Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Our name is Sword and Laser, whether it's read sober or ripped, podcast goodreads, discord patreon dot com slash Sword and Laser. Subscribe . Hey everyone, welcome to The Sword and Laser. I'm Jernica Belmont. And I'm not. I'm Tom Merrick. Sword and Laser is a book club and it's so much more. We bring you news from the world of science fiction and fantasy and awesome discussions from fans just like you. And we're not gonna beat around the bush . I'm having homemade chicken wings and homemade french fries as soon as I'm done with this. Let's get to it. , when you say homemade chicken wings , what do you mean? Do not own chickens ourself . Okay , from spare parts. No, I mean we bought the chicken in the store, but we're making the wings here. We're not going to wing stop and getting . So we're frying the wings . Okay, yeah, I guess I don't understand on like any level what the difference is ? The difference between going to a restaurant and buying something between or going to a grocery store and buying food and bringing it home and cooking it yourself. You don't understand the difference between those . When you say homemade chicken wings , I'm like, not homegrown. Butchering your chicken ? Wow, you really have a high bar for homemade. I had no idea. Yeah . Like kind of just saying if somebody does homemade bread, do they have to grow the wheat? Well, like, I am literally growing potatoes in my yard right now. Yeah. So your homemade potatoes. So what do you call it buys the ingredients at the grocery store but cooks it at home ? Yeah , yeah, it's homemade. Okay ,. okay Just the way you will do it. Call it something else. I think you need to say homemade chicken wings. Like we never we don't usually differentiate the things . The reason I put homemade is if I had just put chicken wings and french fries , you would have or most people I think would've immediately assumed, oh they bought it at a restaurant and brought it home. I don't think that's I don't know. Really? Maybe. Okay . Anyway, good for you. That's great. Thank you Hapa Happiness. I culmita in La Casa . Klado Claro Claro . Okay, I am having a crabopel vodka Spritzer. Krabapol ina Krab apple. My friend Jocelyn makes crab apple vodka. Mm from her. Is it homemade It is. The vodka's not. Oh, oh, I see. The vodka store bought. She didn't distill the vodka herself . You know, in squamish, that's not crazy. There's actually a distillery in town where you can bring your garden fruit and they'll make a gin or a well they're making it. It's not homemade then. Yeah , okay . Okay . That's pretty cool, though. Honestly, you could like cool. You could take stuff to like local distillery, they'll distill it for you. That's pretty great. I love that. Yeah, yeah. And so she but she did this one at home. She just infused the vodka with the apple from her house. It's good. Is it good? It is. It's great. Yeah, it's great. And I added some sparkling water to it to make it kind of fizzy and sparkly . It's very refreshing summer, summer beverage. Oh yeah, lovely. Very lovely. I've gotten some mint from my yard. I haven't eaten those chicken wings and french fries yet, so job jump. We gotta move this thing along. All right, let's jump into the quick burns . Scott posted that Book Riot is getting the jump on their lists by publishing the best new queer science fiction and fantasy of twenty twenty six right now. In June. Too soon. They already know. They already know Scott said, I just finished Ada Hoffman's ignore all previous instructions and definitely agree with its inclusion on any best list. And like many, I'm also eagerly awaiting the new Beck Chambers novel in October. There are plenty of authors new to me on the list whose book descriptions pique my interest. So what do you think is what is the thinking behind posting a year end list so early ? Is it just because there's contenders as they say in this blog post that you should be reading now and not wait till the end of the year. You don't have to wait until the end of the year to get a jump start on some of the best LGBTQ books of twenty twenty six . I think will they post an amendment? Yes. Later, this is called getting clicks . . And we what we call in the business getting people to read your shit . Great. Now we have to put a language modifier on the podcast episode Tom. Because I think I talked about feces . Yeah . Yeah. Yeah. And it works. Why feces is so much of a grosser word? It really is . That one I felt weirder about saying you should it sounded weird . Anyway, yeah, I guess they have to you have to make an amendment at the end of the year be like, here now the amended list , the true list and linked to the previous one. Like back in June, we told you that you didn't have to wait until the end of the year . But since then, some amazing stuff has come to our attention. So read that one , maybe reload it about twelve times to get different ads, then come back here . All right . Speaking of lists, Jan says New Month, new one hundred greatest novels of all time list. Is this one also amended? Probably yeah, sure. This time, it's The Guardian . If we are leaving out magical realism, literary fiction sure loves their ambiguous ghost stories and allegorical supernatural elements, the fantasy and science fiction novels included are ninety eight The Road by Cormick McCarthy, eighty nine The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Caligin