2 - Harpy's Flight (Megan Lindholm, 1983)

***Transmission Received***

WELCOME TO THE SPACE ARCHIVE

This week we're looking at Harpy's Flight (1983) by Megan Lindholm - who is better known as **NAME DROWNED OUT BY HARPY SHRIEKING**.

Featuring harpies, your elderly Catholic mum, and only one bed (UH OH!)

**

N.b. this book contains some somewhat exploitative representations of Gypsy/Roma/Travellers. Lindholm stays away from a lot of the worst tropes and is clearly trying to give a sympathetic portrayal, making this not as terrible as you might imagine for a book from the 1980s. Nevertheless, when you're publishing a book where one of the hooks is that the protagonist is a "gypsy" and this is foregrounded in the marketing, it's kind of integral to the whole thing.

GRT communities are punitively marginalised in the UK, where prejudicial attitudes and an institutional unwillingness to support traditional nomadic cultures abound. 

GRT groups face obstacles to education, health, and accessing the various institutions governing life in the UK. The state also does not provide adequate legal camping space for nomadic Gypsies and Travellers. This means that many families are forced to camp illegally. Since the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was passed in 2022, those who do so can face fines, imprisonment, or even having their homes stolen from them by police.

If you're interested in finding out more about the actual people behind the pastiche, you can learn more at https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/. Please consider showing your solidarity by donating. 

***

Intro and outro by Scivias

https://sciviasdomini.bandcamp.com/

Also featuring:

'Local Forecast - Elevator', Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Follow us on Instagram @spacearchivepodcast

Music by SCIVIAS

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Can you just talk?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, I'm talking.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Let's talk at the same time. Let's talk at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So this is unplanned. Well, welcome to episode two of the Space Archive. I'm personally really excited because I think we had 27 downloads, which is very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

So I see Yeah, because that's more than all of our friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yes, and I see a glittering new future as podcast hosts for us. I think we should give up our current careers and we should just become full-time podcasters. I see no problems with this.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Yeah, I mean maybe we could make merch.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah. Also, we definitely combined have no more than 27 people.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

So they could be 27 big spenders. They're real whales.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Um, so uh thank you to the 27 people who listened to our previous episode about uh Cela Leguin's Planet of Exile.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah, hopefully this one's going to be as good, but um, we are both ill and I've literally just stopped working and we're now recording at the same desk I've sat at all day. So this could also be like sad and energyless compared to the last one, but we'll try not to make it like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Just for context, before we started recording, Nikki just glanced out of the window and said, Why does the bird who was born for joy sit in a cage and record podcasts? A bit of William Blake there for all of you. Anywho. We should introduce ourselves as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

We're bad podcasters.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Uh well, we introduce ourselves last time. But Teresa.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

I'm glad we would listen to all the podcasts. And they might jump in part way through.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Because maybe we'll get 28 listens this time.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Exactly, and that person might be like, Who the hell are these ladies?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Exactly. Well, my name's Emma. Um, I'm a clinical psychologist and unsuccessful author, and I'm joined by Nikki, who's Emma's wife, and I'm a theologian. So, what well, I suppose we should recap actually what the podcast is very briefly, just for our 28th listener. Um so basically, Nikki and I are really into old kind of sci-fi and fantasy novels, and we've bought lots of old sci-fi and fantasy novels just for the fantastic covers. Um, but we never actually read these novels with the fantastic covers, we just admire the covers from a distance. So the idea behind this podcast is that we will read the novels with the fantastic and often unrelated covers and have a chat about them.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yeah, it's it's an opportunity to make it retroactively so that we haven't wasted loads of money.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Exactly, exactly. And actually on that note, I've realised that we haven't brought the book into the room with us, uh, which might make it hard to describe the cover. So maybe if we just pause the recording for a second, well, one of us goes to fetch that book.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Do you want to do that? Because I'm stuck.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Okay, I'm back with the book.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Yeah, we're praise it there. So disorganized. It's alright, this is our like second technically, well, it it's it's our supposedly second go, really third go.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yes, because of the secret episode. Um anyway, the book that we are doing this time around is a book called Harpy's Flight, um, by an author called Megan Lindholm, which is very interesting because Yeah, or yeah, and would would would you like to guess who this author is better known as?

SPEAKER_02 4:17

We can count down ten seconds. And then you can shout it all really loudly. If you shout it loud enough, we might hear you. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

It's kind of a bit like Peter Pan, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Exactly. Believe in fairies. Yeah. I do know who Meghan Lindholm is. Okay. All right, so we'll count down ten. You can try and think of the answer. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. It's Robin Hob!

SPEAKER_00 4:45

We didn't plan that because you can't tell. We didn't plan anything. Um so yes, this is uh Robin Hobbes' other personality. Well, actually Robin Hobbes' true personality because I think it's close to actual name. What's her actual name? It's Margaret.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Margaret Lindholm Ogden or something.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

So Ogden, I think, is her married name. So I think her name is actually Margaret Lindholm.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

And then she added Ogden. It's a nice name.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Margaret's my middle name.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Oh, so it is. You and Robin so much in common. Um, but I think she's called Megan on this book because apparently she wanted to publish this book as M. Lindholm. Not this book, actually a short story that she'd written previously. She wanted to publish it as M. Lindholm, and for some reason the publisher was like, no, no one's gonna take M. Lind Lindholm seriously. Uh, you should do Margaret Lindholm. And then she said, no, I hate the name Margaret, but I guess Meg's alright, which apparently was a joke. Um, but then it got sorry, Nikki was just pointing at her phone.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Oh, the phone did a no-sound detector thing, but maybe that's just from the end that's pointing towards me, because I wasn't talking, because we take turns in conversations like civilised people.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

But yes, so that's I've no idea what I was saying.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Uh it's about why she was Megan rather than M. Yes. Well, I feel like I've lost the thread of that story now, and it's no longer. She was going to I know it's interesting, it's perennially interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

