Episode: 775
Title: HPR0775: HPR AudioBookClub Shadowmagic
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0775/hpr0775.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:18:08

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The following program contains several mild explosives, all beginning with HD or A.
It also contains reviews of alcohol beverages.
Please use your own discretion in determining whether it's appropriate for family or work
listening.
Thank you very much and enjoy the show.
Due to scheduling conflicts and differences in time zones, Ken Fallon was not actually
able to join us for the recording of the show.
However, we believe that he has some valuable insights unique to an Irishman that we'd
like to include here in the show.
At the time of the recording, we didn't have any idea of what Ken was going to say here,
so we don't comment on it in any way or even take it into consideration because he recorded
this segment after we recorded the show.
I think you'll agree that the show would have been even better had Ken been on there with
us, so I'm going to put his content at the beginning and then we're going to go
to the show.
Hi everybody, this is Ken calling in a quick review of ShadowMagic, this month's book review
on HPR's book club.
I really enjoyed this book from start to finish once it started.
As the guy says, once it says ShadowMagic, you're into the book straight away transported
to Chernanok and the story as it goes on.
It's a very safe story aimed at teenagers, I guess.
It's nice to see this setting used as a backdrop to an exciting story.
If any of you are familiar with Celtic mythology, quite a lot of the stories tend to be very
profound and happy ever after is not a requirement for any of the fables, so as a result, this
was really nice to be transported to a land.
I think he really captured the ends of an idea of a place that exists.
I really loved the music, Luna Sir, the moment I heard it as one of my favourite bands.
Definitely my favourite trad band, probably number two after Thin Lizzy to be in my favourite
band.
Their music is fantastic and excellent, but of course you have to be into traditional
Irish music, I kind of guess.
There were one of two points which I'm really hesitant to bring up, but I must say did
bug me throughout the entire thing.
The pronunciation of the father's name is incorrect.
I didn't know what name it was and I downloaded the PDF of the book to find out that the
spelling was O-I-S-I-F-I-N, and that is pronounced O-sheen.
It's not pronounced O-O-S-N, it's O-sheen O-sheen.
If you want to prove the point you can go to www.pranouncenims.com-pranounce and type
in O-I-S-I-N and it will tell you that it's O-sheen.
Or you can pick up a phone and dial international 353 and any number and ask them how you pronounce
that and the answer will be O-sheen.
So I was one thing that really just hit me throughout the book and took away quite a
lot of enjoyment outside from that.
Some of the things, the fact that Karak is a four master chip and a Karak is a type of
Irish board with a wooden frame and again I checked the PDF to make sure that I'm just
Nick picking.
And one other thing that I found kind of odd and I'm going to let him have artistic
license with this one is the concept of a banshee.
The banshee is from the Irish word bans which means woman and she means either side which
is like a fairy mount or she is in house and we were always thought in school that was
banshee which is a woman who would at funerals and stuff, they would hire old women to
cry over the person who was died.
Banshee is a bad word, they would turn up and you would kind of give them some money
kind of thing.
But anyway, in every universe that there exists a banshee is female, bans means woman.
That's it.
There is no discussion.
So that whole race.
And just another thing is there are no leprechauns in there.
I don't think I ever heard the word leprechaun at all until I started watching American
TV shows because every reference has been to the fairies which I guess probably mean
leprechauns but the fairies to me are something different, they're one of the two of the
dano's or something like that, but only.
These are all minor little points that obviously nobody else other than me found annoying and
I'm even reluctant to send them in but hey, I have to do that.
It is a thing.
That's it.
I really am looking forward to the next in the series of this.
Hopefully this will turn out to be a series I'm very interested to see what will happen.
With that, I will thank you very much guys for letting me put this in at the last moment.
And if you want to call in a segment in the US, you can dial it to 063125749 and in the
UK, you can dial to 034325879.
Just record, say this is for the book review and we'll follow them on to the book review
guys and they can add them to the show.
Without thank you much, I'm back to the guys.
Hi and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
We're back with another audio book club and today's book is Shadow Magic.
I'm Pokey.
I'm integral.
I'm Dan.
Shadow Magic is written by John Blinahan and it's also voiced by the author as well.
So he reads the book and he writes the book and he picked the people that would play the
music that he would use for the book.
So he did three things there, which of course the group that he has for that is Lunissa.
He's John Blinahan's from Ireland, right?
I believe so.
He lives in Ireland.
I'm not sure if he's from there.
He doesn't have much of an accent.
Okay.
Yeah.
He doesn't.
You're right.
What's the name of his son that he wrote the book for?
Finn Bar?
Dad, I do not remember.
I'm pretty certain that's what it is.
Shadow Magic is a fantasy novel that has to deal with a family from Tierna Noe, which
is the mythical Irish land of the fairies.
Except the family kind of gets separated due to some drama and what not.
And so you start off the book in the real world with a father who only has one hand and
is an ancient language professor and a smart mouse on.
Yeah.
He's just my kid too.
I thought it was really cool how all throughout the book, they refer to it as the real
world.
Yeah.
Why do you think he referred to it as the real world versus actually the people in
Tierna Noe even refer to it as the real world?
Why did they have a word for it or something similar like Tierna Noe?
I'm not sure.
I mean, it was certainly a more mundane place and there's not much else to call it, but
mundane.
But from the perspective of the Tierna Noeians, you would think that they're in the real
world and we're all in the less real world.
Yeah, exactly.
That's kind of what I was thinking.
I don't know.
See, I look at it and say, looking at Tierna Noe, Tierna Noe is a kind of pseudo finite
place where the real world is an infinite place because Tierna Noe has specifically
illustrated boundaries that can expand based upon that ruin stuff.
But generally has a very fixed set of boundaries that he didn't extend beyond those boundaries
to say what would exist there.
But it seemed to be a place that is more finite as opposed to the real world slash universe.
That's a good point.
Well, I don't know, simply because the ruined thing, I think it's more infinite than
our world is.
They kind of go into the fact that there's still areas that really haven't been explored
fully yet.
But that's based upon ruins coming into existence.
Yeah, when a new ruin is chosen, when someone chooses a new ruin, then a new piece of the
land rises up from the ocean because Tierna Noe is an island, they said.
Yeah.
And also, it's a vehicle to differentiate Tierna Noe and the quote, real world, so the
reader who's in the quote, real world.
I think it's really interesting that one of the ways that he describes the difference
between Tierna Noe and the real world is that the real world in his eyes has like a film
over it all the time.
And so everything kind of has a shade of gray.
It sure does.
Well, especially compared to Tierna Noe, especially how he describes it.
I mean, with certain exceptions, a not really horrible thing happens to him sort of.
Well, that's a common theme used throughout these kind of stories.
You know, it was done in Narnia and it's done in other fantasy books where the main character
travels from the quote, real world into the fantasy world.
And that said, fantasy world is more colorful, more pure, and increases the main character's
vitality and strength just by the mere presence of its pureness.
This is a theme that goes all the way back to like middle English writers.
I've been listening to a podcast called The Tolkien Professor, which I highly recommend.
And he talks about this all the time that when people passed into the land of fairy things
change.
Things are more real.
Things are more beautiful, more vitality, that kind of thing.
So it's an old tradition that Lenny Han is carrying on with this, which is pretty cool.
Is Tierna Noe, is that something he made up or is that actually a mythical fairy land?
Tierna Noe is an actual mythical fairy land.
