We’re reaching the sections of the book where we are tee-heeing and steepling our fingers, connivingly, at the reveals happening in these chapters and the coffee-shop AU fanfictions happening in Harrow’s mind. Your hosts are Steph Kingston (@StephOKingston), Christina Ladd (@christinaladd), and Joshua MacDougall (@FourofFiveWits). You can find us all on Bluesky. Our art is …
When you’ve read a lot of novels, or this could likely apply to a lot of other media too, your brain starts to recognize the patterns of storytelling that will lead to certain outcomes, like seeing where you have to swap the tiles in a puzzle-solving game. Authors can take advantage of these expectations and …
When an Anthony Ryan book comes out, I read it. So imagine my excitement when a sequel to The Covenant of Steel series, a trilogy beloved by me, was announced. When I began the book, I had some apprehension. Previously, I felt Ryan’s singular character point-of-view books always felt stronger than his multiple point-of-view books, …
The Devils by Joe Abercrombie feels fresh while still retaining the style of writing the author has become famous for. It’s set in a new world, our world in an alternate timeline Europe, where the church wages war with elves that eat the flesh of man and are waiting for their chance to wage war …
On this episode we discuss chapters 71-80 of The Discord of Gods, the fifth book in Jenn Lyon’s A Chorus of Dragons. We’re close to the very end now, and events get near apocalyptic levels of crazy. Your hosts are Steph Kingston (@StephOKingston), Christina Ladd (@christinaladd), and Joshua MacDougall (@FourofFiveWits). You can find us all …
The end of Arc 1 of Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive is here, and Wind and Truth feels enormous, metaphorically and physically. The release of The Way of Kings feels like another lifetime, and yet just yesterday, as the end of the first arc seemed so far away in 2010. Now we’ve reached the midpoint where one …
On this Off the Books, we are interviewing Sung-il Kim, author of Blood of the Old Kings, and Anton Hur (Toward Eternity, transl. Blood of the Old Kings, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-Hee) to discuss Kim’s book, falling empires, publishing, translations, technofeudalism, and what’s next for The …
On this Bookling, we discuss Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim, translated by Anton Hur. Multi-eyed dragons, fiery swords, mech-like war machines, and a curmudgeon sorcerer trapped in a mindscape are just some of the details of this great book. Your hosts are Joshua MacDougall (@FourofFiveWits), Christina Ladd (@christinaladd), and Steph Kingston (@StephOKingston), …
In Christopher Buhelman’s The Daughters’ War, Galva dom Braga, a knight from, tells the tale of her time in the third goblin war to who we can assume is her traveling companion, Kinch, from Buhelman’s previous book The Blacktongue Thief. That third war with the goblins, later called The Daughters’ War because the women had …
Throughout The Traitor of Redwinter, the follow-up to The Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald, dread seeped from the story, page by page. A title with the word traitor in it, with a main character whose power to see the spirits of the dead, comes with the punishment of death, and all the emotional baggage …