Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Meets World, where we usually rewatch
Speaker 1: Boy meets World and talk about what it was like
Speaker 1: growing up on set, growing up on screen, and growing
Speaker 1: up period. But today we continue our new little side
Speaker 1: quest with Pod Meets World Book Club Edition. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna every now and then we pick a book, read it,
Speaker 1: and come together to talk about it. No scripts, no
Speaker 1: lessons from Feeni, just a conversation about what we're reading now,
Speaker 1: how it hits us, and what it says about the
Speaker 1: stories we tell and the people we're becoming. And this
Speaker 1: time the book comes from none other than fantasy super
Speaker 1: fan Wilfredell's.
Speaker 2: Very excited, very excited, Welcome to my world people.
Speaker 3: His pick A.
Speaker 1: Deadly Education by Naomi Novic. It's a dark twist on
Speaker 1: the magic school genre, set in a place called the
Speaker 1: Scollarman schoolments I would say, yeah, yes, scholar Mance basically
Speaker 1: a school for young sorcerers where the steaks aren't just
Speaker 1: grades their survival. Our protagonist Elle has a powerful magic
Speaker 1: and a chip on her shoulder. She's sarcastic, prickly, and
Speaker 1: maybe faded to become something truly dangerous, but she's also
Speaker 1: just trying to get out, alive and graduate. The book
Speaker 1: is fast paced, biting, and full of monsters, both literal
Speaker 1: and emotional, and it sparks all kinds of questions about power, identity,
Speaker 1: and how we decide who we want to be. So
Speaker 1: sharpen your wands, watch your back, and let's head into
Speaker 1: the scholomance. Welcome to Podneys world. I'm right strong.
Speaker 3: I'm Danielle Fischl, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 4: So you picked a fantasy book that's only three hundred
Speaker 4: and thirteen pages?
Speaker 3: It was? It? Ye? Basically was that a consideration? It was?
Speaker 5: Okay, it was.
Speaker 2: It was also the consideration of what kind of fantasy
Speaker 2: book I wanted to pick, because I know writers read
Speaker 2: some fantasy.
Speaker 3: You have read No Fear of Fantasy.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, do I want to start
Speaker 2: high fantasy? Because my original thought was going to be
Speaker 2: pawn a Prophecy by David Ennings, which is the book
Speaker 2: that kind of got me into fantasy when I was
Speaker 2: eleven or twelve. So it can be for younger people,
Speaker 2: but it's also just phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just take a moment to describe what
Speaker 1: high fantasy is.
Speaker 3: High fantasy is more of a fantasy.
Speaker 2: There's magical systems involved, but it's very character driven. You're
Speaker 2: gonna get a lot of elves. You're gonna get like
Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: Tolkien is high fantasy. So did I want to start
Speaker 3: with that?
Speaker 2: And then I remember you really liking Harry Potter, which
Speaker 2: I've never read.
Speaker 3: No, but you liked the movies.
Speaker 5: I've never seen them.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I remember somebody who looks like you really
Speaker 2: liking Harry Potter.
Speaker 5: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: That's because whatever girl I was talking to at the
Speaker 2: time really liked Harry Potter.
Speaker 3: I thought there was a girl. Danielle's a girl. All
Speaker 3: girls are the same.
Speaker 5: All the same.
Speaker 3: So I figured school getting in there that kind of genre.
Speaker 5: I liked school.
Speaker 3: You liked school, You're a big fan of that.
Speaker 2: You were also kind of a a girl in school
Speaker 2: who wanted to kill everyone around her.
Speaker 5: That is that I am el Yes, essentially, I.
Speaker 3: Thought there was a chance this was something.
Speaker 2: It's also was its it's newer, and uh Naomi Novic
Speaker 2: is a phenomenal writer, so I thought just this was
Speaker 2: I knew I was taking a shot. I figured I
Speaker 2: was going to get a call from daniel to some point,
Speaker 2: either going what the hell did you do to me?
Speaker 2: Or oh my god, this is the best thing I've
Speaker 2: ever read.
Speaker 3: And I don't know where we've lived.
Speaker 1: And you've read everything that Naomi Novic has written, not everything,
Speaker 1: but mostly I've read She Dies.
Speaker 2: The Uh, I'm gonna mispronounce it. I think it's called
Speaker 2: the Temporary Series.
Speaker 1: Which a pronunciation is going to be a big deal today.
Speaker 3: Me too. I was literally looking up Mel exactly.
Speaker 4: No, you can just l's name gad Gallda Rail, Gladril, Gladriel, Gladriel, Gladril, Gladril.
Speaker 3: It's not everything. Let's go to be Yeah, let's go
Speaker 3: with Ell.
Speaker 2: But no, you're right, wrote her, It's a lot about pronunciation.
Speaker 2: If you finished this series, read this series. I've read
Speaker 2: this series a couple of times. I've read the series
Speaker 2: a couple of times. She also did that. I think
Speaker 2: it's called the Temporary Series, which is all it's It's
Speaker 2: really cool. It's if during the Napoleonic Wars there was
Speaker 2: also a dragon Core, so it's still but that one
Speaker 2: is like seven or eight books long. They're much thicker,
Speaker 2: so I didn't want to jump into that. But that's seriously,
Speaker 2: what is imagine the French and the English are fighting,
Speaker 2: but they each have dragons as well.
Speaker 3: It was very and.
Speaker 2: They're literally shipped on the big boats and they're you know,
Speaker 2: so they're having ocean battles and these giant sloops, but
Speaker 2: then dragons are taking off from the deck. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's really really cool. But I loved I loved that story.
Speaker 2: So when I saw this and I'm then i read
Speaker 2: the first one. It was so different from from anything
Speaker 2: I've been reading fantasy wise lately. Been doing a lot
Speaker 2: of Brandon Anderson lately, which the magical systems are just
Speaker 2: off the charts weird. They're amazing, but they're weird. And
Speaker 2: then you know stuff like you know, when you really
Speaker 2: get into fantasy, you get things like the Wheel of
Speaker 2: Time series, where the prologue of the final book of
Speaker 2: the Wheel of Time series was two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: pages long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the prologue. So it's one of those things you
Speaker 1: just fell asleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2: But if you that's book ten, So if you've been
Speaker 2: doing this for twenty five years, which is what the series,
Speaker 2: how long it took to write. Literally the author died
Speaker 2: halfway through and Brandon Sanderson had to finish it. You
Speaker 2: were I was with three other guys waiting in line
Speaker 2: for Barnes and Noble to open the morning it came out,
Speaker 2: because you're just like you're waiting for this thing to end.
Speaker 3: Wow. So I wanted something that I knew I could
Speaker 3: kind of where I settled with you. I was taking
Speaker 3: such a shot with Danielle. So we'll see.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we're gonna break today into five segments like
Speaker 1: we did last time. We're going to begin with roll call.
Speaker 1: This is where we check in with our initial reactions,
Speaker 1: overall thoughts, then put it on the board where we
Speaker 1: will lay out the big themes and ideas that we
Speaker 1: found in the book, and then show your work. This
Speaker 1: is the nuts and bolts, the writing itself, the characters dialogue,
Speaker 1: how it all came together on the page. And after
Speaker 1: that we will lighten things up with a pop quiz,
Speaker 1: little game or fun question about the book. And finally
Speaker 1: we will close out with report card where we each
Speaker 1: give our big takeaways and we will hand out turn
Speaker 1: and phenies, a rating system of one through five, where
Speaker 1: the turners are how fun and accessible this book was,
Speaker 1: how readable it was, and the phoenies are about the
Speaker 1: life lessons and the overall value what you carry with
Speaker 1: you as you try and do good in your own life.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's open up our books and begin.
