May 23, 2025 • 52 mins
The bell has rung! It’s time for another meeting of the Pod Meets World Book Club!
This time it was Will’s pick, and he chose “A Deadly Education” by Naomi Novik, a fantasy novel about a sorceress at a school of magic…and it doesn’t involve any Quidditch.
Spells and homework collide in this first story of “The Scholomance Trilogy,” but did our hosts get sucked into the story? Or were they too bogged down in the world building?
It’s time to serve up a score of how many Turners, and how many Feenys - and find out if Danielle or Rider will continue reading the series?
Pencils down! It’s time to hear the verdict, and find out your next required reading, on the newest installment of the Pod Meets World Book Club…
Follow @podmeetsworldshow on Instagram and TikTok!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Welcome back to Pod Meets World, where we usually rewatch
Boy meets World and talk about what it was like
growing up on set, growing up on screen, and growing
up period. But today we continue our new little side
quest with Pod Meets World Book Club Edition. Yeah, we're
gonna every now and then we pick a book, read it,
and come together to talk about it. No scripts, no
(00:41):
lessons from Feeni, just a conversation about what we're reading now,
how it hits us, and what it says about the
stories we tell and the people we're becoming. And this
time the book comes from none other than fantasy super
fan Wilfredell's.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Very excited, very excited, Welcome to my world people.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
His pick A.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deadly Education by Naomi Novic. It's a dark twist on
the magic school genre, set in a place called the
Scollarman schoolments I would say, yeah, yes, scholar Mance basically
a school for young sorcerers where the steaks aren't just
grades their survival. Our protagonist Elle has a powerful magic
(01:18):
and a chip on her shoulder. She's sarcastic, prickly, and
maybe faded to become something truly dangerous, but she's also
just trying to get out, alive and graduate. The book
is fast paced, biting, and full of monsters, both literal
and emotional, and it sparks all kinds of questions about power, identity,
and how we decide who we want to be. So
sharpen your wands, watch your back, and let's head into
(01:39):
the scholomance. Welcome to Podneys world. I'm right strong.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm Danielle Fischl, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
So you picked a fantasy book that's only three hundred
and thirteen pages?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It was? It? Ye? Basically was that a consideration? It was?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Okay, it was.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It was also the consideration of what kind of fantasy
book I wanted to pick, because I know writers read
some fantasy.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You have read No Fear of Fantasy.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
And so I was like, do I want to start
high fantasy? Because my original thought was going to be
pawn a Prophecy by David Ennings, which is the book
that kind of got me into fantasy when I was
eleven or twelve. So it can be for younger people,
but it's also just phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Why don't you just take a moment to describe what
high fantasy is.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
High fantasy is more of a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
There's magical systems involved, but it's very character driven. You're
gonna get a lot of elves. You're gonna get like
Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Tolkien is high fantasy. So did I want to start
with that?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
And then I remember you really liking Harry Potter, which
I've never read.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
No, but you liked the movies.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
I've never seen them.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Okay, so I remember somebody who looks like you really
liking Harry Potter.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's because whatever girl I was talking to at the
time really liked Harry Potter.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I thought there was a girl. Danielle's a girl. All
girls are the same.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
All the same.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So I figured school getting in there that kind of genre.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
I liked school.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
You liked school, You're a big fan of that.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You were also kind of a a girl in school
who wanted to kill everyone around her.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
That is that I am el Yes, essentially, I.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Thought there was a chance this was something.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's also was its it's newer, and uh Naomi Novic
is a phenomenal writer, so I thought just this was
I knew I was taking a shot. I figured I
was going to get a call from daniel to some point,
either going what the hell did you do to me?
Or oh my god, this is the best thing I've
ever read.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And I don't know where we've lived.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And you've read everything that Naomi Novic has written, not everything,
but mostly I've read She Dies.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The Uh, I'm gonna mispronounce it. I think it's called
the Temporary Series.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Which a pronunciation is going to be a big deal today.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Me too. I was literally looking up Mel exactly.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
No, you can just l's name gad Gallda Rail, Gladril, Gladriel, Gladriel, Gladril, Gladril.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It's not everything. Let's go to be Yeah, let's go
with Ell.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
But no, you're right, wrote her, It's a lot about pronunciation.
If you finished this series, read this series. I've read
this series a couple of times. I've read the series
a couple of times. She also did that. I think
it's called the Temporary Series, which is all it's It's
really cool. It's if during the Napoleonic Wars there was
also a dragon Core, so it's still but that one
(04:13):
is like seven or eight books long. They're much thicker,
so I didn't want to jump into that. But that's seriously,
what is imagine the French and the English are fighting,
but they each have dragons as well.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It was very and.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
They're literally shipped on the big boats and they're you know,
so they're having ocean battles and these giant sloops, but
then dragons are taking off from the deck. I mean,
it's really really cool. But I loved I loved that story.
So when I saw this and I'm then i read
the first one. It was so different from from anything
I've been reading fantasy wise lately. Been doing a lot
of Brandon Anderson lately, which the magical systems are just
(04:43):
off the charts weird. They're amazing, but they're weird. And
then you know stuff like you know, when you really
get into fantasy, you get things like the Wheel of
Time series, where the prologue of the final book of
the Wheel of Time series was two hundred and fifty
pages long.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, the prologue. So it's one of those things you
just fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
But if you that's book ten, So if you've been
doing this for twenty five years, which is what the series,
how long it took to write. Literally the author died
halfway through and Brandon Sanderson had to finish it. You
were I was with three other guys waiting in line
for Barnes and Noble to open the morning it came out,
because you're just like you're waiting for this thing to end.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Wow. So I wanted something that I knew I could
kind of where I settled with you. I was taking
such a shot with Danielle. So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, So we're gonna break today into five segments like
we did last time. We're going to begin with roll call.
This is where we check in with our initial reactions,
overall thoughts, then put it on the board where we
will lay out the big themes and ideas that we
found in the book, and then show your work. This
is the nuts and bolts, the writing itself, the characters dialogue,
how it all came together on the page. And after
(05:50):
that we will lighten things up with a pop quiz,
little game or fun question about the book. And finally
we will close out with report card where we each
give our big takeaways and we will hand out turn
and phenies, a rating system of one through five, where
the turners are how fun and accessible this book was,
how readable it was, and the phoenies are about the
life lessons and the overall value what you carry with
(06:11):
you as you try and do good in your own life.
All right, so let's open up our books and begin.
I'll give a brief synopsis. Deadly Education is the first
(06:32):
book in the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novic, best selling
author known for blenning fantasy with literary depth.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
She reimagines the Magic School trope with a much darker twist.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This is a school for magically gifted teens, but instead
of secret houses and friendly ghosts, it's a deadly institution
with no teachers, no exits, and a constant threat of
monsters called malificaria yeah, that prey on the students. Our protagonists,
Galadriel L. Higgins, is no Harry Potter. She's not your
typical underdog with a heart of gold. She's angry, sarcastic,
(07:04):
and deeply isolated. And she also happens to have incredibly
powerful dark magic that could maybe wipe out entire cities
if she let it loose. But she's not trying to
become a villain. Her struggle isn't just against the Scholomance
and it's horrors. It's also about resisting the role the
world seems to have a signed for her. As she
fights to Survivor junior year, she gets reluctantly entangled with
(07:27):
Orian Lake, who is kind of the Harry Potter, the
school's golden boy monster slayer, and they start to form
a connection, and she starts to form connections with other
classmates that she's kept it at arm's length. All right,
So let's get right into Danielle coming into this. Danielle,
what was your fantasy experience before and how did this
meet or upend your expectations?
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Okay, so I have heard Will talk about how he
really likes fantasy world building and he likes it to
be as detailed as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
The magical system with their own sort of like math
going into it. Yeah, and from.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
That, I would think to myself, I don't think I
like that. I think that's a little too much for me.
I want I like to follow stories of like. I
like relationship stories, stories about real character driven not so
much about the world. Of course, the world is important
and affects the characters, so you need some of it.
(08:24):
I would say the first seventy five to one hundred
pages of this book was absolute torture for me.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Every night.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
I started reading the book, and I would try to
read one chapter per night because I don't want to
stop in the middle of a chapter. The chapters are
fairly long. Sometimes sometimes they're reasonable. Ah, but they're pretty
long for me who wants to be able to read
for like thirty minutes before bed, because that's what I
that's what the amount of time I.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Can for forty two Dan Brown chapters.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
By the way, So that's so funny because I almost
thought that you were going to say the first seventy
five really hooked you because they are very character driven
compared to some fantasy that was made. My immediate impression was, oh,
this is because it's a narrator. It's first person, and
she's talking mostly about her feelings and the you know,
so I thought you were there was a possibility that
you were gonna say the world building was second, but
(09:15):
it was already too much.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Was too much. It was too much.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Also because she is so isolated and so dark and
such a she's a sarcastic, dry personality.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
She's horribly unlikable.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, I loved that.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
I was like, oh my gosh, this girl, Oh my god,
we get it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So if the book had been narrated by Orian, it
would have like just been easier in for you.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Maybe I just by the time, I was like, oh
my gosh, she just keeps saying the same thing.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Over and over again, but about new places and and
the names the stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
It's like, her name's hard to say, Malfikaria is hard
to pronounce. And then there's Mana and Malia, and I'm like,
never once do they ever even try to explain what
Mana or Malia are to You just have to figure
it out context.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
As you go.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And like I was like, is Malia somehow connected to
the Malificaria?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Like, because it's like.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
The dark magic, right, dark energy? But you can then
get from the Malificaria or no, you can't.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Get Mana, you can also, so essentially what it is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And again this is maybe it's just a helpful and
known fantasy trope for people that read a lot of fantasy,
or us who play magic the Gathering or something like that.
So all Mana is energy, apparently, you know, essentially, And
what they've done in this world or what she's done
in this world is she's actually balanced the manna, which
is what we say, I.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Know, we always say man with malia.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So there's essentially light energy and dark energy that you
can pull from and and you can The thing that
what I loved about this magical system was you could
pull little bits from each one if you wanted to.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And that's why she knew.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
It's essentially she was a cocaine addict who could never
do cocaine again. So it's one of those things where
she knew if she even tapped into the Malia, she
was going to set off a super volcano, right, So
it's like, I can't use that at all.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
So yeah, it's justice secion. Because there were times that
were reading as her did.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I'd get a text from Danielle and to be a
screenshot of the world of a word, and it would
just be, what.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The is it? What is this? What is that? I know?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, I think so much
of fantasy is kind of a vocabulary test to learning
the new vocabulary, and you kind of just have to
go with it. Yeah, so did you after you said
seventy five to one hundred pages?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So did it grow on you? Did it change at
that point?
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Did it grew on me?
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Once she started making relationships with other people, not just Oriyan,
but once she started having friendships that at the time
maybe she didn't really know whether or not they were friendships.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
But once she was engaging.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
With other people interesting and partnering up and having to
rely on other people, then I was like, I'm interested
to see where this.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So it wasn't it wasn't just the understanding the magic
more for you, it was actually just getting out of
her head a little.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Bit, getting out of her head a little bit and
into like other yeah, just getting her out of being
like I'm always going to be alone.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
That is so funny to me that that's the part
that you didn't because because that is for me, the
greatest strength of this, I mean will that when I
got when I got where this was going, where I
was like, this is Draco Malfoy's inn, and the fact
that she was like prophecied to be the ultimate villain.
