Thorns, Feathers & Bones by Anderson W. Frost

A queen buries the warrior she loves, builds a kingdom on the aftershock, and then watches him walk back into her court ten years later. That single impossible return is the spark for our deep dive into Thorns, Feathers, And Bones by Anderson W. Frost, an indie dark epic fantasy where politics run on betrayal, grief hardens into policy, and power keeps finding new disguises.

We start spoiler free with the honest reading experience: the opening throws a lot at you, but the character work is the hook once the threads start connecting. We talk worldbuilding across humans, giants, and elves, why the audiobook shines, and why this is the rare listen where having the physical book nearby can make the story click faster. If you love big-cast epic fantasy with Game of Thrones-style intrigue and Stormlight-level scope, this one is built for your TBR.

Then we go spoiler heavy on the book’s toughest questions: when grief becomes authority, what kind of leader does it create; when love is tangled with control, where does consent end; and when gods meddle with fate, is that justice or cosmic tyranny? We also unpack the title’s symbolism and the ending’s chilling ambiguity, especially what it suggests about agency, cruelty, and the cost of being “chosen.”

Subscribe for more fantasy book analysis, share this episode with a friend who loves morally complex fiction, and leave a review so more readers can find Lit on Fire. What moment in the story changed who you were rooting for?

Transcript

Welcome To Lit On Fire

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Our logo, a woman bound to top a brain stack boat, isn't just an image. It's a warning. A warning about what happens when voices are raised, and a promise that stories once lit are impossible to put out.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I'm Peter Wetzel.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

First Reactions And Reading Tips

SPEAKER_01 0:41

And this is Lit on Fire. Welcome back. Today we're diving into the dark epic fantasy Thorns, Feathers, and Bones by Anderson W. Frost. A sweeping story of grief, resurrection, politics, and the reawakening of old gods and long-forgotten personifications of power. In this fractured world, queens rule through trauma, empires balance on the edge of collapse, and the dead don't always stay buried. At the center of the story is Queen Iolena, a ruler forged by loss who suddenly faces the impossible. The warrior she loved and buried has returned. And that single event begins unraveling political alliances, ancient magic, and a fragile world order that may already be beyond saving. This isn't just a fantasy about swords and kingdoms. It's a story about power born from grief, vengeance that wears a crown, and a world where gods, spies, rebels, and monsters are all trying to shake what comes next. So tonight we're asking, when grief becomes power, what kind of leader does it create? Are gods and fantasy really justice or just cosmic tyranny? And when someone comes back from the dead, is that salvation or the beginning of a catastrophe? Let's light the fire. Okay, ladies, what was your take on this epic fantasy?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Well, it was epic. There are a lot of different storylines going on in this book, and I think that I have to admit right up front, it was a little difficult for me to get into at first. I think I called you and I said, I'm not sure what just happened with the first 50 pages. I have listened to this, I have looked at it, and I kind of need to go back and figure out who I just met because there are so many characters and there are so many different storylines going on. However, once I hooked into the characters and the storylines that were present and I really got to know who they were, I was hooked and I was following those storylines as they popped back in ever so many chapters. And I found it to be really intriguing. There are things that, of course, are left unfinished in the book, and that is because clearly he is moving on to a sequel with this particular book. And I look forward to seeing where he goes with it because there are a lot of really interesting stories in play here and a really interesting world that's been developed. So I do like it. I will say it was one of those that I think you need the hard copy of the book if you're an audible book listener. I think this is one where you're gonna want to at least listen to some sections twice or go in and be able to look in the book and be able to see who he's talking about and what story you're really hooking into.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I completely agree. I went in in good faith because I had so many people whose opinions that I trusted recommend this fantasy so enthusiastically that I was confident in their opinion. However, I also was warned that it takes a bit to get there. And I did experience that. I completely agree with you. Listening to it with all the different characters being introduced one after another and all these different locales being described one after another, and everything seemingly not really fitting together at first, not in my mind, it was really kind of hard to stay focused and absorb it all. And when things did start to come together, I had myself thinking, wait, okay, so was that that character that was in that one scene in the very beginning? Because I just didn't latch on to who they were at first until it started to interconnect. So it probably would have been easier in this instance if I had been doing enhanced reading, like listening and reading, or if I had just read the beginning up to a turning point when things really start to happen. And that would have helped me understand. I think you went and listened to it twice, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yes, I did.

