Halfling Harvest and There Be Dragons Here by S.L. Rowland

Cozy fantasy sounds gentle until you realize what it’s really risking: your sense of self. We step into S.L. Rowland’s Tales of Aedrea with Halfling Harvest and There Be Dragons Here, two warm-hearted fantasies where the “high stakes” aren’t wars or prophecies, but belonging, purpose, and the fear of living a life that doesn’t feel like home.

We start with Marigold, a halfling running a vineyard and inn under the long shadow of her parents’ legendary success. A yearly wine competition and a smug rival push her from pride into panic attacks and crippling self-doubt, while her found family and a vividly cozy community keep trying to pull her back to joy. We also talk about how Rowland writes romance with believable awkwardness and patience, and why the sapphic relationship at the center feels inclusive without being treated as “other.”

Then we shift to Hilda, a grandmother and former adventurer facing grief, aging, and a request that drags her back onto the road to scatter a friend’s ashes in dragon territory. Alongside her granddaughter Frida, the story becomes a love letter to legacy, intergenerational learning, and the power of stories we pass on and the stories we tell ourselves. If you’re looking for low stakes fantasy that still hits hard, this conversation is for you.

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Transcript

Quick Synopses Of Both Books

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Welcome back. Today we're stepping into the deceptively gentle worlds of Halfling Harvest and There Be Dragons here. Stories filled with warm hearths, small communities, and just enough magic to feel like an escape. But let's not get comfortable. These books trade epic battles for internal ones. Belonging, identity, purpose, connection, inclusion. No Dark Lord, no apocalypse, just people trying to figure out who they are. And maybe that's the real high stakes. Because in these worlds, failure doesn't mean death, it means disconnection, isolation, a half-lived life in a place that should feel like home but doesn't. So today we're asking, are cozy fantasies an escape from reality or a mirror that forces us to confront the stakes we usually ignore? Let's slide it up. Okay, Liz, why don't you go ahead and give us a brief synopsis of both of these books that we'll be talking about?

Found Family And Character Chemistry

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Well, I think everyone knows, based on our last conversation, that I absolutely love S.L. Rowland's books. And so let's talk about what goes on in these two. First, we'll talk about There Be Dragons here. This is a story about Hilda, who is a grandmother. She is a dwarf, who has lived a life of adventure, but now lives a life at home with her husband, with her children, with her grandchildren, living basically what looks like that typical grandma life. She has her grandchildren over, her family over, she baked cake, she enjoys telling stories periodically, but over time people have ceased to really believe her stories as time passes. She is, after all, just their grandma. Then she has the opportunity to go to a funeral for one of her adventuring friends, and her son accompanies her, and he realizes that these stories really were true. And she comes back telling some of those, and it intrigues him, and it kind of opens up this door to her stories again. Then she receives a request that she is to take her friend's ashes and take them to a very special place to distribute them. And along the way, she kind of rediscovers her love for adventuring, but she also begins to pass the mantle to her granddaughter who sneaks along after her. And that is kind of what this whole story ends up being about as grandmother and granddaughter take this adventure together and the things they meet and discover along the way. Then in the other book we're talking about, we have Halfling Harvest. We have the story of Marigold, who is a halfling who is now running a vineyard, a vineyard that her father made famous. She has a couple of very adventuresome halfling parents. I kind of think Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. They are halflings that have left the comfort of their home and gone to do some adventures, and they've left this vineyard to their daughter. And she is trying to achieve the same greatness that her father achieved with his wine. And so she is working toward the harvest festival. She is feeling a great deal of pressure to live up to her father's image and feeling like she doesn't quite match up. She has a found family within her vineyard. She has a dwarf named Locke, who is basically her baker. He's an interesting character because he's not your typical dwarf. He definitely likes to bake cookies and scones, and he's in the kitchen a lot. She has her elf best friend who helps her in her winery as her partner. That's Alara. And she happens to be a couple with this dwarf. They are partners in life together. And then along the way, she meets this gnome called Poppy, and there's a developing relationship there. And we really get the story of her effort to grow into her father's shoes, or maybe her effort to realize she doesn't have to do that. And she can grow into her own path and her own shoes as she develops her own vision for what this vineyard will be and lays down some of those burdens she has had along the way. And it is just a really enjoyable journey in this delightful halfling village and really going through this process with her found family. So once again, SL Roland provides us with a couple of wonderful stories where yes, we have low stakes as far as those fantasy threats are concerned, but we have wonderful personal stakes when it comes to all the things these characters are realizing about themselves and the people around them.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Excellent. So I guess let's start copiling. You want to go with Halfling Harvest first?

