Golem Master by TJ Lombardi

A golem-battling litRPG should not make you think this hard about grief, addiction, and identity, but Golem Master does, and we had a lot to unpack. Pepper Walker is a broke high school kid with a dead-end job, a half-built golem, and a dream of going pro in the Golem Leagues. The problem is he is also carrying a home life shaped by war losses, a fractured family, and the kind of fear that can turn “ambition” into “desperation” overnight. 

We walk through the world after the Rift Wars where demon incursions still hit and entire towns live under sirens and scars. That setting keeps the battles from feeling silly, even when the book plays with progression fantasy fun and pop-culture energy. From Pepper’s found family at school and work to the running gag of “Big D energy,” the story balances humor with a sobering sense that recovery is messy and community is a choice. 

Then we get into the turning points: the shortcuts Pepper takes, the consequences that follow, and the moments of forgiveness that force him to look in the mirror. A trip to Golem Con and a profound encounter with a veteran suffering from Rift War sickness and PTSD expands the stakes beyond winning matches. By the end of our chat, the big takeaway is simple and uncomfortable: becoming stronger is not the same thing as becoming better, and “mastery” starts when you find your why. 

If you like litRPG, progression fantasy, and character-driven coming-of-age stories that actually grapple with trauma and resilience, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves golems and good themes, and leave us a review with your take: what finally pushes Pepper toward purpose?

Transcript

What Are You Really Leveling Up

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Some stories begin with a hero destined to save the world. Others begin with a character who isn't even sure he's able to save himself. Today we're stepping into the world of TJ Lombardi's Golem Master, a lit RPG that offers far more than experience points, crafting symbols, and monster fights. Beneath the mechanics lies something surprisingly human. Because every battle one raises a deeper question. What are you actually increasing? What are you mastering? Strength, power, wisdom, character? Our protagonist doesn't simply inherit a difficult world. He carries one inside himself. He's been shaped by loss, by tragedy, by watching a family fractured under the weight of addiction, by a mother fighting battles that no child should ever have to understand. Those experiences don't disappear when the matches begin. They become the lens through which every decision is made. And that's where this story becomes so compelling. Because becoming stronger isn't the same thing as becoming better. Throughout the novel, our protagonist is forced to ask questions that every one of us eventually faces. What defines a person? Is it where you came from? The mistakes of your family? The worst thing that's happened to you? Or is identity built one decision at a time? At the same time, the world itself refuses to stand still. Danger presses in from every direction. Civilization feels fragile. Every choice carries consequences that ripple for far beyond a single individual. When survival is on the line, what deserves to come first? Power, duty, family, community, or purpose. Perhaps the greatest struggle in Golem Master isn't defeating monsters or winning matches at all. It's discovering your why. Because anyone can battle for experience, anyone can chase the next upgrade, anyone can become more powerful. But if you don't know why you're pursuing that power, have you really progressed at all? So today we'll explore grief, addiction, responsibility, identity, resilience, and the search for meaning. We'll ask how our past shapes us without imprisoning us, and whether true mastery is measured by the creatures we command or by the person we choose to become. After all, every aspiring Gollum Master is asked to build their Gollum. But who or what is building them? Okay, Liz, it's your job to briefly summarize what Gollum Master Book One is all about.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

So with this series, we enter a society that is really rebuilding post this very devastating conflict called the Rift Wars. And we're definitely in a more advanced society. It is presumably the United States, a society that would be familiar to us, but definitely advanced technologically. The Rift Wars was a war where an alternate dimension with these demonic monsters opens up, and the world ended up fighting those monsters for a long time. And now there are every once in a while these rifts that open and there are these breakthroughs. But for the most part, the larger conflict is over. In the