But yes, so she ended up as Megan because she joked with the publisher about how she liked the name Megan, so then she was immortalised forever as Megan Lindholm.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

I find it kind of weird that the publisher wanted her to be publicly a woman when writing it, though. Do you think it's because the protagonist is a woman and it's quite feeling-y?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

I don't think this was actually to do with gender. I think the publisher just thought M. Lindholm sounded a bit silly.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

And wanted her to use her full name.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

I mean that's fair, but it's not as good.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

The reason why she switched to Robin Hobb though was to do with gender. So she published 11 books, I think, as Megan Lindholm. None of them did very well. And then she started the Realm of the Elderlings series, um, which is her kind of most famous series. Also, my favourite fantasy series of all time. And so she actually published 11 books as Megan Lindholm before she started uh the Realm of the Elderlings series, which is my favourite fantasy series of all time, I love it, which she obviously published as Robin Hobb. Um before the publication of the first Realm of the Elderlings book, she decided to adopt a pen name, Robin Hobb, because her publisher had said at that point that they thought her Meghan Lynn Horn books weren't selling because she was a woman writing in the fantasy market, and Robin is obviously a gender-neutral name.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

So there's nothing like a quick, like, your brand's not working, so you rebrand and try and make it work.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yes, but it's a bit depressing though, because I think she published Assassin's Apprentice, which was the first realm of the Elderlings book in 1995, which feels a bit too recent for that to still be making a difference.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

I also I also find that shift actually really kind of interesting because, like, obviously, when she shifted to Robin Hobb, um, a um name which could be interpreted as a man's name, one of the contrasts I've seen people draw between this book and the Robin Hobb series is that the Robin Hobb series is actually much more introspective and like feelings focused than these stories, which I think is kind of true, but you kind of think of like characteristic male writing in the fantasy genre as you know, stereotypically less interested in those sorts of things. So, in a certain respect, while you know she became this masculinised figure, she also started writing in a more femininised sort of way.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, like a hundred percent. And I also think when I first picked up her Robin Hobb book, I very much assumed that Robin Hobb was a man, and I remember actually feeling quite surprised when I realised that she was a woman, which says a lot of things about, I guess, my assumptions of people writing in the fantasy space.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

I mean, that is your another unconscious bias. Yes, oh. And how's an unconscious bias to woman in science? She is a woman in science.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, I did an unconscious bias test and it was really awkward because it turns out I'm very biased against women in science. But it's your one unconscious bias. Yes, so well done, me. Um but anyway, background to this novel, Harpy's Flight. Um, so this is the first full-length novel by Megan Lindholm published in 1983. Nikki, do you want to describe the cover of this book?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Alright, yeah, so in the foreground of the book, there is a kind of well, like a sort of decorated arch with um two marble pillars holding it up and some like gothic, gargoyle-y sort of grotesque things um carved at the top of them, and then they're holding up a sort of like a sort of kind of Romanesque arch sort of thing, but it's like fantasied up a bit. But behind it, looking back at the reader through the archway, is a red-haired woman holding a long dagger pointing downwards in a blue skirt and a white fur jacket, and she is standing on the snow with mountains behind her, and then kind of further away into the background, there's also a man in brown clothing, like a scraggly unkempt man, holding a large curved sword, and then between the woman and the um the archway, so in front of the viewer, is just a large golden sort of wing, which belongs to, I imagine, or at least I think is meant to belong to, the eponymous harpy.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Most of those colours are wrong.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

I also really love how you describe that because you started off by describing the archway, which really isn't the main part of the picture. I say the woman and the giant harpy.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

It's like a foreground, it's like a foreground framing device. I think it's one of the most striking parts to the design. And you can see that the publishers thought that because they also then continue to use that design on other books in, I think it's this set of editions, anyway.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Which Nikki would know because uh since reading Harpy's Flight, she well, you explain your book.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah, okay, okay. So, like one of the things which really put me off doing this podcast in the first place is that um I do not do bits of series. If I read a book in a series, I am compelled to read the entire thing, which um sometimes works out when it's a slightly more manageable series like this one, which has four books in. Sometimes it does mean you have to read like a lot of Dennis Wheatley trash. Um but this is very manageable, and the books are all very good. I'm really enjoying it. I'm three out of four books through at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I think it was quite hard for Nikki when she got into Brandon Sanderson, just gonna put that out there.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Yeah. Yeah, I mean again I enjoy them, so it's bad when they're bad books.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

So that's the cover image. Um I wouldn't necessarily say it's huge. I think it does happen in the book, which some of the cover images that we'll discuss are of scenes that never happen in the book, and I think this one does, but I wouldn't say it's hugely representative of the content of the book in some way.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Yes, the harpy wing should be blue. Um the guy's sword should be.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

That's the main problem with it.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Well, I said the colours are wrong. The guy's the guy's sword should be a rapier.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Um, so do you want to read the back of the book?