I was so excited by that.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I loved him.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
But I but I agree, it's kind of claustrophobic in
her mind. And that's my biggest criticism in the book overall,
because even though you're right, I do she does engage
with people, we're still very locked in in her head
and in the school.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
But I was gonna say, this isn't that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Is there something about the writing where you feel the
claustrophobia of the students that are stuck in the schools,
Like you can't get out of these tiny rooms they're in,
and every around, every corner you might die, and every
little thing you might pick up, or I have to
get a hammer, well, the hammer could kill you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
It's like that stuff I loved so much about.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
And it was hard.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
We talked about it before we started this podcast that
there is a map of the school writer, and I
have the paperback and the map is at the very
back of the books, and I never went there until
the end of the story. And then I was like, see,
I would have liked to have started with this so
I could have had something in my mind. Because the
(13:31):
way the school is described, it is without a visual
nearly impossible to understand what they're trying to describe.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
The way the rooms rotate and.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Get are it's a giant screw and they keep going
down levels as they get as they were and so
the senior year is you're basically all the boy thrust
into a room to kill each other, to.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Each other.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Escape the school Malifa car they can turn on each
other because they can get magic from each other.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
They get mana or oralia by killing one another. Whereas
to go to what Danielle is saying.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Whereas I have the hardcover and when you open it up,
the first on a page, it's actually part of the
book is the entire map of the school.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, my best.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Advice for somebody who's going to pick this up after
we talk about it is if you have the paperback
immediately before you even begin, take a look at the drawings.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
They're really well done.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
It adds a lot if you have that before you
jump into it. I did find I think my number
one thing that I thought was the most interesting was
the description of graduation day. Hearing about how graduation day
works and that and and also understanding that the malificaria
that are trying to get you on graduation day, it's
basically like the gates open and all these monsters have
(14:52):
access to eating you, and you through the time that
you're in school have to develop spells and things that
could possibly ward them off or fill the malificaria before
they kill you. But you can also trade make alliances
with people to help you get through it.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
That was all there.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And then also that the molificicaria have to eat throughout
the years.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, so they can sneak in and grab you when
you're there.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And yeah, it was just, but it's also isn't it?
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Isn't it kind of a perfect examples of high schoolnology
of high school everything's.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Everything's going to kill you. You don't you're going to
be friends with these people. These are the rich, popular kids.
These aren't there was something so high school. But then
about taking it to death that was just.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I mean I loved it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I absolutely loved it, all right, So for both of you,
what changed for you from beginning to end?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
With you?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Daniel hated it when it started.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
No, it actually ended and Jensen was next to me
in bed and it ended and I literally went, oh no,
and he went what?
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And I said, now I have to read book two
and three?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Because literally through the entire book, even though I at
about a seventy page seventy five or one hundred, turned
and actually got into it and was then excited to.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Read it every night, whereas before it had been like
what did I every night getting into bed?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
And then it turned and I was like, oh, I'm
really excited, and those chapters didn't feel long anymore. They
felt like they were going very fast, and I would
a chapter would end, and I think, darn it.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I wish I didn't have to go to sleep because
I'd want to keep reading.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
But I had still been thinking, at least I only
have to read this one. At least it's just one book.
It's three hundred and thirteen pages, and once I get
done with this, I'll never have to look.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
At it again.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Oh no, oh no, I've already started book too. I
have by media. I was my birthday had just passed.
My brother asked for a birthday idea, and I sent
the two links for book two and three to my
brother and I said, here you go, this is what
I want. And I'm already, you know, fifty pages into
book two.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay, so will you obviously read everything I read? So
when you first read it, where you just hooked immediately
because you already set the tone, and then the character
just threw you in and then it totally delivered for you.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
It did well.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, So the idea of
taking that dark and going, let's just what happens if
it's the same thing, but we're all killing each other,
and everything just wants you dead, including the school.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
To me, I was hooked right away. I also loved
how much I hated her at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It was like, you're a terrible person, and then when
you really start getting into it, it's like you're not
you just you come to realize that She literally could
not fathom someone liking her, and that's the thing that
colored her entire existence, is her whole life.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
She'd been told. She's with a mom who's again brilliant.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
An absolute saint saint of a mother who is like
the earth everyone.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
So let's describe. So she grew up on a commune
her mom. So wizards grow. Our sorcerers grow up in
enclaves for the most part, which are groups of adults
who raised their kids together trained them to be sorcerers.
But she was raised by this very legendary healer hippie
type who has taken her out of all enclaves and
raised her alone, in part because she was prophecied to
(18:16):
be this dark So it was her mom is both
a protector and kind of an enabler. And yeah, and
so she grew up in a very different environment than
everybody else.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, I thought that was a really cool beat.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I even have wanted to see more of that personally, because.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You may in Okay books, you may in the future,
but it is it just she was a very I
mean again like a Harry Potter, who's the good version
of this. She's a very very complex character, and it
all came down to the fact that she just couldn't
fathom that anyone would like her.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Ever, and she's because she's never had a friend, no.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Never had a friend, to the point where she when
she realized she had a friend, she cried, yeah, I
have a friend. So I mean that to me, I
thought it was such an interesting way to go about it.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, no, it did. It hooked me right away.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
This was one of you know, I read fantasy all
the time. It's basically all that I read, and so
when I then stumble on one that's so different than
anything else I've read and also combines just beautiful pros
because she can obviously blow doors. I mean, she can
write really really well. So when I find that combination,
then I just kind of try to deep dive the
author because it's like, oh my god, that's how I
was with Robin Hobb who was just like wow, and.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
This was the one that did to me.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I found it on it it was I walked into
it might have been in Sebastopool.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
No, it was before Sebastool, but I.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Just walked into a bookstore and it was just on
display and I was like okay, and I grabbed it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And then by the third chapter, I was like, oh
my god, I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
You know already order the next one, and the third
one hadn't come out yet, so I know. Then you
do the fantasy thing where you're sitting there and you're
waiting for the next book to come out, and finally
it came, like the day it was Tolive a day
came out. I was at the bookstore. I went and
got it, and I was, yeah, I was that guy
with this.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Series about you writer.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I I loved the verse seventy five hundred pages. I
love the approach it didn't I mean ultimately like it
lands with more plot hooks right to keep you going,
of course, And when I got there, I was like, okay,
but no, I found it a little exhausting.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I found it.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I found it sort of maintaining at a certain point,
there's a lot of the same scene. Yes, yeah, over that,
and the dynamic as complicated as her interior monologue is,
and as complicated as she is about analyzing her relationships
with everybody and herself, and she actually doesn't have much
desire or wants on her own. And I really wanted
(20:42):
to know how does she like Orion?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Does she you know?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And she knows well, but I but you know, by
the end, don't any spoiler.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I guess we're just gonna have spoilers.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I mean the fact that he kisses her at the end,
and that that becomes a sort of you know, I
was I wanted.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To know, how do you do you want this? You
like somebody?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Or are these people really your friends? I just wanted
a little more introspection on that. I felt like the
author and maybe it develops throughout, you know, but I
felt like the author got trapped by the brilliance of
her first idea, which was and the brilliance of that voice,
and then sort of was treading water for a long time, and.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
And yeah, we can get into the end of the book.
But yeah, so I was a little exhausted, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
I was kind of like I don't think I would
have finished this book if it wasn't really interesting, because
I kind.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Of I was like, you pick up a book evenstand that.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
All right, well let's get let's go move into put
it on the board where we talk about the big
themes or ideas. So how does the dynamic between l
and Ryan complicate traditional hero villain or damsel and savior tropes?
Speaker 4 (21:43):
How does it complicate him? I mean, she is not
she is not appreciative right at all.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It opens with her having already been saved by him, great.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Opening line that it was a wonderful opening line to
a book where he's like, which is just by the
second time he saved me, I knew I had.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
To kill it.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
I knew I had to kill it exactly.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
And you know the thing I'll say about him, he's
a pretty boring character.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
In this first book.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
You yeah, because I don't know anything about him either.
And I do know because I'm fifty pages into the
second book. They start immediately with delving into them and
does she like him?
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And who is he really? And so I know we're
going to get more of it.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
But in this first book, other than the idea that
in some ways we kind of are supposed to feel sorry.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
For him toward the end, he can't.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
He doesn't get to use really, I mean, he can
use his own mana, but he doesn't have access to
it the same way the other enclave kids do. And
yet he's contributing more mana to this shared pool than
any other character, and they the entire school has come
to zent him for saving so many lives because the
(23:03):
Malifikaria are not able to eat any students because he's
stopped so many killings, and so he is resented for
being a hero. And he is kind of personality lists.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
He's sort of like the popular kid, right, I mean,
he's like the popular.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Is a popular kid with hunched over shoulders who kind
of just like the popular.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
He doesn't want to be popular.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
He doesn't want everyone else has made him popular. He
doesn't want to be popular, which is why we think
at the beginning he likes l because I was like,
I don't like you. I'm not going to kiss here. Yeah,
I want nothing to do with you. And he's like, oh, ok,
you real person.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Let me let me be near you.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Which I love and I will say as you get
into books two and three and find out more about
Orian not a.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Basic character really yeah, and not a basic character.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Okay, well, in this first book he leaves. He leaves
a lot to be desired.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's the thing about fantasy is it's almost you almost
have to look at when you know it's multiple fantasy,
when you know it's going to be a series, you
almost have to look at each book as its own chapter.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
That makes sense, and each book focusing a more on
one character, kind of like the seasons of Boy Meets
World focused on individual characters more as you build out
the world.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
So that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
And you also don't know who you're gonna like and
who you're not until the book goes on more. I mean,
by the end of Harry Potter you still like Harry,
but it's like you might be more of a Ron
fan at this point, or you might be like Neville
was my favorite care you just never know, as they're
kind of like Nevill was anybody not true?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Sir?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
All right, well, here's here's a big question. What do
you what do you think that this book is saying
about privilege?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
I do love that topic in this book.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't want hug this whole thing,
but like obviously for both Ell and O'Ryan, they both
they have their own totally different experiences with privilege. Oriyan
is in the most privileged enclave that exist New York,
and Elle is not part of an enclave, has no desire.
(25:05):
She thought, maybe early on in her life, that her
only goal was I'm going to go to the skull Amantsid,
I'm going to join an enclave. And her mom didn't
want her to, and but she that was what she
thought she wanted, and then she realized once she got there,
absolutely not. I see how unfair it is. I see
how there's no reason this group of people because of
their access to mana, which in this book kind of
(25:26):
represents money.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Right power and power, literal power.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's sort of class. Whatever privilege you have or whatever
mana you have access to is some form.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Of power class yea. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And they even talk about the kids that they call
it on the maintenance track, where it's like they'll fix
everything in the school, which is way more dangerous, very
danger you could die, but they know they'll get a
place in an enclave. But even when they get into
the enclave, they're going to be there essentially as.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Janitor's right exactly, this is what you're going to get.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, you'll be protected and you'll have access to the power,
but you're still just fixing all for the rich people.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
So it's really it.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
And again, just going back to something you said a
while before, and I know this is a meta kind
of take on it, but where you said it kind
of got almost monotonous. It's repeating itself. It's the same
scene over and over again.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
To me. That's again that's high school. It's like every
it is the same.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It just happens to be that there's monsters in this one,
but high schools like that everything's the most important thing
in your life. Every day is kind of exactly the same.