World Setup And Why It Works

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, and and that's that's would be really, really helpful. And I'm I'm afraid that would that experience without knowing that going in might discourage a lot of people to continue reading because it is really worth getting through that point in the book where he has to set up this epic world and give you an idea of who these people are and what's happening. But it does take a long time. And then when it when he cooks, as I say, he cooks, and it was just this amazing fantasy story with twists and turns I did not see coming, and all sorts of political intrigue and betrayal, and just really, really good stuff. And it's very well written, it's extremely well written. I really liked his writing style. I recommend it.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

So let's get a little bit of a synopsis of what's going on in this book. We've kind of alluded to some things. It is definitely an epic fantasy narrative, and you have all of the traditional fantasy tropes. We have Warring Kingdoms, we have familiar divisions between different racial groups like humans, giants, dwarves, elves, all those things exist in here, and their different environments exist. So the elves in the forest, and the humans in their developed cities, and we have different descriptions related to all those places and those developments. We have the main kingdom of Hildeheim that is ruled by Iolena, who is half human, half giant, and she's kind of the one that the story semi-revolves around. The intrigue of the different storylines revolves around Hildeheim. And it is her long-lost love who was supposedly killed 10 years prior, who comes back and tips off all the events of the novel and the various things that take place and the conflicts that happen. She has been struggling post two deaths in her life. One being the death of her mother, who was the prior queen before she became queen in her mother's stead, and then one the death of Connor, who was her lover at the time of his death. And then she is reeling from that, still really trying to get her feet under her as queen, in the shadow almost literally, of her aunt, who is a giant named Hargatha, and then also just really trying to deal with this loss. So she has been grieving really for 10 years as she's been trying to get her feet underneath her. Around her, you have multiple stories going on: the story of Alarian the elf and some of the political drama revolving around him and also just his own personal struggles. You have stories in another kingdom of Casmir that really take us down this different road with some characters there. We have just a ton of stories in this book, and they all end up connecting and coming together. It's a lot to take in, but it is really an intricate tale, and it all begins to weave into one tapestry that presents a picture of everything that's going on in this kingdom and how all of these lives have impacted one another in some way.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah. Okay. I think we can copile it. And as far as characters go, I think that is one of the strongest points of this book is that he does take so much time to invest in these characters to introduce them to us. And that is really what the beginning of the book is about is introducing all these characters. And I really felt like I got a sense of everybody's personality and their motivations and their duplicity and their toxicity and all sorts of things going on with them and their personalities. It is certainly a book that does build a lot of complicated relationships.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Right. And I think you will find that as well developed as the characters are, he also leads you through a journey as a reader where you may start thinking, I'm supposed to root for this character and I'm going to invest myself in this character. And then partway through the book, go, oh, I do not like this person. No, I should have realized that this was the person that knew what they were doing because this person's motivations are highly troubling and highly problematic. And I think that makes a really good writer. He leads you down this road in developing these characters where just like in real life, as you begin to scratch beneath the surface and peel back the layers and get to know more of their motivations and get to know more of their backstory, then you realize things about them that make you go, uh, oh, not good. I don't think this person is a good person. Or I think this person actually is a good person, or this person may be the leader that that person thinks they are. You know, and so those things are really cool in the way he develops the characters. So I enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah, at the end of the book, I was left, and I told the author this, not really knowing who I'm supposed to be rooting for.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Like it's not necessarily that we have a clear bad guy, but we also don't have a clear good guy. It's just really it's complicated at the end of the book.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

I think there are people that I gravitate more towards.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Like Valari and the elf.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Right. And I always gravitate toward the elves. But I think I definitely gravitate more towards certain people, and I'm rooting for certain people. But yeah, it's very ambiguous as humanity is.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Exactly. I want to have faith in the Connor, but I'm I'm it's still up in the air at the end.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Right. He's been he's been very manipulated. So we'll leave that there.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Atmosphere, you go for that one.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