Speaker 1: I'll give a brief synopsis. Deadly Education is the first
Speaker 1: book in the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novic, best selling
Speaker 1: author known for blenning fantasy with literary depth.
Speaker 3: She reimagines the Magic School trope with a much darker twist.
Speaker 1: This is a school for magically gifted teens, but instead
Speaker 1: of secret houses and friendly ghosts, it's a deadly institution
Speaker 1: with no teachers, no exits, and a constant threat of
Speaker 1: monsters called malificaria yeah, that prey on the students. Our protagonists,
Speaker 1: Galadriel L. Higgins, is no Harry Potter. She's not your
Speaker 1: typical underdog with a heart of gold. She's angry, sarcastic,
Speaker 1: and deeply isolated. And she also happens to have incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful dark magic that could maybe wipe out entire cities
Speaker 1: if she let it loose. But she's not trying to
Speaker 1: become a villain. Her struggle isn't just against the Scholomance
Speaker 1: and it's horrors. It's also about resisting the role the
Speaker 1: world seems to have a signed for her. As she
Speaker 1: fights to Survivor junior year, she gets reluctantly entangled with
Speaker 1: Orian Lake, who is kind of the Harry Potter, the
Speaker 1: school's golden boy monster slayer, and they start to form
Speaker 1: a connection, and she starts to form connections with other
Speaker 1: classmates that she's kept it at arm's length. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's get right into Danielle coming into this. Danielle,
Speaker 1: what was your fantasy experience before and how did this
Speaker 1: meet or upend your expectations?
Speaker 4: Okay, so I have heard Will talk about how he
Speaker 4: really likes fantasy world building and he likes it to
Speaker 4: be as detailed as possible.
Speaker 3: The magical system with their own sort of like math
Speaker 3: going into it. Yeah, and from.
Speaker 4: That, I would think to myself, I don't think I
Speaker 4: like that. I think that's a little too much for me.
Speaker 4: I want I like to follow stories of like. I
Speaker 4: like relationship stories, stories about real character driven not so
Speaker 4: much about the world. Of course, the world is important
Speaker 4: and affects the characters, so you need some of it.
Speaker 4: I would say the first seventy five to one hundred
Speaker 4: pages of this book was absolute torture for me.
Speaker 5: Every night.
Speaker 4: I started reading the book, and I would try to
Speaker 4: read one chapter per night because I don't want to
Speaker 4: stop in the middle of a chapter. The chapters are
Speaker 4: fairly long. Sometimes sometimes they're reasonable. Ah, but they're pretty
Speaker 4: long for me who wants to be able to read
Speaker 4: for like thirty minutes before bed, because that's what I
Speaker 4: that's what the amount of time I.
Speaker 3: Can for forty two Dan Brown chapters.
Speaker 1: By the way, So that's so funny because I almost
Speaker 1: thought that you were going to say the first seventy
Speaker 1: five really hooked you because they are very character driven
Speaker 1: compared to some fantasy that was made. My immediate impression was, oh,
Speaker 1: this is because it's a narrator. It's first person, and
Speaker 1: she's talking mostly about her feelings and the you know,
Speaker 1: so I thought you were there was a possibility that
Speaker 1: you were gonna say the world building was second, but
Speaker 1: it was already too much.
Speaker 5: Was too much. It was too much.
Speaker 4: Also because she is so isolated and so dark and
Speaker 4: such a she's a sarcastic, dry personality.
Speaker 3: She's horribly unlikable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I loved that.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my gosh, this girl, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: we get it.
Speaker 1: So if the book had been narrated by Orian, it
Speaker 1: would have like just been easier in for you.
Speaker 4: Maybe I just by the time, I was like, oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, she just keeps saying the same thing.
Speaker 5: Over and over again, but about new places and and
Speaker 5: the names the stuff.
Speaker 4: It's like, her name's hard to say, Malfikaria is hard
Speaker 4: to pronounce. And then there's Mana and Malia, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: never once do they ever even try to explain what
Speaker 4: Mana or Malia are to You just have to figure
Speaker 4: it out context.
Speaker 5: As you go.
Speaker 4: And like I was like, is Malia somehow connected to
Speaker 4: the Malificaria?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 5: Like, because it's like.
Speaker 4: The dark magic, right, dark energy? But you can then
Speaker 4: get from the Malificaria or no, you can't.
Speaker 3: Get Mana, you can also, so essentially what it is.
Speaker 2: And again this is maybe it's just a helpful and
Speaker 2: known fantasy trope for people that read a lot of fantasy,
Speaker 2: or us who play magic the Gathering or something like that.
Speaker 2: So all Mana is energy, apparently, you know, essentially, And
Speaker 2: what they've done in this world or what she's done
Speaker 2: in this world is she's actually balanced the manna, which
Speaker 2: is what we say, I.
Speaker 3: Know, we always say man with malia.
Speaker 2: So there's essentially light energy and dark energy that you
Speaker 2: can pull from and and you can The thing that
Speaker 2: what I loved about this magical system was you could
Speaker 2: pull little bits from each one if you wanted to.
Speaker 3: And that's why she knew.
Speaker 2: It's essentially she was a cocaine addict who could never
Speaker 2: do cocaine again. So it's one of those things where
Speaker 2: she knew if she even tapped into the Malia, she
Speaker 2: was going to set off a super volcano, right, So
Speaker 2: it's like, I can't use that at all.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's justice secion. Because there were times that
Speaker 3: were reading as her did.
Speaker 2: I'd get a text from Danielle and to be a
Speaker 2: screenshot of the world of a word, and it would
Speaker 2: just be, what.
Speaker 3: The is it? What is this? What is that? I know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, I think so much
Speaker 1: of fantasy is kind of a vocabulary test to learning
Speaker 1: the new vocabulary, and you kind of just have to
Speaker 1: go with it. Yeah, so did you after you said
Speaker 1: seventy five to one hundred pages?
Speaker 3: So did it grow on you? Did it change at
Speaker 3: that point?
Speaker 5: Did it grew on me?
Speaker 4: Once she started making relationships with other people, not just Oriyan,
Speaker 4: but once she started having friendships that at the time
Speaker 4: maybe she didn't really know whether or not they were friendships.
Speaker 5: But once she was engaging.
Speaker 4: With other people interesting and partnering up and having to
Speaker 4: rely on other people, then I was like, I'm interested
Speaker 4: to see where this.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't it wasn't just the understanding the magic
Speaker 1: more for you, it was actually just getting out of
Speaker 1: her head a little.
Speaker 4: Bit, getting out of her head a little bit and
Speaker 4: into like other yeah, just getting her out of being
Speaker 4: like I'm always going to be alone.
Speaker 1: That is so funny to me that that's the part
Speaker 1: that you didn't because because that is for me, the
Speaker 1: greatest strength of this, I mean will that when I
Speaker 1: got when I got where this was going, where I
Speaker 1: was like, this is Draco Malfoy's inn, and the fact
Speaker 1: that she was like prophecied to be the ultimate villain.
Speaker 1: I was so excited by that.
Speaker 3: I loved him.
Speaker 1: But I but I agree, it's kind of claustrophobic in
Speaker 1: her mind. And that's my biggest criticism in the book overall,
Speaker 1: because even though you're right, I do she does engage
Speaker 1: with people, we're still very locked in in her head
Speaker 1: and in the school.
Speaker 3: But I was gonna say, this isn't that.
Speaker 2: Is there something about the writing where you feel the
Speaker 2: claustrophobia of the students that are stuck in the schools,
Speaker 2: Like you can't get out of these tiny rooms they're in,
Speaker 2: and every around, every corner you might die, and every
Speaker 2: little thing you might pick up, or I have to
Speaker 2: get a hammer, well, the hammer could kill you.