There's power and clicks all over the place. It just
kind of seemed like that going through all.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
So then what does this book say about systems in general,
or like social systems or social structures. Does it land
somewhere for you?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I think it depends on which characters eyes you're looking through.
If you're looking at ELL's eye, looking through L's eyes,
I think what she's I mean, the thing that's amazing
is she has the most power. At least they're setting
it up to where she's the most powerful magical character
in the book, yes.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And essentially refut u to use it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And then you've got the second most powerful character who's
only using it for good and still tamped down by
the powerful people because he wouldn't be able to stop
using his power. It's a weird combination of what the
power actually signifies, because it signifies both good and evil,
and like anything else, it's how you use it. So
(27:24):
a hammer is neither good or evil. If you use
it to build a house, it's good. If you use
it to kill somebody, it's bad. So that's I think
what they're kind of coming at in this book.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It's all how you use it.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But I can tell you it gets way more into
the enclaves, way more into the power structure, especially in
the third book. And all of this is really well addressed,
especially in the third book, this entire idea of power
and safety, because there's safety and power and all the
things that especially the Chloe who's part of the New
York Enclave, who does come and apologize to her, who says, like,
(27:55):
I didn't understand most of the stuff going on because
she's raised isolated. You're there is there is an isolation
to power and money, where you are in a bubble
of this.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting, is that
this book is kind of revolutionary, like in that everybody
suffering from the system. Yes, so even the rich kids
are the privileged kids like Oryan are miserable, and I
thought that was pretty powerful. And the way that this
book at least ends, they're they're banding together to overthrow
the entire system, even the outside and outsider like l
(28:32):
begins this book just wanting to be in it in
some way or maybe to destroy it from within. And
then by the end, they're all kind of saying that, right,
they're all saying this doesn't work. We need to change
the whole way the world, and that's really revolutionary. Harry
Potter gets there in like book five maybe or six,
where they're kind of against the school, but this book's
(28:53):
right there.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I thought it was really.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
A really kind of powerful revolutionary social message.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And the second book is really about the power of
working together. Not to sound trite, but that's really what
you get is there's a power.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
In numbers, there's a safety in numbers.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I mean, I love how she literally got into the
percentage of the enclave kids usually eighty percent of them
made it out, where as like thirty percent of the
non enclave kids made it out. And it's just that's
kind of what money and power does in our society.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
So yeah, first interesting.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
At first, it bothered me that the school kind of
becomes its own character in the sense of like.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
The school has desires.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
The school is trying to get l to do a
certain thing. And at first I was like, I don't
want the school to have its own wants and desires.
But when I thought about it in relation to power
and the way it works with enclaves, it's like, well,
we have government that sways.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Oh wait till the end of parts of the second book,
because it is you come to find out in this book.
But it really gets into it in the second book.
The school is sentient, so it's arts to try to
a help or be defend itself at certain times, right,
And they really.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Get into this. It has to and it's all about this.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
The other thing is one of my favorite You know
how you love time travel and you love one of
my favorite tropes in all of fantasy is balanced I
just because I think most of those think about.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This because this to me was so interesting, Like the
magic system, right, and how it introduces limitation and balance,
How did that compare in this book to like the
way it's because you know all these magic systems, right, Like,
how would you compare this magic system and it's specifically
it's use of balance and limitation, how does that compare
to other fantasy books you've read?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
You know, it depends.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
All great fantasy has balance, and I mean even down
to comic books. You know, Superman can't be all powerful.
He also there has to be kryptonite, there has to
be magic, there has to be things that can hurt him,
or it's a useless character. So great magical systems in
fantasy novels are hey, I can put out all this power,
but then I'm useless for three months. You need that
(30:57):
kind of balance, So you know, it depends. Again, I
keep going back to Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson is great
with balance. Brandon Sanderson is great with I can do this,
but then this happens.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
It struck me as so important read this book huge
because I loved how how she was able to make
it not just like an energy drains also kind of
a money drain thing like the kids had mana that
that was given by their parents.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
She had to exercise. Ye, she could do push ups
and sit ups to create her own mind, which.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I was like, oh, it's also physical.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's like with hard work, we can pull ourselves up
by the bootstraps.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
But that's also not true.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Like I just thought that this, this specific magic system
was really clever in that way. And it made me
think like, oh, right, because I you know, I teach
world building and in screenwriting, and like I feel like,
now I'm really going to just focus on what is
not possible, like focus on the limitations of your world building.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Because that's way more important.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I realized this. I was like, I don't need to
know what artificers can do, Like I don't need to
know the most powerful magic. I just need to know
what they can't do. Yeah, that's like so that guide's
character and story so much more.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
And it's also it's one of those little things.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
It's it sounds like a ridiculous comparison, but within this
magical system, the idea of you build up your mon
and you build up your mon and you build up
your mona and then something attacks. It's the equivalent of
your saving money you're saving money. I'm finally getting it
and my car breaks exactly now half of my money's gone.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
And it's the same with this. Or it's like I'm
building up.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And because only have a certain amount of time because
you have graduation on the environment, Yeah you might, you're
gonna need it all for them, So you have like
only a certain number of days left to earn more money.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And you might find out in the future books that
the school is sending some of these things at you
to exhaust your mind.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
And I know.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That's what I'm saying there.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
You know, it's like the school wants something because it's
also about balance.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
You're you're saving all these kids.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
That's great, but that's now making all the Malfikaria really angry.
And so now actually more of the seniors are going
to die, and that's not fair.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
So yeah, it's this whole it's it works on a
bunch of different levels, it really does.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
All right, let's move into show your work, where we
talk about the writing itself, the style and the characters
and the structure. So compared to more traditional fantasy novels,
how does her first person stream of thought narration shift
the genres, feel or the stakes.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Will you're the expert here.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I'm I'm this. Here's how I put it.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I am sparingly a big fan of first person storytelling.
I don't want every story to be told like this,
but occasionally it is. It's very refreshing to get it
in this kind of voice, and I think in this
situation specifically, it worked perfectly because I also didn't especially
the beginning, I didn't like the person who was telling
me the story, which added to me liking the story.
(33:54):
If it's instantly like God, I love this guy, tell
me more, that's fine. But if it's like, oh God,
I don't like you, why are you complaining again, I'm
still flipping through the pages going like ooh, what comes
dock so?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
And then?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And I love her pros. I think I think she's
a phenomenal writer. I really do, and you really see
it more in the I think it's to Mary, and
I don't know how to say it to Mary.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Book series. She can just write's yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
She's a really wonderful writer. I will say, like I said,
I have to. I was reading it before bed, which
means I've already taken a melotone and I've also taken
a unism, and some of the sentences are you know, paragraphs,
and in there are vocabulary words that you're like, okay,
and I still don't really even know what this is.
So there were times that I would find myself halfway
down a page and I'd go, well, I stopped paying
(34:42):
attention to what I was reading. My brain started thinking
about something totally different. Now I have to go back
and reread it and like try to focus. So it's
not a book that you unlike Blob that was so
beach read by the pool h So yeah, someone could
walk up have a conversation with you, could get distracted
and go right back and know exactly what was happening.
I felt like I had to. I had to pay
(35:04):
attention because I was also worried this word that maybe
I don't understand. Now it's not going to be the
last time I see it. This is also going to
come back again. I need to pay attention to who
these people are and what their relationships to their enclaves.
Who are they are they outcasts? What is her relationship
with them? I felt like everything was important, which is great.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
It's intense, voice exhaust it's exhaust Here's the thing, though,
It's exactly what you said.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It's a language fantasy, and every book has its own dialect.
Once you become fluent, you start to be able to
read it the way you would a beach beach.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
I's already noticed with book two. I can read it
the same I can read.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It's just all of a.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Sudden, the words there, and you get what's going on,
You get the balance. And now you're like, Okay, I'm in.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
What about the secondary characters?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Because we've talked about how well developed she is, and
we're obviously in her head, but do you may.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Better developed in books two and three? This is the
Let's stick with book one.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I know, I know, but in book one, it's not
about them, it's about her fire. I think we're finding
them as she's finding them, and she hasn't found them
for a while.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
I feel like Chloe Adaya and you and Lou are
all really well developed. I love her two best friends.
I feel like I understand them. I think they're they're quirky.
I mean, Lou being the one who has was was
a maleficer.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, she's us.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
She's using Malia and then has turned. And you also
get the sense that her family's not gonna like that. Yes, well,
Elle turned her by exactly. I didn't even know which
I thought was another qul.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I thought that was cool too. It's like she I.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Inadvertently got you off of drugs. I didn't even know
that's what I was doing.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Yeah, so I actually I love them and I love
what their are. Their little alliance.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Teach developments too, like the in your confrontations with her,
like when they kind of tell her off, you get
to hear like they have very nuanced perspectives and they
do change Elle's point of view sometimes.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So I thought that was.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Really the same way Elle challenge is o'rian with the oh,
I am not going to kiss your butt they do
to her, especially at the end of the book spoiler alert,
when you know Elle doesn't want anyone to know who
her mother is. She hasn't told anyone. Oriyan knows right who.
Ryan figures it out. Yeah, well no, he's I think,
says like a Gwen Higgins.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
Yeah, that's something he finds out from her from her
last name. Somehow he knows.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But then at the end of the book when it's
announced kind of and she has to like raise her hand, Yes,
that's my mom.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
And her two friends are like, excuse me, when were
you planning? I'm sharing that with us. I love that.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I like that she is in the same situation, kind
of a power position, the way Orian is with her
she is with her friends.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Okay, I'm just gonna read off some some monster names
that I wrote down. Okay, that's soul leadersmix, Cheena's Siren spiders,
night flyers, mow mouths, shrikes. Oh what did we think
of the crazy amount of monsters the names?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Could you visualize them? Do you know they all are?
Can you describe them? Will?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
You've already read a bunch so you probably can't.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yes, yes, and yes you can't. So you could right
now tell me what a night flyer is versus a strike.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, I would think from the way she described it,
I would think a night flyers essentially like imagine a giant,
messed up, crazy flying squirrel that takes up its wingspan.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Is one hundred feet wide. O. Okay, wow, and just rabbit.
So you really are keeping track of them? I mean
I know them enough in my head to work I
can picture them.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
But again, that's kind of what I like about.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Also, some not getting into too much detail about some
of the things, because then I get to create what
I want in my head. Give me the give me
the basics, and then I'll fill it in from there.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I only could picture a mom Mouth, and it was
a just a giant version of Slimer from those Stars.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Oh gotcha.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
It was just a giant filled though with stuffed like
multi giant Slimer, filled with stuff like jello and just
with tentacle.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
For me, the mom Mouth was pretty much the only
monster ira my head around could envision, and that was
given the space I felt that the monsters deserve. But
everything else if on the in this book. I just
reached a point where I was like, bad thing, bad thing, crawley, creepy,
bad thing, and I knew they were gross.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Came from a ceiling and it's like we got no man.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It was really like a tin cheetah and a hyena
that are crossed and super aggressive.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
The sheer overwhelming amount of different monsters that kind of
coming go. It's like, oh, then this flew in and
Ryan took care of it. I just yeah, I just
checked out. My brain checked out. It was like I
don't want to do the work. I know what this
point of this encounter is for them to win or not,
you know the point of this encounters to so I
(39:50):
just kind of was rushing through them to get to
the point, you know what I mean, Like it was
getting hard. I will say the description of the magic
itself when they're building a mirror or bending something that
was very c details and like kind of fun to visualize.