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yes, that sounds great.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Okay, so characters in Halfling Harvest. I really feel like I bought into the relationship and the camaraderie of Marigold and her found family within the vineyard. I thought that Roland did an amazing job of developing those personalities, especially the love between Alara and Locke. I thought that was a really sweet couple pairing and the way that they interacted with one another. And Alara as Marigold's longtime good friend and a little bit of a prankster, a little likes to tease her a bit. They're all hoping for the best for Marigold. They want her to find happiness. And when Poppy shows up on the scene, I just really enjoyed watching them watch her and Poppy sort of awkwardly develop this relationship.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

And I loved all those characters too. I won't go over exactly what you just said, but they are very real. And the awkwardness, as you said, is there. And it's true friendship and those true awkward moments where people trip over one another and just kind of laugh at each other's foibles and funny habits and moments where they're embarrassed and don't know what they're doing. So that was really fun. When it comes to there be dragons here, I love once again how S.L. Roland gives us this aging adventurer, or rather aged adventurer in Hilda. And I love her character as a grandmother, yet someone who still has that adventurous heart who isn't quite ready to say, I'm done, you know, I'm ready to sit in a recliner and put my feet up nonstop. She still has a little bit of that inside her. And so I love the fact that we get this developed older character with a lot of wisdom and a lot of stories to pass on, but she's also comfortable with where she's at in life and comfortable with the fact that she is a grandma. And you have this beautiful relationship between her and her husband, who calls her, you know, mama and she calls him papa, and they have just this lovely relationship where they love their children and they love their grandchildren. I love that focus on older characters. And then I think the wonderful characters that he develops with Frida, the granddaughter, with the dragons, uh, particularly Tink Tink, which we meet later on, and then even the goat Morsel is great. Just the things described there. I just think they're delightful. All of the characters are delightful.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I yeah, I really love the fact that I I really got Morsel's personality, that he had a lot of characters for a goat. I also like the difference between Frida's approach to the life of adventuring and Hilda's approach to life of adventuring. Although Frida is there to learn from Hilda's wisdom, it's very clear though, she's has her own set of ethical and moral values that she brings into it. And I I like that she's sort of a softening edge to Hilda's more matter-of-fact. Matter-of-fact, yeah, do what needs to be done kind of approach to adventuring. She it has a little bit more of a heart for preserving the beauty and the life of the creatures that they encounter. I thought that was fascinating to watch.

Atmosphere And Series Comparisons

SPEAKER_00 8:15

I think it's really great that he shows kind of that generational transition. And that it's okay for another generation of people to have different ideas about how to handle life and how to approach relationships. So, yes, that was really, really good. Atmosphere, of course, he's a genius when it comes to developing fantasy atmospheres. I felt the halfling atmosphere, that comfort of hobbit holes and wineries and harvest festivals. All of that was just brilliant. And then when it comes to There Be Dragons, the mountains, and the adventure that they're on as they go through different locations, I thought I was there with them and I felt those journeys.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Right. And I would say that the atmosphere of Halfling Harvest was the strongest of all four books and Tales of Adria.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Primarily because we get it set in this one locale. Although Cursed Cocktails, it's essentially set in one locale. However, Cursed Cocktails is more the relationship than it is about the atmosphere. The bar, yes, but this is a whole town. This is a whole community coming together. And I just got that warm, cozy feeling in my heart watching not only the people that work at the inn and vineyard interacting with one another, but how the whole town just interacts with one another. And everybody knows everybody, and they're always making fun of that one halfling who nearly cut off his finger one year and it's a constant recurring joke. It just was great.