Speaker 3: It's like that stuff I loved so much about.
Speaker 5: And it was hard.
Speaker 4: We talked about it before we started this podcast that
Speaker 4: there is a map of the school writer, and I
Speaker 4: have the paperback and the map is at the very
Speaker 4: back of the books, and I never went there until
Speaker 4: the end of the story. And then I was like, see,
Speaker 4: I would have liked to have started with this so
Speaker 4: I could have had something in my mind. Because the
Speaker 4: way the school is described, it is without a visual
Speaker 4: nearly impossible to understand what they're trying to describe.
Speaker 5: The way the rooms rotate and.
Speaker 1: Get are it's a giant screw and they keep going
Speaker 1: down levels as they get as they were and so
Speaker 1: the senior year is you're basically all the boy thrust
Speaker 1: into a room to kill each other, to.
Speaker 3: Each other.
Speaker 1: Escape the school Malifa car they can turn on each
Speaker 1: other because they can get magic from each other.
Speaker 3: They get mana or oralia by killing one another. Whereas
Speaker 3: to go to what Danielle is saying.
Speaker 2: Whereas I have the hardcover and when you open it up,
Speaker 2: the first on a page, it's actually part of the
Speaker 2: book is the entire map of the school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my best.
Speaker 4: Advice for somebody who's going to pick this up after
Speaker 4: we talk about it is if you have the paperback
Speaker 4: immediately before you even begin, take a look at the drawings.
Speaker 5: They're really well done.
Speaker 4: It adds a lot if you have that before you
Speaker 4: jump into it. I did find I think my number
Speaker 4: one thing that I thought was the most interesting was
Speaker 4: the description of graduation day. Hearing about how graduation day
Speaker 4: works and that and and also understanding that the malificaria
Speaker 4: that are trying to get you on graduation day, it's
Speaker 4: basically like the gates open and all these monsters have
Speaker 4: access to eating you, and you through the time that
Speaker 4: you're in school have to develop spells and things that
Speaker 4: could possibly ward them off or fill the malificaria before
Speaker 4: they kill you. But you can also trade make alliances
Speaker 4: with people to help you get through it.
Speaker 5: That was all there.
Speaker 4: And then also that the molificicaria have to eat throughout
Speaker 4: the years.
Speaker 3: Yes, so they can sneak in and grab you when
Speaker 3: you're there.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was just, but it's also isn't it?
Speaker 4: Isn't it kind of a perfect examples of high schoolnology
Speaker 4: of high school everything's.
Speaker 2: Everything's going to kill you. You don't you're going to
Speaker 2: be friends with these people. These are the rich, popular kids.
Speaker 2: These aren't there was something so high school. But then
Speaker 2: about taking it to death that was just.
Speaker 3: I mean I loved it.
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved it, all right, So for both of you,
Speaker 1: what changed for you from beginning to end?
Speaker 2: With you?
Speaker 3: Daniel hated it when it started.
Speaker 4: No, it actually ended and Jensen was next to me
Speaker 4: in bed and it ended and I literally went, oh no,
Speaker 4: and he went what?
Speaker 5: And I said, now I have to read book two
Speaker 5: and three?
Speaker 4: Because literally through the entire book, even though I at
Speaker 4: about a seventy page seventy five or one hundred, turned
Speaker 4: and actually got into it and was then excited to.
Speaker 5: Read it every night, whereas before it had been like
Speaker 5: what did I every night getting into bed?
Speaker 4: And then it turned and I was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: really excited, and those chapters didn't feel long anymore. They
Speaker 4: felt like they were going very fast, and I would
Speaker 4: a chapter would end, and I think, darn it.
Speaker 5: I wish I didn't have to go to sleep because
Speaker 5: I'd want to keep reading.
Speaker 4: But I had still been thinking, at least I only
Speaker 4: have to read this one. At least it's just one book.
Speaker 4: It's three hundred and thirteen pages, and once I get
Speaker 4: done with this, I'll never have to look.
Speaker 5: At it again.
Speaker 4: Oh no, oh no, I've already started book too. I
Speaker 4: have by media. I was my birthday had just passed.
Speaker 4: My brother asked for a birthday idea, and I sent
Speaker 4: the two links for book two and three to my
Speaker 4: brother and I said, here you go, this is what
Speaker 4: I want. And I'm already, you know, fifty pages into
Speaker 4: book two.
Speaker 1: Okay, so will you obviously read everything I read? So
Speaker 1: when you first read it, where you just hooked immediately
Speaker 1: because you already set the tone, and then the character
Speaker 1: just threw you in and then it totally delivered for you.
Speaker 3: It did well.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, So the idea of
Speaker 2: taking that dark and going, let's just what happens if
Speaker 2: it's the same thing, but we're all killing each other,
Speaker 2: and everything just wants you dead, including the school.
Speaker 3: To me, I was hooked right away. I also loved
Speaker 3: how much I hated her at the beginning.
Speaker 2: It was like, you're a terrible person, and then when
Speaker 2: you really start getting into it, it's like you're not
Speaker 2: you just you come to realize that She literally could
Speaker 2: not fathom someone liking her, and that's the thing that
Speaker 2: colored her entire existence, is her whole life.
Speaker 3: She'd been told. She's with a mom who's again brilliant.
Speaker 4: An absolute saint saint of a mother who is like
Speaker 4: the earth everyone.
Speaker 1: So let's describe. So she grew up on a commune
Speaker 1: her mom. So wizards grow. Our sorcerers grow up in
Speaker 1: enclaves for the most part, which are groups of adults
Speaker 1: who raised their kids together trained them to be sorcerers.
Speaker 1: But she was raised by this very legendary healer hippie
Speaker 1: type who has taken her out of all enclaves and
Speaker 1: raised her alone, in part because she was prophecied to
Speaker 1: be this dark So it was her mom is both
Speaker 1: a protector and kind of an enabler. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: so she grew up in a very different environment than
Speaker 1: everybody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought that was a really cool beat.
Speaker 1: I even have wanted to see more of that personally, because.
Speaker 2: You may in Okay books, you may in the future,
Speaker 2: but it is it just she was a very I
Speaker 2: mean again like a Harry Potter, who's the good version
Speaker 2: of this. She's a very very complex character, and it
Speaker 2: all came down to the fact that she just couldn't
Speaker 2: fathom that anyone would like her.
Speaker 5: Ever, and she's because she's never had a friend, no.
Speaker 2: Never had a friend, to the point where she when
Speaker 2: she realized she had a friend, she cried, yeah, I
Speaker 2: have a friend. So I mean that to me, I
Speaker 2: thought it was such an interesting way to go about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it did. It hooked me right away.
Speaker 2: This was one of you know, I read fantasy all
Speaker 2: the time. It's basically all that I read, and so
Speaker 2: when I then stumble on one that's so different than
Speaker 2: anything else I've read and also combines just beautiful pros
Speaker 2: because she can obviously blow doors. I mean, she can
Speaker 2: write really really well. So when I find that combination,
Speaker 2: then I just kind of try to deep dive the
Speaker 2: author because it's like, oh my god, that's how I
Speaker 2: was with Robin Hobb who was just like wow, and.
Speaker 3: This was the one that did to me.
Speaker 2: I found it on it it was I walked into
Speaker 2: it might have been in Sebastopool.
Speaker 3: No, it was before Sebastool, but I.
Speaker 2: Just walked into a bookstore and it was just on
Speaker 2: display and I was like okay, and I grabbed it.
Speaker 3: And then by the third chapter, I was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I can't wait.