Depending on who you hear about it from, it differs from his interpretation to probably
every other person in the world's interpretation of the place.
It was also different when it was written about.
From what I gathered, the ancient Celts called it Tierna Noe.
The middle English called it fairy.
So it's a place that people have been writing about for a long, long time.
And everyone seems to have a slightly different take on how it works.
At least one of the Canterbury tales, even, is based in there.
And a lot of the King Arthur's tales are based in fairy or interactions with fairies,
which are not necessarily the little winged creatures.
In fact, they almost never are back then.
Yeah, they're actually kind of demons back then to an extent, or at least more certainly
close to like the pup character from mid-Summer Night's Dream.
Yep, all the characters in mid-Summer Night's Dream were all fairies.
Puck can overrun in all of them.
You had mentioned that the author wrote it, voiced it, and chose the music for it.
One of the things I wanted to say about that, the music in particular.
I thought the music was fitting.
I thought the music was good, but I definitely got sick of that music.
Did you really?
I loved it.
Every time I heard it, I loved it.
Really?
Well, I started to dislike the music, not because I didn't like it, but because it
was signifying that like the chapter was over, and so it meant that there was less of
the book for me to hear.
There was definitely a Pavlovian response to hear in the music.
I just got sick of it.
I did.
It was the same thing over and over again, that little boo-hoo, whatever, you know.
It was all right.
It's just, you know, it's not my favorite kind of music, and I got sick of it because
it was the same thing every chapter.
I can understand that, but I love that kind of music.
I could listen to that all day, but I did actually have a problem with the music.
I've listened to the book so many times because I've listened to it on my own and with the
kids, and then again for this show.
And when I listened to it with the kids, I'm usually listening to it in the car, and over
the car stereo, that music is literally like ten decibels louder than everything else.
It's ear splitting when it happens.
You know, you're right, and maybe that was another part of the reason I didn't like it
because I did notice that I was going to say that it just, it was very intrusive a lot
of the times.
Because that's how we listen to it on a trip.
Yeah, I noticed that the difference between his audio wavered a lot throughout the book.
So there were times where you'd actually have to turn him up a little and then turn
him back down and back up, and then the music would play, and then you'd want to rip your
ears out because they're exploding.
I didn't pick up on that so much in his voice, but I picked up on it with the, you know,
in regards to the music, though, except for actually, you know what, he does kind of,
he'll kind of talk quite, and then I'll show it to you.
Let's make a point.
If that's what you're talking about, then yeah, I can relate to that.
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm talking about.
I'm not saying it's the wrong thing for him to have done.
It's just, I also hate going to a movie where they whisper, and then you can barely hear
the whisper, and then there's just huge explosion noises all the time everywhere as well.
I don't know, I really like the audio to be really level the whole time.
Yeah, I was just going to say I wonder how different it would be if you ran it through
a compressor first.
He may have, we don't know his setup.
Yeah, but you still can.
Yeah, that's true.
He called me, he said he was using Windows Vista with Windows Media Player, and the plug-ins
for that to even it out.
That's why it didn't work out too well.
Did he really call you and say that, Dan?
What do you think?
No, he didn't.
I mean, aside from that, I mean, I've really enjoyed the quality of the book, though.
The music bothered me a little bit, but it wasn't enough to detract from how much I enjoyed
the book.
Yeah.
The one thing he did in a growl that made the book work for you the most, what was it
that he added back to everything?
Every time he said the word shadow magic, especially at the beginning of every chapter,
every track.
We kind of talked about this earlier today in IRC, and I likened it to being like the
special lighting effects that you'd get at like a space mountain roller coaster, where
the ride would be the same without all the strobe lights and special effects lights, but
the experience would be different.
When he said shadow magic at the beginning of every recording, it did.
It set the mood.
It got you going.
It got you wound up, and it got you ready to listen for the story.
It was right after he'd left you with a cliffhanger, so you're dying to hear more of it anyway.
Yeah.
It's kind of what I was going to say earlier is, you know, you got to have a low-bian response
of being sad because the music's playing, but then you get that next track, and it really
gets you going when he says shadow magic, because he says it was such enthusiasm and such
a tone that it just echoes through you.
And then immediately bum's Dan out with the flute music?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Now, I see what you're saying about when he says shadow magic.
I agree with you on that, and then the flute music, yeah.
We could have skipped out of my family, but it's all right.
I listened to another audiobook one time that I had a similar reaction, Dan, and it was
so bad I went through, like, literally 50 episodes and cut the music out because I couldn't
bear to listen to it anymore, but I had to finish the story.
Yeah, I said to my wife I was going to get her to soundtrack for Christmas.
Well, he tells me which one it is.
Yeah, if you get her to that soundtrack, Ripney, I'll copy you, yeah.
We didn't say that.
She did not enjoy the soundtrack, either.
I, you know, I think that didn't enjoy it is too harsh.
It was just, if there was some more variety in there, it would have been that just like
do, do, do, do, do, do, it just got sick of it.
It frustrated me because I couldn't whistle along to it.
It was just too fast for you to whistle with it, wasn't it?
Just slightly.
A way too fast for me.
I guess I should start pop harping on this back and talk about the meat, which was the
actual story, which was awesome.
Yeah, the actual story was really good.
You got to see some character development.
That's something that's always good to see inside a book.
I loved the story.
I thought it was one of the most fun stories I've heard on, on any audio book.
It was fun.
It was fun and it was exciting and it kept you going along with it too.
Yeah, I like the pace of it, but what was your impression of the main character, Connor?
It depends on what part of the story that you're talking about.
Because at the beginning, you just want to slap him.
My impression of Connor was that he could be me, or you, or anybody.
I liked him, but I got a little sick of his smariness, his sarcasticness after a little
while, especially towards the end.
I got tired of the sarcastic feel from him about the time that they're going through
the U-Lands and he starts talking about the U-Tries.
I mean, he's in this place, he knows nothing about it, and yet he's making jokes.
Yeah, like that's chapter four, man.
I know.
That wasn't too...
See, I liked all that.
I didn't like his jokes.
I didn't think they were very funny.
Not most of them, and a couple of were here and there, but it was part of his character
and had he dropped that from his character, that would have killed it for me.
It would have made him very one-dimensional.
Well, I think so too, but at the same time, I think it could have dropped off as he went
through the book and kind of aged a little more.
I don't know.
I just think his first reaction to everything is through his mouth, and I think that was
just part of his character.
I have a question, and I don't recall if this was explained.
But generally speaking, if you go from the fairy land, what's the name of it again, Ternanog?
Into the real world, and you step on the ground, don't you get trapped in the real world
forever?
Or is it that you die?
And how did they overcome that?
Okay, what happens is, is if you're from Ternanog, or actually if you're there, and
then you come here, you instantly age to whatever age you would be from living in Ternanog.
So if you were 20 here, you went to Ternanog, lived there for 20 years, and then stepped
on the soil here, you'd turn 40.
And if you were from there, 40 years old, you only age to like 15, you'd come here,
you'd age to 40.
Okay.
Instantly, which I imagine would be pretty painful to go from like 15 to 40 years old,
and it totally annihilated that guy in the first chapter he turned to dust and disappeared,
because he was a couple thousand years old.
So guess what we take from that is, he was sent over right about the time he was born,
and his father must have been more than 30, I guess.
I think reason that his father survived, because he'd lived a couple centuries pretty much.
The only reason he survived was because of the shadow magic.