Low Danger, High Personal Tension

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, and I think now that you brought that up, if I were going to compare writing styles and just kind of the atmosphere development that you're talking about, I would say that I would put cursed cocktails and halfling harvest together in a pairing that I think those two have very similar approaches with the development of atmosphere and relationship. And I agree, halfling harvest, I think, is the stronger of the two, atmosphere-wise. And then our other two Sword and Thistle. Sword and Thistle, thank you. I was having a moment. Sword and Thistle and There Be Dragons, I think have that adventure aspect on location, adventuring. And they have those two differences between them: the location of the cozy home atmosphere, and then the on-adventure atmosphere that we have. So the writing style, we've already discussed L. Roland's riding style. It is just lovely. There is intrigue still. It's low stakes intrigue again, but I keep arguing, which I want to emphasize with S.L. Roland, that we have low-stakes intrigue when it comes to anything truly dangerous and terrible happening, but we have high-stakes personal intrigue. And that goes on in both of these books, where we're really dealing with some personal growth that goes on. And there's definitely that mystery, that tension that exists within the course of both stories.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yes. And I think that existential sort of discovery, crisis, transition that these books explore really make them some of the most relatable fantasies that I've ever read. And the stakes are personal for the reader because we can relate to everything that they're going through. We might not relate to facing dragons down, but we can certainly relate to a feeling of is my worth past? What's the next step in my life?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

All those things.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

That's what I love about these books. Logic. Logic. I mean, I just think he makes really believable interpersonal interactions and relationships.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Right. That you should be able to identify with. So the logic is there because the human life is there.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

It's funny, we were on a live recently with S.L. Rowland, and one of the things that was discussed was this bad review that one of the books got. And one of the things the person says in the room, I will go all over entirely was that he just doesn't know how to write romance. And I would completely disagree with that. Both Cursed Cocktails at Halfling Harvest with the strong romantic elements are so believable, in my opinion. They develop so naturally because in reality, romance is slow, it's timid, it's testing the other person's feelings and awkward interactions and bleeding eye contact. And you don't know when to make the move. And that's true romance. It's not a romanticy. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous romance. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Right. He doesn't know how to write your version of romance that you hope you are creating for yourself, but he knows how to write the romance that you really have. It's like those great TikTok videos or videos where you go, What my cat thinks he looks like, and you see the panther prowling through the woods, and what my cat looks like, and you see like the fat cat rolling out on the carpet. You know, I hate to burst your bubble, negative reviewer, but romance really does look awkward and awful sometimes and just slow and pitiful. And we trip over ourselves. And so I think he's writing the best romance I've ever read because I can believe it and I've been there.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Exactly. And so enjoyment, hey, what more do we need to say? Did you enjoy the book?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

I enjoyed the book. Yeah, very much so. I would read it over and over again. In fact, these may be my new books that I come back to over the holidays and to sit down with a cup of coffee or cocoa and reread these books of Adria because they are so enjoyable and I connect to the characters so much.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

And he's writing a fifth one now, which is going to be Cozy Horror.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Yeah, can't wait.

Spoiler-Free Wrap Before The Shift

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Get ready for that. That sounds great.

Spoilers Start And Reading Order

SPEAKER_00 13:20

I know, and I'm just so intrigued to find out what a cozy horror book actually looks like. So so much fun. All right. So thus ends the spoiler-free version of our first half of a podcast. And now we transition to our spoiler half-up. Where do you want to start? Halfling Harvest or There Be Dragons here?