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Um, yeah. Harpies don't give up on blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them. A life must be given in return. Devastated by the slaughter of her family and haunted by memories of her own violent revenge, Key rejects the comfort of her husband's gypsy people and wants only to wander in solitude as an outcast. Across mountains sheathed with ice, through the treacherous shadow of the impassable sisters, Key finds herself running for her life, pursued by frenzied Harpies sworn to vengeance, and by one stubborn, dark-haired man who seems intent on being part of her future. From the author of the hugely successful Farseer trilogy and live chip traders' books, Harpy's Flight is a mesmerising tale of love, adventure, and magic. So this edition was obviously published after she became successful under different names. They're like, oh shit, maybe we can sell those books too.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Um it also says on the bottom, also writes with Robin Hobb. So we've clearly got a later edition on our hands here. So I guess when you read the first paragraph of that blurb on the back, I thought, yes, that is kind of representative of the book. Second paragraph, I think maybe not, because it really sets it up, sets it up as a kind of action epic. She's pursued by frenzied harpies, and it also sets it up as almost a kind of romanticy. There's this stubborn dark-haired man who fancies her. I'd say neither of those things are entirely representative of what the actual book is.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Yeah, it's probably also worth pointing out that this is like Robin Hobbs' Gypsy Sploitation series, and um, like I don't know, she kind of exoticises like gypsy Roma. Yeah, like Roman and like uses a lot of their aesthetics in a way that's potentially not super culturally sensitive. But um so we should we should just premise that before we go on to discussing the book. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah, I also think we should call them the Romney, which is what they're called in the book.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah, and I think it's really interesting that they use the term gypsy on the back because I think in calling them Romney, Hobb I think is trying to like the group in the book Romney. I think Hobb is, well, it's clearly it evokes Romani, but um, and but I also think that she's trying to like mark a distinction between the fictionalised group and the actual group. Whereas the publishers on the back of the book were just like, yeah, this is a real group of people, but they're like when was this edition published actually out of interest?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Oh, 2001. I would have expected a bit better.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Emma, we live in Britain where like gypsy Roma travellers can just lose their houses for trespassing. Yes, that's like I'm I'm not convinced that like there's sorts of phobic attitudes are that.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Yeah, okay. They're still pretty prevalent, aren't they? Um so Harpy's flight, what were your kind of initial um impressions? Yeah, so I think look, I think, like you said, it's less action-y than you'd expect.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Like it reads a bit like a thriller, where she's like a thriller. No, I mean on the back of the book, where she's like where it sounds it sounds like she's trying to like, you know, keep ahead of her Harpy pursuers. Um, there's a little bit of that, but they're more of like a sort of general threatening presence for most of the book, but it doesn't feel like she's literally fleeing them. Um, for the most part, it's like a combination of like quite a profound reflection on the nature of grief and the nature of belonging, with like watching as someone like heals from a very profound loss, and then maybe a bit of like folk horror slash sort of mystery sort of stuff where you learn more about how the harpies relate to the group of people that um the protagonist kind of encounters in this book.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, I would agree. I think you started reading the book before I did. Yeah. And I think there was a point because you were reading it on Kindle, so you weren't quite sure how far through the book you were.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah, it's it's one of those books where you have all four books, so like the percentage doesn't tell you how far you are through in particular any specific one.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, and I think you thought you were quite near the beginning of the book, and then you found your place in my paperback copy and you were actually quite near the end of the book. Um, because you'd only seen one harpy.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah. No, I've seen I'd seen by that point I'd seen three harpies.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Oh, okay, fine.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Um, but one like three of them in a flashback, and then one of them comes back again later, they don't touch the thing. It's fine, it's still recording.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Oh, okay, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

And it's fiddling with the phone that we're recording on. You just gotta let it do it.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

It's because the screen went dark.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

I'm sure it's fine. Hang on. I'll I'll get it off again so that it does the Nikki Nikki.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Okay, I'm amazing. Okay, cool. Pro-podcasters.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Absolutely pro-podcasters. Um but yeah, so just to say straight off, I really loved this book. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Um, what it was not was an action-packed roller coaster. I think nor even like romantic.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Like there's it wasn't basically no romance in it. There's lots of unrequited love, but like by NPCs, kind of directed at the protagonist.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Actually, let's go into the romanticy thing because the back of obviously this was published in 1983, which is kind of before the romanticy genre existed. But we now live in the middle of the romanticy boom, and I think the back of this book is almost what you would read on the back of a romanticy. There's a stubborn dark-haired man who's intent on being part of her future, and it just so I liked this more than any romanticity I've ever read. And I think there is some element where Robin Hobb is kind of playing with a lot of romance tropes, but it in a way that's not romantic.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Isn't that partly because like this book is good and romanticity tends to be bad?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

I mean, maybe, maybe, but when I say she's playing with romance tropes, I mean like she literally is the vast majority. So actually, the book largely I would say is a kind of framing story between the two main characters, Key, the female lead, and Vandian, who's the stubborn dark-haired man. Um, and they're traveling through a mountain pass, and then Key is remembering things that have happened to her before, and a lot of the book is her flashbacks. But in this framing story with Key and Vandian, it's so it's such a romanticy story. So she is travelling alone across this path. Vandian turns up, kind of attacks her, setting up the enemies to lovers dynamic, um, and then ends up having to travel with her. It's very cold outside, and there's only one wagon, and within the wagon there's only one bed. Um, and it kind of goes from there, but it does not in any way progress in a kind of romanticy direction. I mean, there's a hint that maybe they might get together in the future, and I think they sort of hold hands at one point, but I wouldn't say that Vandian is in any way intent on becoming part of her future, he just wants to get across the pass, and they kind of build a friendship as they go through the pass.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

There are also some other romanticity tropes as well, right? Like, so she has a family before this book begins, but spoiler for like a 25-year-old book.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

1983.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Okay, like wow, okay, yeah. So that's a really old book. Spoiler for a book that's older than both of us. Yeah, yeah. Um, she originally has like a family, but they're killed by harpies, so she's like recovering from that grief. And then she also has that like she's alienated not just from her own like native Romney community, but also from her husband's community, who she has to go back to to tell about the husband's death, and then they try and get her to stay, and she decides she doesn't fit in. And then she also escapes like a repressive religious kind of cult, which that group all belongs to, and things like that. So you've got like the trauma background, which is recovered through the relationship with like the dangerous dark stranger, you've got the special person who doesn't fit in trope, um, you've got the difficult relationships with your family trope. Um, and it all so it really does kind of set itself up as if it would be a romantic book written today, and then just isn't.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