I think he is on his way to developing an excellent setting and environment in the story. We definitely have some very complex atmospheric elements going on. So there were times where I could really see what he was creating, and I thought, this is cool. Like we've got things going on inside people's minds, inside almost alternate dimensions, inside these intricate city and mountainous layouts. And then there are a couple moments where he's created atmospheric elements that I don't understand yet. And I think that that's fair, specifically things having to do with orbs. And when you read the book, you'll understand if you haven't read it yet. But I feel like those things are going to be developed further later. So he's dealing with a lot here. And I think the complication for an author who is writing something so epic is he has to have a board somewhere with a bunch of different lines on it trying to track everything he's doing. And those things get developed over time.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

I love his writing style. That was the first thing that impressed me and kept me reading really through all that confusion is that this is a really well-written book. The way I would describe it is if a song of ice and fire and the stormlight archives had a baby, this is the fantasy novel that you would get.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

It has that J.R. Tolkien feel as well. It's got that epic descriptive and then character-driven. There's just a lot going on through many different threads.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

And I feel like there might be a game in influence there as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

I agree. I found that especially at the end.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

So as far as plot, it builds. He manages to have, I think, a full story arc with each of the stories going on within this book. So while you are divided between several different storylines, they really do all have a complete arc in them. Although you will be left hanging with some of those storylines at the end, but that is always the case when we're moving on to a sequel.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Right. And one thing I'd like to say also, he also weaves back and forth between the different story arcs really well, actually.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

He does.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

There are some times when that's happening. I think, okay, this author feels the need to go every other chapter to some new location. And he stays where he needs to stay for as long as he needs to stay there. And then when we are ready, he goes on to this other story arc. And I didn't ever feel jarred, like it was jarring at all.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

No, I felt like it was really smooth when he did that. Intrigue, there's plenty of intrigue. This book is political, this book is backstabbing, this book is Game of Thrones-like in its political drama. The intrigue is there, and you will still be trying to figure out all the moving pieces at the end.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Logic, I mean, it's magical, it's fantasy. It follows some of the same rules as fantasy. However, like you said, there are there's this powerful artifact orb thingies and these gods that are manipulating the background. And I think those kinds of concepts defy logic.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

They do.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

And so that's you know not really at play. However, however, I think there is a certain psychological logic to each and every one of the characters and their motivations and their behavior and the way that they act and their goals. I think he develops a very realistic pattern of behavior there that follows the kind of psychology, like I said, a psychological and emotional logic.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

I agree. And as far as enjoyment is concerned, I would absolutely say I enjoyed this book in the end. I'm proud of myself for making it all the way through because it is not a small book. I have made it through many large books, but this one was a struggle at the beginning. Again, not because it's poorly written, it's beautifully written, but you do need to be able to devote some time and energy to understanding which character is which up front, and then really digging in with those characters and getting to know them and running with them. By the time I was into the book, when I got past that opening section and I reread it that second time just to make sure I knew who those characters were, I was fully invested in this storyline. So I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

As did I. And I really did enjoy the audiobook because it's an excellent narrator and it's really well produced and done. But I do think you should get the physical copy and the audiobook. I think you need both, which is a great way for Anderson to make more of his money.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

That's correct. Which is a good thing. So I am looking forward to seeing more from this author.

Spoilers Start And Title Meaning

SPEAKER_01 13:43

I think he's the next great fantasy writer, which is why we're covering him.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

So thus ends the spoiler-free part of our podcast, and we now move into the spoiler-heavy section. So if you have not read Anderson W. Frost's novel, then you need to pick up a copy of it and read it and join us.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

So I guess it makes sense to start with the title, Thorns, Feathers, and Bones, because I feel like neither one of us by the end of the book really knew why it's called Thorns, Feathers, and Bones. It is very unclear. Explicitly, Thorns, Feathers, and Bones don't really come into much of a play in the story. We have the bones of a dragon that are discovered. We have a god that can appear as a bird, right? And Argatha calls Lena her little bird, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Thorns, I have no freaking idea. So I have to assume that these are all like metaphorical ideas about power and death and freedom and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