Speaker 2: You know already order the next one, and the third
Speaker 2: one hadn't come out yet, so I know. Then you
Speaker 2: do the fantasy thing where you're sitting there and you're
Speaker 2: waiting for the next book to come out, and finally
Speaker 2: it came, like the day it was Tolive a day
Speaker 2: came out. I was at the bookstore. I went and
Speaker 2: got it, and I was, yeah, I was that guy
Speaker 2: with this.
Speaker 3: Series about you writer.
Speaker 1: I I loved the verse seventy five hundred pages. I
Speaker 1: love the approach it didn't I mean ultimately like it
Speaker 1: lands with more plot hooks right to keep you going,
Speaker 1: of course, And when I got there, I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: but no, I found it a little exhausting.
Speaker 3: I found it.
Speaker 1: I found it sort of maintaining at a certain point,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the same scene. Yes, yeah, over that,
Speaker 1: and the dynamic as complicated as her interior monologue is,
Speaker 1: and as complicated as she is about analyzing her relationships
Speaker 1: with everybody and herself, and she actually doesn't have much
Speaker 1: desire or wants on her own. And I really wanted
Speaker 1: to know how does she like Orion?
Speaker 3: Does she you know?
Speaker 1: And she knows well, but I but you know, by
Speaker 1: the end, don't any spoiler.
Speaker 3: I guess we're just gonna have spoilers.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that he kisses her at the end,
Speaker 1: and that that becomes a sort of you know, I
Speaker 1: was I wanted.
Speaker 3: To know, how do you do you want this? You
Speaker 3: like somebody?
Speaker 1: Or are these people really your friends? I just wanted
Speaker 1: a little more introspection on that. I felt like the
Speaker 1: author and maybe it develops throughout, you know, but I
Speaker 1: felt like the author got trapped by the brilliance of
Speaker 1: her first idea, which was and the brilliance of that voice,
Speaker 1: and then sort of was treading water for a long time, and.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we can get into the end of the book.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so I was a little exhausted, you know.
Speaker 1: I was kind of like I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have finished this book if it wasn't really interesting, because
Speaker 1: I kind.
Speaker 2: Of I was like, you pick up a book evenstand that.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's get let's go move into put
Speaker 1: it on the board where we talk about the big
Speaker 1: themes or ideas. So how does the dynamic between l
Speaker 1: and Ryan complicate traditional hero villain or damsel and savior tropes?
Speaker 4: How does it complicate him? I mean, she is not
Speaker 4: she is not appreciative right at all.
Speaker 1: It opens with her having already been saved by him, great.
Speaker 2: Opening line that it was a wonderful opening line to
Speaker 2: a book where he's like, which is just by the
Speaker 2: second time he saved me, I knew I had.
Speaker 3: To kill it.
Speaker 5: I knew I had to kill it exactly.
Speaker 4: And you know the thing I'll say about him, he's
Speaker 4: a pretty boring character.
Speaker 5: In this first book.
Speaker 4: You yeah, because I don't know anything about him either.
Speaker 4: And I do know because I'm fifty pages into the
Speaker 4: second book. They start immediately with delving into them and
Speaker 4: does she like him?
Speaker 5: And who is he really? And so I know we're
Speaker 5: going to get more of it.
Speaker 4: But in this first book, other than the idea that
Speaker 4: in some ways we kind of are supposed to feel sorry.
Speaker 5: For him toward the end, he can't.
Speaker 4: He doesn't get to use really, I mean, he can
Speaker 4: use his own mana, but he doesn't have access to
Speaker 4: it the same way the other enclave kids do. And
Speaker 4: yet he's contributing more mana to this shared pool than
Speaker 4: any other character, and they the entire school has come
Speaker 4: to zent him for saving so many lives because the
Speaker 4: Malifikaria are not able to eat any students because he's
Speaker 4: stopped so many killings, and so he is resented for
Speaker 4: being a hero. And he is kind of personality lists.
Speaker 1: He's sort of like the popular kid, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's like the popular.
Speaker 4: Is a popular kid with hunched over shoulders who kind
Speaker 4: of just like the popular.
Speaker 3: He doesn't want to be popular.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want everyone else has made him popular. He
Speaker 2: doesn't want to be popular, which is why we think
Speaker 2: at the beginning he likes l because I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't like you. I'm not going to kiss here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want nothing to do with you. And he's like, oh, ok,
Speaker 2: you real person.
Speaker 3: Let me let me be near you.
Speaker 2: Which I love and I will say as you get
Speaker 2: into books two and three and find out more about
Speaker 2: Orian not a.
Speaker 3: Basic character really yeah, and not a basic character.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, in this first book he leaves. He leaves
Speaker 4: a lot to be desired.
Speaker 2: That's the thing about fantasy is it's almost you almost
Speaker 2: have to look at when you know it's multiple fantasy,
Speaker 2: when you know it's going to be a series, you
Speaker 2: almost have to look at each book as its own chapter.
Speaker 4: That makes sense, and each book focusing a more on
Speaker 4: one character, kind of like the seasons of Boy Meets
Speaker 4: World focused on individual characters more as you build out
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 5: So that makes sense.
Speaker 2: And you also don't know who you're gonna like and
Speaker 2: who you're not until the book goes on more. I mean,
Speaker 2: by the end of Harry Potter you still like Harry,
Speaker 2: but it's like you might be more of a Ron
Speaker 2: fan at this point, or you might be like Neville
Speaker 2: was my favorite care you just never know, as they're
Speaker 2: kind of like Nevill was anybody not true?
Speaker 3: Sir?
Speaker 1: All right, well, here's here's a big question. What do
Speaker 1: you what do you think that this book is saying
Speaker 1: about privilege?
Speaker 5: I do love that topic in this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't want hug this whole thing,
Speaker 4: but like obviously for both Ell and O'Ryan, they both
Speaker 4: they have their own totally different experiences with privilege. Oriyan
Speaker 4: is in the most privileged enclave that exist New York,
Speaker 4: and Elle is not part of an enclave, has no desire.
Speaker 4: She thought, maybe early on in her life, that her
Speaker 4: only goal was I'm going to go to the skull Amantsid,
Speaker 4: I'm going to join an enclave. And her mom didn't
Speaker 4: want her to, and but she that was what she
Speaker 4: thought she wanted, and then she realized once she got there,
Speaker 4: absolutely not. I see how unfair it is. I see
Speaker 4: how there's no reason this group of people because of
Speaker 4: their access to mana, which in this book kind of
Speaker 4: represents money.
Speaker 3: Right power and power, literal power.
Speaker 1: It's sort of class. Whatever privilege you have or whatever
Speaker 1: mana you have access to is some form.
Speaker 3: Of power class yea. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they even talk about the kids that they call
Speaker 2: it on the maintenance track, where it's like they'll fix
Speaker 2: everything in the school, which is way more dangerous, very
Speaker 2: danger you could die, but they know they'll get a
Speaker 2: place in an enclave. But even when they get into
Speaker 2: the enclave, they're going to be there essentially as.
Speaker 3: Janitor's right exactly, this is what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: Yes, you'll be protected and you'll have access to the power,
Speaker 2: but you're still just fixing all for the rich people.
Speaker 3: So it's really it.
Speaker 2: And again, just going back to something you said a
Speaker 2: while before, and I know this is a meta kind
Speaker 2: of take on it, but where you said it kind
Speaker 2: of got almost monotonous. It's repeating itself. It's the same
Speaker 2: scene over and over again.
Speaker 3: To me. That's again that's high school. It's like every
Speaker 3: it is the same.
Speaker 2: It just happens to be that there's monsters in this one,
Speaker 2: but high schools like that everything's the most important thing
Speaker 2: in your life. Every day is kind of exactly the same.