It does, but then it ends up with both of these characters, Keith and Vandian, being far more complex and interesting than I guess your typical romanticy protagonists in a way. I don't want to bash romanticity because romanticy is great in lots of ways, but I think Vandian steers away from being that just needlessly angry character. Um, and actually he's just a very nice man throughout. Um, he does try to rob her, but that's really because he has to get across the path.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

He also says that, yeah, so they they come up, Key is trying to um deliver some, like fulfill a contract. She's like a teamster and she drives her wagon um around a place uh transferring and selling goods and things like that, and she has to deliver what she thinks at the time are some priceless jewels um across the mountains, and she doesn't want to stop. And um Vandian also needs to get across the mountains, but he's just stuck on foot. I can't remember where he is now, but he's just been starving in the woods in front of the pass.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

And he really needs a horse.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Yeah, and he comes by and he's like, I'm going to steal one of her horses, and then she can ride the other horse back down to the town and get a new horse, and like no harm will be done except for the fact that she'll have lost a horse. Um, and then I'll get across the past because he's like desperate. And his heart's not really in the whole attacking thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, and then as they kind of cross the path, he just becomes nicer and nicer. There's a bit where which I really loved actually, where Key is very upset for various reasons, and Vandian just sings to her to make her feel better. And there's this wonderful comment at the end of the description where Robin Hopp just goes, He doesn't have a voice for singing, which just makes him into a really nice man.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Um it's really yeah, I find myself very attracted to Vandy, and they have like a nice kind of geodynamic as well because Key is a little bit a little bit joyed. And very like practical and um yeah, like practical and austere, and um in a certain respect that kind of represents how her trauma is working out and things, I think a bit. Whereas Vandian is like much more like carefree and silly and um jokey and gregarious, and they end up with like quite a nice little dynamic between the two. It reminds me a little bit of um John and Erin in um Far Escape.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah, it does actually, and I think Key, so Key is such a good character in this book, and it's interesting because I think I've read a lot of novels where you have like a teenage protagonist who maybe doesn't have that much of a life before the novel, so the novel is very much about her kind of coming into her life. And actually, when I started to read this book, Key in the opening kind of paragraph, she talks about losing her family and she names these people that she's lost. And my initial assumption was that they were her younger siblings, and then I actually found myself really surprised when I realised that no, these people are her husband and her children. She is still quite young because I think she marries her husband Sven when she's a teenager, so I think she's kind of like mid-twenties, but there's a sense that she comes into this novel when she's already a fully formed person, and I found that really, really interesting. And I think it makes her so much richer and more complex.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Yeah, so I think that actually maybe this marks out the fundamental difference with romanticity, right? Like I don't know romanticity very well as a genre, I don't really read it or anything, but what I did do is listen to the In Bed with the Right episode on it. Great podcast, you should listen to that after this one.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Maybe then listen to our podcast, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

If we if we look at them, maybe just as In Bed with the Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Please, I think you guys are like famous for podcasting.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

I could come on your podcast, it's like to deal with what I was said.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Um anyway, so it's why Nikki's doing this podcast, she wants to get on another one.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

This this is yeah, this is just my incredibly elaborate plan for getting onto In Bed with the Right. What did you stop off that bit? I have no idea. Um, oh no, actually it's sculpting tools. Let's not lose those. Oh no, you need those. I need my sculpting tools. Um, anyway, uh what was I saying? Oh yeah. So what they said is that like one of the features of romanticy is that the protagonists are often quite like superficially drawn, sort of blank slates. And this is because what romanticity offers is an opportunity for women to live out a certain fantasy of particularly like recovery from trauma.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

So having a blank protagonist actually aids people in identifying with them. Um, also like having a pro have having a protagonist that goes through quite a fantastical kind of traumatic experience that nevertheless hits a lot of notes that might be familiar to people, and then otherwise being quite loosely characterized means that people can identify with their trauma, they can then also identify with the character, and then heal vicariously through their story. Whereas I'm not convinced that that's what Robin Hobb's doing. I think that Robin Hobb is taking those tropes because they are, you know, like fundamentally compelling, but she's actually really interested in the character themselves rather than what the character can be used for.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah, I think that's very true. And I also think there's a thing about stakes here, because I think in romanticy the stakes are always world-ending every single time, and that kind of in a way for me puts me at a distance from the character. Whereas the stakes for key are not. The stakes for key are that she's lost her family and she gradually kind of regains her sense of self as the novel goes on, and actually, I think that makes her much more kind of rich and human than perhaps a lot of other fantasy characters.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah, I mean, there's some to an extent that's also kind of like the genre in the time, though, right? Like I think particularly maybe I don't know about fantasy, but science fiction in particular was like still quite open to quite small scale kind of stories.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, that's true, and I think maybe it's more a reflection on how fantasy in the modern day has become very high stakes, sometimes needlessly.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

And it's quite nice to see a very human story.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Yeah, this does actually kind of remind me of her Robin Hobbs stuff, though. Like again, like the Realm the Elderlings, obviously, it eventually grows to be a kind of world-spanning story about the transformation between different ages and things like that. But like most of that's told through I mean, the first Assassin's book is basically domestic, right? And like especially the Fitz, the what's it, the Tawny Man trilogy, the first book, like hundreds and hundreds of pages of just Fitz living in a hut with his useless adoptive son and aging dogs.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yes. High drama when the dog chokes on a fishman. I loved that book.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Oh, it's beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

But I think, yeah, what um Robin Hobb or Megan Lindholm, I don't know which name to call her by what she does in Harvey's Flight, which is similar to what she does in Realm of the Elderlings, is I think she has so many of these small character moments between Key and Bandion, and they're wonderful. And I think what she is is this brilliant kind of observer of humanity. So at the so all the way through the book, Key is wearing her hair in something called widow's knots because she's grieving, so her hair is quite tightly bound, and then at the end of the book, not because she's fallen in love again, but just because she's come back to herself, she finally feels able to kind of let her hair out of these knots, and it's actually a really wonderful moment, but it's so low-key, yeah, and it's so little, but it kind of means everything to that character.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Yeah. I hope whatever that person's doing with what's someone controlly outside their window is not coming up in the recording.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