Yeah, it was never fully explained.
He was definitely at least a thousand years old, because that's how long ago Una was killed
by Kielt and Kielt and him are only a year apart.
The only explanation that was given, and it wasn't even an explanation, it's just more
mystery on top of it, was when they said that he gave up his immortality, which is not
a fair trade, because anyone who steps into the real world gives up their immortality
if they stay there.
So I don't understand how that worked, he didn't explain it yet.
Well, from my understanding is, as you lose your immortality while you're in the real world,
because when they go back again, it's kind of like they've got it back again.
I think the exception of Elisom, who gave it up no matter where he's at.
Yeah, that's what I mean, and that's the part I don't understand.
But obviously, he had to have given it up so that he didn't age and die instantly, but
it never explained how he gave it up or why he didn't get it back.
Yeah, I'm just going to say magic.
I agree, it's magic, Dan, that good enough for you?
Uh-oh, it's magic, Pokey, when I'm with you.
Ooh, thanks Dan.
The one thing that I thought was fun, and there's a bunch of little things that, having
listened to it so many times, I started like picking out little things, like there's
no snakes in Tiernanogue, but the first thing that happens to him when he gets there's
a rat crawls across his foot, that was kind of funny.
Well, you know why there's no snakes in Tiernanogue, right?
They're too small to swallow the rats.
They were chased out of there, now correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what Satan Patrick
stays about, isn't it?
Yep, it's another snake's out of Ireland.
I thought that was rats.
No snakes.
You're thinking of the Pied Piper.
I probably am.
Wow, thanks, that's really cool.
I'll drink to that so we can do some spoilers.
Ooh, sounds good to me.
What are you drinking tonight, Cookie?
I am drinking Samuel Adams Irish Red of the Brew Master's collection.
I got it in a variety pack, and it is fantastic, and because it's Irish Red, I thought it
was also fitting.
I would say so.
What's your opinion of this beer?
It's delicious.
I'm drinking it out of one of my very favorite glasses.
My wife bought me for my birthday last year, a set of the Samuel Adams glasses, which
are like specially designed for beer, and they're actually pretty cool, and they're tasty.
They keep it cold just a tiny bit longer, but this beer is delicious.
It's fairly dark amber, would be appropriate, but that's actually darker than amber.
It's brown, even the head on it is a dark brown.
It's smooth.
It's not very sweet, which is cool, because I don't like sweet beers very much, and it's
got just a slight, slight hint of like a smoky flavor, almost a bacon-y type smoke, but
not in a bad way, but in a very good way.
It's delicious.
I highly recommend it.
Sounds good.
I'm also on a Samuel Adams beer tonight.
I decided to go with the, hold on, I have to actually read it from the bottle because I'm
horribly forgetful, and I can't find it on the bottle.
Wow.
I read mine too.
Here we go.
Okay, it's the Samuel Adams Noble Pills.
It's a light pilsner, which typically I am completely against pilsner, so I don't like
them.
The buds and cures have just completely destroyed that for me.
But this one's really decent, because it actually has a decent hops flavor to it, and I guess
that comes from what they say they use five different hops in it, all five noble hops.
That's really funny that you're drinking that beer, because I was going to recommend
that one to you.
Because I like the hoppy flavor.
Yeah, it was in the variety pack that my wife bought me, and it was probably my least
favorite one in the pack, because I'm not a huge hops fan, but you were, and I was going
to recommend it to you.
Yeah, I wouldn't say that it goes as far as, you know, being like a pale ale, or even
just, you know, an ale, but it's still pretty decent.
It's got enough to wear.
It makes me happy, but not so much that it's exploding on me or anything like that.
How about you, Dan?
What are you on?
I too am drinking a finely crafted beer, well regarded in Ireland and the rest of the world.
The classic beachwood aged king of beers, Budweiser.
I have drank two of these, they go down smooth, and leave you with a nice fermented belly.
Go USA.
Dan, that's not an American beer, sorry.
I know it's not American anymore.
I'm going to have to say that's not a bad thing.
What was the company that bought at Heizerbush?
Couldn't tell you, it was a German company, I thought, wasn't it?
Yeah, yeah, I came here with an aim, yes.
Oh well.
Probably the same company that bought the Muppets.
It's a good combo.
Muppets in Budweiser?
Yeah, I was more thinking Muppets in beer, but...
Wouldn't they get soggy?
That's the point, it's kind of like your towel.
You can just suck the beer out of them afterwards.
I would have expected Dan to say that.
Well.
This just goes to show that Integralus is perverted and a pig is anybody else.
Well, Miss Piggy is one of the Muppets after all.
You know, back at the point.
I thought Shadow Magic was a great book.
Yes, I think we all did.
How is your favorite character?
My favorite character I have to say was Virgil.
Virgil was awesome, he was great.
I have to agree with both of you on that, I really liked him too.
I thought that Virgil was introduced in a really fun way to the book too.
I mean, when Connor gets there, it starts off with somebody in his family trying to kill
him, and then somebody else in his family tries to kill him, and then somebody else tries
to steal his shoes, he tries to stab that person, and then that person tries to kill him.
And so he's got three straight family members doing that stuff to him.
When I heard that scene and how he's leaning on the tip of the sword and he's got his
arms up to the side of him laughing, all I could picture was Chevy Chase.
Chevy Chase?
I could see Chevy Chase doing, you know, flapping his arms and laughing maniacally at some crazy
thing that should have been horrible.
I'm speaking of Connor, but that scene, I thought was hilarious.
I thought it was funny every time I heard it.
Yeah.
I loved hearing Virgil's accents.
I loved how he never didn't say what was on his mind, it was fun.
I wasn't stealing your shoes, I thought you were dead, or at least I thought you would
be soon.
Throughout the whole book, they constantly talk about the furgo smile too, and how he's
always flashing that to people.
It's just this big teethe grin, you know.
I can't think of an example of it other than maybe like the Chishar cat.
Right, right.
It made me happy whenever he said that Virgil flashed his smile.
You know, you can just picture a cousin or a long-lost friend, you know, someone you haven't
seen a long time, given you a smile and trying to make everything seem all right.
And it worked for me.
It worked for me because I think I actually have a smile that's a lot like that.
So it always made me smile, and then that made me smile more because, you know, I'm smiling
like the character that I liked and so on and so forth.
That works for me because if I was in that book, I'd be Connor.
I'd be this smart-ass, mouthy guy, and Dan, of course, would be Kielty.
Well, she vanks.
He definitely would be a raff.
If a raff had dirty, dirty thoughts in his mind all the time, yes, he'd be Dan.
I don't have dirty thoughts on my mind all the time, and I really liked a raff.
Well, I was just talking about his inclination to speak.
I liked a raff's character, and I liked the way he spoke.
When he spoke, it was well thought.
Yeah, he always was poignant.
I didn't like how we met a raff.
Did you guys like that?
That's maybe the one thing in the book I didn't really buy.
Is how a raff just kind of walks up?
Yeah, and completely ignored Connor.
I mean, I know he never talked throughout the book, but he really didn't ignore people.
Connor didn't have his respect yet.
That could be.
Although he did kind of speak for Connor once they got to the party there at the very beginning,
and you would think that that would mean something as if he's holding, saying, hey, this guy's
with me.
Did he do that?
Did he speak for me?
I know he spoke for Fergal.
I didn't remember him speaking for Connor.