The Rift Wars And Golem Leagues

SPEAKER_00 3:21

regular world on a regular basis, we have these leagues that are going on called the Gollum Leagues, and they are competitions where you go in and you build a golem and you compete against other people with golems, and you can get up into professional league status, et cetera. So you've got kind of this fun thing going on with the golem leagues, um, these golems that are battling, but you've also got this very serious backdrop with recovering from these rift wars and, you know, the frequent invasions that happen every once in a while as we're going through. Our main character is Pepper Walker, and he is your typical high school student. He is about to graduate. He is working a dead-end job that he really doesn't like at a fast food place, and he's just trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. And what he really wants to do is join the Gollum Leagues. He wants to be a professional golem master. And he's got his golem, Mala, who he has to kind of scrap, build all the time, and find new parts. And he works the job at the fast food restaurant mostly so he can get new parts for his golem. And he really struggles. Meanwhile, there are certainly people with more money, like this one rich guy who's a bully, who's constantly getting what he wants, and Pepper is just struggling. And so we watch him as he struggles to kind of make ends meet. He's trying to figure out what he's gonna do. He has this dream of success, this kind of out there. Then he has what's going on in real life with his family, and his family has lost a lot. They've lost other children, brothers to the Rift Wars, and they've had death in their family. His mother is struggling with addiction. He just has a lot of trauma that he's suffered through. And so he doesn't have a support system at home. His dad, Trent, is great. His little sister looks up to him, but he doesn't have a lot of structure to give him guidance there. So he's kind of trying to figure it all out. And we see that through his friends, the decisions he makes, and as he struggles through this book to kind of find his place.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

And before we copile this, I just want to clarify: you know, we called it a lit RPG in our intro. And it is technically in that category, but it's different than the typical lit RPGs that you might read because he's not working within a world where there's this system, and Pepper himself has these stats and he's trying to, you know, use magic or whatever. The stats come from very brief descriptions of how he's improving his golem and the kinds of abilities that it's getting and things like that. And it is very light on that. Like this, you almost don't really know you're reading a lit RPG, really. It's this is basically a matchup of TG Lombardi's like three favorite things: the movies Pacific Rim and Real Still and Pokemon. So he matches these three things together, and that's where he

LitRPG Without Heavy Stat Talk

SPEAKER_01 6:21

came up with this world that we're exploring.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Right. And I think when you first mentioned reading this book, I was thinking Pokemon in a very real way. And of course, with my kids, I have gone through all the Pokemon stages of everything. And I thought, oh, I don't know that I can read this. It is so much more than that, though.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

It's really good.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, I said in one of my reviews of the book that I thought it was just gonna be, you know, he wins matches, he loses matches, he's learned something in the process, and that was basically gonna be the story. We were gonna get a very like Pokemon battle heavy book with very little plot underneath it. And I expected to enjoy it, but I did not expect everything we got. So let's go ahead and call up copy it. So, Liz, why don't you tell us what you think about characters in these books?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

As a high school teacher, Pepper was very recognizable to me. And I appreciated that he was a very three-dimensional teenager. I felt like he was a very well-developed character, and that's what I love about him as a protagonist. He makes some bad decisions. He learns and then he doesn't learn and he makes more bad decisions. And I wanted to jump into the book and counsel him more than one time. You know, I wanted to go, oh no, please don't do that. You're gonna do that. Oh, you did it, you know, and but it was so real watching him struggle, and it was so real watching him have this dream that as an adult, you're sitting on the outside going, dude, like you need a plan, man. And you don't have a plan. You've just got this big idea that you've got out there. You know, these

Pepper Feels Like A Real Teen

SPEAKER_00 7:52

people are trying to help you, and he's just kind of la la la la, you know, and you're like, come on, come back. And watching him go through that process, it was so authentic. So I love Pepper as a character because I found him to be such an authentic teenager. This book really takes you through his process of growth. And I'm sure there will be much more growth in the following books, but this was a really good setup for him really finding his purpose and his place. I thought that was good.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, there are a lot of great characters in this book. There are a lot of characters in this book.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

A ton.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And whether or not they feel real like Pepper or more there to be kind of a caricature, right? Like his next door neighbor, Ryan, who's this very, very stereotyped Canadian with very, very heavy, heavy, stereotypical Canadian accent. And it works, it works because TJ infuses a lot of humor into the book, but also a lot of seriousness to balance that. And so I feel like I liked all the characters in this book. Pepper, of course, being the one that we come to know the most throughout the story because it's all about him.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Right. But they do. They have very lovable, it has very lovable characters in there, almost in the way that Dungeon Crawler Carl for me has very lovable characters. You get that kind of feel of, oh, he's got this great group around him.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Yeah, yeah. That is one of the things I did love about it. He already has this found family because, like you said, he doesn't have a lot of support at home. So even his boss at the fast food place that he works with is like a a second mother to him, really. Right. And they've got a very sweet relationship, even though, of course, he doesn't want to work there for forever. Atmosphere-wise, yeah, it was very small town.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Everybody knows everybody, everybody has lost something. The grief and the trauma and the tragedy that this small town has gone through because of everything that happened during the wars is palpable. Yeah. And and it's this cloud that's sort of hanging over. I mean, they're they're only a decade, a little over a decade into their recovery, but still, like you said, there's still constant demon incursions because they can't close these rifts. They have to just kind of monitor them and uh be ready. The sirens going off and everybody having to run to the bunkers and special events that they plan getting ruined because there's a demon incursion. I mean, it really felt just heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Right. It prevented it from feeling campy. You know, when you said you almost expected Pokemon and these series of battles, and Pokemon can feel very silly at times. It prevented that whole idea of, oh, we're going to fight