seventy six Dracula seventy one Kindred by Octavia E Butler . thirty six The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, thirty Frankenstein and number sixteen nineteen eighty four by George Orwell . I am not surprised by any of these . The only thing that made me go home was Kindred being in front of Dracula on the list. I'm like, oh . That's pretty cool. Yeah, welcome. Okay, so I have a confession to No, I'm not gonna confess this, not live on the air . Terrible idea . It has been how many months since your last confession since my last confession , everyone's yelling at me to confess . I have never , not only have I never read the Handmaid's Tale. Okay. I've never I didn't watch the show either. Oh, okay . I don't know why it's genre fiction. Mm . Yeah, that's a fair. I mean , you just set yourself up for having no credibility to make that argument . Well, I don't because I don't know what about it . All of these books , I know why they're short section. The Handmaid's Tale is set in a dystopian alternate future . Okay, okay. So that is the basis for its genre. I mean, this is the one hundred greatest novels of all time. So it's not the guardian saying gen it'res a. Yan is yeah, considered this genre fiction. So I'm going to, I'm going to point it out . But yeah, it's it's that dystopian future part of it. It's actually no different than nineteen eighty four. nineteen eighty four also really genre fiction beyond that, beyond that dystopian future situation . So there's not a whole lot of technology that I can remember in the Handmaid's Tale, definitely in Oh, now I'm blanking on the name of the land. I want to say Jordan . Oh no, it's oh Gilliad Gilead not a lot of tech gilliad for sure . And there's no wizards either. So, you know, there's not a lot of fans. Is it our world ? Yes, Canada is a character in the Canada is a character So I know the broad strokes of the of the story because I am a human that exactly. But yeah, I did not realize that it was a future, a future version of our society. So Ray calls it speculative fiction. I think that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. It falls into that category. Jan wanted to point out another quick burn about a prize winner in another language, the winner of the twenty twenty six Gran Pri Maginaire Apologies to the French. Honoring the best science fiction and fantasy work published in France in twenty twenty five have been announced and the winner is Eta by Anuk Ferr , that's A T E A and A N O U C FA U R E, the blurb of the novel sounds rather poetic. A navigator capable of steering his sailboat on the suspended oceans of the cl oud , Atea is nonetheless an outcast in the eyes of his people. Born at sea, he lacks the filament, the symbiotic organ that allows his people to coexist with gigantic living islands. The only way he can endure the servitude forced upon him by the caste system is through his maritime expeditions. However, after a pirate attack costs the lives of all of his passengers, Atea loses his right to sail , then chooses the unthinkable , to flee the safety of the islands, abandoning everything , and following the path of his grandmother, an explorer whose tales had lulled his childhood. Cool. That sounds cool. That is a good description. I get it. It sounds like a prize winner to me. All right, so we are on piece number yontent four today The twenty twenty six British Fantasy Award shortlist s has been announced, nominated for best fantasy novel R A Song of Legends Lost by MH Inde , The Outcast Mage by Annabelle Campbell , Magic Maps and Mischief by David Green , self published, Daughters of Nick Nevin by Shona Kinsella , Grave Empire by Richard Swann, and upon a Starlet Tide by Kell Woods . Did you know that I was about to say there's some stuff for your TBR? Did you know that people use TBR to just mean like cognitive overload ? Like what do you know too much? TBR like to mean like I've never heard of that before Yeah, people are starting to use it that way. Fascinating. I know. Language is so weird. It is. I love it. Chris wanted to point out the Locus Award winners for twenty twenty six. The winner of the science fiction novel is Death of the Author by Netty Acc oraphor and you just deleted that right in the middle of me reading it. Why did you do that? Why would you do that Veronica? The evil cackling that follow s too , really sells it as an intentional act ion . It wasn't intentional . I was typing something in discord and I accidentally 'cause I had the square highlighted. I typed it in the square. Typed it in the square instead and then it deleted everything . Anyway, that is That is Death of the Author by Netty Akorafor, winning the science fiction novel for Locals Award and Fantasy went to The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow . Chris put in all the other nominees, but we've gone over the other nominees before, but we'll have those in the show notes if you want to check them out . I really liked I really liked the everlasting . I finished that recently. It was it was good. It was different. Yeah, it was cool. The devil's got a nomin ation , slow gods got a nomination. A lot of the stuff that we read has got nominations in here . For sure. A lot of a lot of great authors too . All right . Jan says the Nuremberg bid is withdrawing from the race for the twenty twenty eight World Con . As the Nuremberg twenty twenty eight page states, this decision comes from a mix of