Well, with Fergal, he definitely spoke out and said, yeah, this guy's definitely from
horror.
But whenever it came to Connor, they just associated him with him, and he's, you know,
he kind of pushed that.
Yeah.
All right.
I loved the name or and door, and where everybody was from, you know, or and door.
They rhyme.
That's all I liked them.
But I liked all the names of the places and how everybody was, you know, whoever they
were of the feeling lands or of or or that kind of thing.
That was, I liked that.
That put me right into the story.
It sucked me right into the experience of it.
Nah, what you're saying.
I would have liked to have a map of this world.
To see what it looked like from a visual perspective.
Yes.
A map would have been nice because you always got that with your, you know, middle
earthbooks.
You'd get a map and then a few songs and things like that on there.
Yeah.
I hadn't even thought about that having a map.
That would be really fantastic.
And like, it would have the little dotted line for where they had walked in the path
they had traced.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That way you kind of knew what was going on.
You could associate a little more.
But it's kind of hard to just treat that in audio form.
Mr. Lennahan, there's the value ad that sells your hardcover book.
Actually, let me go grab the hardcover book and make sure that's not on there.
I was just going to look at the website, his website for the book, shadow magic.co.uk and
see if there was a map there, but I don't see anything listed about it.
I love the trees, man.
If I was in his shoes every spare minute that I had, I'd be talking to trees.
Yeah.
Come to.
I mean, they were an interesting element to the story, especially the, was it the mother
oak?
Yeah, mother oak.
See, after hearing the book, it makes me want to go up and hug trees here, even.
Well, it makes me want to not hug them here, because I don't know trees.
I don't know which one's which and I wouldn't want to accidentally touch a you tree.
You'd know you tree if you saw it.
Interesting, because we just had the tree in front of our house cut down today.
What a jerk.
You're a bad person.
It was dead.
Did you ask it if you could cut it down first?
Many times and it responded by drop branches all over the yard and all over the cars and
threatening to kill people when it went was windy.
Dan had a crotchety old tree.
Yep.
Yeah, it makes me want to go find the different trees so I can associate them.
I may even end up going to the arboretum.
I actually did do a little bit of that.
I went and looked up the, uh, shoot, now I forget what it is, the trees that are in the
Philly land and I looked it up and checked it out and it was really interesting to see
the tree and just and the kids were interested in it too.
That was really kind of cool.
Talking about the black thorns.
No, it wasn't the black thorns.
Those were at the border.
They, they bordered off the Philly lands, but there, there was a tree in the Philly lands
and I forget what it was called.
Alder, maybe, was it Alderwood?
Alders wasn't, I don't think that's inside the Philly lands.
That's actually, I think that's the next book.
Oh, okay, sorry.
But it, whatever, the tree that was in the Philly lands, I remember when I looked it up,
it was a, um, like it has these kind of long stems that come up with a lot of tiny little,
little leaves in a row on each side of the stem and they have these kind of little berries
that look like shrunken oranges or something.
There are neat looking tree and I know I've seen them around.
So it was, it was cool to associate them.
I did have one, you know, one question when I was listening to it again that I came up
with when Connor left his, his hazel staff behind.
Lorcan gave him a black, a black thorn, uh, banter stick and I wonder how in the world
did Lorcan ever get a black thorn stick?
I'm going to say he asked very, very politely.
I've never met anyone that polite.
I don't think Dave Yates could do that.
I think Dave Yates could get black thorn.
Was black thorns or mean?
What were you going to say, Dan?
You almost piped up because he's Lorcan.
All right.
Lorcan the leprechaun.
Yeah, exactly.
Lorcan the leprechaun.
Well, I guess he probably had connections in there with the feely and I'm sure the feely
could probably get the black thorns to give up some of their wood for a staff.
Now no one knew the feely except for Connor's mother, no one, no one had spoken them, spoken
to them in centuries.
I'm just figuring there must be other black thorns than the ones at the border.
Well, I'm sure there is, but also I mean, when the feely land was cut off, I mean, prior
to that people had interacted with the feely, didn't they?
Yeah, the people, you know, had talked to the feely and everything they interacted with
them, but they'd just been banished for so long.
Yeah, a lot of people thought they weren't even real.
They thought they were mythical.
They'd been banished for so long.
Which is why he gets laughed at whenever he says he's from the feely lands that the party
and they tell him not to eat me babies, since apparently they've created rumors.
That's what the story they tell their kids to keep them behaving, the feely will come
get you.
Yeah, exactly.
Maybe a black-formed antistick is like a almost on par with a you bow.
I kind of got the association that that was more what his hazel-bantistick was.
I don't think hazel was probably so dangerous to get.
I think that's what Dan means is that the black thorn was probably very dangerous to ask
for.
And I can buy that.
But then again, Lorca just gave it up kind of easily, though, so here you go.
Lorcan was a nice guy.
He got a bad rap, you know, after setting up that horrible, horrible, close line, but he
was a pretty nice guy overall.
I liked him.
Yeah, it was good to see him, you know, come back throughout the book.
Yeah, not be a complete jerk, like, you know, guilty.
What'd you think of guilty as the protagonist, antagonist?
He was so perfectly lovable.
It was perfect.
Exactly.
You can't not hate him.
I like how he never broke character throughout the entire series and all the stories you heard
him.
He was equally despicable everywhere and everyone.
I have a favorite line from him.
Do you guys have a favorite line from him?
I bet it's the same one.
What's yours?
I merely stabbed his horse.
Exactly.
That's mine.
He knows how much of a jerk he is because he didn't really want to kill his father, but
at the same time, he wanted his father dead.
But he didn't want to actually be the one that could actually be blamed for it.
Well, he didn't want to be blamed for it.
He wanted him dead and he would kill him.
But the funny thing is in his mind, I think he preserved his innocence by stabbing the horse.
He justified himself that way.
Well, I think he justified himself in the form of being asked by an alif glass.
I don't know what you mean.
Well, you know, not alif glass.
One of the crystals like a S.I. had the runner neck.
Yeah, that was the alif or alif crystal.
No, that's what it was called by.
I don't remember Kieltie coming in contact with one.
Well, at least the way that I thought it was, if somebody had stuck one of those two
his face and said, did you kill your father, he could honestly answer no.
Oh, I get it.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
And in his mind, he really believed that too.
You're right.
Yep.
Yeah, so he's really saving his ass if somebody had asked him that.
I mean, yeah, he did kill his father.
Yes, everybody knew it, but at the same time, he's kind of protecting himself.
Oh, I don't think anybody knew it.
He would have killed all the witnesses.
Are we going to be given away the whole book?
Yes.
We can give away as much of the book as you'd like, Dan.
Were you at all surprised that fertile ended up being his son?
Not in the least.
No.
Were you?
Oh, no.
Not at all.
You can see that coming a mile away.
Yeah.
I was very surprised that he was the son of the one-handed prince.
Yes, that didn't end up being a surprise.
That and the thing that really got me was that fertile switch sides so easily at the end
there, I thought that that was kind of, you know, against his character, that he would
be so trusting of guilty at the end.
Yeah, that disturbed me too, especially given all that gone through and the trust that
they established between the three of them, four of them, and then the ritual, the shadow
magic, ritual, and how every concern was taken to be as pure and up and honest as possible
that he would just so readily switch sides right at the end like that seemed a little
out of character.
Now, I thought it was perfect.
He was so stressed out and he was so out of his element.