Small-Town Grief Shapes Everything

SPEAKER_00 10:24

with golems now. It prevented that from feeling campy or silly at any point because you were always having these reality checks. The whole place has the scars of war. I almost in my mind at different points when I got pulled back to the Rift War reminder, I thought of Germany post the wall falling, because I went to visit when I was a teenager and there are scars all over the country of where the wall was standing and the and the marks of Eastern Germany versus Western Germany. You know, so when you go to places that are really marked by war. So as I'm thinking about the atmosphere in this book, I kept thinking about that because you get reminded of that throughout.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah. And there's still whole sections of the town that are just ruins.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

And then after incursions, it's like, you know, Mrs. Harrison down the street was killed. The her house was crushed, you know, last night.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And it just things like that are just normal life in this world.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Right. Which is that's the part that's unfathomable for those of us that are privileged enough not to have lived in an environment like that. So writing style, I think that segues very well because that's a gift to be able to set an atmosphere that both feels normal to us as we are going through and we're seeing these kind of normal, recognizable things, and then kind of those fantasy elements, the lit RPG, the gaming type elements, but then also that he's able to pull us into this sobering reality that exists there for these people that that then brings that more serious tone. So I thought the writing style was very good.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

It's a really wide net that can really capture a a very large age range.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Because it's it's just silly and fantastical enough to be fun for children and clean for the most part. There's some there's a funny innuendos that will go over kids' heads. Right. But also serious enough, though,

Tone, Craft, And Representation

SPEAKER_01 12:21

also for adults to really get into it.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

And to create some good conversations, you know, as far as okay, well, this is fun, but then there's also some really real life here too.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

And another great thing that TJ does is also representation, as far as like he's very into donating to the autism foundation and stuff. And so he always has autistic representation within his stories.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

My 13-year-old is autistic, he's on the spectrum. And so one of the things that is interesting about this book is there's a young boy in this book who is autistic, and that's very obvious. And some of those behaviors and those um reactions are very recognizable. And so as my 13-year-old reads this book, that is very recognizable. And I think that also creates good conversations.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

The plot, I think we've said a lot about the plot. I loved the plot. The plot is surprising.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

It is, and it moves you along. And like I said, you recognize things that are gonna happen with this teenager, but not as in a predictable formulaic way, but just in a very human way, and that keeps you moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

So the intrigue, definitely there. There's a lot that's set up in this book. It's got a lot of intrigue of its own, and then there's a lot that's set up in this book in the background that you know is going to be developed as well. Because there's a lot of things going on in this society within the league itself, but then within society itself, with the remnants of these rift wars that you know is going to continue to progress, that our main character, Pepper, is going to face. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Even Pepper's mistakes are believable mistakes as far as explaining the science of what happened with the Rift War or deep dive history or how they've managed to harness the magic from that rift war to create these golems, because all this technological advancement is a product of having access to this other dimension that they've kind of harnessed it.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

He doesn't go into detail about that. Just they harnessed it.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

The only way in which I could critique the logic at all, and I would think that TJ Lombardi is thinking in a very aspirational way, would be with the public school system. Because I wish I knew a principal and, you know, a group of school officials that were cool enough to watch Gollum matches within the school.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

I think it's a small town thing then. Probably. Yes, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

To support that in lieu of, you know, preparing for testing, et cetera. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Totally enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yes, totally enjoyable. I really did enjoy it. It there were a couple times where I like put the book down and I'm like, oh God, I know it's going to happen. I've got to set this down for a second because I don't want to say, oh, cringe. But then I picked it right back up and kept going because that was just the mom and teacher and me. But I kept going and it was really good.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Okay. It's that time of the podcast where if you don't want spoilers, this is uh where you should uh turn us off and go read Golem Master.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

We'll be right back after this break.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