But the monsters all just became squiggly, like fill in
this blank in my mind because there's too many of them.
I think it was like there's so much variety, it
(40:11):
was it was a little overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
All right, pop quiz? Okay?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
After reading about how stressful life is that scolomance. God,
I'm never going to say it right, How would characters
from the Boy Meets World universe fair if they had
to enroll?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Would they survive? What would their skills be? Maybe? What
kind of sorcerer would they be? Let's do Corey Sean, Eric, Topanga, Minkus,
and Nobody's angels. Well, at least she hit all the
most important characters. I think. Does it have to be
in any order? No, you can just pick one that
(40:44):
you want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
The Panga would still be valedictorian in the school. I
think she would, and I think she.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Would be I'm gonna say I don't think she'd be
strictly mana. Oh a chance she might be able to
dabble in the malley a little bit.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Eric would be dead by the time he stepped into
the freshman year. What you guys do it dead?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Sean is glad real, he is.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's raised with like Matt, no father or an absent
to your parent. Yeah, and he is a poor kid
from the wrong side of the track.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And Corey would accidentally be O'Ryan lake. He would, he
would ask, he would totally not intending.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
To, but somehow he'd be like, I just killed that thing. Yes,
And you'd be bailing Sean out of all yep, right.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
That's absolutely correct. That would be a great dynamic their friendship.
Are they just friends? Are they in love? Ryan and Gladiol?
And I think what about MICUs? I think Mincus would
probably be dead pretty quick. He'd also died pretty quick.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
And he'd have great ideas and he'd get too wrapped
up in his great ideas to not be paying attention
to the things around him, and no one would He
wouldn't be in an alliance with people who'd be looking
out for him.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I actually think he'd be one of the kids. That's
somebody else would go take his room and push him
into the voice.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
You might be right, Yeah, he'd be that guy. That's
also very cool. The rooms having a wall.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
That's like whether it's on your ceiling or which wall
is depending on where you are. Yeah, just you have
to avoid that area because it's just into the void.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Very crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Oh and nobody's angel I mean, come on, they played graduation.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Everybody knows they actually already have their own alliance, so
they have to be record Okay, all right, report card
overall thoughts, takeaways, Let's start this way. Uh could this
be adapted into a series or a film?
Speaker 5 (42:36):
It absolutely should.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Be at and what tone would fit it best? Is
it a an.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
R rated horror? Is it a sattire? Is it a
Wednesday style?
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Would say?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
I think it's Harry Potter meets Wednesday with a touch
of saw.
Speaker 5 (42:52):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
That's a perfect description. We'll just take that.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Yeah, let's run with it.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Thank you. All right, So how does this end up commenting?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Does it fulfill or critique the fantasy genre? I'm thinking,
particularly like the notion of a hero's journey or the
idea of the chosen one. Where does this book ultimately
land just on the first one.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Just in the first one, if you're just judging it
on the first one, I'm not sure it does land fully.
It's you know, it's not a fully wrapped up in
a bow story. You could read the first Harry Potter
and put it down after book one if you want,
and never read another one and be like, I read
a fun Harry Potter story. You wouldn't get the full story,
(43:36):
but you could do that this one. To get what
the entire series means, you really need to read the
entire series. It really makes a difference. So book one,
I think it's I think it's fantasy adjacent in book
one is what I would say.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
See For me, it was interesting how much it actually
became a pretty standard fantasy novel. You think, per group
of kids, she's kind of the chosen one, leading to school,
to a new place, she becomes the hero, she fights
it all. You know, she's kind of just starts with
such a different you know, she starts as like the
anti chosen One, but by the end of this book,
(44:13):
I was like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Well you got the you got the guy.
Speaker 5 (44:15):
Yeah, goes from there.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
That's so I was kind of like, this is secretly
just another fan I can actually.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I could see a slowburg slowburn. I could see that too.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Any final like takeaways or read.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
The second one. Okay, don't stop here.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Even if you didn't, both of you are completely in
the bag for this this book.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
I will finish the series. Yes, wow, I will finish
the no.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I don't think. Yeah, I don't think I will.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I you know I I I find it. I found
it exhausting a little redundant, and it didn't take me
and it didn't take me into enough of an interesting
new place that I need to keep going into this schirl.
All the books are written from her point of view. Yes,
it's always her narration. Yeah, I think if the next
book started with a different narrator, I would be like,
I'm in because now I want to see this from
(45:01):
I want to enter this world from another place. As
it was, it really felt limited to me.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Has that ever been done?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Like a fantasy novel comes out and then the next
book comes out and it's exactly the same fantasy story,
but just from a point of view of a different character.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You tell me, man, I don't think that. I don't
think that's ever been down.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I don't know would be interesting and not like another
story with the same with a different character. I mean, like,
tell you exactly the same story, but from the point
of view of a different character.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Here's a big question that I had the kind of once.
I've had the question to kind of hurt the book
for me. Who is she writing to? Uh, that's funny
because there's the time. Doesn't she say dear readers?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
She does, she does, which I kind of liked, but
that but once I was like, is she writing to
a mundane right? Why is she explaining half of the stuff?
I'm not explaining the other half? And when I when
I realized that tension, I couldn't relax. I was like,
I just wish if it started with like, it's a
letter to her mom, right, and she's and we're in
the vocabulary, and I'm going to do all this work
because of the choice of point of view.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
But instead of the point of view kept shifting from me.
I was like, wait, why are you explaining what this is?
Speaker 5 (46:00):
But the not explain to her?
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Three?
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Do we not know who she's ever thinks, okay, because
that's I like the idea of her writing to him undane.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Right, here's how this world. But then she would be
much clearer up front, she'd be like school. And then
for me, like when she talked about Lord of the Ring,
suddenly I was like, well, wait, hold on, that's the relationship.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Where's the real world and what you know?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Because like, are you not going to acknowledg Harry Potter?
Like you're gonna because I think if she had Acknowledgeary
Potter would have deflated the whole book because then you're like,
now they know that they're in the real world, the
real version of it.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
So that was like a problem for me too. I
was like, let's pick what the point of view is
and how this information shared.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
I don't know if you ever find out who she's
writing to you, I always assumed it was something along
the lines of a diary, yeah, because she's has had
no writ Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
But then she's explaining half stuff and saying, dear reader
at one point is essentially telling herself how the school was.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
That was one of my favorite lines. She said, dear,
dear reader, I ran or whe I was great, all right.
Phoenies and Turners one through five. Turner's being fun and readability,
Phoenis being life lessons you go first.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
I think Turner's fun readability it depends if you're a big, big,
big fantasy person.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
It's probably very readable for you.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
For someone like me who doesn't read a lot of fantasy,
I can't really say it's a fun book.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
It is.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I have to focus, I have to pay attention. I
have to reread a couple of things here and there.
I would give it one or two Turners WHOA I
I do not find I did, I do not find.
I do not find it fun or I don't. I
would not describe it as, oh, it's so fun, oh
my god. I just would not Phoene's. I'd give it
five out of five. I love the I love the
(47:38):
social commentary about it. I love the relationship stuff. I
love the parallels to real high school. I think it
is relatable. I think there's a lot of stuff in
here that sparks good conversation. I think it's great for teens,
but yeah, it's not. I don't think it's fun and
cool wow will I again?
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I can only look at it to somebody.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
He reads fantasy all the time, So I would to me,
I would give it a four.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Turners, okay, four, and I would give it five five Phoenies.
I would. I really liked it.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Actually, No, I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna say double four's.
I'm gonna say double four's four turners, four phoenies.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
That's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I'm gonna I'm pretty much the exact opposite of Danielle.
I'm gonna give it four turners because I really did.
I think that the writing is and I think the
plot is propulsive enough Phoenies.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Man, this is a two max for me.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
I don't I think.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
I think he's in Jackson Hole.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, I think I think it's it's introducing a lot
of really great ideas, like like you were saying, the
social I do love, and I think the magical system
has so much potential. I really was disappointed by the
third act with the final the climax, because suddenly we're
in a battle with all new characters. We get like
ten new characters that she's suddenly aligned with, and we
(48:53):
leave all the characters in relationships, and I honestly can't
tell you what happens in the big battle.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Do you guys know what happened?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Now, it just becomes that's a big battle of Okay,
you did a thing and then we and I just
kind of like the mam mouth description that moment where
she beats that was for me wonderful, and the book
that was there was this problem with the book for
me between scene and monologue. You know, it's like the
monologue is super fun and pulling me through, and then
suddenly we'd be in a scene and I'm like, oh,
(49:19):
we're in like a day would go buy in a paragraph? Yeah,
And so I had a hard time on the page.
I kind of wish it had broken up the paragraphs
a little bit more and been like then I went
to class and take a break and then describe that
scene a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
And so she's not an uber descriptive writer. She's just
allowing you to do it in your mind a little bit.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
She's the equivalent of some It's funny because I sometimes
like it as a writer but hate it as a
dungeon master who says, okay, you walk into a village,
describe the village. For me, It's like, well, no, I
don't want to describe the village.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
I want you to describe the village. So some people
like that in a DM, some people don't. In this book.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
It worked for me because, you know, again, at the
end of the day, there are so many monsters that
I got to kind of create them in my mind.
What it okay, this is going to look like this one.
This one's gonna look like that one. This is what
a siren spider.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Is gonna look like.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
I would say, you're already there. Give the second one
a try. Read the first two chapters. If you don't
like it, bounce, but read the first two chapters.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I guess I'm just not the reason I give it
low Foenie. Is this because I'm not sure if at
the end of this I'm I really I feel like
I wrestled with some of these ideas about class and privilege,
but like I said, it ultimately kind of fulfilled the
basic fantasy story.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
She is kind of chosen. She you know, she does
pull herself up by her bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
So I'm not sure if I'm not sure if it
landed somewhere that I'm gonna like apply to my own life,
or like I would say to like my son, this
will help you get understand high school or unless.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
He runs into a mom mouth, it's going to know
exactly right. Yeah, you're gonna let him go in unprepared.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
All right, Well, thank you for joining us for this
episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow
us on Instagram at pod meets World Show.
Speaker 5 (50:55):
You can send us your emails.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, I want you to do this Pod mets World.
Speaker 5 (50:58):
Show at gmail dot com. And we've got merch.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Merch of Carya look it up people.
Speaker 5 (51:06):
I have chosen our next book.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
I think you guys will all know why I've I've
chosen it.
Speaker 5 (51:11):
It's called Death Takes Me.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
God. It is a panphlet and then you go to.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Sleep by Christina Rivera Garza. Death Takes Me by Christina
Rivera Garza.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Read this book?
