A wonderful video AP. When I think of why I love fantasy, I think of Robin Williams’ line about how we have a spark of madness and we mustn’t lose it. Similarly I think that we all have this spark of the fantastic in us, that tiny part of us that tells us anything is possible. I’ve seen too many people lose it, or even worse, throw it away because they feel it’s impractical or they don’t need it anymore. It breaks my heart when I see it. To heavily paraphrase Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, we need dreams and stories because it’s what keeps us going. We need them, even when we don’t feel they’re practical anymore. Fantasy is the literature of the imagination and impossible, I wouldn’t have it another way.

As I’ve grown older and matured in my thought, I’ve realized that it isn’t necessarily that politics itself is a bad thing, but how it is implemented in the story. I also used to confuse ‘subtlety’ with ‘nuance’ and I’ve realized that you can be overt in your commentary while still creating a story that’s nuanced, interesting, and well considered. Take Perdido Street Station for instance. It’s a very clear fuck you to capitalism, authoritarian governments, and capital punishment, yet at the same time China Mieville respects his readers enough for them to come to their own conclusions for his work. For instance, one of the more memorable side-stories is about a young girl who accidentally killed her young baby and as a punishment she was given the cruel ReMade treatment, where they sowed her baby’s arms to her face. It’s quite obvious that Mieville wants to show that this is a cruel and unusual punishment, but he also has us wonder about the nature of punishment. When is punishment just and when is it cruel and sadistic? A bad example would be Gabino Iglesias’ The Devil Takes You Home. Iglesias gives us themes about our world, but he never raises any questions or gives us anything to ponder about. He never says anything meaningful or insightful about the political issues he raises. His characters don’t make choices that have us consider these themes in an interesting way and Iglesias doesn’t respect the reader enough to have us think about what he’s writing. He just cares about the message and he thinks he’s deep and profound just because he brought them up. But it doesn’t mean anything because he doesn’t really say anything of interest. Sorry for the rant, it’s something I’m passionate about and it’s something which causes me a lot of frustration. Great video AP.

I love Terry Goodkind more than any other author and I love a lot of them. My favourites before were Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, and then R.A Salvatore. Until I discovered Terry Goodkind, and then J.V.Jones. The imagery, the story, and the universe Terry uses is incredible. His efforts to tie details together throughout all the books are astounding. The Wizard's Rules are wonderful to look into, and to understand. Terry does his best to give us samples of various cultures and religions, like the mud people where he learns how hard they word, and he contributes by showing them how to make clay tiles for roofs. He shows us a variety of attitudes, and shows us how each of them has a place in the world. He takes assumptions that people have, and turn them on their heads. The Palace of the Prophets.. the Temple of the Winds... The Holes in the World.. Emperor Jagang.. If you seriously dislike Terry Goodkinds books, then you have not taken the time to actually read Terry Goodkinds books. Doesn't matter who you are. People like to tout that Terrry disrespects other authors, but he doesn't. He's serious, real, direct. He's not mean, or evil, or hurtful. It's strange how people can hate someone who can write so damn well.

Interesting how that diagram you reference to (but don't like) marks Stonewielder as containing major spoilers for events in Toll the Hounds and that you should ABSOLUTELY read Toll the Hounds first, while you specifically recommend Toll the Hounds into Stonewielder. Is that because TtH into Stonewielder is chronological, but TtH actually spoils plot points in Stonewielder?

I'm still not ready to talk about Beak😞

I’m reading memories of ice now and this videos had helped me to refresh my memory 👀💖 thank u so much!!

I'm only 30 minutes into this video and have much to watch, but thank you both for these insights. You provide a lot of illumination into something I struggle with in these books, namely understanding the big picture. I already understand more deeply the role of Kallor, the Elder Gods, and some of the conflicts within.

Obviously this is way too late, but from what I understood; tthe giant spider pet was supposed to be Dr. Yueh's wife. In the movie, Dr. Yuej says to Duke Leto, they take her apart and out her back together again. I assumed that that was supposed to be his wife kept as a pet.

These are the types of discussions I love. Keep up the great work.

Wow. This is how booktube should be. I hope some of the 'big guns' from the YT fantasy review world watch this. Excellent and thought provoking. Clearly outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the book while placing it within the context of when it was written. Many people forget these concepts and are quick to criticize based on what we have now. My first video of yours and I subscribed. Thankyou.

Didn’t Kallor explicitly say that he used to kill his wives when they got too old to be attractive? And kill his babies upon birth? Back when he was king?

25:11 time stamp for me

Fantasy goes as far back as hallucinations. As dreams. As consciousness. Thinking. As aar back as mind-encountering nature, and not understanding it...and wanting to figure it out. Tolkein was just another human who picked up that thread and wrote about it rather than just keeping it in the secret confines of his own mind. Reality and its mysteries created fantasy.

TOLKIEN is kind of a late arrival, isn't he, to this whole thing we broadly refer to as "fantasy"?

Have you guys ever discussed writings more along the lines of David Lindsay's novels 9THE HAUNTED WOMAN, DEVIL'S TOR, A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS) or John Jacob Astor's A JOURNEY TO OTHER WORLDS?---metaphysical fantasy adventure? Spiritual "adventure", meaning OVERT rather than more metaphorically--implicit metaphysical adventure tales? (I wasn't able to listen to all of this discussion, so, maybe you DO talk about these things here? Or not? Just too many ADS to plow through ----and I don't like to use anti-ad apps, generally, as it isn't fair to the content provider. But...TOO MANY makes it hard to stick to that philosophy. Is DILEMMA! :-7

AS A BIT OF AN OUTSIDER to fantasy writings and filmed versions etc, I'll have to side with A CRITICAL DRAGON insofar as a general take as to Haggard and those kinds of fantastical adventures. In broad strokes it's all the same kind of, er, bailiwick. Between Haggard and Howard, more or less a distinction without a difference. BROADLY speaking. To the GENERAL public. It's all "non-reality" imaginative entertainment. Of course, as with most anything, the devil is in the details, but details don't seem to be of interest to the public at large.