So we got thorns being nature's way of protecting itself or being standoffish towards people or defensive towards people.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Right. Defense, protection becoming harm at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

And then of course, feathers representing freedom, the sky.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Or fleeing, or fleeing, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

As in Connor fleeing his past life and his response.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

And Lena wanting to flee everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Right, exactly. And then, of course, bones being a symbol of death, of mortality.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Right. And the consequences of some of the actions that have taken place and the idea that all of these beings, with the exception of the gods and maybe the elves, are careening toward death all the time.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

So unless Anderson wants to step in and give us his own explanation, it is really left up to interpretation, and that is ours. That's the best we can do.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Symbolic and thematic interpretation based on the things that happen in the book. Yes. So that's what we're going for. That's our story, and we're sticking to it. All right, and you had something else you want to say.

Giants, Humans, And Awkward Logistics

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Yeah, so this is a very important claw point in the story. Okay, so Lena is half giant, half human. Her mother is human, and her father was a giant, right? Correct. And in this world, giants are somewhere between eight to twelve feet. They're not like, you know, super, super tall. On the short side, they're eight feet. On the tall side, they're 12 feet, right? Yes. Okay, so I just got to thinking that let's assume that her father was on the short side of eight feet. And her mother might have been on the tall side of like five, eight. Or maybe even six. Maybe even almost seven feet. Maybe she's just a really tall woman, right? Regardless, though, there's still about a foot or two difference at best between her and her husband. So I'm thinking all things being in proportion. Girl wasn't just a queen, she was a size queen.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Like she went out and got herself some BGC. You know what I'm saying? And that's all I could think about when I thought about that relationship, okay? My intrusive thoughts. I wanted to know how that worked.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

This is where you want to start. You know, she actually addresses that in the book. Do you remember that scene?

SPEAKER_00 16:28

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Yeah, she actually addresses that. And it's a really awkward discussion between Lena and her mother. You don't remember that scene at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

I probably blocked it out for trauma. You probably did block it out for most things.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Because it's not long before, spoiler alert, Lena kills her. It's not long before that moment. And she talks about how she wanted to give her husband children, and she worked as hard as she possibly could to be able to accommodate him physically.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

She doesn't talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

She talks about it anderson knew we would want to know. Yes. And he's she's like, I really struggled to be able to accommodate him physically, and I really couldn't. It was a struggle. I mean, she really is quite honest about the fact that I don't think this was an enjoyable proposition for her.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

No, and she had like five miscarriages before she eventually gave birth to Lena and her brother.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So they were definitely dedicated to or supposed miscarriages. Or supposed miscarriages, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Right. But so they were dedicated to trying, and she was dedicated to giving him children. But when we meet the woman, she's a little bit crazy. And you gotta think, maybe she went a little bit crazy because she was trying to accommodate something she was not physically or mentally capable of accommodating.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

One of the many factors, yeah, about her husband being murdered. And she did love him.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

She did love him, I think. But yes, I think she did. But yeah, she talks about it. She's like, Yeah, this was not a fun time because Lena is being a little bit of a tantrum girl at the moment, and she's saying, I don't want this, and she doesn't really want to be in this position she's in, and she wants to marry Connor. And the mother goes on this long tangent about how she never wanted to be in this position. And she goes, But I was so committed to being queen and giving my husband children that basically, even though he had this enormous appendage, I was trying to have children with him regardless of the agony that it caused me along the way. So yes, she does address it.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

I do, I do remember that now, yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Yeah, you were just trauma blocking.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Yes, I was.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Okay, all right, but you have brought it upon yourself anyway. So yes, that is addressed in the book. But I have to think she was probably more like five eight, five'9, and he was probably eight or nine feet tall. I mean, we are talking about a significant size difference. And and that was probably not fun.