Speaker 5 (51:23):
I have not.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
You're thinking with writer.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
And doing a book that is something I have not
read but seems interesting to me, and I think, uh.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Is it fiction or non fiction? It is fiction? Okay?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (51:37):
All right, all excited? It sounds happy.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
All right, We'll see you all next time.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Podmeads World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Wilfordell and Rider Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman,
Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
TaRaSu Bosch producer, Maddie Moore engineer and Boy Meets World
Supervan Easton Out. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
of Typhoon.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Follow us on Instagram at Podmets World Show, or email
us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com
Welcome back to Pod Meets World, where we usually rewatch
Boy meets World and talk about what it was like
growing up on set, growing up on screen, and growing
up period. But today we continue our new little side
quest with Pod Meets World Book Club Edition. Yeah, we're
gonna every now and then we pick a book, read it,
and come together to talk about it. No scripts, no
(00:41):
lessons from Feeni, just a conversation about what we're reading now,
how it hits us, and what it says about the
stories we tell and the people we're becoming. And this
time the book comes from none other than fantasy super
fan Wilfredell's.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Very excited, very excited, Welcome to my world people.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
His pick A.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Deadly Education by Naomi Novic. It's a dark twist on
the magic school genre, set in a place called the
Scollarman schoolments I would say, yeah, yes, scholar Mance basically
a school for young sorcerers where the steaks aren't just
grades their survival. Our protagonist Elle has a powerful magic
(01:18):
and a chip on her shoulder. She's sarcastic, prickly, and
maybe faded to become something truly dangerous, but she's also
just trying to get out, alive and graduate. The book
is fast paced, biting, and full of monsters, both literal
and emotional, and it sparks all kinds of questions about power, identity,
and how we decide who we want to be. So
sharpen your wands, watch your back, and let's head into
(01:39):
the scholomance. Welcome to Podneys world. I'm right strong.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm Danielle Fischl, and I'm Wilfredell.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
So you picked a fantasy book that's only three hundred
and thirteen pages?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
It was? It? Ye? Basically was that a consideration? It was?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Okay, it was.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
It was also the consideration of what kind of fantasy
book I wanted to pick, because I know writers read
some fantasy.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
You have read No Fear of Fantasy.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
And so I was like, do I want to start
high fantasy? Because my original thought was going to be
pawn a Prophecy by David Ennings, which is the book
that kind of got me into fantasy when I was
eleven or twelve. So it can be for younger people,
but it's also just phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Why don't you just take a moment to describe what
high fantasy is.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
High fantasy is more of a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
There's magical systems involved, but it's very character driven. You're
gonna get a lot of elves. You're gonna get like
Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Tolkien is high fantasy. So did I want to start
with that?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
And then I remember you really liking Harry Potter, which
I've never read.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
No, but you liked the movies.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
I've never seen them.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Okay, so I remember somebody who looks like you really
liking Harry Potter.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's because whatever girl I was talking to at the
time really liked Harry Potter.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
I thought there was a girl. Danielle's a girl. All
girls are the same.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
All the same.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So I figured school getting in there that kind of genre.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
I liked school.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
You liked school, You're a big fan of that.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You were also kind of a a girl in school
who wanted to kill everyone around her.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
That is that I am el Yes, essentially, I.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Thought there was a chance this was something.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's also was its it's newer, and uh Naomi Novic
is a phenomenal writer, so I thought just this was
I knew I was taking a shot. I figured I
was going to get a call from daniel to some point,
either going what the hell did you do to me?
Or oh my god, this is the best thing I've
ever read.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
And I don't know where we've lived.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
And you've read everything that Naomi Novic has written, not everything,
but mostly I've read She Dies.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The Uh, I'm gonna mispronounce it. I think it's called
the Temporary Series.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Which a pronunciation is going to be a big deal today.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Me too. I was literally looking up Mel exactly.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
No, you can just l's name gad Gallda Rail, Gladril, Gladriel, Gladriel, Gladril, Gladril.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It's not everything. Let's go to be Yeah, let's go
with Ell.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
But no, you're right, wrote her, It's a lot about pronunciation.
If you finished this series, read this series. I've read
this series a couple of times. I've read the series
a couple of times. She also did that. I think
it's called the Temporary Series, which is all it's It's
really cool. It's if during the Napoleonic Wars there was
also a dragon Core, so it's still but that one
(04:13):
is like seven or eight books long. They're much thicker,
so I didn't want to jump into that. But that's seriously,
what is imagine the French and the English are fighting,
but they each have dragons as well.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It was very and.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
They're literally shipped on the big boats and they're you know,
so they're having ocean battles and these giant sloops, but
then dragons are taking off from the deck. I mean,
it's really really cool. But I loved I loved that story.
So when I saw this and I'm then i read
the first one. It was so different from from anything
I've been reading fantasy wise lately. Been doing a lot
of Brandon Anderson lately, which the magical systems are just
(04:43):
off the charts weird. They're amazing, but they're weird. And
then you know stuff like you know, when you really
get into fantasy, you get things like the Wheel of
Time series, where the prologue of the final book of
the Wheel of Time series was two hundred and fifty
pages long.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, the prologue. So it's one of those things you
just fell asleep.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
But if you that's book ten, So if you've been
doing this for twenty five years, which is what the series,
how long it took to write. Literally the author died
halfway through and Brandon Sanderson had to finish it. You
were I was with three other guys waiting in line
for Barnes and Noble to open the morning it came out,
because you're just like you're waiting for this thing to end.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Wow. So I wanted something that I knew I could
kind of where I settled with you. I was taking
such a shot with Danielle. So we'll see.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Okay, So we're gonna break today into five segments like
we did last time. We're going to begin with roll call.
This is where we check in with our initial reactions,
overall thoughts, then put it on the board where we
will lay out the big themes and ideas that we
found in the book, and then show your work. This
is the nuts and bolts, the writing itself, the characters dialogue,
how it all came together on the page. And after
(05:50):
that we will lighten things up with a pop quiz,
little game or fun question about the book. And finally
we will close out with report card where we each
give our big takeaways and we will hand out turn
and phenies, a rating system of one through five, where
the turners are how fun and accessible this book was,
how readable it was, and the phoenies are about the
life lessons and the overall value what you carry with
(06:11):
you as you try and do good in your own life.
All right, so let's open up our books and begin.
I'll give a brief synopsis. Deadly Education is the first
(06:32):
book in the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novic, best selling
author known for blenning fantasy with literary depth.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
She reimagines the Magic School trope with a much darker twist.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
This is a school for magically gifted teens, but instead
of secret houses and friendly ghosts, it's a deadly institution
with no teachers, no exits, and a constant threat of
monsters called malificaria yeah, that prey on the students. Our protagonists,
Galadriel L. Higgins, is no Harry Potter. She's not your
typical underdog with a heart of gold. She's angry, sarcastic,
(07:04):
and deeply isolated. And she also happens to have incredibly
powerful dark magic that could maybe wipe out entire cities
if she let it loose. But she's not trying to
become a villain. Her struggle isn't just against the Scholomance
and it's horrors. It's also about resisting the role the
world seems to have a signed for her. As she
fights to Survivor junior year, she gets reluctantly entangled with
(07:27):
Orian Lake, who is kind of the Harry Potter, the
school's golden boy monster slayer, and they start to form
a connection, and she starts to form connections with other
classmates that she's kept it at arm's length. All right,
So let's get right into Danielle coming into this. Danielle,
what was your fantasy experience before and how did this
meet or upend your expectations?
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Okay, so I have heard Will talk about how he
really likes fantasy world building and he likes it to
be as detailed as possible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
The magical system with their own sort of like math
going into it. Yeah, and from.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
That, I would think to myself, I don't think I
like that. I think that's a little too much for me.
I want I like to follow stories of like. I
like relationship stories, stories about real character driven not so
much about the world. Of course, the world is important
and affects the characters, so you need some of it.
(08:24):
I would say the first seventy five to one hundred
pages of this book was absolute torture for me.
Speaker 5 (08:33):
Every night.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
I started reading the book, and I would try to
read one chapter per night because I don't want to
stop in the middle of a chapter. The chapters are
fairly long. Sometimes sometimes they're reasonable. Ah, but they're pretty
long for me who wants to be able to read
for like thirty minutes before bed, because that's what I
that's what the amount of time I.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Can for forty two Dan Brown chapters.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
By the way, So that's so funny because I almost
thought that you were going to say the first seventy
five really hooked you because they are very character driven
compared to some fantasy that was made. My immediate impression was, oh,
this is because it's a narrator. It's first person, and
she's talking mostly about her feelings and the you know,
so I thought you were there was a possibility that
you were gonna say the world building was second, but
(09:15):
it was already too much.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Was too much. It was too much.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Also because she is so isolated and so dark and
such a she's a sarcastic, dry personality.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
She's horribly unlikable.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, I loved that.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
I was like, oh my gosh, this girl, Oh my god,
we get it.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So if the book had been narrated by Orian, it
would have like just been easier in for you.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Maybe I just by the time, I was like, oh
my gosh, she just keeps saying the same thing.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
Over and over again, but about new places and and
the names the stuff.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
It's like, her name's hard to say, Malfikaria is hard
to pronounce. And then there's Mana and Malia, and I'm like,
never once do they ever even try to explain what
Mana or Malia are to You just have to figure
it out context.
Speaker 5 (10:02):
As you go.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
And like I was like, is Malia somehow connected to
the Malificaria?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Like, because it's like.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
The dark magic, right, dark energy? But you can then
get from the Malificaria or no, you can't.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Get Mana, you can also, so essentially what it is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And again this is maybe it's just a helpful and
known fantasy trope for people that read a lot of fantasy,
or us who play magic the Gathering or something like that.
So all Mana is energy, apparently, you know, essentially, And
what they've done in this world or what she's done
in this world is she's actually balanced the manna, which
is what we say, I.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Know, we always say man with malia.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So there's essentially light energy and dark energy that you
can pull from and and you can The thing that
what I loved about this magical system was you could
pull little bits from each one if you wanted to.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And that's why she knew.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
It's essentially she was a cocaine addict who could never
do cocaine again. So it's one of those things where
she knew if she even tapped into the Malia, she
was going to set off a super volcano, right, So
it's like, I can't use that at all.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
So yeah, it's justice secion. Because there were times that
were reading as her did.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I'd get a text from Danielle and to be a
screenshot of the world of a word, and it would
just be, what.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
The is it? What is this? What is that? I know?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, it's it's it's I mean, I think so much
of fantasy is kind of a vocabulary test to learning
the new vocabulary, and you kind of just have to
go with it. Yeah, so did you after you said
seventy five to one hundred pages?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So did it grow on you? Did it change at
that point?
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Did it grew on me?
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Once she started making relationships with other people, not just Oriyan,
but once she started having friendships that at the time
maybe she didn't really know whether or not they were friendships.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
But once she was engaging.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
With other people interesting and partnering up and having to
rely on other people, then I was like, I'm interested
to see where this.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
So it wasn't it wasn't just the understanding the magic
more for you, it was actually just getting out of
her head a little.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
Bit, getting out of her head a little bit and
into like other yeah, just getting her out of being
like I'm always going to be alone.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
That is so funny to me that that's the part
that you didn't because because that is for me, the
greatest strength of this, I mean will that when I
got when I got where this was going, where I
was like, this is Draco Malfoy's inn, and the fact
that she was like prophecied to be the ultimate villain.