Wine Rivalry And Mental Health Spiral

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Oh, let's do them in published order, which is the order that I think people need to read them. Because once again in Halfling Harvest, we get a crossover between Sword and Thistle, the book prior, and this book, where we have Daubin and Eris, I believe is his name, meeting on the road in Sword and Thistle. Then we have Eris and Doblin both coming to the winery and meeting Marigold in this book. So I just think that we should talk about them in order.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So we've already discussed that. Marigold has been the sole proprietor of the Dewdrop Inn and Vineyard ever since her father and her mother left, kind of live the RV period of their retirement together. And they only occasionally check in. And she's been running the inn for the last 10 years. And for the last 10 years, she has been consistently coming in second place in the yearly wine contest that they hold. And her main rival is the Dark Root Cellars. And the reason why Dark Root Cellars continues to beat her is because the proprietor of Dark Root Cellars has hired a druid to use magic to enhance the crop year after year. And Marigold is very traditional in her views on how wine should be produced and age naturally and all that stuff. And so she has refused to do that, but she's very resentful and just doesn't know how to compete with that kind of edge. And so she puts a lot of pressure on herself and she's sort of lost the plot as far as the joy that she once had making wine and running the inn and the vineyard. Because this other person has sort of antagonized her for the last 10 years. He's really haughty, he's really mean, and he do really makes it clear that he looks down on her. And so it has taken its toll on her and her mental health very clearly, to the point where she struggles really with serious panic attacks and crippling self-doubt. And so the story is basically about her trying to find her place once again in this process, her joy, and discover where she lost that. Right. And how she can get it back.

Poppy Arrives And Romance Builds

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Right. And up until this point in her life, she has not really been able to connect with another person as far as a real relationship or lasting relationship is concerned, a personal relationship, an intimate relationship for herself. She has her friends, her best friend Alara, she has Locke, she has her cat, Onyx, who is an elder dire cat that she won't get rid of or retire because even though he no longer really catches the rabbits very well in the vineyard, he's her cat and she loves him. She holds on to those traditions in that family, but she provides little self-care when it comes to her and what she needs. She doesn't consider what she needs for herself at all. And she just keeps pushing forward and beating herself up for the things that she cannot do and cannot accomplish. And so we really see that. And I think SL Roland does such a good job of showing us the reality of those mental health issues, those real pressures that we put on ourselves, even in the little day-to-day things that we endure, and little things like the antagonistic people who drag us down. Because let's face it, whenever we are trying to accomplish something in our lives and you're hoping for something great, and then there's that person, that person that always has something to say. That is how Marigold feels every day. And for her, that is something that just destroys her on the inside. And she cannot, she cannot process through it. She cannot get past it. So she needs someone who can really come through and support her with that and kind of push her toward helping herself and really supporting her own mental health. So Poppy comes along. And this is another beautiful moment where S.L. Roland provides us a very inclusive atmosphere in this beautiful LGBTQ relationship. We've got Poppy the gnome with her brilliant blue hair, and she comes in and she's awkward and she's clumsy and she's constantly dropping things and tripping over herself. And at one point, Marigold walks into the library as she's researching because she's like a historian and she's trying to grab a book, and the ladder has slipped out from underneath her, and she's like hanging. And Marigold has to like rescue her. And there is clearly this thing between them. But Marigold, to a certain extent, lacks the confidence to do anything about it. And her friends are watching and they're like, it's there, this is it. And Marigold's kind of hanging back and afraid to take that first step. But again, it's such a beautiful introduction and slow roll into this relationship by this person who is struggling with so much of, as you said, that crippling self-doubt.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

And once again, I love that he writes this sapphic relationship without any kind of sense of the other.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

No one's looking down on them as they kind of see it. As a matter of fact, they're kind of smiling and kind of rooting for them. It's just part of life. The person you connect with, the person you fall in love with, is the person you're supposed to be with.