And it's the denial stage of grief, you know, or whatever it's called, but the different
stages of loss or grief or whatever it is, he just happened to be in the denial stage
and keelties just that good of liar and manipulator.
Still, I mean, after all they had gone through, after all the truth coming out, the story
coming out, everything, trying to prevent the destruction of the shadow lands and everybody
on the same page for him to just turn like that easily.
I don't know.
I still have our time behind it.
I thought it was, I thought it was set up perfectly.
I mean, from the finding out the keeltie was his father to the stabbing, in his shoes,
it would be so much easier to believe that all of that was a lie.
And on top of it, going into the castle, Connor didn't have a moment of time for him.
He made that specifically clear, so you can kind of see how he might feel that way.
I could anyway.
I thought it was right in character, right in line with the story.
I thought it was good.
Well, I could see how he would switch, and especially with it being that emotional of
the time, but at the same time, it just seems like a real jump.
But when you get really emotional, jumps like that aren't too hard.
Yeah, I think you nailed it there.
It was the emotions.
He was a far more emotional person than anybody else in the book, except for maybe Jared.
And I think that explains it.
I think you're right.
You nailed it.
Still, he had absolutely no relationship except an antagonistic one, and a bitter one with
his father, and a thought of his father who he didn't even know his father, keelty.
And to turn on his lifelong friend, a wrath, and just everything that he had believed
and gone with up until this time, just to turn on it, I have a hard time buying it.
Emotional state or whatever.
I mean, I don't know.
It was too predictable, and it just smacked of out of character to me, I thought.
That's just me.
I thought it was slightly predictable, but I thought that that kind of led credence
to its believability.
I didn't think it was super predictable.
Well, it was predictable in the way that, you know, it was kind of necessary for the story
for keelty to come back at all.
OK, so it was a plot device, and like I said in the last show, I'm a sucker for a good
plot device.
I found it more believable than the story of Oasis and cutting his own hand off.
I love that story.
I think it's amazing.
I could definitely see that happening.
I could see me doing that even.
Really, the cutting your own hand off, that I bought it right up until that point.
Really?
I thought that that was, you know, a summation of it.
I thought it was a great story, and I thought it was a great piece to like a legend or a
myth or a fairy story, so it fit perfectly.
But being put inside this story as well as let a hand put you into, and when these characters
become so real, I can't picture a real person actually doing that.
But they're not really real people.
The fairies, they're not, they're not from around here.
That's, yeah, okay, that's true, that's true.
But let a hand did a great job of making you feel like they were.
And I did like how we kept putting the story off.
He put that off for two thirds of the book and teased it.
That was good.
Yeah, it was really nice that it didn't just tell you that right away, because it definitely
wouldn't have been as believable before you knew the Oasis and character more.
Because what you get from it at the beginning of the book is just this kind of Connor's opinion
only of him.
And that doesn't paint the best picture of a father.
Yeah, he comes off as this very cool calculating, almost by the numbers kind of guy protective
think before leaping, whereas if, you know, that story portrays him as more fiery, hot
headed and jump first, ask questions later kind of guy.
Well, he knew what was at stake as well.
He had win the vote race.
So if that meant cutting his hand off for his brother to not end up king, that's what
he'd have to do.
Also that was in his very early youth and it paints a good picture of how different he
is as a young man than as a grown man.
No spoilers for book two there.
Did I spoil book two?
No, but I came close to what I was tempted.
Oh, okay.
So there's one character that we've mentioned maybe twice throughout this whole thing that
is really important in this book and that's, that's Esa.
I don't think we mentioned her at all.
No, we haven't mentioned her at all yet, but she was, she was pivotal.
I could have done without her.
But why could you have done without her, Dan?
She served primarily as a foil and a love interest to the main character, Connor.
I just didn't find her character overly compelling, but she was so hot.
She didn't have to begin spelling.
She was so beautiful.
And that's why this character there just for her looks.
Not just her looks though, but for how taken with her, Connor was.
He really was taken with her.
When he met her at the party, he was totally charmed by her.
And that's the power of fairies.
Well, that's, you know, just kind of the power of Conner's used to seeing ugly people
and you just don't see that in the land.
And then you see Esa, who's, I want to say like the 10th person he's seen and she's actually
looks like she's his age, that's, you know, that's going to strike pretty hard with you.
And she's very friendly to him at first.
She really makes a good impression and it sounds like, you know, in the hierarchy of beautiful
women, it's Conner's mom, Conner's aunt, and then Esa.
Still wasn't overly wellms with the character.
No matter how much of a spin you put on her beauty, I don't care.
See, the character I really didn't like was his girlfriend in the real world.
Yes, same here.
She reminded me too much of my ex-wife.
Oh, that's, that's not why I didn't like her.
What, what was there about her and the story at all?
I mean, just a few brief mentions.
Well, the thing I didn't like about her was that she existed and she prevented my main
love interest from happening.
Yeah, like, like I said, she reminded me of my ex-wife.
I think the severed hand vented that more than anything.
Wait, severed hand?
No, he overcame that.
She was still always on that other side of the wall with the knife ready to plunge into
his heart and never trusting him because he was thought to be the son of the one-handed
prince all the way up to the end, even up to the end.
And wasn't that, wasn't that one of the reasons why, like, he just lost interest in her or
not lost interest.
I won't say that.
Just felt utterly betrayed by her because of that.
Yes, at the end of the book.
One would hope so.
Yeah.
He felt totally betrayed.
But then again, you know, that whole thing with them, everybody being antagonistic towards
him, I thought I like how they kind of kept that up, though, because you're talking about
their whole world was at risk because of this one person.
I mean, I guess, you know, we look at it in this country that if you are, like, given
a decade, like this decade now, it's Muslim or Islamic.
And your question, if you are anyone from the Middle East, you know, you looked at with
a skeptical eye by a lot of people in this country who, as soon as, you know, push you
off into some camp or, you know, have the FBI watch you then to trust you.
So I like how that concept kind of carried over into the fairy world.
And based upon, you know, their beliefs, they weren't trusting him at all.
They were ready to string him up and draw and order him.
Well, the people that believed inside the, you know, future like that, that believed
inside the prophecy, everybody else, you know, hey, this is a cool guy.
They took him at who he was or who his parents were, in some cases, like with Jared.
Yeah, the people who believed in the prophecy, when they saw him, they just kind of pictured
him with his finger on the nuclear button the whole time.
And no matter how great a guy he was, there was, you know, that he's right there.
He could just trip and fall in the world to be destroyed.
They didn't know how it was going to happen.
Yeah.
No matter how much he was willing to try to help them or to fix their whole, uh, key
problem.
Along the way, he had a bunch of prophetic dreams.
One of the dreams that Connor had that, like most of the dreams that he had came true
to some extent, although the one of the final prophetic dreams was his uncle pushing the
button and destroying everything.
And this like big, bad weapon, that, that dream seemed like it seemed so powerful.
But it never really came close to fruition.
It seemed like, you know what I mean?
Like the way that it ended seemed opposite of the way that that dream went as compared
to the other dreams he had.
Maybe I, I saw his dreams as being more of possibilities.
I didn't think any of them were strictly speaking prophetic.
I thought that you showed kind of possibilities.
Yeah, I didn't think they were guaranteed fact.
And they were kind of masked at the same time, because they weren't straightforward as
well.