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SPEAKER_01 16:18

Welcome back. So I think the first thing that we need to revisit is Pepper's home life and the situation going on there. So we mentioned that he has lost his brother. So his older brother was in the war along with his father and was killed in a tragic accident, which was just really sad. And then his actually his younger brother was killed in a demon incursion, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

That's correct.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

And the father now works full-time, more than full-time, at a job that basically keeps him away from the house at all times and takes advantage of him and won't let him catch a break or anything like that. And the mom clearly is struggling with something. It appears to be alcoholism.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

And her and Pepper have this very strained relationship. She, every time he comes home, he dreads coming home because he knows that she's gonna get on

Home Life, Loss, And Addiction

SPEAKER_01 17:09

him for something. And she hates his obsession with Gollum with Gollums or the Gollum League, and resents, I think, in a number of ways, that the money that Pepper makes from his own job isn't going to support the family, but rather into this hobby of his that she sees as I think almost throwing her personal tragedy in her face. Because I'm imagining having lost two of my sons to this war and the evil power that came through this war, and then to watch that same power get harnessed for sport and entertainment, and then my younger son to just kind of be into that thing that that will be a reminder of my tragedy. So I think there's a factor there as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Right, to enjoy battle for fun. You know, and that that is something he wants to do and he wants to invest his time in. And also when we are grieving, we want the whole world to stop and grieve with us. And because she has not been able to overcome her grief, she resents seeing everyone else moving on in her perspective, and Pepper enjoying himself and talking about the sports he's watching on TV, you know, the golem battles that he's watching, which is how we first meet him as he's breaking down a golem match. That is unacceptable to her because why is he not sitting in misery like she is?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

And because of what she's going through, Pepper has had to grow up a little early. He has a lot more growing to do, as we find out in this book, but he's has to basically be the caretaker for his little sister, Meg.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Who looks up to him in a huge way.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Right. And really relies upon him. And he loves her very, very much. Um, I don't think he resents that. It's just all of his time either goes to making his golems or taking care of his sister or working to buy parts for his golems.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So that definitely puts a huge strain on him and his family relationships. It also motivates him to push forward very quickly and motivates a lot of his decision making. And it motivates a lot of his mother's decision making as well. So the mom is clearly afraid. And that fear on her part comes out in a lot of both abusive alcohol and then abusive anger. And when I say abusive anger, she's not breaking things and she's not hitting anyone, but she lashes out at Pepper all the time. And it makes it a hostile environment. She lashes out at her husband, but Pepper seems to be more of the target. And then the fear for Pepper is I don't want to get stuck here. We don't have a lot of money. What if I never get away from this place? You know, I'm never going to be able to leave. And that fear motivates him to make some bad decisions here and there as he is trying to find a way out. When things don't come to him right away, well, maybe, you know, stealing something is my way. Maybe taking shortcuts that are not ethical is my way out. And those things are bad decisions. And it keeps Pepper from really recognizing the opportunities he has at certain points because he is tied up in knots about what is going on with his mom. And it's a very real, real situation that you see with people is this cycle of this emotional and sometimes verbal abuse and this family trauma that's going on, and people get stuck in that cycle. And Pepper is at very real risk of being stuck in that cycle and having it drag him down.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

And of course, his mom isn't the only one who has responded to their tragedy in this way in the town. However, in contrast to that, outside of his home, we do have a sense that this experience has brought the town together. They're a much more tighter community, they're a much more supportive community. And outside of his home, Pepper has an abundance of support and people who do believe in him, which he kind of squanders in some ways.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

He does. And he doesn't see them for who they are. In fact, there are points at which, like his next door neighbor, who is always coming over and wants to talk to him, his name is Ryan, correct? His next door neighbor Ryan with the distinctive Canadian accent comes over and wants to talk to him all the time about the golems, about other nerdy things.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

About big D energy.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, about big D energy drink.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Which is an energy drink that he is developing.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Which is

The Helpers He Keeps Missing

SPEAKER_00 21:39

just a constant running gag throughout the entire book. And it's just a lot. Anyway, so so that's a constant running gag. And he dismisses Ryan all the time as this weird middle aged guy who is a pest and he doesn't want to have. Anything to do with him, and then he finds out Ryan is kind of a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

And he's got the means to help him out.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

And he had dreams too, dreams that were snatched from him when he was injured. But at one point, he was big deal. So he can really relate to Pepper a lot more than Pepper gives him credit for.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And Pepper is sitting there shunning him for a long period of time. And then when Pepper hits rock bottom, Ryan is the one that's there for him.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