No, it won't be.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Oh, anyway. Maybe maybe we should go over the plots just um because I feel like we're just we're noting bits in the plot, but in a way that's not actually strong together. Yes, go for it. All right, give it a try. So that's quite complicated because it's it's basically two kind of plots. One which happens significantly after the other. Or actually, no, well, it kind of starts immediately after the other, yeah. But told kind of concurrently, interwoven through a series of like plots and flashbacks. But basically, Key is the um young mother of two children by a guy named Sven. Uh, Key is from the like Romney group. Um, but she's not.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

I think she says she joined the Romney when she was a child, so they're not really her. Yeah, she has this sense of them not really being her people.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

And this actually becomes more relevant in the later books, but um, because it's like kind of a you would know I would know, yeah. Um, but yeah, but so she's never really had a strong attachment to Romney and she doesn't keep their traditions and stuff like that, really, though she does still travel around in like a Romney caravan. She marries this guy called Sven, whom she meets when she's quite young. Um, they have like a youthful romance and get married. Sven is from this farming community, a very thecled community that's like multi-generational, living in a kind of big house altogether. And uh their community is united by a shared faith which revolves around giving offerings to harpies. Um, and in return, the harpies allow them to interact with um their dead, like they have visions of their dead and can speak to them and things like that. Um, but uh harpies also fly around the countryside like terrorising people. And Sven agrees to leave the community with um Key, who's the woman, the protagonist. Um, and it later turns out that Sven is actually a bit disenchanted with the harpies. Um, and this is one of the reasons why he wants to leave, but you only find that out later on. But um anyway, so they leave and they travel around in Key's caravan, making it a home. She has two children, they live by trading and being teamsters. Then one day, Sven and the kids are riding ahead on horses and harpies swoop down and kill them. And this obviously makes um Key hate harpies, and she's grieving and suffering, and she tracks down um the harpies that did this, climbs a mountain um into their like cliffside home, and this is where you kind of first meet her. The book opens with her scaling the cliff.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

And I have to say, as much as I love this book, this cliff scaling sequence did go on for too long. It's about 20 pages, and it's not not 20 pages when she gets to the top of the cliff, it's 20 pages of climbing up the cliff.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

I quite liked it, it felt very vertiginous.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

But anyway, she goes into this cave and the harpies are absent, but she sees actually how harpies live, and you realize that harpies are sentient, they make art about harpies, they have um culture of their own, so there's like a ceremonial nest outside of the cave. Um, and she finds that there's a clutch of harpy eggs unattended, and she's about to smash them in revenge for the harpies killing her kids. She realized she can't, but then uh harpy comes back and attacks her, and she fights the harpies, and in the process, she accidentally sets fire to the clutch of eggs. Uh, another harpy returns and tries to rescue the eggs. Um, it's the father harpy, I think it is.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

And um is horribly burned in the fire, and the mother harpy attempts to kill her. She ends up stabbing the mother harpy, and they plunge from the uh the cliffside home and fall into the woods. Key survives to fall but is injured and is then healed by some Romney who find her, and then she um the Romney try and invite her to um, you know, move on from her husband and children by giving away their possessions, which is like the Romney custom. And Key shows us that she doesn't identify with Romney customs by refusing to do this, and also in the process, shows that she's not willing to let go. And she then realizes she has to go back to his friend's family to tell them about the fact that he's dead. Uh, this is awkward because they worship the harpies, which she knows, and she just, as far as she knows, killed the entire harpy family. Anyway, she goes back and they um basically pressure her into doing this kind of um like grieving ritual that she doesn't understand how this works, but they have a big banquet and she drinks a series of like odd drinks, and what it does is it establishes this kind of psychic connection between everyone present through which they share the last memories of the person who died, um, from the person who's like telling the story of how they died. Um, Key doesn't recognize or realise this, and what she ends up doing is showing everybody that the harpies killed them. And this creates a problem for the community because it means that all their thoughts are now infected with Key's feelings towards the harpies and their own horror towards the harpies. And this means that when they next go to the harpies to give them offerings and speech to their dead, the harpies who do so through the same psychic connection, you find out this is like a sort of harpy harpy excretions. I don't really know. You find out the harpies will know this and then they will see the people as enemies of the harpies and will then just kill them, or at least stop letting them see they're dead. So this creates a huge problem, and Key becomes very alienated in the community. However, she is persuaded to stay on the community by the kind of matriarch of the community whose name is Oh, I can't remember. Um, who is um Sven's grandmother or mother? Mother. Sven's mother. Um so Cora kind of pressed her to stay in the community and she tries to settle down and take on the responsibilities of like Sven's wife and inherit his land and things like that, um, at least until the community can buy it off her honestly. Um while she's doing this, a man comes whose name I've also forgotten. Um, but he's like a kind of harpy priest sort of character who offers to do a ritual which will get them all right with the harpies. And this involves firstly humiliating Key, so turning her into someone not to be feared or resented, but just seen as like a nuisance and like a clumsy child who didn't know what she was doing. But also what you find out means like editing people's memories effectively and changing their feelings so that they're more properly aligned with the harpies. Um Key is disgusted by this but kind of goes through with it. But then um when but then uh she in in in the court while the old man is there, uh they go outside and they find that one of the members of the community who kind of loves Key um but whom Key constantly rebuffs, his prize bull has been killed by harpies um because they haven't been giving their customary offerings to the harpies while waiting to be kind of healed by this old man priest kind of guy. And because the community are not fully healed yet, um people react in different ways. Some people repent and go through with the rest of the healing, but other people can't do this and end up being effectively like shunned by the community. So the community kind of falls apart, Key is marked as an outcast, and the old man you find basically concludes that they need to re-establish a right relation with the harpies, the people who remain, and this will mean giving them a kind of form of harpy justice, which will mean effectively giving them key to kill. Key is basically informed this, so she flees, and um then she attempts she takes a contract with an old business partner to shepherd these jewels across the um mountains. Uh as she's traveling up, this is when she meets Vandian. Um, they travel across the mountains, they get in some magical trouble with some magical cliffs known as the sisters, and then they're attacked by the father harpy who survived the fire. Uh, Key and Vandian manage to fight him off, and then they journey onwards. And in the course of this, um, they then find that the person who contracted her to take the jewels was actually in the pay of one of the people who remained in the community uh who wanted to get her to cross the path so that the male harpy could get her. They also find out that the community killed um the person who is in love with Key kind of as like the sacrifice to the harpy. Um Key intimidates the guy who hired her at the behest of this person in the community and also tells him to tell her that she's dead, and then the book kind of ends.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yeah, so maybe it's a complicated plot. It's a complicated plot, and I think it's told, I like the structure of the book actually. I like that you have this really quite simple framing story with Key and Vandian travelling through the past, and then everything else comes in flashbacks, and I think the way the flashbacks are done is very skillful. It feels almost like a mystery novel where you've got pieces of the puzzle kind of slotting in at exactly the right point to reveal this religious kind of dependence on the harpies and the extent, I suppose, of how the harpies are manipulating the people around them.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