Connor And Iolena’s Toxic Origin

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, in every way imaginable. Well, the other really crucial element to this story is this incredibly painful, frustrating, infuriating, toxic relationship between Connor and Lena, which goes way back to the very beginning when she first meets him. Yeah. She kind of plucks him out of his job as a knight in training to become her little plaything.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Right. And he is the master of the guard, right? Or he's the captain.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

He becomes the captain of the guard, but initially he's just the squire who's, you know, the bottom of the totem pole.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

But she sees him and decides, I want that. I want him.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

And he becomes He's a hot piece of, you know, ass.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yeah, exactly. A series of manipulations and almost like owner and toy.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Mistaken for love and infatuation. But I don't think they have a really they never really had a relationship of equals, first of all. And they never really had a true love relationship either with one another. And I think that plays out. And I think that's one of the reasons why Connor takes the opportunity that he does to escape. Escape into supposed death and live his life of freedom with somebody he truly does love, fall in love with, for the last 10 years. Until he's discovered that he's not dead, and then Lena sends guards after him to bring him back to her by force.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Lena is that fiery, passionate, lustful relationship. It's the relationship where one moment you're jumping each other behind the shed, and the next moment you're screaming at one another, and she's berating him and manipulating him. It is that relationship that's completely unpredictable, that's up and down all the time. When he escapes her and feigns his death and is gone for those 10 years, he finds the stable, loving, consistent relationship. It may not have the same passion and excitement, but it is based in something deeper, and he truly loves her, and it alludes to the intimacy of their relationship. It may not be fiery and passionate on the same level as he was with Lena, but his relationship with Lena is terribly toxic and it's just awful. And all the flashback scenes we see between them, she is taunting him, she is toying with him, she is manipulating him with her sexuality to do what she wants. She is using him. And it may allude periodically to him being a support that she needs, like he would run in to help her and defend her, or she would lean on him in some way, but she only pulls him in when she needs him for something. And then otherwise he is shoved to the side. So it is really an unequal power dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

And this is a major spoiler, but the breaking point comes when she tells him that she wants him to go and slaughter an entire country of people to bring their enemies to heal and secure the political stability of her realm.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Because she doesn't like the prince that's there and he's manipulative and she doesn't think the country's going to be allegiant at all.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

She says she's like, You'll either have to kill him or I'll have to marry him, which is manipulative in its own right.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Right. And so he feels like he's being pushed into a corner.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So he refuses to do it. He says, I will not kill an entire nation of people just because you asked me to. And she says, Well, they're evil, they're less than human. She uses all the dehumanity. Language that a person can about a group of people, and he still won't do it. And so suddenly, one night, when the prince is there to see her, Connor is heading to her bedroom and he sees the prince walking away from her bedroom with a smile on his face. He runs into the bedroom and she claims that she has been sexually assaulted.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

And she's crying and she's begging him, don't do anything right now. I I thought that I could convince him to align with our countries without any conflict. But then he took my meaning in the wrong way, and then I couldn't stop him, and he did this. And then he, of course, is trying to comfort her. But in the moment, Anderson Frost writes in that she's kind of smirking into Connor's neck as she's crying, and you definitely get the inference that she has just set him up. That this was not sexual assault, that this was her manipulation because she knows the one thing he's not going to be able to stand is the idea that she has been raped or sexually assaulted by this man.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

So, of course, he goes and he gets his revenge. And he gets revenge not only on this prince, but on the entire city. I think they say that he killed him and his men, but him, they don't know it was him and his men, really. He's got like this secret group of soldiers that he leads, I guess. And that's that's 70, yeah. The 70. But he is credited with having killed 5,000 plus people. Right. And then disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Men, women, and children. And he brutally kills this prince. All the time the prince is crying out, he asked me to do it. Connor is blind to any of that and just mercilessly cuts this man into pieces.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

And it's not until after he's committed all these atrocities that he really puts it together and realizes that he has been manipulated, and that is the reason he does not go back to Lena.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

So right there, that is just incredibly toxic behavior.

Connor’s Return And Punishment Politics

SPEAKER_02 23:50

We fast forward a little bit, and this is a bit of a debate that Peter and I had when I was in the midst of reading the book. We fast forward, he is brought back to the castle after it's discovered that he's alive, and she basically tells people, go find him, bring him to me. I want him back. And she has always been and is still obsessed with Connor and having Connor as her own. And so she has the guards bring him back. She knows that he is going to have to be punished if she's going to retain her position as queen. He has she has to punish him in some way because he technically deserted for these 10 years by leaving and running away from his post.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

And by all appearances, killed all these people without the authorization of the crown.