I was so excited by that.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I loved him.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
But I but I agree, it's kind of claustrophobic in
her mind. And that's my biggest criticism in the book overall,
because even though you're right, I do she does engage
with people, we're still very locked in in her head
and in the school.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
But I was gonna say, this isn't that.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Is there something about the writing where you feel the
claustrophobia of the students that are stuck in the schools,
Like you can't get out of these tiny rooms they're in,
and every around, every corner you might die, and every
little thing you might pick up, or I have to
get a hammer, well, the hammer could kill you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
It's like that stuff I loved so much about.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
And it was hard.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
We talked about it before we started this podcast that
there is a map of the school writer, and I
have the paperback and the map is at the very
back of the books, and I never went there until
the end of the story. And then I was like, see,
I would have liked to have started with this so
I could have had something in my mind. Because the
(13:31):
way the school is described, it is without a visual
nearly impossible to understand what they're trying to describe.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
The way the rooms rotate and.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Get are it's a giant screw and they keep going
down levels as they get as they were and so
the senior year is you're basically all the boy thrust
into a room to kill each other, to.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Each other.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Escape the school Malifa car they can turn on each
other because they can get magic from each other.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
They get mana or oralia by killing one another. Whereas
to go to what Danielle is saying.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Whereas I have the hardcover and when you open it up,
the first on a page, it's actually part of the
book is the entire map of the school.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, my best.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Advice for somebody who's going to pick this up after
we talk about it is if you have the paperback
immediately before you even begin, take a look at the drawings.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
They're really well done.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
It adds a lot if you have that before you
jump into it. I did find I think my number
one thing that I thought was the most interesting was
the description of graduation day. Hearing about how graduation day
works and that and and also understanding that the malificaria
that are trying to get you on graduation day, it's
basically like the gates open and all these monsters have
(14:52):
access to eating you, and you through the time that
you're in school have to develop spells and things that
could possibly ward them off or fill the malificaria before
they kill you. But you can also trade make alliances
with people to help you get through it.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
That was all there.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And then also that the molificicaria have to eat throughout
the years.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yes, so they can sneak in and grab you when
you're there.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And yeah, it was just, but it's also isn't it?
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Isn't it kind of a perfect examples of high schoolnology
of high school everything's.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Everything's going to kill you. You don't you're going to
be friends with these people. These are the rich, popular kids.
These aren't there was something so high school. But then
about taking it to death that was just.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I mean I loved it.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I absolutely loved it, all right, So for both of you,
what changed for you from beginning to end?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
With you?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Daniel hated it when it started.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
No, it actually ended and Jensen was next to me
in bed and it ended and I literally went, oh no,
and he went what?
Speaker 5 (16:00):
And I said, now I have to read book two
and three?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Because literally through the entire book, even though I at
about a seventy page seventy five or one hundred, turned
and actually got into it and was then excited to.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Read it every night, whereas before it had been like
what did I every night getting into bed?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
And then it turned and I was like, oh, I'm
really excited, and those chapters didn't feel long anymore. They
felt like they were going very fast, and I would
a chapter would end, and I think, darn it.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I wish I didn't have to go to sleep because
I'd want to keep reading.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
But I had still been thinking, at least I only
have to read this one. At least it's just one book.
It's three hundred and thirteen pages, and once I get
done with this, I'll never have to look.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
At it again.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Oh no, oh no, I've already started book too. I
have by media. I was my birthday had just passed.
My brother asked for a birthday idea, and I sent
the two links for book two and three to my
brother and I said, here you go, this is what
I want. And I'm already, you know, fifty pages into
book two.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Okay, so will you obviously read everything I read? So
when you first read it, where you just hooked immediately
because you already set the tone, and then the character
just threw you in and then it totally delivered for you.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
It did well.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, So the idea of
taking that dark and going, let's just what happens if
it's the same thing, but we're all killing each other,
and everything just wants you dead, including the school.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
To me, I was hooked right away. I also loved
how much I hated her at the beginning.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It was like, you're a terrible person, and then when
you really start getting into it, it's like you're not
you just you come to realize that She literally could
not fathom someone liking her, and that's the thing that
colored her entire existence, is her whole life.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
She'd been told. She's with a mom who's again brilliant.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
An absolute saint saint of a mother who is like
the earth everyone.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
So let's describe. So she grew up on a commune
her mom. So wizards grow. Our sorcerers grow up in
enclaves for the most part, which are groups of adults
who raised their kids together trained them to be sorcerers.
But she was raised by this very legendary healer hippie
type who has taken her out of all enclaves and
raised her alone, in part because she was prophecied to
(18:16):
be this dark So it was her mom is both
a protector and kind of an enabler. And yeah, and
so she grew up in a very different environment than
everybody else.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, I thought that was a really cool beat.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I even have wanted to see more of that personally, because.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
You may in Okay books, you may in the future,
but it is it just she was a very I
mean again like a Harry Potter, who's the good version
of this. She's a very very complex character, and it
all came down to the fact that she just couldn't
fathom that anyone would like her.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Ever, and she's because she's never had a friend, no.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Never had a friend, to the point where she when
she realized she had a friend, she cried, yeah, I
have a friend. So I mean that to me, I
thought it was such an interesting way to go about it.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, no, it did. It hooked me right away.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
This was one of you know, I read fantasy all
the time. It's basically all that I read, and so
when I then stumble on one that's so different than
anything else I've read and also combines just beautiful pros
because she can obviously blow doors. I mean, she can
write really really well. So when I find that combination,
then I just kind of try to deep dive the
author because it's like, oh my god, that's how I
was with Robin Hobb who was just like wow, and.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
This was the one that did to me.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I found it on it it was I walked into
it might have been in Sebastopool.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
No, it was before Sebastool, but I.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Just walked into a bookstore and it was just on
display and I was like okay, and I grabbed it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
And then by the third chapter, I was like, oh
my god, I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
You know already order the next one, and the third
one hadn't come out yet, so I know. Then you
do the fantasy thing where you're sitting there and you're
waiting for the next book to come out, and finally
it came, like the day it was Tolive a day
came out. I was at the bookstore. I went and
got it, and I was, yeah, I was that guy
with this.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Series about you writer.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I I loved the verse seventy five hundred pages. I
love the approach it didn't I mean ultimately like it
lands with more plot hooks right to keep you going,
of course, And when I got there, I was like, okay,
but no, I found it a little exhausting.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I found it.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I found it sort of maintaining at a certain point,
there's a lot of the same scene. Yes, yeah, over that,
and the dynamic as complicated as her interior monologue is,
and as complicated as she is about analyzing her relationships
with everybody and herself, and she actually doesn't have much
desire or wants on her own. And I really wanted
(20:42):
to know how does she like Orion?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Does she you know?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And she knows well, but I but you know, by
the end, don't any spoiler.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I guess we're just gonna have spoilers.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
I mean the fact that he kisses her at the end,
and that that becomes a sort of you know, I
was I wanted.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
To know, how do you do you want this? You
like somebody?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Or are these people really your friends? I just wanted
a little more introspection on that. I felt like the
author and maybe it develops throughout, you know, but I
felt like the author got trapped by the brilliance of
her first idea, which was and the brilliance of that voice,
and then sort of was treading water for a long time, and.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
And yeah, we can get into the end of the book.
But yeah, so I was a little exhausted, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
I was kind of like I don't think I would
have finished this book if it wasn't really interesting, because
I kind.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Of I was like, you pick up a book evenstand that.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
All right, well let's get let's go move into put
it on the board where we talk about the big
themes or ideas. So how does the dynamic between l
and Ryan complicate traditional hero villain or damsel and savior tropes?
Speaker 4 (21:43):
How does it complicate him? I mean, she is not
she is not appreciative right at all.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
It opens with her having already been saved by him, great.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Opening line that it was a wonderful opening line to
a book where he's like, which is just by the
second time he saved me, I knew I had.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
To kill it.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
I knew I had to kill it exactly.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
And you know the thing I'll say about him, he's
a pretty boring character.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
In this first book.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
You yeah, because I don't know anything about him either.
And I do know because I'm fifty pages into the
second book. They start immediately with delving into them and
does she like him?
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And who is he really? And so I know we're
going to get more of it.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
But in this first book, other than the idea that
in some ways we kind of are supposed to feel sorry.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
For him toward the end, he can't.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
He doesn't get to use really, I mean, he can
use his own mana, but he doesn't have access to
it the same way the other enclave kids do. And
yet he's contributing more mana to this shared pool than
any other character, and they the entire school has come
to zent him for saving so many lives because the
(23:03):
Malifikaria are not able to eat any students because he's
stopped so many killings, and so he is resented for
being a hero. And he is kind of personality lists.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
He's sort of like the popular kid, right, I mean,
he's like the popular.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Is a popular kid with hunched over shoulders who kind
of just like the popular.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
He doesn't want to be popular.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
He doesn't want everyone else has made him popular. He
doesn't want to be popular, which is why we think
at the beginning he likes l because I was like,
I don't like you. I'm not going to kiss here. Yeah,
I want nothing to do with you. And he's like, oh, ok,
you real person.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Let me let me be near you.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Which I love and I will say as you get
into books two and three and find out more about
Orian not a.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Basic character really yeah, and not a basic character.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Okay, well, in this first book he leaves. He leaves
a lot to be desired.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
That's the thing about fantasy is it's almost you almost
have to look at when you know it's multiple fantasy,
when you know it's going to be a series, you
almost have to look at each book as its own chapter.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
That makes sense, and each book focusing a more on
one character, kind of like the seasons of Boy Meets
World focused on individual characters more as you build out
the world.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
So that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
And you also don't know who you're gonna like and
who you're not until the book goes on more. I mean,
by the end of Harry Potter you still like Harry,
but it's like you might be more of a Ron
fan at this point, or you might be like Neville
was my favorite care you just never know, as they're
kind of like Nevill was anybody not true?
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Sir?
Speaker 1 (24:35):
All right, well, here's here's a big question. What do
you what do you think that this book is saying
about privilege?
Speaker 5 (24:41):
I do love that topic in this book.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't want hug this whole thing,
but like obviously for both Ell and O'Ryan, they both
they have their own totally different experiences with privilege. Oriyan
is in the most privileged enclave that exist New York,
and Elle is not part of an enclave, has no desire.
(25:05):
She thought, maybe early on in her life, that her
only goal was I'm going to go to the skull Amantsid,
I'm going to join an enclave. And her mom didn't
want her to, and but she that was what she
thought she wanted, and then she realized once she got there,
absolutely not. I see how unfair it is. I see
how there's no reason this group of people because of
their access to mana, which in this book kind of
(25:26):
represents money.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Right power and power, literal power.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's sort of class. Whatever privilege you have or whatever
mana you have access to is some form.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Of power class yea. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
And they even talk about the kids that they call
it on the maintenance track, where it's like they'll fix
everything in the school, which is way more dangerous, very
danger you could die, but they know they'll get a
place in an enclave. But even when they get into
the enclave, they're going to be there essentially as.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Janitor's right exactly, this is what you're going to get.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yes, you'll be protected and you'll have access to the power,
but you're still just fixing all for the rich people.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
So it's really it.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
And again, just going back to something you said a
while before, and I know this is a meta kind
of take on it, but where you said it kind
of got almost monotonous. It's repeating itself. It's the same
scene over and over again.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
To me. That's again that's high school. It's like every
it is the same.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
It just happens to be that there's monsters in this one,
but high schools like that everything's the most important thing
in your life. Every day is kind of exactly the same.
There's power and clicks all over the place. It just
kind of seemed like that going through all.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
So then what does this book say about systems in general,
or like social systems or social structures. Does it land
somewhere for you?
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I think it depends on which characters eyes you're looking through.