No, they weren't straightforward at all, like the one with Fergel and the cherries where,
you know, the cherry juices running down Fergel's face and his tone of voice sounds really,
really ominous, but Fergel's got the giant grin on his face while it's happening.
Yeah.
And the whole disabling of the doomsday weapon, rather benign, very unsatisfying for some
reason.
I don't know why.
I expected there to be more of a struggle on that.
And it was just dig a hole and sever the, the gold circle.
They had to make some spikes out of the gold too.
I don't know.
I wanted more, I wanted more battle, I guess.
There really wasn't much of a, a climactic battle at the end, like a big war type thing.
Was there?
I'm trying to remember, what was there?
There really wasn't.
They do kind of just gloss over the fights in this.
There wasn't enough of an army to have a big battle.
I guess that has to be what it is, is that the army, the Red Hand, was so small that they
couldn't really have a final battle.
Yeah, they would not have won militarily.
If, I mentioned the Tolkien Professor already, Dan, but if you were listening to that guy,
I think he would say that what you were expecting out of this was some kind of a Yucatastrophe
which is like the opposite of a catastrophe.
It would be some kind of, you know, miracle that would happen and swing the tides to the
good guys.
Which that's kind of what happened with the whole gold line thing, where they turned
his bomb to blow up, you know, just the castle.
Didn't end up being just a castle wall.
Yeah.
Yeah, blew out the castle wall.
I don't think that was, I don't think that could be considered a Yucatastrophe though,
because that's something that they planned and executed.
They were expecting it.
A Yucatastrophe is something like totally, totally unexpected, like, you know, in the Lord
of the Rings when the black ships show up and they feel a good guys.
Oh, so you're saying that a Yucatastrophe is more of a Deus Ex Machina.
I don't think I'd say that because I don't know what that means.
Deus Ex is kind of an example of where God shows up and just fixes things for you.
Is that what you were looking for, Dan?
Not really.
I was looking more for a big battle at the end.
Yeah, he just wanted to combat.
That actually is my least favorite plot device, by the way.
I think it destroys novels.
Combat, does are Yucatastrophe.
Yucatastrophe's.
I want a Conan to come out of the field swinging.
Oh, I'd love to hear Conan swing.
That'd be awesome.
Then again, you know, I did enjoy the combat throughout the rest of the book.
The challenges with the bandits and not the bandits, the banshees in particular.
I like to see more of those guys running around.
I feel like the second book, then, the scene with the lemon juice in the pummel of the
sword.
That was great.
Oh, you know what was that?
Wait, was that in the second book?
No, no, that was in this first book.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I was going to say, I know I'm about a third away, if not more, into the second book.
I thought that was in the first, yeah.
I like that, that fight at the end.
I like the fact that when he actually killed somebody, it affected him psychologically.
Yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't.
It was just Magicaly.
Oh, killed somebody.
And then that, of course, got easier with time.
Yeah.
I like the scene where he couldn't go on after he killed that first guy, and he just kind
of stood there and the guy ran at him and his father cuts the guy in half and the guy
still running.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Wait, who's the, who's the really skilled combat trainer?
Is it Doc?
Docy.
Yes.
Is this the book where they talk about, no, it's a second book where they talk about
Docy and that other guy, right?
Yes.
That's the second book.
Okay.
Because I really like, I like some of the weapons that he had and just, Docy was, I thought,
a really cool character.
Docy was fantastic in that training session was great.
Yeah, even as, with how short it was.
I liked the fight where Docy's telling him, you know, my next attack is going to do this
and you have no choice but to attack me back.
That was what I liked about the fight scenes is how he was describing the parry and the
thrust and the swing and what the effect would be of this.
I really liked how that went with, with the sword fighting.
The bandistic's not so much because that maybe just because they're not real and they're
not based in reality, but for the sword fighting, I thought that was fantastic.
Yeah.
I liked how he was not like this ultra, you know, skilled combatant from the get go.
But yet, he did have training from his father growing up.
So he wasn't like, oh, I'm just going to pick up a sword for the first time and here
we are, you know, fighting off the banshees and every other evil that comes along.
Yeah.
How he'd actually had some training as he was growing up.
I didn't like how so many of the banshees were completely untrained and they were just,
you know, roobs walking up.
I mean, if you're immortal, you think you picked up a little something somewhere.
You would think in a place where the swords and bantistics are common that they wouldn't
grow up being trained.
Even if they weren't trained, even if, you know, their parents were low lives who didn't
take any interest or didn't bother, you'd think at least in some bar somewhere, they'd
be talking with their buddies and talking about what works and what doesn't.
These guys were just, they were clueless, especially with them being banshees, which in
my opinion is a rather combat oriented, you know, race.
They were the protectors of the western shore.
Exactly.
Well, the guys that were chasing them around, those banshees, long hair.
Was that his name?
A big hair, but yeah.
Big hair.
I mean, weren't they, aside from big hair, were most of them just like bandit kind of guys?
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Like, they were just guys off the street.
I mean, put yourself in big hair shoes, okay?
You got, you know, 10 or 20 guys serve in India and they're all completely retarded.
They don't know how to swing a sword.
I mean, wouldn't, wouldn't you just like step aside and say, alright guys, look, here's
how to parry.
Here's how to block if someone swings at you.
I don't know.
It was weird that they were so untrained for immortals anyway.
I could, I could see mortals being that untrained.
Yeah.
I mean, that got all the time in the world.
I don't know if I, I mean, I didn't pick up that they weren't untrained.
I got the feeling that like, Esa and Arath, Fergal, and even to do some extent, Conor
towards the latter end of the book, were especially trained.
They were trained beyond the standard infantry person.
They had like grown up with some training by the masters whereas, you know, I kind of felt
that they just had the one up, had these been like, you know, Conor's teammates been
a wrath, the peasant, and Esa, the merchant's daughter or whatever, just like came together
without any skills or training beforehand and just picked up what they had along the way.
They would have been taken out lickety spit.
I agree with that except for Conor.
He wasn't trained particularly well.
His dad trained him to block and to thrust and he took some fencing classes but he was
by no means a soldier like these other guys had been trained to be.
I don't think he was at their level getting closer towards the end of the book.
I think he was kind of more in the same part with maybe a simple infantry person which
these banshees may have been.
Yeah, exactly, but he walked all over every infantry guy that he fought.
Big hair was his first true match and that guy was, you know, a leader.
Yeah, that guy was going to kick his ass, you know?
No, without sand and lime juice.
Well, he cheated but when it comes down to it, life and death cheating is a win.
Wait, did he kill big hair or was that Dahi that ended up killing him?
It was Dahi that ended up killing him but the only reason Dahi stepped in was because
he used the lime juice.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think he would have won that fighter else Dahi would have stepped in before that.
Dude, that's because he's so good man, that's when he's all about smart mouth, master swordsman.
I think a lot of it had to do with his sword too.
I mean, he was carrying the sword of door.
He was carrying the lawn mower.
Right.
What's wrong with sheep?
Exactly.
What's wrong with sheep?
So what'd you think about the ending, his final choice to return to the real world?
I think it's a moron.
It reminded me too much of my ex-wife.
Him returning to the real world reminded you of your ex-wife.
Does she make you return to the real world?
She actually did one time.
Yep.
I kind of thought that was right.
Here he is.
He finally gets this mom.
Everything's good.
He wants to return to the real world because it's more normal.
Normalcy, he wanted.
There is no way I would have even looked at coming back.
Yeah, I know.
