to me. I feel like Johnny Quest was always grabbing someone by the wrist as they were gonna fall off a cliff. Is Johnny Quest an American creation? Yeah, that or like Dutch. I feel like the Dutch.
SPEAKER_01I was wondering if it's Japanese. Uh, I don't know, actually. Oh.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, I don't like some of these character designs.
SPEAKER_01Uh-oh. Pretty racist?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I don't know what was in their hearts, but I wouldn't have done them. It's okay. Speedy Gonzalez when we were kids. Yeah, people don't that one. Yeah. That one kind of got lost.
SPEAKER_02We kind of left that one behind.
SPEAKER_00They will leave that one. However, did you see that Coyote V Acme is getting rave reviews? Really? I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, it's like like 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
SPEAKER_02I'm like four times in theaters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, I think my big takeaways are you know, there's a bigger world out there, right?
SPEAKER_02There's other continents, there's other gods, or there's other little kind of magic systems.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they were talking about people from the crew being from other continents, which like we know Belina was, but I don't know why it didn't really feel real to me until this book. I was like, man, it's a pretty big world out there.
SPEAKER_02Right. And then so that's one takeaway is like, yeah, okay, cool. I'm excited for more world expansion. And I don't actually know how much Kahil's gonna go off continent in this five-book series, to be honest. We'll see. Yeah. Like that's a to go beyond Ephere would actually be a pretty big leap given what we're doing so far.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, I probably wouldn't expect him to, other than like maybe people from elsewhere will come to Epheriya, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Uh and then I'm really excited for druids, man. Like druid factions, druid powers. Like that's one of my big takeaways from this is like uh I'm excited to see more of these dudes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And continue to be excited for more answers to all the questions we've been asking about why the dragons are not hatching.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, that's gonna be fascinating.
SPEAKER_00Um that's coming. Yeah, I think that's that's my big stuff. All right, rank the novellas, and then we can log off.
SPEAKER_02Um What are the there's three that we've read thus far.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the The Fall, the Exile, and the Ice.
SPEAKER_02And then the truth is gonna be our next novella. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh The Blood That Stains the Winter Snow. Oh. Is that the name of the What? I feel like he broke the naming convention. There's no way he did. You wouldn't just throw the blood that names the winter snow or what stains. No, it is. I think it's the one about his dad, the chainbreaker. Really?
unknownAnyway.
SPEAKER_00We'll figure it out.
SPEAKER_02Actually, rank them in order.
SPEAKER_00Um The Fall, the Exile dies. Yeah, that's that's where I'm at. I don't think the exile and the ice are too far apart, really. Nothing. Um And I don't know. It it feels like kind of similar. A little deeper on a character. The exile ends with really fun rune-marked stuff that ends up mattering, and this one ends with some cool ice dragon druid stuff that I know is going to matter. Um, but it's just hard to know how much it'll matter. Right. Until we go to the case.
SPEAKER_02I think the cool stuff. The cool part is like all three novellas t to our interview with with Ryan, it's like they serve a different purpose, they're different writing styles. He is experimenting with something new in each. And I think they're like required reading in this series. Like I wouldn't there's no way I would skip them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, like this wasn't my favorite read of the year, but as a part of The Bound and the Broken, very happy I read it.
SPEAKER_02And it's just a you know, think of it as a 200-page prologue to the next book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Whatever. So I mean, yeah, this one was short too. I don't know what word count where it was, but it felt like it was over very quickly.
SPEAKER_02If the fall was like 80 pages and exile was like 300, yeah, this is somewhere in the middle.
SPEAKER_00God, how many times book three versus this? It must have been like 50 times the length of the fall.
SPEAKER_02See, book three was fourteen hundred and like fifty pages. That was a long, long book. I was in my life.
SPEAKER_00It's all good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, well, 1400 more.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna be back soon with book four. I've been cheating ahead, I'm like 200 pages in. It rips. It's very fun. Um so I can't wait. I'm very excited.
SPEAKER_00Yep, I'm gonna crack into it tomorrow, um, after I figure out what happens with Darrow and Robin Williams. It's not your fault. Listener, sometimes it is your fault.