personal, organizational, and timing reasons. Since our introduction at Smofcon in November, we have received wonderful support from volunteers, artists, experience, conrunners and communities across central Europe. We are deeply grateful for that. But as site selection begins, we have to be honest. We are not at the point where we would need to be in order to ask the community to vote for us and be ready to carry the responsibility of winning. This leaves Brisbane as the only remaining bid for WorldCon twenty twenty eight. Hey, Brisbane. Congrat ulations, I guess. I hope I hope Brisbane doesn't withdraw its bid. Oh, they'll just have to start a little bit. What would even happen in that case? They'd start looking around. Hey, anybody else? twenty twenty eight. It's coming up . It'll end up in San Diego 'cause that's the only place that has like enough venues to like or Vegas support or Vegas always has enough venues, right? That's true. Yeah. All right. Well well, yeah, there you go. So I guess are you going to be coming down for WorldCon? Do you have any plans for that? Because it's in LA in August I don't yet , but let's let's reconvene on that. Okay , yeah. We could we hold can a protest about not getting nominated . I currently don't have any additional I'd have to I'm out of PTO right now. . So I may earn that PTO in time. We'll see. Okay . I don't know what might accruel a cruel a cruel A cruel it's a cruel mistress. A cruel makes you pronounce accruel a cruel What is happening right now? I don't know. How do you say that word? A cruel ? A cruel? Yeah, perfect. A cruel? Yeah . Okay . Yeah, you're thinking of how it's spelled instead of thinking how to say it. I think that's a crow to you. A crowbar because it's spelled like a crazy thing. A crow . Yeah, who? Yeah. Anyway, there you go. It's a crow roll summer, Jason B. You said it. All right, well thank you . Thank you everybody for submitting stories. Let us hop into Bear Your Sword, which is our feedback from the audience. I loved this little interaction in the QuickBurns thread on Goodreads, even though it technically violates the posting policies of QuickBurns, which is you're not supposed to have any discussions there. You're just supposed to post the news . But Katie in response to Jan's posting about German translations, wrote , Is there a shortage of translators from German to English? I ask because I have a sort of dream to someday become a translator of science fiction and fantasy from German to English. The way some people dream that they might someday write a book, I dream that maybe someday I'll translate a book. I don't know if this will ever happen. I have full time work and not a ton of free time. I'm not even yet fluent in German. I just keep coming back to it, trying to learn and especially to read in German, I don't even know if I'll actually be good at it yet. And in response, and Katie posted some other things too, but I'm shortening it for the show , Jan posted a response including a link to a page that promotes German language literature for translation into English in the UK and the U. S. and has resources for translators of all experience levels. It's new dashbooks in dash german. com Jan's like, I have no idea who these people are, but here you go . And it could help Katie maybe make some connections. I don't know. That's pretty great. I love to see that. That's great. That is great. That's cool. And good on you, Katie for learning a new language and having aspirations to like take it to the next level like that that's really cool. And don't give up, Katie. I have been learning Korean for seventy five years now, but I keep getting better I just keep at it and I am better now than I was last year and I will be better in a few months than I am now . You just you just, you know, keep grinding it out when you have time, even if you don't have a lot of free time. It may not feel like you're making progress, but you absolutely are. Just think back to where you were before. Or you can be like Veronica and just be at Lomismo same spot that you've been for the last thirty five years Especially like your pronunciation . Lomismo. Lomismo . It's Wonder Bar . Yeah, exact ly . Oh, I'm an embarrassment . But yeah, that's that's thank you, Yan for contributing so much to this community. I think that's pretty sweet. Yeah. Our next barrier comes from Yan . Oh, I thought this was part of it. Okay . Yan also added, I once translated the German nineteen eighties He man and the master of the universe audio play anti eternia into English for the English speaking fan commun , and that was way too much work already. And it doesn't exist anywhere online anymore. That's one of my claims to fame as I am responsible for that fan translation that Mattel is now sometimes using the translation castle hell skull on their toys instead of the correct castle hell gray skull just because I thought back then it sounded cooler and less clone I love that you changed Castle Grey skull to castle hell skull in German because you thought it sounded cooler. Immattel's like, yeah, he's right, it does sound cooler. Let's just go with it. Yeah , you know, that kind of happens sometimes I feel . You know, you gotta go with what sounds better in any language . Definitely. The intent is there . Eventually, all the languages are merging. If that's the thing that gets me is when I'm learning a foreign language and like a lesson will be just filled with English words or not