It was so blatantly not the right decision.
But he jumped right into it, you know, like, ah, get some new shoes.
Here we go.
No.
I can understand getting new shoes.
I don't think they had very good shoes there.
I can't imagine being in his position and wanting to walk away from his mom like that.
I mean, I can see him wanting to walk away from Asa because he was still hurt.
But wanting to walk away from his mom, I just, I didn't buy that.
And maybe that's just because I'm a mama's boy and I always have been, but I couldn't
see it.
Even his dad.
Why would you walk away from your dad like that?
Yeah.
Why would you walk away from everyone that you know that's infinitely better than everybody
you know in the real world?
Why would you walk away from those apples?
Exactly.
Mother Oak.
Yeah.
The list goes on and on and on.
I mean, you know, the internet is great, guys, but, you know, it ain't worth coming
back from tearing an oak for.
I just don't see it.
Yep.
And what was he going back to, though, too?
I mean, without his dad, yeah, he was going back to just his girlfriend.
That was it.
That's all he had.
Now you see my point.
Why did they let him?
Why did his parents let him like, what the hell was he going back to?
Didn't have it.
Didn't even have it.
Did he have a job?
I don't even think he had a job.
No.
No, but they let him make his own choice.
I mean, that, that I can understand, but he didn't send him back with a bag of gold
or anything like what the heck was he going to do?
Spend his father's money until he has to go back.
Well, I guess that's what happens.
Really?
Really?
Start reading second one.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, the same could be said if he had stayed in tiered and oak, what was
he going to do?
He didn't really have any skills there.
I mean, understanding he has a position, but his parents can't hold his hand forever.
It was time for him to make his own decision.
And he would have resented them if they said, no, you know, that kind of thing.
I don't know.
I think he just has so much more opportunity there than he does back here.
Yeah, he really did.
I mean, if I got sucked into tiered and oak, I'd be the guy carrying, you know, the
pea bucket up to back and forth to the king's chamber, but he's a prince.
Yeah, exactly.
He's got infinite amounts of everything, not just the prince, but the prince of the
kingdom that lives on the gold mine, the only gold mine.
Yeah, the house that rules the whole land is, it was kind of crazy.
But it goes to that point that a lot of times on, on podio books, a lot of the
stories are what I call fish out of water stories, where you're introduced to a
character and they're in their setting and they're comfortable and they're
well adjusted and all of a sudden their setting changes completely.
And usually on podio books, anyway, the fish out of water stories are not
very good, at least the starting isn't very good because how their setting
changes is not believable at all.
Lenahan did such a good job of making a fish out of water story that worked.
It was perfect.
He did it the right way and it was, it was the right thing to do for the story.
None of the other fish out of water stories do that.
Some of them, one of them is so bad.
The girl falls asleep, wakes up a million years in the future and everything's
different, but Lenahan set the story was based on him being a fish out of water.
I thought it was perfect.
So at the end, he just kind of went back to where he was supposed to be, or at
least where he thought he was supposed to be, not that I approve of his decision.
I wish he would have stayed, but he should have slapped Dessa across the face
and then left.
Oh, there's lots of things he should have done before he left.
It is not that kind of podcast.
Oh, that's not even what I meant.
Yeah, I was totally taken with us.
I was, I was every time he looked at her and fell in love with her.
I was right there with him.
I could totally see it there.
Yeah, same here.
I wouldn't have left, but that's just me.
I wish Ferdinand wouldn't have died here here.
I know that was killer.
I mean, I would trade almost anybody for keeping Ferdinand.
Heck, I'd trade the main character for keeping Ferdinand.
Yeah, I know if book two were just like Ferdinand's revenge, that would be a good,
but that'd be worth it.
Ferdinand's revenge.
It was kind of a bummer though that you think about like,
throughout the whole book, they always wanted to kill the son of the one-arm prince.
And at the end, they do kill the son of the one-arm prince.
It was unfulfillingly sad.
I wish he would have stayed alive.
Isn't that what they say?
Like really, really good, engaging books are books where you are not sure if they're going
to kill a character that you're completely taken with though.
This is not what they say.
I don't know who they is, but I could have just, they could have kept that and I could have kept the Ferdinand.
Yep.
Yeah, Ferdinand was a really, really likeable character.
It was great, but it, it killing him just showed how sad that killing him really was.
What kind of showed you how desperate everything had to be to?
Desperate's a good word because they didn't really, I mean, at the same time,
they probably could have helped him.
That was the thing.
See, okay, that, oh man, I'm glad you said that.
That was the thing that got me because a voice and got shot in the chest with a crossbow.
And I can't remember Connor's mom's name, but she was just like, oh, Connor,
you know, use the Rothloo amlet and get the heck out of here.
And this will be fine, but they just sat there and shook their head about Ferdinand.
Yeah, they just kind of like, well, um, guess he's got to die.
That's what, that's what I was wondering was, did they decide that they weren't going to help him?
Or did they decide that he was beyond help?
That was, to me, the biggest question in the book.
Yep.
Deirdre was her name.
So what do you think then?
Did Deirdre decide that he needed to die to fulfill the prophecy?
Or did she realize that he was beyond help because he was still alive when she shook her head?
I got the impression that he was beyond help at that point.
I think he was mortally willing to be on hell because I don't know why they would let him
die to fulfill the prophecy.
If throughout the rest of the entire book, they were willing to fight against that prophecy
when it was their own son that was assumed to be, why would they just turn and let a
comrade like that, just, especially one who'd been through such horrible experiences, just die.
Because it's not their son anymore.
Yeah, because the prophecy at that point was revealed.
And these are people who believe in prophecies.
Yeah, but I got the impression that Oisyn and Deirdre would have fought the prophecy.
They fought the prophecy for so long.
Why would they turn around and just accept it now that it was no longer their son?
And they're like, ah, well, okay, I guess it is true.
Kill them.
I think because the whole time throughout the book, when they talked to, when they talked about it,
they would either say or at least hint that the prophetess was never wrong.
Prophecies just don't always come about the way you think they come about.
So I think they were reserved to that fact.
What I want to know is, is it impossible for Oisyn's hand to get chopped off again?
I think not.
Maybe his other hand.
But either way, he's still missing his now.
So it's, you know, less obvious.
Well, yeah, but now Kiyothi doesn't have a son.
Yeah, and the world was saved.
So the prophecy is fulfilled and we don't have to worry about that prophecy again.
But what's the prophecy that the world would be destroyed by the, was the son of the one
arm prince was at it?
Not that he would destroy the world, but that he had to die or else the world would be destroyed.
They didn't specifically name the son of the one arm prince as the agent of destruction.
It just said that he had to die or else.
All right, I guess at that point, I don't know.
I didn't think the adra just let him die to fulfill the prophecy.
I felt that there was no way to save him.
That's what I believe.
And that's what I'm sticking with, Pokey.
Don't ruin my world.
Okay, but that's what we're here for.
Yeah, I just think the characters are a little more complicated than you're given them credit for, Dan.
And I think it's too late to have not ruined it.
Next time you listen to it, you're going to wonder that.
Yep, definitely.
Maybe I'll just go back and listen to that part.
But you have the book in Tag Rowland.
Yeah, is the book any different than the actual audio book?
Or is it like word for word to say?
I haven't finished reading the book.
It's got some differences though.
I hope it's not word for word the same, because he flubs a couple of lines here and there.
And my kids every time I have and my kids picked up on it.