And he missed it the entire time. And those are the moments in the book where you're sitting there going, Pepper, Pepper, Pepper, open your eyes. You know, and he is just oblivious to the helpers, to the people that are all around trying to support him. He has tremendous support in the people at his school, his teacher, Mr. Dean, the principal, the assistant principal, these people that really like him and go out of their way to do things to support him. His boss at work, his boss at his second job. You know, he he has these people, the owner of the junkyard. We get these people along the way that are like they go out of their way. And I would say almost to the point of it being unbelievable that they go out of their way, but not really. There are people like that around us all the time that see something and want to reach out and help. And I think we'd all be surprised at the number of people we miss.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Right. I agree. And I also think that in imagining a world that has gone through this horrible tragedy, I would think that there would be a lot of adults that would then latch on to the hope and promise of a young person actually being able to believe in themselves again and have a dream. And they would support it for that reason as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And so I think that's a factor here as well. As we've already alluded, you know, Pepper decides to make some shortcuts and he decides to steal from uh the junkyard, which is owned by Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

And then he decides to steal from his father's job, putting his father's livelihood at risk, which is the only thing supporting the family.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

And of course, he's caught on camera immediately. The cops are there the very next day.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

And arrested by the police.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And he winds up having to do some probation, community service.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

And he's lucky it's only community service.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

But we talk about the junk guy who owns the junkyard, he forgives him and he decides not to press charges. And the reason for that is we later find out that he fought alongside his brother before his brother was killed, and that he felt he owed it to Pepper's older brother to make sure that Pepper turned out okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And then he ends up just giving him what he stole for free.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

And so there are these incredible moments, and that's not just

Stealing, Consequences, And Forgiveness

SPEAKER_00 24:42

a second chance for Pepper, but I think it's also a beautiful moment of reconciliation and a beautiful moment of coming together in grief and healing, a beautiful moment of healing for Pepper because there's someone that was there when the accident happened or there with his brother during this time when he was fighting in the war and knows what happened and also experienced the grief. I think being able to speak to someone else when he can't speak to his mom and can't speak to his dad in the same way, I think that's a moment of healing as well as a moment of forgiveness. It's just a very human, very beautiful moment that happens in that way.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Right. I've now read books one and two, uh, happily going to get to book three very soon. He's got books one, two, three, and four out. But I have cried in both those books over these things. That was a moment where I got emotional, and also when Pepper visits his brother's grave at the very end, it got emotional. Like there's just really some really great moments in this book. And then in the second book, there's another great, but it all centers around this war and the incredible loss and tragedy of it. And I should take a moment to mention here that TJ himself is a veteran. That's it, is it his history, and so that's very close and dear to his heart when you get to know him. We should go back to the schools voting to send the principal voting to send Pepper to Gollum Khan.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Yes, and that is a wonderful moment. That's one of those moments of support that takes place, is that Pepper is selected to go free of charge to Gollum Khan and have his lodging and his travel and everything paid for, and it's a huge deal for him. And one of the pro most profound moments is that he meets a veteran of the Rift Wars who is suffering from Rift War sickness, this illness that takes place, as well as PTSD, but there's this toxic nature to the rift and what the soldiers were exposed to. And he is really on the verge of death.

Golem Khan And Meeting A Veteran

SPEAKER_00 26:47

He has deteriorated to that point. And Pepper has to help him, pushing his wheelchair and then helping him back out of the stadium when it's too overwhelming to him. And he has an opportunity to sit there and talk to him about the war and really see someone who has struggled. And it's really a profound moment of understanding something beyond himself that I think is an important moment of growth for Pepper.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Another great thing that TJ does with these books, it's just a fun thing to know, is that he inserts as characters everybody that he knows so many people that he knows in his real life. So most of the characters in this book are based are are named after real people. Like when he goes to the con, the con is in Denver, Colorado, where lit RPGCon happens to be held. And the con organizer's name is Geneva Agnos, who happens to be the organizer of Lit RPGCon.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

PandaCakes is a real person. JD Glasscock, the announcer of the Gollum Games, is a real person. Uh everybody, pretty much everybody's a real person in this book.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Right, right. And he credits all of them in the end in really, really a beautiful moment of recognition for the lit RPG community.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

And the impact that they've had on TJ's life.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