even English. Sometimes they're French, but they're like just borrowed words. Oh yeah What's called the word for online mall online mall . Yeah . What's the word game? Game There's a word for that. I can't remember what it is. It's not cognit ive I don't think. Is it? No , I love how I immediately looked at the chat because I figured they'll already know. Well, yeah, I know it's in Hapa Happiness as it's Spanglish here , but there is a there is a word and I don't know if it's just in Japanese Korean for Korean English. I don't think that's it. Anyway , yeah, that's great. Okay , we didn't have too many quick burns tonight, but we have a lot of book convers ation, which I'm excited about. We do. So let's jump into the Book of the Month discussion. We will kick off our June pick and get into our final spoilery thoughts on Slow Gods by Clare Nor . I'm going to be honest. I usually have started the monthly pick by the third of the month, usually well before the beginning of the month, but I'm reading the latest Notion Grawler Carl and I haven't had as much time lately as I usually have. So I have not yet started the June Pick Red Rising by Pierce Brown , 'cause usually I cheat a little and I throw in some perspective 'cause I've already started the book, it's kind of like this, kind of like that . But if you want to read the hilarious way in which we picked the book, that's in the book briefing at patreon dot com slash sword and laser . Pierce Brown was born in Denver , went to Pepperdine, got a Polyscient economics degree, was working in Burbank as a page at NBC and that's when he published Red Rising . Red Rising reached number twenty on the New York Times bestseller list. It is about a sixteen year old red . That is the type of person Red named Darry Casty . He is the lowest caste of the Martian society. That's what the Red Cast is. Darrow infiltrates the high elite gold class to destroy society from within . So if you want something about totalitarianism falling, hey, red rising. There you go . And yeah, we know it's a sci fi book. So guess what? I did that. We run this town . I picked that. Yeah . I actually have a fantasy book I've been thinking about that I'm like, oh, I guess I can't pick it. So I'm just gonna pick that next and then we'll get together. Okay , all right . So yes, I picked this. It's been on my TBR , not weighing me down, just floating around there in my TBR for quite some time . And I've noticed and I don't know why this is yet, and maybe I will discover that , it is very much a book Tal,k like Instant Talk, Insta Book Fan, I don't know what the fan community on Instagram is called Book Talk community . Fan favorite . And it's often likened to or not liken ed , but mentioned in the same breath as a lot of romantic books . And I don't know why . I saw something that there was like a progression from Acatar Throne of Glass to Red Rising to Dungeon Crawler Carl . And I don't know what all these books have in common other than being like good for some people. I'm going to be interested to see both ends of that comparison . There's definitely a string there's like a people go from romantic to Dungeon Crawler Carl a lot and I don't know why there's definitely a progression there . That's interesting. Yeah, Jason B says, I agree, and I don't know why either Bookstagram. Thank you, Shaman . And I don't know if it's because Pierce Brown is hot he is. I didn't look at it. He's an attractive guy, but I don't think that's it. Yeah I mean so yeah. That didn't be that bad . Yeah, I mean , but I don't think that's why it's done to Carl . It's probably the there's a lot of like, you know , is it because of shoot ? The head Samantha? Samantha is because Samantha . Why? Because she wants to kill his mother. She's very sexy . Oh she will kill your mother though. Yeah. Yeah, maybe says maybe it's because infiltrating slash overturning the oppressive regime. Oh yeah . Tie a good rising part of this. Yeah. That's a good one . Yeah, yeah. I'm reading this with my eyeballs , so have started and the first couple of chapters felt very sad YA to me. , but I'm getting into it now and it feels like it's moving along but yeah, I'm excited to read it and I'm excited to hear everyone's thoughts on it too. Okay I almost started it yesterday and then Dungeon Crawler Carrol got really good. Because I'm almost in it. So yeah. Are you? Okay, I still have like ten hours left . I'm about to get to the eleventh level I've got about four hours left . You won't say anything. You just looked at me when I said that. So I don't know what's gonna happen. No, you don't . Okay . No , nor will you based on anything, I'm gonna tell ya . I feel Pony is so chill in this book. Pony used to call him, Mom . We're friends. . Yeah, he told me I could . Should we jump into our final thoughts? Spoilery thoughts on slow gods? Yes. Slow gods by Claire North. We are going to be spoilery, probably maybe not right out of the gate, but it's going to happen at some point. We're not going to hold back. So if you don't want to be spoiled on any element of slow gods, by Cl are North . You are free to go now . We 'll miss you. Please come back and listen to the rest of this later when you finish Slow Gods by Clare North. Okay , okay . All right, so yes, I finished this a while ago and I mentioned this a little bit in the initial kind of conversation we had about it. This is one of those books that just kind of washed through me washed over