Consent, Coercion, And Power Imbalance

SPEAKER_02 24:38

And so, because no one knows about any of the machinations that were going on behind the scenes. And so we have all of that playing. And so she has to, and he pretty much agrees to being punished. But before any of that happens, he's being held captive in the palace in this room. And he wakes up and his arms are tied down and his legs are tied down, and he sees her putting logs on the fire, and then she stands up and she's in kind of this elaborate robe and she takes it off, and then she's only got this corset and this loincloth. And a servant slips in and undoes her corset and it drops to the floor, of course, and she's got this heavy eye makeup on. Up until this point, they have had nothing but arguments. There has been no love. There's only been anger in the moments they've been reunited since he was brought back to the castle. Like there's only been hostility. And we left under this horrible manipulative state. She drops her clothes and then she pulls the blanket off of him and she smiles because she's standing there naked and he is sexually aroused by the fact that she's standing there naked, big tries to kind of turn his head away, and then she climbs on top of him and she has sex with him. And during the course of it, he tries to look away from her. He has this flat expression on his face. He tries to look away from her. She grabs his face and pulls his face back. And they end up, of course, having sex. He has the natural responses of a man in that process. But my comment to Peter was she just raped him. That to me was sexual assault. Again, unequal power dynamic. And regardless of the fact that he responded to it, the entire nature of their relationship suggests that that cannot be considered anything except rape.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

And of course, I've had to think about this a lot because you questioned why that didn't end the book for me. Because I have a pretty hard line in the sand when it comes to making rape or sexual assault appear like a gray area. And I kind of just didn't think of it that way at first. I understand the power dynamic. I felt like they were both having mutual, angry sex with one another. And I thought there was more consent there. When you do consider the history of the relationship and the power dynamic, there is no way he hasn't been groomed basically by her to give in to her every whim.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

And and that is sexual assault.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

And that is rape. I mean, he is able, it makes it very clear that he is able to break his restraints whenever he wants. The thing is, she even smirks when she sees his erection and says, I knew he can't. Can't deny me. He can't deny me. Yes. And there's mutual pleasure too. Right. Having angry sex, but it isn't balanced. There's no equal power there. It's definitely a power imbalance to it.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

When it's over, he has visions of this other woman and her son. He has visions of Rose's face and he has this intense regret of what just happened. What did I just do? And I feel like she has put him in that position. I just feel like that really qualifies in that moment because of all the context surrounding it. I don't think we can always control our physical reactions to things, but our physical reactions don't necessarily send the message of acquiescence.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Oh, I agree. I agree. And that is something that victims often struggle with because our bodies were not in control of those physical reactions. And that doesn't mean you were consenting. Right. And that's important to state. And this is why it's not a dill killer for me, is because I don't think Anderson is trying to present it as a positive thing that happens to him or happens between them. I think it's another example of her toxicity and the toxicity of their relationship. However, you and I would both like readers to know going in, especially those that might misinterpret it, that this is not okay.

Memory Torture And Stolen Agency

SPEAKER_02 28:27

No, it's not. And if you if you read it as okay, I would ask you to step back and re-examine it because I think Anderson Frost does do a really good job from that point on of showing what this relationship really is and showing who she is as a person. And if you really read everything you're supposed to and you connect all the dots, I think you can't help but realize that is really a sign of her personality and who she is and the length she's willing to go to to get what she wants. And she's not a good person.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

No, and this behavior continues. I mean, in order to get his past out of him, she brings in this woman who is like a telepath, but her means of pulling memories out, and she knows this, is excruciatingly painful. Right. And so she automatically puts him into this kind of almost revenge torture, I think, for abandoning her because she could have asked Delarian to do it in a way that wasn't painful and he was willing. Right. But she uses this woman that she's been keeping basically as a telepathic slave that she calls creature, that everybody calls creature.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