Speaker 2: There's power and clicks all over the place. It just
Speaker 2: kind of seemed like that going through all.
Speaker 3: So then what does this book say about systems in general,
Speaker 3: or like social systems or social structures. Does it land
Speaker 3: somewhere for you?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on which characters eyes you're looking through.
Speaker 2: If you're looking at ELL's eye, looking through L's eyes,
Speaker 2: I think what she's I mean, the thing that's amazing
Speaker 2: is she has the most power. At least they're setting
Speaker 2: it up to where she's the most powerful magical character
Speaker 2: in the book, yes.
Speaker 3: And essentially refut u to use it.
Speaker 2: And then you've got the second most powerful character who's
Speaker 2: only using it for good and still tamped down by
Speaker 2: the powerful people because he wouldn't be able to stop
Speaker 2: using his power. It's a weird combination of what the
Speaker 2: power actually signifies, because it signifies both good and evil,
Speaker 2: and like anything else, it's how you use it. So
Speaker 2: a hammer is neither good or evil. If you use
Speaker 2: it to build a house, it's good. If you use
Speaker 2: it to kill somebody, it's bad. So that's I think
Speaker 2: what they're kind of coming at in this book.
Speaker 3: It's all how you use it.
Speaker 2: But I can tell you it gets way more into
Speaker 2: the enclaves, way more into the power structure, especially in
Speaker 2: the third book. And all of this is really well addressed,
Speaker 2: especially in the third book, this entire idea of power
Speaker 2: and safety, because there's safety and power and all the
Speaker 2: things that especially the Chloe who's part of the New
Speaker 2: York Enclave, who does come and apologize to her, who says, like,
Speaker 2: I didn't understand most of the stuff going on because
Speaker 2: she's raised isolated. You're there is there is an isolation
Speaker 2: to power and money, where you are in a bubble
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting, is that
Speaker 1: this book is kind of revolutionary, like in that everybody
Speaker 1: suffering from the system. Yes, so even the rich kids
Speaker 1: are the privileged kids like Oryan are miserable, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty powerful. And the way that this
Speaker 1: book at least ends, they're they're banding together to overthrow
Speaker 1: the entire system, even the outside and outsider like l
Speaker 1: begins this book just wanting to be in it in
Speaker 1: some way or maybe to destroy it from within. And
Speaker 1: then by the end, they're all kind of saying that, right,
Speaker 1: they're all saying this doesn't work. We need to change
Speaker 1: the whole way the world, and that's really revolutionary. Harry
Speaker 1: Potter gets there in like book five maybe or six,
Speaker 1: where they're kind of against the school, but this book's
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 3: I thought it was really.
Speaker 1: A really kind of powerful revolutionary social message.
Speaker 2: And the second book is really about the power of
Speaker 2: working together. Not to sound trite, but that's really what
Speaker 2: you get is there's a power.
Speaker 3: In numbers, there's a safety in numbers.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love how she literally got into the
Speaker 2: percentage of the enclave kids usually eighty percent of them
Speaker 2: made it out, where as like thirty percent of the
Speaker 2: non enclave kids made it out. And it's just that's
Speaker 2: kind of what money and power does in our society.
Speaker 3: So yeah, first interesting.
Speaker 4: At first, it bothered me that the school kind of
Speaker 4: becomes its own character in the sense of like.
Speaker 5: The school has desires.
Speaker 4: The school is trying to get l to do a
Speaker 4: certain thing. And at first I was like, I don't
Speaker 4: want the school to have its own wants and desires.
Speaker 4: But when I thought about it in relation to power
Speaker 4: and the way it works with enclaves, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: we have government that sways.
Speaker 2: Oh wait till the end of parts of the second book,
Speaker 2: because it is you come to find out in this book.
Speaker 2: But it really gets into it in the second book.
Speaker 2: The school is sentient, so it's arts to try to
Speaker 2: a help or be defend itself at certain times, right,
Speaker 2: And they really.
Speaker 3: Get into this. It has to and it's all about this.
Speaker 2: The other thing is one of my favorite You know
Speaker 2: how you love time travel and you love one of
Speaker 2: my favorite tropes in all of fantasy is balanced I
Speaker 2: just because I think most of those think about.
Speaker 1: This because this to me was so interesting, Like the
Speaker 1: magic system, right, and how it introduces limitation and balance,
Speaker 1: How did that compare in this book to like the
Speaker 1: way it's because you know all these magic systems, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how would you compare this magic system and it's specifically
Speaker 1: it's use of balance and limitation, how does that compare
Speaker 1: to other fantasy books you've read?
Speaker 3: You know, it depends.
Speaker 2: All great fantasy has balance, and I mean even down
Speaker 2: to comic books. You know, Superman can't be all powerful.
Speaker 2: He also there has to be kryptonite, there has to
Speaker 2: be magic, there has to be things that can hurt him,
Speaker 2: or it's a useless character. So great magical systems in
Speaker 2: fantasy novels are hey, I can put out all this power,
Speaker 2: but then I'm useless for three months. You need that
Speaker 2: kind of balance, So you know, it depends. Again, I
Speaker 2: keep going back to Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson is great
Speaker 2: with balance. Brandon Sanderson is great with I can do this,
Speaker 2: but then this happens.
Speaker 3: It struck me as so important read this book huge
Speaker 3: because I loved how how she was able to make
Speaker 3: it not just like an energy drains also kind of
Speaker 3: a money drain thing like the kids had mana that
Speaker 3: that was given by their parents.
Speaker 1: She had to exercise. Ye, she could do push ups
Speaker 1: and sit ups to create her own mind, which.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, it's also physical.
Speaker 1: It's like with hard work, we can pull ourselves up
Speaker 1: by the bootstraps.
Speaker 3: But that's also not true.
Speaker 1: Like I just thought that this, this specific magic system
Speaker 1: was really clever in that way. And it made me
Speaker 1: think like, oh, right, because I you know, I teach
Speaker 1: world building and in screenwriting, and like I feel like,
Speaker 1: now I'm really going to just focus on what is
Speaker 1: not possible, like focus on the limitations of your world building.
Speaker 3: Because that's way more important.
Speaker 1: I realized this. I was like, I don't need to
Speaker 1: know what artificers can do, Like I don't need to
Speaker 1: know the most powerful magic. I just need to know
Speaker 1: what they can't do. Yeah, that's like so that guide's
Speaker 1: character and story so much more.
Speaker 3: And it's also it's one of those little things.
Speaker 2: It's it sounds like a ridiculous comparison, but within this
Speaker 2: magical system, the idea of you build up your mon
Speaker 2: and you build up your mon and you build up
Speaker 2: your mona and then something attacks. It's the equivalent of
Speaker 2: your saving money you're saving money. I'm finally getting it
Speaker 2: and my car breaks exactly now half of my money's gone.
Speaker 3: And it's the same with this. Or it's like I'm
Speaker 3: building up.
Speaker 4: And because only have a certain amount of time because
Speaker 4: you have graduation on the environment, Yeah you might, you're
Speaker 4: gonna need it all for them, So you have like
Speaker 4: only a certain number of days left to earn more money.
Speaker 2: And you might find out in the future books that
Speaker 2: the school is sending some of these things at you
Speaker 2: to exhaust your mind.
Speaker 5: And I know.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying there.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like the school wants something because it's
Speaker 2: also about balance.
Speaker 3: You're you're saving all these kids.
Speaker 2: That's great, but that's now making all the Malfikaria really angry.