If you're looking at ELL's eye, looking through L's eyes,
I think what she's I mean, the thing that's amazing
is she has the most power. At least they're setting
it up to where she's the most powerful magical character
in the book, yes.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
And essentially refut u to use it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And then you've got the second most powerful character who's
only using it for good and still tamped down by
the powerful people because he wouldn't be able to stop
using his power. It's a weird combination of what the
power actually signifies, because it signifies both good and evil,
and like anything else, it's how you use it. So
(27:24):
a hammer is neither good or evil. If you use
it to build a house, it's good. If you use
it to kill somebody, it's bad. So that's I think
what they're kind of coming at in this book.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It's all how you use it.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
But I can tell you it gets way more into
the enclaves, way more into the power structure, especially in
the third book. And all of this is really well addressed,
especially in the third book, this entire idea of power
and safety, because there's safety and power and all the
things that especially the Chloe who's part of the New
York Enclave, who does come and apologize to her, who says, like,
(27:55):
I didn't understand most of the stuff going on because
she's raised isolated. You're there is there is an isolation
to power and money, where you are in a bubble
of this.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting, is that
this book is kind of revolutionary, like in that everybody
suffering from the system. Yes, so even the rich kids
are the privileged kids like Oryan are miserable, and I
thought that was pretty powerful. And the way that this
book at least ends, they're they're banding together to overthrow
the entire system, even the outside and outsider like l
(28:32):
begins this book just wanting to be in it in
some way or maybe to destroy it from within. And
then by the end, they're all kind of saying that, right,
they're all saying this doesn't work. We need to change
the whole way the world, and that's really revolutionary. Harry
Potter gets there in like book five maybe or six,
where they're kind of against the school, but this book's
(28:53):
right there.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I thought it was really.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
A really kind of powerful revolutionary social message.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And the second book is really about the power of
working together. Not to sound trite, but that's really what
you get is there's a power.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
In numbers, there's a safety in numbers.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
I mean, I love how she literally got into the
percentage of the enclave kids usually eighty percent of them
made it out, where as like thirty percent of the
non enclave kids made it out. And it's just that's
kind of what money and power does in our society.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
So yeah, first interesting.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
At first, it bothered me that the school kind of
becomes its own character in the sense of like.
Speaker 5 (29:29):
The school has desires.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
The school is trying to get l to do a
certain thing. And at first I was like, I don't
want the school to have its own wants and desires.
But when I thought about it in relation to power
and the way it works with enclaves, it's like, well,
we have government that sways.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Oh wait till the end of parts of the second book,
because it is you come to find out in this book.
But it really gets into it in the second book.
The school is sentient, so it's arts to try to
a help or be defend itself at certain times, right,
And they really.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Get into this. It has to and it's all about this.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
The other thing is one of my favorite You know
how you love time travel and you love one of
my favorite tropes in all of fantasy is balanced I
just because I think most of those think about.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
This because this to me was so interesting, Like the
magic system, right, and how it introduces limitation and balance,
How did that compare in this book to like the
way it's because you know all these magic systems, right, Like,
how would you compare this magic system and it's specifically
it's use of balance and limitation, how does that compare
to other fantasy books you've read?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
You know, it depends.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
All great fantasy has balance, and I mean even down
to comic books. You know, Superman can't be all powerful.
He also there has to be kryptonite, there has to
be magic, there has to be things that can hurt him,
or it's a useless character. So great magical systems in
fantasy novels are hey, I can put out all this power,
but then I'm useless for three months. You need that
(30:57):
kind of balance, So you know, it depends. Again, I
keep going back to Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson is great
with balance. Brandon Sanderson is great with I can do this,
but then this happens.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
It struck me as so important read this book huge
because I loved how how she was able to make
it not just like an energy drains also kind of
a money drain thing like the kids had mana that
that was given by their parents.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
She had to exercise. Ye, she could do push ups
and sit ups to create her own mind, which.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I was like, oh, it's also physical.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's like with hard work, we can pull ourselves up
by the bootstraps.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
But that's also not true.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Like I just thought that this, this specific magic system
was really clever in that way. And it made me
think like, oh, right, because I you know, I teach
world building and in screenwriting, and like I feel like,
now I'm really going to just focus on what is
not possible, like focus on the limitations of your world building.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Because that's way more important.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
I realized this. I was like, I don't need to
know what artificers can do, Like I don't need to
know the most powerful magic. I just need to know
what they can't do. Yeah, that's like so that guide's
character and story so much more.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
And it's also it's one of those little things.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
It's it sounds like a ridiculous comparison, but within this
magical system, the idea of you build up your mon
and you build up your mon and you build up
your mona and then something attacks. It's the equivalent of
your saving money you're saving money. I'm finally getting it
and my car breaks exactly now half of my money's gone.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
And it's the same with this. Or it's like I'm
building up.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
And because only have a certain amount of time because
you have graduation on the environment, Yeah you might, you're
gonna need it all for them, So you have like
only a certain number of days left to earn more money.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
And you might find out in the future books that
the school is sending some of these things at you
to exhaust your mind.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
And I know.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
That's what I'm saying there.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
You know, it's like the school wants something because it's
also about balance.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
You're you're saving all these kids.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
That's great, but that's now making all the Malfikaria really angry.
And so now actually more of the seniors are going
to die, and that's not fair.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
So yeah, it's this whole it's it works on a
bunch of different levels, it really does.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
All right, let's move into show your work, where we
talk about the writing itself, the style and the characters
and the structure. So compared to more traditional fantasy novels,
how does her first person stream of thought narration shift
the genres, feel or the stakes.
Speaker 5 (33:27):
Will you're the expert here.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
I'm I'm this. Here's how I put it.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
I am sparingly a big fan of first person storytelling.
I don't want every story to be told like this,
but occasionally it is. It's very refreshing to get it
in this kind of voice, and I think in this
situation specifically, it worked perfectly because I also didn't especially
the beginning, I didn't like the person who was telling
me the story, which added to me liking the story.
(33:54):
If it's instantly like God, I love this guy, tell
me more, that's fine. But if it's like, oh God,
I don't like you, why are you complaining again, I'm
still flipping through the pages going like ooh, what comes
dock so?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
And then?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And I love her pros. I think I think she's
a phenomenal writer. I really do, and you really see
it more in the I think it's to Mary, and
I don't know how to say it to Mary.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Book series. She can just write's yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
She's a really wonderful writer. I will say, like I said,
I have to. I was reading it before bed, which
means I've already taken a melotone and I've also taken
a unism, and some of the sentences are you know, paragraphs,
and in there are vocabulary words that you're like, okay,
and I still don't really even know what this is.
So there were times that I would find myself halfway
down a page and I'd go, well, I stopped paying
(34:42):
attention to what I was reading. My brain started thinking
about something totally different. Now I have to go back
and reread it and like try to focus. So it's
not a book that you unlike Blob that was so
beach read by the pool h So yeah, someone could
walk up have a conversation with you, could get distracted
and go right back and know exactly what was happening.
I felt like I had to. I had to pay
(35:04):
attention because I was also worried this word that maybe
I don't understand. Now it's not going to be the
last time I see it. This is also going to
come back again. I need to pay attention to who
these people are and what their relationships to their enclaves.
Who are they are they outcasts? What is her relationship
with them? I felt like everything was important, which is great.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
It's intense, voice exhaust it's exhaust Here's the thing, though,
It's exactly what you said.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
It's a language fantasy, and every book has its own dialect.
Once you become fluent, you start to be able to
read it the way you would a beach beach.
Speaker 5 (35:39):
I's already noticed with book two. I can read it
the same I can read.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
It's just all of a.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Sudden, the words there, and you get what's going on,
You get the balance. And now you're like, Okay, I'm in.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
What about the secondary characters?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Because we've talked about how well developed she is, and
we're obviously in her head, but do you may.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Better developed in books two and three? This is the
Let's stick with book one.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I know, I know, but in book one, it's not
about them, it's about her fire. I think we're finding
them as she's finding them, and she hasn't found them
for a while.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
I feel like Chloe Adaya and you and Lou are
all really well developed. I love her two best friends.
I feel like I understand them. I think they're they're quirky.
I mean, Lou being the one who has was was
a maleficer.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, she's us.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
She's using Malia and then has turned. And you also
get the sense that her family's not gonna like that. Yes, well,
Elle turned her by exactly. I didn't even know which
I thought was another qul.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
I thought that was cool too. It's like she I.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Inadvertently got you off of drugs. I didn't even know
that's what I was doing.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Yeah, so I actually I love them and I love
what their are. Their little alliance.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Teach developments too, like the in your confrontations with her,
like when they kind of tell her off, you get
to hear like they have very nuanced perspectives and they
do change Elle's point of view sometimes.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So I thought that was.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Really the same way Elle challenge is o'rian with the oh,
I am not going to kiss your butt they do
to her, especially at the end of the book spoiler alert,
when you know Elle doesn't want anyone to know who
her mother is. She hasn't told anyone. Oriyan knows right who.
Ryan figures it out. Yeah, well no, he's I think,
says like a Gwen Higgins.
Speaker 5 (37:17):
Yeah, that's something he finds out from her from her
last name. Somehow he knows.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
But then at the end of the book when it's
announced kind of and she has to like raise her hand, Yes,
that's my mom.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
And her two friends are like, excuse me, when were
you planning? I'm sharing that with us. I love that.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I like that she is in the same situation, kind
of a power position, the way Orian is with her
she is with her friends.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Okay, I'm just gonna read off some some monster names
that I wrote down. Okay, that's soul leadersmix, Cheena's Siren spiders,
night flyers, mow mouths, shrikes. Oh what did we think
of the crazy amount of monsters the names?
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Could you visualize them? Do you know they all are?
Can you describe them? Will?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
You've already read a bunch so you probably can't.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yes, yes, and yes you can't. So you could right
now tell me what a night flyer is versus a strike.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, I would think from the way she described it,
I would think a night flyers essentially like imagine a giant,
messed up, crazy flying squirrel that takes up its wingspan.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Is one hundred feet wide. O. Okay, wow, and just rabbit.
So you really are keeping track of them? I mean
I know them enough in my head to work I
can picture them.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
But again, that's kind of what I like about.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
Also, some not getting into too much detail about some
of the things, because then I get to create what
I want in my head. Give me the give me
the basics, and then I'll fill it in from there.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I only could picture a mom Mouth, and it was
a just a giant version of Slimer from those Stars.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Oh gotcha.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
It was just a giant filled though with stuffed like
multi giant Slimer, filled with stuff like jello and just
with tentacle.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
For me, the mom Mouth was pretty much the only
monster ira my head around could envision, and that was
given the space I felt that the monsters deserve. But
everything else if on the in this book. I just
reached a point where I was like, bad thing, bad thing, crawley, creepy,
bad thing, and I knew they were gross.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Came from a ceiling and it's like we got no man.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It was really like a tin cheetah and a hyena
that are crossed and super aggressive.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
The sheer overwhelming amount of different monsters that kind of
coming go. It's like, oh, then this flew in and
Ryan took care of it. I just yeah, I just
checked out. My brain checked out. It was like I
don't want to do the work. I know what this
point of this encounter is for them to win or not,
you know the point of this encounters to so I
(39:50):
just kind of was rushing through them to get to
the point, you know what I mean, Like it was
getting hard. I will say the description of the magic
itself when they're building a mirror or bending something that
was very c details and like kind of fun to visualize.
But the monsters all just became squiggly, like fill in
this blank in my mind because there's too many of them.