Journals, Joy, And Rewriting Identity

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Right. And they even mention another couple in a same-sex relationship in the village, right? As they're going through, even before Poppy comes into the scene. So this is an accepted thing. Again, we're presented with in a perfect world, this is just part of our world. This is not looked at as anything that is marginalized.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Exactly. And the turning point occurs because Poppy is there to do research on the Harvest Festival and the wine competition and take her research back to, I believe it's the Eastbourne Historical Society. So she's come to Willowbrook from Eastbourne and she stays at the inn that Marigold runs. And one of the things that she discovers, actually, Marigold brings it up to help her with her research, is the fact that Marigold's father kept detailed journals every year that he ran the inn and competed in the competition. And she says, Let me go ahead and find those and you can read them and it'll help with your research. But the irony is that it's what helps Marigold find her love and enjoyment for running the end and competing in the wine competition as well, because her father has written these beautiful words about his experience and his attitude towards what he does. And she realizes that in the process of allowing this person to antagonize her and continue to defeat her and make her feel defeated, that she's lost the real purpose of everything, which is the connection with the community and also the love of what she does. And she reads this entry that her father wrote when he came in second place. And the attitude of her father towards the person who beat him was just like, that wine was so good. I immediately had to buy several casks, and I'm so happy for him. And he did such a good job. And she's like, That's how I want to feel when I lose.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Right. But she's just having a hard time getting there.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Because she's got this person in her life that obviously does not enjoy what he does. And so he wants her not to enjoy what she what she does. He he kind of uses his victory over her as his only sort of identity, I guess. Yeah. He no longer lost the love for what he does as well. It's very clear. And at one point she mentions that to him. She's like, What happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Right. And that's a classic bully. It's a bully who likes to tear down other people because really the truth is they've lost their own happiness. So I think that it tracks, it tracks with what we see all the time in the real world. So he has lost his happiness, his true sense of purpose, and he's trying to take away hers.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Because Misery Loves Company.

Grief, Aging, And One More Quest

Dragons, Ethics, And Generational Change

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yes, exactly. So Poppy becomes instrumental in helping to re-establish Marigold's purpose, her joy, her understanding of what she loved, her history. Poppy helps bring all that back in all her awkwardness, all of her craziness and her need to write everything down, which Marigold kind of teases her about because Poppy's always stopping to take notes on everything she's learning. It's just this beautiful development of things as we go on. And so the inevitable conclusion, we get our happy ending all the time in these books, which we love, but it's really not about winning the wine contest or the happy ending with the romance. The journey is really where all the beautiful development takes place as we see Marigold have the panic attacks and Poppy be the one to help walk her through those and to help her breathe and to help her find her center, that it's Poppy in the audience that she finds and she looks at and that she holds on to, and that she begins to find her sense of self again. We see all those things, and then we we see that journey ultimately come to the place where I found myself, not the blue ribbon prize or whatever else. I found myself, and in finding myself, I've also found my person, and now I can go from. Forward and live my life with joy. So turning to the next book, There Be Dragons Here, I've mentioned it before, but I'm just gonna zero in on it again. I love the inclusion not just of the sapphic relationships we've been talking about in the stories like Cursed Cocktails and Halfling Harvest, but I love the inclusion of our older characters, of the characters that have reached a certain age, but S.L. Rowland still treats these characters as main characters and characters of great value. So we have Hilda, and she has gone to a funeral for Frey, one of her adventuring friends from her adventuring group from years ago, before she got married and had children and then grandchildren. And she has to go and she has to deal with the fact that one of her very dear friends has passed away. And so there is this very real challenge for us as a reader, as there is a challenge for Hilda as a character to deal with death and the acceptance of death, and by dealing with that, to also deal with where she's at in her own life and the acceptance of her age and her stage in life. Not in saying that her life is already over, but in understanding just where she is as an older woman, as someone who is beginning to lose her friends, as someone who has reached a certain point. But one of the things I love is that we see her sitting down with her friends at the funeral and reliving all of these beautiful moments. And we see her son open his eyes to who his mother really is, her adult son. And that to me is beautiful because I think that we in America do such a terrible job of honoring the older generation, of respecting people of age. If we're honest, we do a terrible job of taking care of older people, like older women in particular, once they get to a certain age, like healthcare for older women, like we aren't having children anymore. So it's like, ah, bye, not important. All right. So I think that we just discard. And in this moment where the son recognizes his mother, he truly honors her and he wants to hear these stories more. And he wants to really look at her and say, I see you now as someone great that I had either forgotten you were that person or I never really realized you were that person. Please tell me all the things that you did. I want my children to know what you did. I want to remember what you did. And so it is this passing on of a legacy and this honoring. And then, like I said, this passing on to her granddaughter, who clearly wants to be like her and respects her so much and wants to follow in her footsteps. But there is this beautiful focus on this age and this meaningful nature to wisdom and to experience. And so I love that aspect of the story.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