Speaker 2: And so now actually more of the seniors are going
Speaker 2: to die, and that's not fair.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's this whole it's it works on a
Speaker 3: bunch of different levels, it really does.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move into show your work, where we
Speaker 1: talk about the writing itself, the style and the characters
Speaker 1: and the structure. So compared to more traditional fantasy novels,
Speaker 1: how does her first person stream of thought narration shift
Speaker 1: the genres, feel or the stakes.
Speaker 5: Will you're the expert here.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm this. Here's how I put it.
Speaker 2: I am sparingly a big fan of first person storytelling.
Speaker 2: I don't want every story to be told like this,
Speaker 2: but occasionally it is. It's very refreshing to get it
Speaker 2: in this kind of voice, and I think in this
Speaker 2: situation specifically, it worked perfectly because I also didn't especially
Speaker 2: the beginning, I didn't like the person who was telling
Speaker 2: me the story, which added to me liking the story.
Speaker 2: If it's instantly like God, I love this guy, tell
Speaker 2: me more, that's fine. But if it's like, oh God,
Speaker 2: I don't like you, why are you complaining again, I'm
Speaker 2: still flipping through the pages going like ooh, what comes
Speaker 2: dock so?
Speaker 3: And then?
Speaker 2: And I love her pros. I think I think she's
Speaker 2: a phenomenal writer. I really do, and you really see
Speaker 2: it more in the I think it's to Mary, and
Speaker 2: I don't know how to say it to Mary.
Speaker 3: Book series. She can just write's yeah.
Speaker 4: She's a really wonderful writer. I will say, like I said,
Speaker 4: I have to. I was reading it before bed, which
Speaker 4: means I've already taken a melotone and I've also taken
Speaker 4: a unism, and some of the sentences are you know, paragraphs,
Speaker 4: and in there are vocabulary words that you're like, okay,
Speaker 4: and I still don't really even know what this is.
Speaker 4: So there were times that I would find myself halfway
Speaker 4: down a page and I'd go, well, I stopped paying
Speaker 4: attention to what I was reading. My brain started thinking
Speaker 4: about something totally different. Now I have to go back
Speaker 4: and reread it and like try to focus. So it's
Speaker 4: not a book that you unlike Blob that was so
Speaker 4: beach read by the pool h So yeah, someone could
Speaker 4: walk up have a conversation with you, could get distracted
Speaker 4: and go right back and know exactly what was happening.
Speaker 4: I felt like I had to. I had to pay
Speaker 4: attention because I was also worried this word that maybe
Speaker 4: I don't understand. Now it's not going to be the
Speaker 4: last time I see it. This is also going to
Speaker 4: come back again. I need to pay attention to who
Speaker 4: these people are and what their relationships to their enclaves.
Speaker 4: Who are they are they outcasts? What is her relationship
Speaker 4: with them? I felt like everything was important, which is great.
Speaker 1: It's intense, voice exhaust it's exhaust Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: It's exactly what you said.
Speaker 2: It's a language fantasy, and every book has its own dialect.
Speaker 2: Once you become fluent, you start to be able to
Speaker 2: read it the way you would a beach beach.
Speaker 5: I's already noticed with book two. I can read it
Speaker 5: the same I can read.
Speaker 3: It's just all of a.
Speaker 2: Sudden, the words there, and you get what's going on,
Speaker 2: You get the balance. And now you're like, Okay, I'm in.
Speaker 3: What about the secondary characters?
Speaker 1: Because we've talked about how well developed she is, and
Speaker 1: we're obviously in her head, but do you may.
Speaker 3: Better developed in books two and three? This is the
Speaker 3: Let's stick with book one.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, but in book one, it's not
Speaker 2: about them, it's about her fire. I think we're finding
Speaker 2: them as she's finding them, and she hasn't found them
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 4: I feel like Chloe Adaya and you and Lou are
Speaker 4: all really well developed. I love her two best friends.
Speaker 4: I feel like I understand them. I think they're they're quirky.
Speaker 4: I mean, Lou being the one who has was was
Speaker 4: a maleficer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's us.
Speaker 4: She's using Malia and then has turned. And you also
Speaker 4: get the sense that her family's not gonna like that. Yes, well,
Speaker 4: Elle turned her by exactly. I didn't even know which
Speaker 4: I thought was another qul.
Speaker 3: I thought that was cool too. It's like she I.
Speaker 2: Inadvertently got you off of drugs. I didn't even know
Speaker 2: that's what I was doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I actually I love them and I love
Speaker 5: what their are. Their little alliance.
Speaker 1: Teach developments too, like the in your confrontations with her,
Speaker 1: like when they kind of tell her off, you get
Speaker 1: to hear like they have very nuanced perspectives and they
Speaker 1: do change Elle's point of view sometimes.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was.
Speaker 4: Really the same way Elle challenge is o'rian with the oh,
Speaker 4: I am not going to kiss your butt they do
Speaker 4: to her, especially at the end of the book spoiler alert,
Speaker 4: when you know Elle doesn't want anyone to know who
Speaker 4: her mother is. She hasn't told anyone. Oriyan knows right who.
Speaker 4: Ryan figures it out. Yeah, well no, he's I think,
Speaker 4: says like a Gwen Higgins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's something he finds out from her from her
Speaker 5: last name. Somehow he knows.
Speaker 4: But then at the end of the book when it's
Speaker 4: announced kind of and she has to like raise her hand, Yes,
Speaker 4: that's my mom.
Speaker 5: And her two friends are like, excuse me, when were
Speaker 5: you planning? I'm sharing that with us. I love that.
Speaker 4: I like that she is in the same situation, kind
Speaker 4: of a power position, the way Orian is with her
Speaker 4: she is with her friends.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just gonna read off some some monster names
Speaker 1: that I wrote down. Okay, that's soul leadersmix, Cheena's Siren spiders,
Speaker 1: night flyers, mow mouths, shrikes. Oh what did we think
Speaker 1: of the crazy amount of monsters the names?
Speaker 3: Could you visualize them? Do you know they all are?
Speaker 3: Can you describe them? Will?
Speaker 1: You've already read a bunch so you probably can't.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and yes you can't. So you could right
Speaker 3: now tell me what a night flyer is versus a strike.
Speaker 2: Well, I would think from the way she described it,
Speaker 2: I would think a night flyers essentially like imagine a giant,
Speaker 2: messed up, crazy flying squirrel that takes up its wingspan.
Speaker 3: Is one hundred feet wide. O. Okay, wow, and just rabbit.
Speaker 3: So you really are keeping track of them? I mean
Speaker 3: I know them enough in my head to work I
Speaker 3: can picture them.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: But again, that's kind of what I like about.
Speaker 2: Also, some not getting into too much detail about some
Speaker 2: of the things, because then I get to create what
Speaker 2: I want in my head. Give me the give me
Speaker 2: the basics, and then I'll fill it in from there.
Speaker 4: I only could picture a mom Mouth, and it was
Speaker 4: a just a giant version of Slimer from those Stars.
Speaker 3: Oh gotcha.
Speaker 4: It was just a giant filled though with stuffed like
Speaker 4: multi giant Slimer, filled with stuff like jello and just
Speaker 4: with tentacle.
Speaker 1: For me, the mom Mouth was pretty much the only
Speaker 1: monster ira my head around could envision, and that was
Speaker 1: given the space I felt that the monsters deserve. But
Speaker 1: everything else if on the in this book. I just
Speaker 1: reached a point where I was like, bad thing, bad thing, crawley, creepy,
Speaker 1: bad thing, and I knew they were gross.
Speaker 3: Came from a ceiling and it's like we got no man.
Speaker 2: It was really like a tin cheetah and a hyena
Speaker 2: that are crossed and super aggressive.