Yeah, and it really has this kind of folk horror dimension because she journeys into like you she delves into the life of the community effectively through this process. And the more you learn about it, the more sinister it becomes. So, first you hear that they worship the harpies, then you discover that they have this weird harpy ritual, then the old man comes and you realise that's even more sinister than anyone thought. And then near the end of the book, you realise that they actually sacrifice one of their own in order to appease the harpies.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

And I actually like I found it quite shocking when all of those things were happening. It was going in directions that I wasn't anticipating, and I found it quite horrifying in places. Um, and I thought the kind of, well, you're a theologian, the take on religion in the book is really, really complex because obviously you've got Sven's people who are worshipping the harpies as gods, but the harpies are cruel, violent, murderous. Um, and I guess it kind of comes at first it seems as though people worship the harpies because the harpies provide the people with this wondrous gift of being able to kind of talk with the dead, but then that gift is gradually revealed to be kind of manipulative smoke and mirrors, and it's intended to keep Sven's people compliant and make them do the harpies bidding.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

Yes, they basically I think one of the things that makes clear is that they're not actually seeing the dead, they're just seeing hallucinations created by the harpies, and then basically tell them to sacrifice more stuff to the harpies, which is unbelievably cruel.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Um, so I guess that what we learn is that the harpies are kind of vengeful gods and they punish people like Sven who fail to worship them adequately. And I guess as a theologian, Mickey, what do you make of this take on religion and gods turning out to be, I guess, false or not what you expect them to be?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Yeah, so I mean I think it's like it's quite a classic kind of anti-religious story where you have you have these beliefs that firstly are are portrayed as like backwards and provincial, right? Like it's stuff that Key doesn't believe in, that Sven didn't really believe in. It's just believed by these like farmers that live together in this big house and this like very sedentary multi-generational community. Then you realize that it's like a mind control scam based on extracting wealth from believers.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

No, not a pyramid scale.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

But like it's a mind control scam based on extracting wealth from believers. So it's it's kind of like that very classic like Marxist view of ideology, where you have um a system of ideas that basically function to obscure the fundamentally exploitative material relationships um that they also then kind of thereby sustain. And that's basically what's going on. So, like the first thing you see when this relationship breaks down is that the harpies just come and take stuff, and then eventually, like people have to give them more in order to establish the kind of fake consolation that they get from um viewing their dead relatives, and the harpies just take and take and take and take, and they're basically they're literally preying on people.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah, well, yeah, literally in the case of the sense.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

It's also interesting the first time you meet the harpies. Sorry, it's like they're people, right? You see that they have culture and stuff like that. So there's that kind of parallel between like exploitative people using religion to control the ignorant masses in the fields or whatever, but then also they're very animalistic. So they have this like um they have they have this traditional nest filled with bloody bones outside their um their harpy cave, and they like eat people and eat the soft bits of the people when they attack them. Um, and they're they're very they're quite sexual as well. Like the harpy art has lots of pictures of them mating and things like that. So there's this like very animalistic side to it too. So that you kind of have this sense that it's people, but it's people at their most kind of barbaric and most animalistic entering into this exploitative relationship.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Maybe I might come back to the harpies in a second, but I just wanted to say, in terms of the take on religion in general, I think it's slightly more nuanced than sorry, edit that up. Um slightly more nuanced than just this idea of I don't know, religion bad or religion fake, because one of the characters who really, really, really believes in the harpies is Kora, who we mentioned before, who's Fen's mother. And I think reading the book that Korra is meant to be one of the characters who you're meant to respect, you're meant to identify with, you're meant to see her as a really good leader of her people. And I think that's quite an interesting take because I think what it's saying is even though this religion is false, it's kind of allowing people like Kora to bind her society together. And one of the things that she does in the book is in Kora's younger days, she adopted some children who are the children of a distant relative, and when she brings them into the community in order to make them feel part of her family, she introduces them to the harpies, and they're then able to kind of take a full part in the life of this community because they adopt the religion of the community. So I think it also has a message about maybe the power of something like a religion to be a force for good within a community, yeah, through people like Cora.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Yeah, so Cora's really interesting actually because she she hits a number of tropes about like sorry, we're both ill. She hits a number of tropes. Can I send your water? Thanks. Oh, that's very lemony.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