And in addition to that, he also deals with what the younger generation has to offer and has to teach the older generation. Because not only do we have this difference between Frida and Hilda and her attitude towards the world around her and the creatures that they encounter, but we also have the difference between this young dragon that they eventually meet, which of course Frida is able to connect with as a young dwarf herself, this juvenile dragon, and this juvenile dragon's willingness to connect with these humans, whereas the older dragons have been hateful of humanity for centuries.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Or wary of them at the very least.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Or wary. I mean, we have these stories of dragons destroying whole cities or forcing the population of the city to relocate and move because there was this big falling out between the dragons and the dwarves a long time ago. And these are stories that were mentioned in previous books, like Sword and Thistle. We hear about Hell's Crag again and things like that. And they themselves travel through one of the abandoned cities that basically, little by little, the dragons in the area kind of forced people to leave.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Right. And it's really interesting that Frey, the dead friend, makes this specific request that that's where Hilda goes into this dragon territory to distribute his ashes. Almost a two-fold request. Like he wants Hilda to remember what it is to adventure, but also that he wants Hilda to maybe bridge this gap. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yeah, and leave her comfort zone. Very much so. It's not an easy task that he asks of her because no one's traveled into dragon territory for fear of their life for centuries, like I said. She really sets out having no idea how she's going to accomplish it. And if it wasn't for a series of very fortunate events involving a spirit of the forest and an injured juvenile dragon, I don't know how she would have accomplished it.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

And her granddaughter.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And her granddaughter.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

The ideas of her granddaughter.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

And and there's several times, if the granddaughter had not been there, she would have felt her quest.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

So I thought that was really very interesting how they complimented one another on their journey and all the things that Hilda was able to teach Frida along the way, but vice versa as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

And then we have what ends up being not a perfect reconciliation at all between dragons and humans, but definitely a first step toward a connection that was not there before, because we have this initial journey and the relationship developed with Tink Tink, specifically between Frida and Tink Tink. Then we have the epilogue to this story where we go years in the future and we see Frida adventuring and then meeting up with Tink Tink again. And we do get the impression that this relationship will continue. And I think that speaks to things in the future because we also get an allusion in this book back to the behemoths that Roran fought in the north, Rorin from Cursed Cocktails, and the Behemoths being this incredibly evil force that threatens this entire land of Adria, and that the dragons have noticed increased activity with the behemoths. And S.L. Roland is always dropping us these little nuggets of possible stories. It leaves me wondering if at some point then we have the dragons and the humans having to work together in order to battle a greater force.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Or a story that's going to be more about the dragons as main characters. That would be very interesting as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

You also mentioned grief being a big theme in this book. And I did enjoy the idea that this journey gave Hilda one last adventure to go on with Frey in spirit and how it helped her work through her grief and remember her identity as a former adventurer and realize that she's still got a little bit of adventure in her still, but that she continues to have a conversation with Frey. Right. Several times she's caught talking to the urn. And then in the end, the the goodbye that she gets to say, I was in tears when she finally gets to release the ashes and say goodbye to Frey for one last time. I thought it was beautiful.