And it is a really cool thing. And I think that's one of the really cool things about this community in general is that everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone recognizes everyone else with that level of support.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yeah, every single lit RPG book that I've read has referenced other lit RPGs in really sneaky ways. So the more lit RPG books that you read, the more you realize there's like crossovers all over the place. Like Dungeon Crawler Carl gets referenced all the time in other books, as well as He Who Fights with Monsters, and then TJ likes to throw his friends in there. It's a really, like you said, a tight-knit, self-supporting, self-referential community.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I am not, I have not been as long exposed to the community as you have been, and I have not read as many books. And yet as I was reading Gollum Master, I was like, oh, I know that person on TikTok. Oh, I know that person on Facebook, because I recognized all the names as well. So it is, it is really a very small, very integrated community. As the literature teacher, I'm always trying to decide what I think the core theme of a book is. And for me, watching Pepper's journey, I really zeroed in on him finding his why, his purpose to what he was doing. If he's going to become a Gollum master, why is he doing that? What is his purpose? What is his motivation? And I think that the whole first book for me came down to him defining his own identity and his journey and making conscious choices to get himself where he wants to be and with purpose, as opposed to allowing his circumstances and his desperation and his fear to define him. And I think that that is the journey that he makes, that after he reaches

Purpose, Identity, And Choosing Better

SPEAKER_00 29:49

that low point of stealing, of getting incarcerated, of facing a judge, of having to accept that forgiveness and go through that humiliation of community service and having to go back and apologize to all the people that were helping him, that he clearly embarrassed along the way. I think he finally starts making some deliberate decisions and realizing who he does and does not want to be. And then realizing if he's going to go and fight in the Golem League, if he is going to go out and do this, he's going to do it with the goal of being a mentor. He's going to do it with the goal of doing good. He's going to fight in honor of instead of fighting for himself. And I think there's there are some really good choices made that begin his journey toward why and begin his journey toward purpose. Not that he's fully defined it at the end of book one, but that he's on that road as opposed to kind of that very aimless lashing out that he was doing in the first half of book one as he's trying to figure out where he's going.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Right. And we've mentioned the experience that he has at the con, and then of course the lessons that he learns from stealing and that forgiveness also. But there's another really important moment, I think, for him during one of his Gollum matches.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

That he's not only defining what kind of person he wants to be, but he also has a moment where he really has to face what kind of golem fighter he wants to be. When he brutally destroys a friend of his Gollum, she is not wealthy either. She has spent a ton of money on our Golem, and he goes further than he has to in his desire to win the match and destroys the core, which basically it just kills the Gollum. Just it sets her back to square one. And afterwards he realizes what he's done and he's like, he's like, oh my God. He feels so much regret. And he feels like she's gonna be so angry at me, and I need to go apologize to her. I don't want to be this kind of person.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

I don't want to be this bully over here that I hate. I don't want to be like him. And I think that's a crucial moment for him. And uh and also another great crucial moment of forgiveness, too.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Right, because she does forgive him and she there she is not angry at him in that way, but he feels it very distinctly. And then he faces it with the bully that comes after him as well. And like you said, he doesn't want to be that that type of person.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

And I will say, having read the second book, that that is a crucial lesson that comes back to help him out in in the next chapter of his life.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

And that's awesome. So it is learning from his failures, and that comes up a lot over and over again. That idea that we learn from our failures more than we learn from our successes. And that's something we have to be able to do. I think that's some something that Pepper really learns in that first book. So I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

Well, I think there's a lot that we have not talked about, but then again, we don't want to spoil it for everyone. So if you did listen to the ha second half and you haven't read this, there's still plenty of friends to talk about and experiences and choices that Pepper makes.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

We didn't talk about his animal companion. We didn't talk about his girlfriend, we didn't talk about so many of the cool things. And those are some of my favorite things in the book. So we're leaving that for you to discover. You must read it. All right. So what are we reading next time?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

The next episode, we will be discussing The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Clun.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

And I am so excited because I have been asked to read this book for forever. My foster daughter, um, Ashton, she asked me to read it years ago. And I was like, okay, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. It's a kid book. I I will get to it eventually. It is not a kid book, it is amazing. I am so sad that I didn't read this so long ago. I'm reading the sequel right now, and I am in love with these characters. They are so cool. I can't wait to talk about this book. So until then, keep reading.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Keep thinking.

SPEAKER_00 33:51

And we'll look forward to talking to you soon. Bye.