I'll put lemon juice in it.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

I feel like my cold just lifting from my body. She's anyway, she's kind of presented as hitting a lot of like tropes from the religious mum at home. Like when she's first uh she's first introduced, you're kind of like, oh, this is like Sven's super religious mum who's going to make this all like really awkward and like believes all this backward shit that no one else believes. But then you realise that she's also like this benevolent community leader, like you said, for whom religion is central to like what binds the community together, and you see the productive, like social side of religion, and you also recognise that you know she has everyone's best interests at heart. In fact, at the very end, she she goes through a lot of like denial, like quite literally, kind of denial around Key's role in the harpies, and that she shuts off her awareness from this um in order to maintain her relationship with Key. So you start to see her as like the old religious figure struggling to maintain a relationship with the younger generation who are living a very different life to the one that she wants to live in in a very kind of sympathetic way. And yet she is also instrumental to sustaining the Harvey faith and the exploitation of her family. And I and I and I think I think that this is very much like the way that people portray and maybe experience like religious parents who you know hold very strongly to a faith that hurts them and hurts other people, but also kind of gets. A lot of value out of it and can impart a lot of value out from it from other people. But this is also kind of like a trope for like representations of religion. Like when people want to do a fair representation of religion, often there will be this one like virtuous person who does religion in a way that still has the bad element, but also does religion in the good way and kind of can embody a more kind of redeeming portrayal of religion and therefore like kind of soften soften the critical portrayal. And I think the Hope's kind of doing that.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

I think she is, and I think there's a sense in Cora that maybe I think it comes out towards the end of the novel that maybe she can actually see some of the negatives about this religion, but she kind of doesn't know any other way to be who she needs to be in order to be a good leader for her people, which I think is another example of Hobbes' very subtle characterization, a very nuanced characterisation.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

And actually, to come on to the harpies, I think the harpies are another, I mean they're not subtle and nuanced, they're harpies, but they're another example of where maybe they're characters with more layers than you would expect. They're not kind of unthinkingly evil. Um, and I know Nikki, you were saying that there's that idea of the traditional nest and it's covered in blood, but then actually when Key goes inside the harpy cave, I guess, um, where their real nest is, she finds that it's not like that. And what they what she sees in there is art, she sees toys for the harpy children, she sees things that make her realise that these are people with kind of a society, all their own, and she in that moment actually feels a kind of almost compassion for them.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Yeah, because she can't doesn't actually try and destroy the animals, she can't know to do it.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Yeah, because she sees them suddenly as not animals, she sees them as something closer to herself.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

There's also a really interesting parallel that happens later on the story where she's about to cross the pass, and before she tries to cross the past, she tries to um she tries to get a room at an inn. Um and it's owned by this, like I can't imagine them as sort of like slug-like sentient creatures. There are a variety of different sentient species in this world. And this slug-like sentient species is horrified at the idea that humans would harm or consume animals. And the person who runs the inn notices that key's horses are geldings and responds to them with the same sort of horror that we might respond to a harpy kind of eating a person. So there's also this kind of like mirroring where, on the one hand, humans are victims of the harpies, the harpies are explosive, the harpies are kind of animalistic, but you also realise that like humanity has those sorts of qualities in and of themselves. And which I guess is also another very like characteristic hob move of like, you know, again with Realm the Elderlings, it starts out with all these alienations. Who are the elderlings? Who are the dragons? They're just these mysterious beasts or whatever, who are the liveship traders versus the backwards people of Buckkeep or something. And then as time goes by, she explores each of them and kind of humanises all of them, and the resulting picture of the world that you get is one that's both much richer, but also really resists the kinds of characteristic and easy or like lazy divisions and distinctions you might otherwise draw.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Yeah, and I think the other thing that's very characteristic of Hobbslash Lindholm is just a kind of reverence for all living things. And I think for me that's the point of that encounter at the inn is to kind of say, well, to these people at the inn, you humans are no better than harpies. Um and I think it's quite a powerful point, and I think it kind of makes the reader reflect on maybe how we do interact with the kind of non-human creatures around us. Because I think if you read any of the books by this author, what you see is just an abiding kind of reverence and love for the natural world and for animals, and certainly if you read The Realm of the Elderlings, that comes through extremely strongly. But even in this book, I would say Keys Horses, she has two horses, and their characters are really fully formed. Yeah, the horses are good characters. Actually, when Nikki was reading the second book, she turned to me on like page one and said, What's a fetlock? Um, and I think any book that's mentioning such horse-specific words is by an author who really loves horses and indeed all animals.

SPEAKER_02 48:26

Yeah, so it's interesting actually because this this theme becomes a major, major theme in um the third book, The Limbrath Gate, which I finished the other day. Of course. Um, which I can't go into because I don't want to spoil it for Emma. But like this question of um not just like how humans approach animals and death, but also like the question of like belonging in the world, um, all become really kind of foregrounded.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Yeah. And I think actually Key's reaction in a way to the natural challenges that she encounters. So when they're traveling through the mountain paths, like snow drifts and things like that, she's very accepting of those things in a way. She's very kind of like, yeah, this is what the world does.