Story As Legacy Across The Series

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Right. And the fact that not only does she stand there and finally is able to say goodbye, because it's obvious that she is having a hard time with the idea of letting go the entire journey. And even the dragon, the elder dragon, notices that. But that Frida says some of the most beautiful final words over Frey's ashes for her grandmother, because she thanks Frey for providing the opportunity for her grandmother and her to do this together, and for providing her with the inspiration to be the adventurer that she wants to be. And so there is this beautiful passage again, even from the dead elder adventurer to the younger adventurer, the younger future adventurer, where we have this passing of the baton. And it is just a beautiful story. It's not the antagonism between the older and the younger. It is this beautiful learning and growing that takes place on both sides. And I think that that just creates this beautiful picture. Again, in a perfect world, that is exactly what should happen.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

And I want to point out that one of the major themes of this entire series, all four books, is about story. The stories that we tell others, the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the stories that we leave behind. Because in Cursed Cocktails, you have this beautiful connection between the main character and his father through the journals that his father kept. In Sword and Thistle, you have this story, this false narrative that Dobin is telling himself about his guilt and his responsibility about his friend's death. And also the stories that he's asked to tell about himself in the taverns when he really wants to tell his story about his experience going to the library. They want to hear about his experience fighting off dragons and things like that. And then in Halfling Harvest, you have the journals that Marigold connects with her father through. And then finally, in There Be Dragons here, you have the stories that Hilda is able to tell her children and her grandchildren and her granddaughter, as well as the story that she tells herself about where she is, what she's worth, and what is yet to come for her. So I think that story as legacy and story as connection between people and generations is a huge theme that S.L. Rowan tackles very well.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Some people may start these and be like, man, this isn't very exciting. I disagree. I think you have to persevere and realize it for what it is. It is a story of personal growth. It is a story of relationship. It is a story of identity. That is the story. So if you're picking up this fantasy novel and you're expecting some exciting battle, while there's a little bit of excitement here and there, that's not what you're reading this for. You are reading it for those other factors. And I encourage you to do it because it's worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

It almost makes me wonder if you need to be a person of a certain age to truly, truly grasp everything that there is to grasp about these stories because they really are about sort of a midlife crisis, a life well lived that has reached a turning point.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

But how old is S.L. Rowland?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

I think he's in his late 30s or 40s.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Is he? He looks like he's like 20. Oh, I know he's like that's a compliment to you.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

He's got a great head of hair. He does. And that's that's it.

Next Book Pick And Final Banter

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, we're gonna have to Okay, we're gonna fan out on S.L. Rowland now. So that's just gonna be a thing. That does fascinate me about him is that he has this wonderful grasp of those things. And I agree. I think that there is an element of that, but I think anyone can appreciate it, but those of us that are certainly on the maybe latter half of life may appreciate it even more. I know that's certainly true, true for me. And I think I would like all of us to understand, and even the younger people to understand, that life is not over once you reach 40 or 50. There's still an awful lot of life to live, and I hope that we all live it well. So pick up his books, read, look forward to the next one. And Peter, now it's time for you to tell us what we're going to be talking about next time.

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Okay, what we'll be talking about next time as I continue to heavily influence our reading list. I appreciate this, Liz, is Stumbling Up, a Loser's Guide to Progression, Book One by Reck Well.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

All right, awesome. And I do enjoy broadening my usually classic and canon-based reading list. I will push us back at some point to something a little more traditional, just so we can put something, you know, out there. But I'm looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

I think you'll enjoy this one. It has a sentient banana slug.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Oh well, if it has a sentient banana slug, how can we go wrong? All right. In that case, we will talk to you next time.