She's completely dehumanized.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

In order to do this to him. So that's one red flag about her character as a leader and as a lover or companion to him. And then later on, she asks the same person to remove the part of his memories that makes him want to go back to this woman that he fell in love with. She asks her to take away his agency and make him forget this other woman so that she won't lose him again. Which again is just okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

It's awful. Yeah. Take away his choice.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Culminating to her, bringing him back into the life of violence that he tried to escape, the life of violence that gives him so much guilt and trauma that she's basically always used him as her killing machine. Right. And that's not the person he wants to be, and she brings him straight back into that world. And then finally, in the end, what appears to be a betrayal of his trust when he makes her promise to find Rose, the woman he loved, and her son Eric, and make sure that they're okay, that they're safe and they're set up. The book has this horribly ambiguous ending where it appears as though she finds them, puts them on a ship, supposedly going to Rose's homeland, gives them money, sets them up, and they end up daulking at this port at Casmir, which is specifically for the trafficking of sex slaves.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And that ends. And so we don't know, okay, did she put them on that ship not knowing or knowing? And everything I can see about her character so far, I have to think it was a double cross.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Right. I think that she knew.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

So when we talk about who are the bad guys in this book, Green is definitely one of the ones that stands out to me.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

I didn't want her to be that though.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

No, I didn't either. And the entire time in the beginning, I am kind of rooting for her. And that's why I said, as we go along with the character development, we begin to peel back layers. You start to see more and more of who she is. And by about halfway through the book, I'm like, oh, heck no. Like, what is wrong with this woman? She is the classic narcissist. She is so manipulative. She is so consumed with herself and her own desires and her own goals that she is incapable of seeing the humanity of anyone else around her and the individual rights of anyone else around her. She's completely lost that ability.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

But at first, you know, you kind of feel bad for her because she's this young ruler in over her head. She's been dealing with, like you said, this brief for the last 10 years. And she has been relying heavily upon the advice of her aunt, Hargatha, who's a giant and also her hand, the hand of the crown, to kind of lead her. And then we find out that Hargatha has her own machinations in mind to dethrone her, to use the giants to take over and install herself as the kind of de facto leader or her own daughter as the de facto leader. And we think, oh, that's horrible. She's surrounded by all these people who are willing to betray her. And you want them to not get away with it. Because you think they're the bad guys. You think they're the bad guys. And I don't know if they all are also the bad guys, but I have much less compassion for Lena. And it's very clear that she was a bad ruler. And the people that hate her have a very good reason to.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

Yeah. And so if they want to replace her, they may very well be able to replace her with someone better. But you do not realize that in the beginning. And you know, one of I think the questions it throws up to us is, you know, how we handle grief and whether grief really destroys a person or whether it makes a person wiser. And it really comes down to how you process grief and how you work through grief and then how you use grief because Lena has allowed grief to eat her up inside out. But then again, everyone thinks she's just grieving her mother, but she murdered her mother. And she may still be in a grief cycle.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

And her mother became the tyrant that she became because of her own grief over losing her husband.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Right. And so this cycle of grief is has made these people awful and corrupted them instead of making them stronger or making them wiser. And so the grief cycle is really ugly in this story. I like to think that grief can make us stronger, it can make us more compassionate, it can make us more empathetic, but that really depends on how you use it.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

This is also grief coupled with an inordinate amount of power.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Right. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah. And responsibility.