I knew this show was going to suck as soon as they announced the race-swapped cast.

I knew this show was going to suck as soon as they announced the race swapped cast.

To your point, how easy would it have been to switch up the "take its body" scene to be a quick 60 second thing with the family where they announce the synthetic's murder and ask permission to look into his drive so they can catch the killer? Or hell TNG/DS9 might make the entire episode less about the mystery and more a reason to pivot around the ethics of essentially violating a body for justice.

I get so frustrated with who complain about characters that they haven’t made the effort to understand. I’ve tried to listen to several podcasts discussing Robin Hobb’s Farseer/Realm of the Elderlings with people complaining about Fitz calling him stupid for the decisions he makes. For anybody who knows how people react when someone suffers from childhood trauma and ptsd, Fitz’s actions are very understandable. In fact it’s unreasonable to expect someone who went thru everything that he did to make choices like an average person. So it’s the readers error not Fitz’s. Judgement is the enemy of empathy. Judging is easy. Empathy takes effort and can be painful so people avoid it

AP Zack Snyder fanboy confirmed.

Thank You! It makes a difference having these videos while reading the book!

Interesting that Mr. Erikson points Grimdark back to KEW's Kane, which are not really popular at all these days. I can see it though, the little I've read of Kane it feels like Conan but obviously a villain. Anyway, we don't get thieves' guilds without Leiber.

Sir, I admire your work butvi have to disagree with you on this point. Malazan is a series I read early on and I really liked it early on. However my opinion of the series has lowered considerably since. I think the whole Tavore/Felisin storyline was really poor writing along early malazan writing like Ammanas/Cotillion motives, Tattereail and Paran romance, Malaz Empire being benevolent but releasing a jaghut tyrant , Tayschrenn etc etc.

Just finished reading this a couple of days ago. Awesome discussion

One of the best fantasy novels ever. Not for everyone, but don't worry, there is always mistborn series.

That WWII comparison is a very good metaphor.

On my first re-read of the series. So much more satisfying and easier to digest everything. So rich.

For me, there are a lot of things that make a title good. One is just how cool it sounds to me, but that is not the only factor. For example, I don’t like the titles “A Clash of Kings” and “ A Storm of Swords” (I said this is the live chat of CWN and got some pushback). I’ll clarify and admit that no, these titles don’t actually sound bad, they just don’t have any actual meaning or purpose beyond sounding cool, and that’s why I don’t like them. Personally I’m fine with a diversity of different intentions with titles, but I tend to lean slightly towards things a bit less straightforward may descriptive as “The Three Musketeers” but also not too far on the other end of the spectrum. For example, among the many titles that I really like are “A Game of Thrones, “Fires of Heaven,” and “Lord of Chaos.”

A whole episode dedicated on of my favorite characters?!?! Can’t thank you enough!

Random useless annoying thoughts: So if you have something that is from our world as an epigraph in a fantasy book then it is extradiegetic; that makes sense. But if you have something that is from our world as an epigraph in, say, a sci-fi book where earth and presumably the person who wrote that epigraph nominally existed in the world of the story, then in some sense it’s not technically extradiegetic, but there would still be some distinction in our heads between that and an epigraph that does not some from a real historical text, I think partially because one ot these hypothetical texts is, in fact, real, and the other is not. Right?

Is theme always intentional or are there themes that creep in?

Yes. Trauma. Not just regret or grief over a specific loss. Wurts deftly explores trauma here.

Ah yes, the Edam Holy War - Blessed are the cheesemakers or all manufacturers of dairy products? Regarding the acknowledgments, it was nice to see you are referred to as Dr. on one amongst the several name variations.

I dont know which I loved more, your answering my question or the wonderfully dramatic reading of said question! Thank you. This series has been a gem, beginning to end.

Professor Fireballs DOES sound better. Good work.

Do you guys have a list of all the episodes or a playlist? I feel like I might be missing some or getting them out of order. lol.

Now I have to rewrite everything. Thanks AP 😂

Really enjoyed this series. Thanks so much!

"Our exposure to truly bad writing is usually quite limited" It's clear that AP has never been to the fanfiction side of the Internet 😉

In Banana Land there was much peeling of skins.

🥳🎉

Thank you guys for even taking the time. Time = money but this will last an eternity

Thank you both, this series has been absolutely fantastic. It bewilders me that you don't both have millions of subscribers because your insights are absolute gold dust.

Interesting how the origin story changes over time. And don't try to pull the "off-camera" tweed over our eyes, some of us know better... 😉

Thank you so much for answering my question! But more importantly thank you for a wonderful video series. It has been highly informative and entertaining and I’m sure I will return to it at some point. One thing that wasn’t answered however is who in fact is the evil one. I’m still not sure! In fact I am inclined to believe that you are both evil. And you can try and cover it up with sentimentality in the coda but I now know the truth.

The Prose Bros knocked it out of the park again

This has been a very pleasant journey! Thank you once again to both of you for going through the effort of trying to edumacate us unwashed masses in the ways of litteramature.