me, not a bad way. We're compared to the Dung Q eight four, like you're bathing in the writing effect. You're bathing in the writing, exactly. And it feels like an experience more than a plot driven story to me . I really I felt like the and maybe this is because I did listen to it instead read it on paper . But so I'm missing a lot of that iation between the text and the way that it kind of jumps from like all caps to like bold it or however they differentiate the experience that Maw's having or any of the other characters , the slog s, for example . So I miss some of that context, I think, perhaps, but I still think that the narrator did a good job in conveying that through voice . Yeah, what did you think? I'm pretty much right on the same page. This was, I think I said this before. This is the kind of book where I enjoyed it while I was reading it and wasn't necessarily finding time to read it, but I did do the Kindle E version and the Whisper Sync to the audio. So I was going back and forth. Oh cool, which I partly did because it's so long. And there were times when I'm like, I can't listen right now, but I can read , you know, like a baseball game was on. And when that happens, it's like kind of hard to listen to something, but I can, you know, read it. I enjoyed the character and I enjoyed the worlds , but I'd be hard pressed and it's been a minute since I finished it, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you the story . R.ight I can tell you things I learned like morals that were expressed , you know, about importance of being true to yourself or what love really is . And what I what I did like about slow gods is there are not answers to those things. There are stories that explore those themes and don't give you easy answers . And I think that's very true to life . And it's well explored. It's an exploration of the human condition, even though these aren't necessarily humans . But I but it'd be hard to tell someone what it's about . And if you did tell someone what it's about, you'd be like, well there's this alien presence that warns people that there's a slow motion death coming and they try to get everybody off a planet that they can, but they can't. And one guy who some like hyperspace piloting that usually kills people , doesn't get killed, but it changes him and he's not sure how and in the end a lot of people die but not him . And it would not sound like a very good story. Put a git like that, even though every single thing I said was accurate or most ly accurate because the story is not there. The story isn't the plot . Yeah. And I mean, he kind of is even he 'll talk about this a little bit in later conversations potentially, but he's he's almost like a background character. Like he's set up as like a like a he's he's not going and I'm going to apologize in advance . I don't think I'm going to do a good job with the pronouns for all the different characters Yeah , right now. I didn't write them down. I don't think so if I can't speak for Claire North, but I don't think you're expected to so much as respect them if that makes sense, right? Like there are too many of them and I think that's the point is like, hey, right, you know, like there can be a lot of diversity in a world this big . And in the end , it's not that they don't matter. I don't want to say they don't matter , but it's it's more like you kind of learn them as you go . The way you learn anything when you visit somewhere new and you pick 'em up, but you're not expected to know every language on Earth , right? I kind of felt that way about it. Like, oh yeah, as a side note to that, it did become much easier as time went on to hear them. Yeah, yeah. Like I think in the beginning it was quite jarring and I think that's normal for for people and then you just listen, you just get immersed in it and you're you're used to it and it sounds natural . So I think that's the good the good thing with people is we can adapt and learn things and absorb it into our brains . But anyway, so I felt like Maul was like not a not did not have main character energy, as they say , but then gets in this situation where they're selected as being special somehow. Like something happens where, you know, he goes into the what's it, what's it called the dark? The dark into the dark and comes out the other side and is essentially immortal, right ? And is constantly being reborn. I think one of the most touching parts is when he's terrified that he is going to be put in a situation where he dies and is healed and dies and is healed and dies which happens for all eternity. Yeah, yeah. But he gets out of it, but like there's that fear of it that will be there. Yeah . And I thought the mechanism for him being revived was also really interesting. Like if everyone forgets about him goes away and that's like that's a lovely mix of like the idea that we are immortal because we leave a memory as long as someone remembers us we're alive and in his case she Claire North made that literally true . Yeah , and he does become quite terrifying . Like there is like there's I found it that those were my favorite parts of the of the novel when Ma leans into being the ghost of Hashito . When he leans into that darkness and is like pokes at it a little bit and is like, okay, yeah you want to be you think you're supposed to be scared of me. I'll give you something to be scared about. Like I know that I have this side, this nature and like it felt like it