In chapter two, for instance, he says on key LT.
And I don't think that was intentional.
Yes, I also picked and it made me go, what the heck?
Like you want to write the guy.
Let him go, oh, fix that before you print it.
Yeah, I would hope that he did.
Like I said, I haven't read much of the actual book.
Not as a criticism, but as a constructive criticism.
Because, you know, you care about the guy, about John Lennahan.
Well, what I was going to say is it's more of a criticism of,
hey, get your book fixed because we love your book.
Yeah, exactly that's what I mean.
We don't want people to look at it and go, oh, well, he's got misspellings in there
and things like that. That just sucks.
Yeah, you don't want people to go, oh, this is what you get when you have indie writers.
Yeah.
Because as an indie writer, he's created a book and a world that far surpasses
90% of everything I've ever read.
Yep, he's created a real good book here.
He really, really has a mic dancer.
The depth of the characters is so well done and so complete and so believable.
Every one of them I thought was completely believable.
I could see this series of books that I just work on on the third one now
by the time the third or whatever he comes to the end of it.
It will be like a significant loss in my life and kind of like getting to the end of the
Harry Potter series that here, you know, these stories are now at an end and you're not
going to get any more, at least not any more that are this good.
Yeah.
And you're going to miss them.
Yeah, I didn't read Harry Potter, but they had the same feeling at the end of the
the Trader's Tales, Nathan Lowell's books, with the same thing.
The characters are most of them.
I would say, you know, actually all the main characters are easy, very easy to become invested in.
They are and they all, well, most of them anyway, kind of reminded me
if not of myself, you know, Connor reminded me of me and most of the other characters
reminded me of people that I know and care about.
Well, I think that's the goal of any author is to make it to where you can associate
with the characters or associate one of your friends to a character.
Most of them don't succeed at that.
He hit that one out of the park.
I got to get rolling on my end, but you guys continue on with this magnificence
because it's a really good book.
I loved it and my kids loved it and my wife loved it.
Flute music aside, it was awesome.
All right, well, thanks Dan for being with us.
It was really cool.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you for coming out.
Hey, no problem.
And the next one we're doing handbook for the criminally insane, right?
We will do that at your turn to pick and that's the book you pick.
So handbook for the criminally insane.
Was that on potty of books?
Yeah, I'll drop you the URL.
And none of us have heard this book yet, so we have no idea if it's good or bad or anything.
This is the first one that we're doing that no one's listened to yet.
True that.
I'm excited, but I will talk to you guys on IRC later.
So have a happy and thank you for having me on.
Was there anything that you didn't like about the book?
Why don't you get started on anything that you didn't like?
And I may be able to pick some things up after that.
I had to think about it now.
I know. It's kind of harsh.
I didn't write it down.
There were things I didn't like while I was listening to it,
but looking back and retrospect, they just kind of get washed over by the overall
fun of the book.
And I think maybe if I had the level of criticism at it,
the biggest criticism I could level would be to say that it was such a fun
book that it made it not seem like a tremendous literary masterpiece,
but I don't think that's the kind of book that it was intended to be.
Yeah, I don't think it was either.
I think it was intended to be a really good story.
And it was a good story, and it was mostly believable.
You know, except for the bits and pieces here and there where
Connor was so out of place, someone should have pointed out that,
you know, hey, he's not wearing sandals.
Hey, that shirt's funny.
Hey, he's not really from a place.
He's dodging our questions.
Did he kind of washed over that?
And I, you know, it's really hard to criticize this book, isn't it?
Yeah, I think that was kind of required, though, because he's not from around there.
And you can't really just say surprise and expect him to fake it.
And they're not used to people being from the real world.
So it's kind of unbelievable.
So it doesn't even crush your mind.
Okay, I have another thing.
I was thinking of criticisms.
Actually, all I can come up with is another compliment for the book.
I thought that the way he left the book open for a sequel or the ways he did so
throughout all the book were brilliant.
Most books go through a book and tell a single story and leave it at that.
And then at the end of the book, some thing will happen.
At least the door opened for the sequel.
But I loved how Lenny Hinn did that all the way through.
Like the boars acting crazy was never explained.
And the snake showing up was never explained.
And all this stuff that is going on, that is unexplained, that you're like,
okay, he has to get to this in the sequel.
I'd like how the whole book was peppered with that.
Yeah, the whole time he's building it toward, you know, there have to be more books.
Yeah, because he could have left all those things out.
And then at the end, oh, Kielty gets away and now there has to be a sequel.
And I hate that kind of thing.
And that's not what he did.
And I really appreciate that he didn't do that to me.
I think that's it. I'm having such a hard time coming up with any criticism
without listening to it again and taking notes, which I'm not going to do
before we hit stop on this thing.
Yeah, same here.
So I'm going to speak for Dan here and say that we give this three thumbs up
that everyone liked it.
Well, can I use both of my thumbs or can I only use one of them?
Because I'm not like a lice and I actually have two hands here.
Wow, we get four thumbs up in the three of us.
That's fantastic.
It is.
Yeah, so if anyone's listening to this and you haven't read the book
and we just spoiled it on you for once, that's okay.
Because we did not tell the story that this guy tells.
It's still worth listening to.
And there is still a sequel that's been built in.
This is books been designed as a trilogy.
And there are cliff hangers and there are,
there is more story to listen to.
And I can say that the second book, because I've listened to it already,
the second book is easily as good as the first book.
Minus that he doesn't say Shadow Magic quite the same.
Yeah, I have to say that while we may have given away the ending,
we definitely didn't give away the journey or the story that goes along with it.
No, and you know what?
We didn't even give away the ending just to say that, you know,
I think we kind of mentioned in passing that Kielty got his hand cut off
and Fergel was killed.
We didn't go through anything about Shadow Magic,
how that worked, how the rune choosing worked.
So there's still a whole lot of story here that we haven't touched.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, this books, you said it was eight hours long in total?
Yeah, I think it was like 8.7 hours,
is what I put it into a playlist is what it says.
It was almost nine hours of listening and it goes by way too fast.
Yeah, exactly.
What I'd like to say is that, you know,
our next book is going to be handbook for the criminally insane.
You can find it on patio books and then blame Dan if it stinks.
And you can blame me if it's great.
Exactly.
If people want to join us on these recordings,
you know, I think that's totally acceptable.
I think we're totally open to that.
Get in touch with us on IRC if you're interested in reviewing our next book with us
or if you're one of the guys on IRC already and you're ready to jump in,
that's cool.
We're using Bumble to record the sand and we're using the latest version 1.2.3
because all the earlier versions, you heard the last show.
It didn't work as well as the show, obviously.
And you'll need a beverage to review.
That's I think those are the three prerequisites to hop in on here with us.
Are you up for that integral?
Yeah, definitely.
We'd love to have more people.
It's definitely more hacker public radio of us.
Yeah, it definitely is.
And, you know, and of course, if three or four completely other people want to do a book club
too without us, that's also hacker public radio.
It's just, you know, the next one that we're going to do is going to be handbooked for
the criminally insane.
Well, I think that's all we've got.
Yeah, that's all we've got.
Definitely.
I'm just trying to think of a way to wrap it up.
And I don't know how to wrap it up, except to say thank you for listening.
Oh, I see what you did there.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio.
For more information on the show and how to contribute your own shows, visit hackerpublicradio.org.
You should just cut off this part here where I'm describing what to do.