Speaker 1: The sheer overwhelming amount of different monsters that kind of
Speaker 1: coming go. It's like, oh, then this flew in and
Speaker 1: Ryan took care of it. I just yeah, I just
Speaker 1: checked out. My brain checked out. It was like I
Speaker 1: don't want to do the work. I know what this
Speaker 1: point of this encounter is for them to win or not,
Speaker 1: you know the point of this encounters to so I
Speaker 1: just kind of was rushing through them to get to
Speaker 1: the point, you know what I mean, Like it was
Speaker 1: getting hard. I will say the description of the magic
Speaker 1: itself when they're building a mirror or bending something that
Speaker 1: was very c details and like kind of fun to visualize.
Speaker 1: But the monsters all just became squiggly, like fill in
Speaker 1: this blank in my mind because there's too many of them.
Speaker 1: I think it was like there's so much variety, it
Speaker 1: was it was a little overwhelming.
Speaker 3: All right, pop quiz? Okay?
Speaker 1: After reading about how stressful life is that scolomance. God,
Speaker 1: I'm never going to say it right, How would characters
Speaker 1: from the Boy Meets World universe fair if they had
Speaker 1: to enroll?
Speaker 3: Would they survive? What would their skills be? Maybe? What
Speaker 3: kind of sorcerer would they be? Let's do Corey Sean, Eric, Topanga, Minkus,
Speaker 3: and Nobody's angels. Well, at least she hit all the
Speaker 3: most important characters. I think. Does it have to be
Speaker 3: in any order? No, you can just pick one that
Speaker 3: you want to talk about.
Speaker 2: The Panga would still be valedictorian in the school. I
Speaker 2: think she would, and I think she.
Speaker 3: Would be I'm gonna say I don't think she'd be
Speaker 3: strictly mana. Oh a chance she might be able to
Speaker 3: dabble in the malley a little bit.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: Eric would be dead by the time he stepped into
Speaker 3: the freshman year. What you guys do it dead?
Speaker 2: Sean is glad real, he is.
Speaker 1: He's raised with like Matt, no father or an absent
Speaker 1: to your parent. Yeah, and he is a poor kid
Speaker 1: from the wrong side of the track.
Speaker 5: And Corey would accidentally be O'Ryan lake. He would, he
Speaker 5: would ask, he would totally not intending.
Speaker 4: To, but somehow he'd be like, I just killed that thing. Yes,
Speaker 4: And you'd be bailing Sean out of all yep, right.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely correct. That would be a great dynamic their friendship.
Speaker 3: Are they just friends? Are they in love? Ryan and Gladiol?
Speaker 3: And I think what about MICUs? I think Mincus would
Speaker 3: probably be dead pretty quick. He'd also died pretty quick.
Speaker 4: And he'd have great ideas and he'd get too wrapped
Speaker 4: up in his great ideas to not be paying attention
Speaker 4: to the things around him, and no one would He
Speaker 4: wouldn't be in an alliance with people who'd be looking
Speaker 4: out for him.
Speaker 2: I actually think he'd be one of the kids. That's
Speaker 2: somebody else would go take his room and push him
Speaker 2: into the voice.
Speaker 5: You might be right, Yeah, he'd be that guy. That's
Speaker 5: also very cool. The rooms having a wall.
Speaker 4: That's like whether it's on your ceiling or which wall
Speaker 4: is depending on where you are. Yeah, just you have
Speaker 4: to avoid that area because it's just into the void.
Speaker 5: Very crazy.
Speaker 3: Oh and nobody's angel I mean, come on, they played graduation.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows they actually already have their own alliance, so
Speaker 1: they have to be record Okay, all right, report card
Speaker 1: overall thoughts, takeaways, Let's start this way. Uh could this
Speaker 1: be adapted into a series or a film?
Speaker 5: It absolutely should.
Speaker 3: Be at and what tone would fit it best? Is
Speaker 3: it a an.
Speaker 1: R rated horror? Is it a sattire? Is it a
Speaker 1: Wednesday style?
Speaker 3: Would say?
Speaker 2: I think it's Harry Potter meets Wednesday with a touch
Speaker 2: of saw.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 3: That's a perfect description. We'll just take that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's run with it.
Speaker 3: Thank you. All right, So how does this end up commenting?
Speaker 1: Does it fulfill or critique the fantasy genre? I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: particularly like the notion of a hero's journey or the
Speaker 1: idea of the chosen one. Where does this book ultimately
Speaker 1: land just on the first one.
Speaker 2: Just in the first one, if you're just judging it
Speaker 2: on the first one, I'm not sure it does land fully.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's not a fully wrapped up in
Speaker 2: a bow story. You could read the first Harry Potter
Speaker 2: and put it down after book one if you want,
Speaker 2: and never read another one and be like, I read
Speaker 2: a fun Harry Potter story. You wouldn't get the full story,
Speaker 2: but you could do that this one. To get what
Speaker 2: the entire series means, you really need to read the
Speaker 2: entire series. It really makes a difference. So book one,
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's fantasy adjacent in book
Speaker 2: one is what I would say.
Speaker 1: See For me, it was interesting how much it actually
Speaker 1: became a pretty standard fantasy novel. You think, per group
Speaker 1: of kids, she's kind of the chosen one, leading to school,
Speaker 1: to a new place, she becomes the hero, she fights
Speaker 1: it all. You know, she's kind of just starts with
Speaker 1: such a different you know, she starts as like the
Speaker 1: anti chosen One, but by the end of this book,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah.
Speaker 3: Well you got the you got the guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, goes from there.
Speaker 1: That's so I was kind of like, this is secretly
Speaker 1: just another fan I can actually.
Speaker 3: I could see a slowburg slowburn. I could see that too.
Speaker 1: Any final like takeaways or read.
Speaker 3: The second one. Okay, don't stop here.
Speaker 1: Even if you didn't, both of you are completely in
Speaker 1: the bag for this this book.
Speaker 5: I will finish the series. Yes, wow, I will finish
Speaker 5: the no.
Speaker 3: I don't think. Yeah, I don't think I will.
Speaker 1: I you know I I I find it. I found
Speaker 1: it exhausting a little redundant, and it didn't take me
Speaker 1: and it didn't take me into enough of an interesting
Speaker 1: new place that I need to keep going into this schirl.
Speaker 1: All the books are written from her point of view. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's always her narration. Yeah, I think if the next
Speaker 1: book started with a different narrator, I would be like,
Speaker 1: I'm in because now I want to see this from
Speaker 1: I want to enter this world from another place. As
Speaker 1: it was, it really felt limited to me.
Speaker 3: Has that ever been done?
Speaker 2: Like a fantasy novel comes out and then the next
Speaker 2: book comes out and it's exactly the same fantasy story,
Speaker 2: but just from a point of view of a different character.
Speaker 3: You tell me, man, I don't think that. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's ever been down.
Speaker 2: I don't know would be interesting and not like another
Speaker 2: story with the same with a different character. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: tell you exactly the same story, but from the point
Speaker 2: of view of a different character.
Speaker 3: Here's a big question that I had the kind of once.
Speaker 3: I've had the question to kind of hurt the book
Speaker 3: for me. Who is she writing to? Uh, that's funny
Speaker 3: because there's the time. Doesn't she say dear readers?
Speaker 1: She does, she does, which I kind of liked, but
Speaker 1: that but once I was like, is she writing to
Speaker 1: a mundane right? Why is she explaining half of the stuff?
Speaker 1: I'm not explaining the other half? And when I when
Speaker 1: I realized that tension, I couldn't relax. I was like,
Speaker 1: I just wish if it started with like, it's a
Speaker 1: letter to her mom, right, and she's and we're in
Speaker 1: the vocabulary, and I'm going to do all this work
Speaker 1: because of the choice of point of view.