I think it was like there's so much variety, it
(40:11):
was it was a little overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
All right, pop quiz? Okay?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
After reading about how stressful life is that scolomance. God,
I'm never going to say it right, How would characters
from the Boy Meets World universe fair if they had
to enroll?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Would they survive? What would their skills be? Maybe? What
kind of sorcerer would they be? Let's do Corey Sean, Eric, Topanga, Minkus,
and Nobody's angels. Well, at least she hit all the
most important characters. I think. Does it have to be
in any order? No, you can just pick one that
(40:44):
you want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
The Panga would still be valedictorian in the school. I
think she would, and I think she.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Would be I'm gonna say I don't think she'd be
strictly mana. Oh a chance she might be able to
dabble in the malley a little bit.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Eric would be dead by the time he stepped into
the freshman year. What you guys do it dead?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Sean is glad real, he is.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's raised with like Matt, no father or an absent
to your parent. Yeah, and he is a poor kid
from the wrong side of the track.
Speaker 5 (41:21):
And Corey would accidentally be O'Ryan lake. He would, he
would ask, he would totally not intending.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
To, but somehow he'd be like, I just killed that thing. Yes,
And you'd be bailing Sean out of all yep, right.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
That's absolutely correct. That would be a great dynamic their friendship.
Are they just friends? Are they in love? Ryan and Gladiol?
And I think what about MICUs? I think Mincus would
probably be dead pretty quick. He'd also died pretty quick.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
And he'd have great ideas and he'd get too wrapped
up in his great ideas to not be paying attention
to the things around him, and no one would He
wouldn't be in an alliance with people who'd be looking
out for him.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I actually think he'd be one of the kids. That's
somebody else would go take his room and push him
into the voice.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
You might be right, Yeah, he'd be that guy. That's
also very cool. The rooms having a wall.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
That's like whether it's on your ceiling or which wall
is depending on where you are. Yeah, just you have
to avoid that area because it's just into the void.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Very crazy.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Oh and nobody's angel I mean, come on, they played graduation.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Everybody knows they actually already have their own alliance, so
they have to be record Okay, all right, report card
overall thoughts, takeaways, Let's start this way. Uh could this
be adapted into a series or a film?
Speaker 5 (42:36):
It absolutely should.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Be at and what tone would fit it best? Is
it a an.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
R rated horror? Is it a sattire? Is it a
Wednesday style?
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Would say?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
I think it's Harry Potter meets Wednesday with a touch
of saw.
Speaker 5 (42:52):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
That's a perfect description. We'll just take that.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Yeah, let's run with it.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Thank you. All right, So how does this end up commenting?
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Does it fulfill or critique the fantasy genre? I'm thinking,
particularly like the notion of a hero's journey or the
idea of the chosen one. Where does this book ultimately
land just on the first one.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Just in the first one, if you're just judging it
on the first one, I'm not sure it does land fully.
It's you know, it's not a fully wrapped up in
a bow story. You could read the first Harry Potter
and put it down after book one if you want,
and never read another one and be like, I read
a fun Harry Potter story. You wouldn't get the full story,
(43:36):
but you could do that this one. To get what
the entire series means, you really need to read the
entire series. It really makes a difference. So book one,
I think it's I think it's fantasy adjacent in book
one is what I would say.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
See For me, it was interesting how much it actually
became a pretty standard fantasy novel. You think, per group
of kids, she's kind of the chosen one, leading to school,
to a new place, she becomes the hero, she fights
it all. You know, she's kind of just starts with
such a different you know, she starts as like the
anti chosen One, but by the end of this book,
(44:13):
I was like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Well you got the you got the guy.
Speaker 5 (44:15):
Yeah, goes from there.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
That's so I was kind of like, this is secretly
just another fan I can actually.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
I could see a slowburg slowburn. I could see that too.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Any final like takeaways or read.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
The second one. Okay, don't stop here.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Even if you didn't, both of you are completely in
the bag for this this book.
Speaker 5 (44:34):
I will finish the series. Yes, wow, I will finish
the no.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I don't think. Yeah, I don't think I will.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I you know I I I find it. I found
it exhausting a little redundant, and it didn't take me
and it didn't take me into enough of an interesting
new place that I need to keep going into this schirl.
All the books are written from her point of view. Yes,
it's always her narration. Yeah, I think if the next
book started with a different narrator, I would be like,
I'm in because now I want to see this from
(45:01):
I want to enter this world from another place. As
it was, it really felt limited to me.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Has that ever been done?
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Like a fantasy novel comes out and then the next
book comes out and it's exactly the same fantasy story,
but just from a point of view of a different character.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You tell me, man, I don't think that. I don't
think that's ever been down.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I don't know would be interesting and not like another
story with the same with a different character. I mean, like,
tell you exactly the same story, but from the point
of view of a different character.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Here's a big question that I had the kind of once.
I've had the question to kind of hurt the book
for me. Who is she writing to? Uh, that's funny
because there's the time. Doesn't she say dear readers?
Speaker 1 (45:34):
She does, she does, which I kind of liked, but
that but once I was like, is she writing to
a mundane right? Why is she explaining half of the stuff?
I'm not explaining the other half? And when I when
I realized that tension, I couldn't relax. I was like,
I just wish if it started with like, it's a
letter to her mom, right, and she's and we're in
the vocabulary, and I'm going to do all this work
because of the choice of point of view.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
But instead of the point of view kept shifting from me.
I was like, wait, why are you explaining what this is?
Speaker 5 (46:00):
But the not explain to her?
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Three?
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Do we not know who she's ever thinks, okay, because
that's I like the idea of her writing to him undane.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Right, here's how this world. But then she would be
much clearer up front, she'd be like school. And then
for me, like when she talked about Lord of the Ring,
suddenly I was like, well, wait, hold on, that's the relationship.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Where's the real world and what you know?
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Because like, are you not going to acknowledg Harry Potter?
Like you're gonna because I think if she had Acknowledgeary
Potter would have deflated the whole book because then you're like,
now they know that they're in the real world, the
real version of it.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
So that was like a problem for me too. I
was like, let's pick what the point of view is
and how this information shared.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
I don't know if you ever find out who she's
writing to you, I always assumed it was something along
the lines of a diary, yeah, because she's has had
no writ Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
But then she's explaining half stuff and saying, dear reader
at one point is essentially telling herself how the school was.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
That was one of my favorite lines. She said, dear,
dear reader, I ran or whe I was great, all right.
Phoenies and Turners one through five. Turner's being fun and readability,
Phoenis being life lessons you go first.
Speaker 4 (47:00):
I think Turner's fun readability it depends if you're a big, big,
big fantasy person.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
It's probably very readable for you.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
For someone like me who doesn't read a lot of fantasy,
I can't really say it's a fun book.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
It is.
Speaker 4 (47:13):
I have to focus, I have to pay attention. I
have to reread a couple of things here and there.
I would give it one or two Turners WHOA I
I do not find I did, I do not find.
I do not find it fun or I don't. I
would not describe it as, oh, it's so fun, oh
my god. I just would not Phoene's. I'd give it
five out of five. I love the I love the
(47:38):
social commentary about it. I love the relationship stuff. I
love the parallels to real high school. I think it
is relatable. I think there's a lot of stuff in
here that sparks good conversation. I think it's great for teens,
but yeah, it's not. I don't think it's fun and
cool wow will I again?
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I can only look at it to somebody.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
He reads fantasy all the time, So I would to me,
I would give it a four.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Turners, okay, four, and I would give it five five Phoenies.
I would. I really liked it.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Actually, No, I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna say double four's.
I'm gonna say double four's four turners, four phoenies.
Speaker 3 (48:14):
That's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
I'm gonna I'm pretty much the exact opposite of Danielle.
I'm gonna give it four turners because I really did.
I think that the writing is and I think the
plot is propulsive enough Phoenies.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Man, this is a two max for me.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
I don't I think.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
I think he's in Jackson Hole.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah, I think I think it's it's introducing a lot
of really great ideas, like like you were saying, the
social I do love, and I think the magical system
has so much potential. I really was disappointed by the
third act with the final the climax, because suddenly we're
in a battle with all new characters. We get like
ten new characters that she's suddenly aligned with, and we
(48:53):
leave all the characters in relationships, and I honestly can't
tell you what happens in the big battle.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Do you guys know what happened?
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Now, it just becomes that's a big battle of Okay,
you did a thing and then we and I just
kind of like the mam mouth description that moment where
she beats that was for me wonderful, and the book
that was there was this problem with the book for
me between scene and monologue. You know, it's like the
monologue is super fun and pulling me through, and then
suddenly we'd be in a scene and I'm like, oh,
(49:19):
we're in like a day would go buy in a paragraph? Yeah,
And so I had a hard time on the page.
I kind of wish it had broken up the paragraphs
a little bit more and been like then I went
to class and take a break and then describe that
scene a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
And so she's not an uber descriptive writer. She's just
allowing you to do it in your mind a little bit.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
She's the equivalent of some It's funny because I sometimes
like it as a writer but hate it as a
dungeon master who says, okay, you walk into a village,
describe the village. For me, It's like, well, no, I
don't want to describe the village.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
I want you to describe the village. So some people
like that in a DM, some people don't. In this book.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
It worked for me because, you know, again, at the
end of the day, there are so many monsters that
I got to kind of create them in my mind.
What it okay, this is going to look like this one.
This one's gonna look like that one. This is what
a siren spider.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Is gonna look like.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
I would say, you're already there. Give the second one
a try. Read the first two chapters. If you don't
like it, bounce, but read the first two chapters.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I guess I'm just not the reason I give it
low Foenie. Is this because I'm not sure if at
the end of this I'm I really I feel like
I wrestled with some of these ideas about class and privilege,
but like I said, it ultimately kind of fulfilled the
basic fantasy story.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
She is kind of chosen. She you know, she does
pull herself up by her bootstraps.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
So I'm not sure if I'm not sure if it
landed somewhere that I'm gonna like apply to my own life,
or like I would say to like my son, this
will help you get understand high school or unless.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
He runs into a mom mouth, it's going to know
exactly right. Yeah, you're gonna let him go in unprepared.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
All right, Well, thank you for joining us for this
episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow
us on Instagram at pod meets World Show.
Speaker 5 (50:55):
You can send us your emails.
Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, I want you to do this Pod mets World.
Speaker 5 (50:58):
Show at gmail dot com. And we've got merch.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Merch of Carya look it up people.
Speaker 5 (51:06):
I have chosen our next book.
Speaker 4 (51:08):
I think you guys will all know why I've I've
chosen it.
Speaker 5 (51:11):
It's called Death Takes Me.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
God. It is a panphlet and then you go to.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Sleep by Christina Rivera Garza. Death Takes Me by Christina
Rivera Garza.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Read this book?
Speaker 5 (51:23):
I have not.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
You're thinking with writer.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
And doing a book that is something I have not
read but seems interesting to me, and I think, uh.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Is it fiction or non fiction? It is fiction? Okay?
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Cool?
Speaker 3 (51:37):
All right, all excited? It sounds happy.
Speaker 5 (51:41):
All right, We'll see you all next time.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Podmeads World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Wilfordell and Rider Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman,
Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
TaRaSu Bosch producer, Maddie Moore engineer and Boy Meets World
Supervan Easton Out. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
of Typhoon.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Follow us on Instagram at Podmets World Show, or email
us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com
Hosts And Creators
Will Friedle
Danielle Fishel
Rider Strong
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