Gods, Fate, And Moral Boundaries

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Right. So that grief perhaps creates trauma, and the trauma coupled with the power then becomes unbelievably corruptive. So we definitely have that going on. In the background, of course, I think we have to mention that we have the gods at work. And the gods really come into play more toward the end of the book. They're there in bits and pieces at different places in the text, but they become very apparent toward the end. And they are highly manipulative. Like you want to look at some of them and go, okay, these are good gods, right? In our Greek stories and our Roman stories and all our mythology, you will gravitate towards some gods and you will say, Oh, I like this god or goddess because she did this or he did that. But inevitably, if you read all the tales, they always do something bad too, because they reflect human characteristics. And I think you see that in this text, you see very much the agendas. This is where I felt Neil Gaiman and I felt Sandman a little bit, is when we dealt with some of the gods at the end. I felt kind of that internal antagonism that was going on between some of the gods slash goddesses.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Especially when we get these god-like beings that are even actually more ancient than the human-like gods themselves that are called things like fear and chaos and desire.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Right. And so when you begin to deal with those, you start feeling some of that ancient agenda and infighting that's going on with the gods. And there are some that you want to gravitate toward and say, okay, this godlike being has a positive agenda, but maybe in this moment, maybe not. So there are a lot of things to deal with there as well. But clearly, Anderson Frost has set up a really fascinating journey for us to go on with a lot of interesting things to consider. And we haven't even hit Casmir.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, let's hit one more core theme. One more core theme is the level to which these gods interfere with fate, destabilizing the reality that they're supposed to take care of.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

And that is a big theme in this book. First, we get that with the Larian, who is an elf with very godlike powers, but he has a clear line in the sand where he will not intervene in a person's fate or their own agency, despite the fact that he has the power to do so.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Right. He's got this clear ethical line, this clear moral line of right and wrong, and he knows it is not his job to do that. So he's constantly removing himself, even when he has guilt, I could have helped my friend or I could have done this for him.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

And it's very clear that he is on the path to rising to godhood himself. Right. Is his ultimate destination, which I think is Anderson setting up almost a savior sort of figure. And it's because we have these other gods that have been established for a very long time, and one by one they've become kind of corrupt in their dealings and their own agendas.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

So we have a god, Regara, who has been intimately involved in kind of guiding and manifesting this destiny for characters like Ilena. And so as Lena has gone along in her life, he has appeared to her in multiple iterations to advise her and to give her aid.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

And even go so far as to not let her die.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Right. She tries to commit suicide like multiple times, and he intervenes to prevent her from dying. And then he brings Connor back to life when Connor actually does die and he interferes with the natural order, and he's constantly stepping in and manipulating things to the point where the other gods are getting mad at him. But you see again that infighting and those hidden agendas. So you see gods that are more than willing to transgress the lines, to break the oaths, to break the deals that have been made, to break the rules, and then you have godlike beings like Illarion who are unwilling to cross those lines. So you have that debate about where those lines are, where they should be, and what is the responsibility of these immortal beings.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

It's an incredibly intricate. We haven't even spoiled all the things that there are to spoil.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Not at all.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

So if you're listening to this just to get excited about reading it, there's still surprises around the corner. But what Anderson W. Frost has created here is going to be a real epic journey. And I cannot wait for the second and third book, and apparently a prequel, to come out. So he is really going to be developing a Brandon Sanderson-esque world around this first novel, and it's a great start.

Next Reads And Listener Support

SPEAKER_02 38:00

And don't wait until all those come out. I can say, as someone who gets frustrated waiting for a sequel, you will not regret picking this one up and reading it right now. It gives you enough in this complete story to hang on to that you will really enjoy getting to know these characters. All right, Peter, what are we reading next time?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

So we're gonna highlight another indie author and one of my very favorite cozy fantasy authors, S. L. Roland, who has written a number of series, but one of my favorites so far is his Tales of Adria series, which is four standalone novels. We're gonna read all four, and then either the course of one or two episodes, we're gonna talk about them.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Yeah, and I love this. Like when people mentioned cozy fantasy, I was like, what is that code for? Like, I don't understand what cozy fantasy is. I'm just getting into this lit RPG stuff. And then you said cozy fantasy, and I read the first one, and I'm like, I really like this. Like this was a feel-good fantasy in the midst of all these other kind of tragic things that I was reading, but it also has a lot of depth to it as well. And I really enjoyed his writing in particular. So I'm excited to read the rest of these three that I'm getting into and then having some really good discussion. All right, so we look forward to talking to you then. If you are enjoying our podcast and feel moved to support us in some small way, you can find a support link on our bus sprout account and in the link tree on our social media.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Your support will go towards covering our production costs and improvements in our production quality. We appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

And as always, keep reading, keep thinking, and we'll see you next time.