Speaker 3: But instead of the point of view kept shifting from me.
Speaker 3: I was like, wait, why are you explaining what this is?
Speaker 5: But the not explain to her?
Speaker 3: Three?
Speaker 4: Do we not know who she's ever thinks, okay, because
Speaker 4: that's I like the idea of her writing to him undane.
Speaker 1: Right, here's how this world. But then she would be
Speaker 1: much clearer up front, she'd be like school. And then
Speaker 1: for me, like when she talked about Lord of the Ring,
Speaker 1: suddenly I was like, well, wait, hold on, that's the relationship.
Speaker 3: Where's the real world and what you know?
Speaker 1: Because like, are you not going to acknowledg Harry Potter?
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna because I think if she had Acknowledgeary
Speaker 1: Potter would have deflated the whole book because then you're like,
Speaker 1: now they know that they're in the real world, the
Speaker 1: real version of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: So that was like a problem for me too. I
Speaker 1: was like, let's pick what the point of view is
Speaker 1: and how this information shared.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you ever find out who she's
Speaker 2: writing to you, I always assumed it was something along
Speaker 2: the lines of a diary, yeah, because she's has had
Speaker 2: no writ Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then she's explaining half stuff and saying, dear reader
Speaker 3: at one point is essentially telling herself how the school was.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorite lines. She said, dear,
Speaker 1: dear reader, I ran or whe I was great, all right.
Speaker 1: Phoenies and Turners one through five. Turner's being fun and readability,
Speaker 1: Phoenis being life lessons you go first.
Speaker 4: I think Turner's fun readability it depends if you're a big, big,
Speaker 4: big fantasy person.
Speaker 5: It's probably very readable for you.
Speaker 4: For someone like me who doesn't read a lot of fantasy,
Speaker 4: I can't really say it's a fun book.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 4: I have to focus, I have to pay attention. I
Speaker 4: have to reread a couple of things here and there.
Speaker 4: I would give it one or two Turners WHOA I
Speaker 4: I do not find I did, I do not find.
Speaker 4: I do not find it fun or I don't. I
Speaker 4: would not describe it as, oh, it's so fun, oh
Speaker 4: my god. I just would not Phoene's. I'd give it
Speaker 4: five out of five. I love the I love the
Speaker 4: social commentary about it. I love the relationship stuff. I
Speaker 4: love the parallels to real high school. I think it
Speaker 4: is relatable. I think there's a lot of stuff in
Speaker 4: here that sparks good conversation. I think it's great for teens,
Speaker 4: but yeah, it's not. I don't think it's fun and
Speaker 4: cool wow will I again?
Speaker 3: I can only look at it to somebody.
Speaker 2: He reads fantasy all the time, So I would to me,
Speaker 2: I would give it a four.
Speaker 3: Turners, okay, four, and I would give it five five Phoenies.
Speaker 3: I would. I really liked it.
Speaker 2: Actually, No, I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna say double four's.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say double four's four turners, four phoenies.
Speaker 3: That's what I would say.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm pretty much the exact opposite of Danielle.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it four turners because I really did.
Speaker 1: I think that the writing is and I think the
Speaker 1: plot is propulsive enough Phoenies.
Speaker 3: Man, this is a two max for me.
Speaker 1: I don't I think.
Speaker 3: I think he's in Jackson Hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think it's it's introducing a lot
Speaker 1: of really great ideas, like like you were saying, the
Speaker 1: social I do love, and I think the magical system
Speaker 1: has so much potential. I really was disappointed by the
Speaker 1: third act with the final the climax, because suddenly we're
Speaker 1: in a battle with all new characters. We get like
Speaker 1: ten new characters that she's suddenly aligned with, and we
Speaker 1: leave all the characters in relationships, and I honestly can't
Speaker 1: tell you what happens in the big battle.
Speaker 3: Do you guys know what happened?
Speaker 1: Now, it just becomes that's a big battle of Okay,
Speaker 1: you did a thing and then we and I just
Speaker 1: kind of like the mam mouth description that moment where
Speaker 1: she beats that was for me wonderful, and the book
Speaker 1: that was there was this problem with the book for
Speaker 1: me between scene and monologue. You know, it's like the
Speaker 1: monologue is super fun and pulling me through, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly we'd be in a scene and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're in like a day would go buy in a paragraph? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I had a hard time on the page.
Speaker 1: I kind of wish it had broken up the paragraphs
Speaker 1: a little bit more and been like then I went
Speaker 1: to class and take a break and then describe that
Speaker 1: scene a little bit more.
Speaker 3: And so she's not an uber descriptive writer. She's just
Speaker 3: allowing you to do it in your mind a little bit.
Speaker 2: She's the equivalent of some It's funny because I sometimes
Speaker 2: like it as a writer but hate it as a
Speaker 2: dungeon master who says, okay, you walk into a village,
Speaker 2: describe the village. For me, It's like, well, no, I
Speaker 2: don't want to describe the village.
Speaker 3: I want you to describe the village. So some people
Speaker 3: like that in a DM, some people don't. In this book.
Speaker 2: It worked for me because, you know, again, at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, there are so many monsters that
Speaker 2: I got to kind of create them in my mind.
Speaker 2: What it okay, this is going to look like this one.
Speaker 2: This one's gonna look like that one. This is what
Speaker 2: a siren spider.
Speaker 3: Is gonna look like.
Speaker 2: I would say, you're already there. Give the second one
Speaker 2: a try. Read the first two chapters. If you don't
Speaker 2: like it, bounce, but read the first two chapters.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just not the reason I give it
Speaker 1: low Foenie. Is this because I'm not sure if at
Speaker 1: the end of this I'm I really I feel like
Speaker 1: I wrestled with some of these ideas about class and privilege,
Speaker 1: but like I said, it ultimately kind of fulfilled the
Speaker 1: basic fantasy story.
Speaker 3: She is kind of chosen. She you know, she does
Speaker 3: pull herself up by her bootstraps.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure if I'm not sure if it
Speaker 1: landed somewhere that I'm gonna like apply to my own life,
Speaker 1: or like I would say to like my son, this
Speaker 1: will help you get understand high school or unless.
Speaker 2: He runs into a mom mouth, it's going to know
Speaker 2: exactly right. Yeah, you're gonna let him go in unprepared.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you for joining us for this
Speaker 1: episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at pod meets World Show.
Speaker 5: You can send us your emails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want you to do this Pod mets World.
Speaker 5: Show at gmail dot com. And we've got merch.
Speaker 3: Merch of Carya look it up people.
Speaker 5: I have chosen our next book.
Speaker 4: I think you guys will all know why I've I've
Speaker 4: chosen it.
Speaker 5: It's called Death Takes Me.
Speaker 3: God. It is a panphlet and then you go to.
Speaker 4: Sleep by Christina Rivera Garza. Death Takes Me by Christina
Speaker 4: Rivera Garza.
Speaker 3: Read this book?
Speaker 5: I have not.
Speaker 3: You're thinking with writer.
Speaker 4: And doing a book that is something I have not
Speaker 4: read but seems interesting to me, and I think, uh.
Speaker 3: Is it fiction or non fiction? It is fiction? Okay?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 3: All right, all excited? It sounds happy.
Speaker 5: All right, We'll see you all next time.
Speaker 3: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 1: Podmeads World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Speaker 1: Wilfordell and Rider Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman,
Speaker 1: Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Speaker 1: TaRaSu Bosch producer, Maddie Moore engineer and Boy Meets World
Speaker 1: Supervan Easton Out. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
Speaker 1: of Typhoon.
Speaker 3: Follow us on Instagram at Podmets World Show, or email
Speaker 3: us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com