SPEAKER_02 49:11

There's there's also that wonderful bit where they they discover a creature called a snow serpent. Yes. And Key's originally really afraid of it because she thinks it's an enormous predatory snake, and it turns out they're basically like giant earthworms that are harmless, although they will also like fuck up a mountain pass by like digging underneath it and ruining it. There's also like this great moment of um non-living agency. Um, as they cross the past, they go under um two like some sort of rock formation, which I can't really picture. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be on either side of the past or just like over it, but known as the sisters, and they're two stone outcroppings that look like two sisters or two women kissing from the right angle. But it turns out that they have like there's loads of legends around them, and then it turns out they have actual magical potency. Um, they have the shadow which like pulls you down into some sort of other world, um, which almost gets key and Vandian. Um, but they managed to they manage to escape, and it's a really cool sequence, and it's very like cool imagery and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

But um I also love that she threw in two women kissing in there because this is Robin Hobb and she uh she loves to explore a bit of gender. Gender and sexuality. They are sisters who like to kiss.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

But but it's it's it says that they were put there as guardians and they're revealed to actually what you're seeing, the rocky kind of structure you're seeing is actually their shadow, which descends on the past. And it turns out they're two like carved human heads that are inhumanly beautiful. But I think and I think it's implied to that that they've been made by someone. But um, and actually, like I guess like boundaries and locations becomes important in like the Limberath Gate 2. So I wonder if that's going to be filled in a bit more with world building. But there are also these like non-human things which key initially dismisses as just like natural phenomena, but which actually like have a function and per and purpose and prevent humans from exercising their agency as they will by like preventing you from crossing this path and stopping where you will and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Yeah, and that was something that I really loved about this book actually. In terms of the world building, there was a real sense that this book was kind of dipping its toe into its setting, but there's still a lot to be explored. So that also I think those non-humans who are running the inn, there's a sense that they're there in the world, but you don't really know anything about them, they're just there. Um, and I guess also the idea of like the snow serpents and all of these creatures that she doesn't fully explore, they're they're just there, and I think that makes the setting again feel really quite real and quite rich and quite resonant. Um, and I guess part of that is because this is the opening to a longer series.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

But it's a longer series that's really caught my imagination. I find myself thinking about it in the world, and I think I think actually it's got a really winning combination of like really intriguing world building, and then also this very like fan fiction-y dynamic between the two main characters that I find myself just like enjoying.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

Yeah, like a hundred percent. Um, but the one final point that I wanted to mention on the harpies, though, going back to them, is that um harpies traditionally, I think, in in folklore and mythology are all female. These harpies are not, they there are male harpies too, and I really love that about the book because it saved it from falling into a kind of evil woman trope, and I really appreciated that.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Yeah, because I guess you first encounter harpies, um, like the harpy could be a counterpart to Kia's mother.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Um, and they could then just be this like monstrous mother thing that like key has to then overcome and in the process become a better mother. But it's not that, it's not that as well.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

And actually, the one who's chasing her is the dad harpy, yeah, just to fully kind of undermine that trope.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:58

Um, I'm aware that we've been talking for probably around an hour, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

I mean there might be some shit that we have to edit out, but um, but potentially we should wrap up.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

So I guess Nikki, final thoughts on Harpy's flight. What would you give it out of ten? Um, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Uh I actually find this rating out of ten thing really hard because I I've just enjoyed stuff and then I'm inclined to like rate it quite highly. I might give it an eight.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Eight. Okay, brilliant. Um, so this might actually be a nine for me. I really, really, really loved it. Um I just think the world is so rich. I think Key is such a wonderful character. I actually haven't mentioned my favourite detail about Key's characterisation, which is that she's called Key because that's the sound that a hawk makes. And on the day that she's born, her father hears a hawk. And I think it's details like that which really elevated this book for me. Um, and made it really immersive, found it really compulsive, couldn't stop reading. I was honestly so I didn't expect to be so into a book from 1983, but turns out I am. So I'll definitely read the mistake.

SPEAKER_02 54:07

There's so much, literally, so much more we could have talked about. Like, I really wish we could talk about grieving and the way that's negotiated. Oh my goodness. How that relates to questions of belonging as well, because you have a moving through this ambivalent relationship with all these communities. You even have that in like their relationship too. Like Vandian has a hawk tattoo, which um Key thinks is like Harpy's wings, and he thinks the agent's a harpy, but instead it's like reminiscent of a hawk, which is like reminiscent of her name, and like there's all of these like wonderful little details that are just like woven through it.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Yeah, and honestly, I think the emo the core of this book is a really complicated portrayal of grief, yeah, and a portrayal of I suppose the different rituals and ways that people use to manage grief. And one of the things that I again really loved about Key is that actually she rejects the rituals of two societies when dealing with her grief, and instead she deals with it in the way that's right for her.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Yeah, but then you also find that she then in like taking out her morning braids and things like that, that's that's what they do in um Sven's community. So there's almost like even though she's become alienated from them and fled them, she lets go of Sven, but in doing so, kind of reconciles herself to the community, at the same time as also like convincing them that she's dead and things like that. So you have just this really interesting kind of movement there. It's yeah, I wish we could talk about this more.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

And I think she as well, she's a fantastic character because she's so independent, yeah. And I think that's all that's really quite unique, actually. And it's not a kind of studied, oh, I don't fit in with society or I'm aloner. It's just that she's just very independent and it feels really core to her character, it feels really distinctive. I wonder if there's a bit of a coded kind of neurodiverse presentation going on there. Um, but yeah, I really, really, really enjoyed this. I thought it was brilliant. We'd really recommend it.

SPEAKER_02 56:05

We enjoyed it so much that we were just like, oh, I wish we could talk about this stuff, and then we began to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

Which we should recommend. We should write this up.

SPEAKER_00 56:14

So I guess for our next book, I think Nikki and I are currently torn because I think fighter jet dragons. Yeah. So I kind of want to do uh one of C.S. Lewis's space trilogy. No, no, no, we've got a much better one.

SPEAKER_02 56:29

There's this book about a girl who like grows up in a factory that makes dragons that are fighter jets. It's so much wilder a ride, apparently, than Emma's expecting. I've forbidden her from looking it up because I want this to be a complete surprise to her. We are definitely doing that one. I can't remember what it's called. But it's gonna be fucking amazing.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

Okay, great. Um, we'll have to edit our listener.

SPEAKER_02 56:53

For you, no, we can't. We're gonna edit this podcast. It'll be amazing for you as a listener. It might be terrible for us to tweet it. That's why we that's why I wanted to do the early series list.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

I think it'll be good. Also, well, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Get out of the space on the guys. See you later.