both offended his sensibilities and also was a point of strength for him in some ways as well . Like I don't like this, but I can go ape shit on you if I have to need to do that I could do that if like if you want to F with me like Faffo you know as the kids say that there was a lot of faffo in this yeah and some people faw food and they fought . They fought . They fawed and therefore and they fode. They fought . I to your point about him not being a main char acter, like at one point we get a war and our entire perspective of the war is him like kind of on the fringes of it just like and then I went into a huge battle . That part isn't important. Then I left . Then I went to then I had lunch, then I went to another place. Well, he's effectively a courier, right? Yeah, like he's well not affected he literally he's not a general or anything. Yeah, yeah. No, but he's on the side . That's my point . Is he's on the fringes of the war ? But it's funny too because he's like this unused weapon. Like they don't really know how to point him in the right direction. Like there's they could have except in the end when they figure out that they can use his power to blink in and out of arc space to attack the Shine ships , you know, before they can figure out where he's going because he's the only one who's ever been able to do that . And that's that's pretty cool. That's a cool moment where people are like, oh, oh, that's insane. Let's do that. Let's do that a little bit more . And then there's of course the whole the love story with Gabri. That's actually my favorite thread . I'm a sucker for that kind of love story where it's not like true love , right ? I like the more traditional true love kind of story, but there's a K drama called twenty five twenty one, which reminded me of the Gebray story where they're like, yeah, we're not in love. We're not in love . But there's definitely love, but they never call in love and they don't end up together . And that's Gebre . That's totally Gebre. Yeah, Gabre's like, let's be real honest about what this is and what I'm able to offer you right now. And I think it's very reminiscent of a lot of relationships, you know, like, okay, let's keep this, let's keep this casual. But even with Gabri, you could sense it. It was like a little bit more, but they were just too , they knew they were on a ticking time bomb early, right? Like I say the tragedy of the Gebre story is some of it's a choice . Gebre could have decided. There's also Ma learning like I can't ask that of Gebre . But but there's also Gabrie could have just been like, yeah, man, I'll jump on your ship, your arc ship, let's get out of here and then we can be together . But Gabri was like, No, I have a job. It is to preserve as much of this culture as possible. I know it's a death wish and that yet I'm committed to it. As a reader, partly I was going , you fool . Just leave, but partly I was like, Damn, respect , commitment. That's admirable. As a cancer with much of my situation in Libra, like I definitely am lawful good to that regard. If you tell me to do something , I'm going to be like, okay, well, that's my fate now. That's no turning back. I have it's been decided. And it's like, No, you can actually undecide that. You don't have to. It's like, nope, I tell people this is what I'm doing. So I guess I have to do that. That's what I do now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I could I could kind of kind of see that a little bit. You put one thousand reader comments from the book Lub in here We don't have, I mean, we can just start reading them. Okay, let's go fast. Okay, because I got excited. I did get excited. There's a lot of good stuff. None of it's bad. I'm not criticizing. I just started scrolling and it was like, oo thereh',s no . We didn't even talk about the consensus, which I think is also like a really cool . Yeah, that is that is a really cool device or world building piece where you have I love that nothing is horrible. That's the thing I respect about Claren North's writing is nothing is obvious. It's like, yeah, it's a shared mind, but not like you think. Everybody actually has their own personality , but they feel the experiences of others. They don't share a single mind. They have their own thoughts, but they share so cool. I love that. Yeah. And then there's the whole kind of like the hidden trap door into the black ships , the dri with the consensus member who is kind of like doesn't even know, I think, that she's doing it. Yeah . In a way that was a cool side story , side quest that I thought was very interesting . Anyway, so Jan did a what are we drinking? He said the month is almost over. So what have we been nomining this month while reading? I also want to give a non AI cocktail recommendation that's only based on the name of the novel , a slow comfortable screw against the wall . I felt uncomfortable saying that. One point five ounces of vodka, five ozeroun pointce southern comfort , three ounces of orange juice, five point five ounce of slogan, and zero point five ounce of galliano . So you can mix all that together . And it's a whole family of cocktails from the slow screw to the slow comfortable screw against a cold hard wall with a kiss . So there's a lot of different cocktails you can make . Yeah , yeah , exactly. So thank you for that. I'll try it. I don't have a lot of those ingredients. I should say take this to a bar and say, can you make this? Oh, yeah, you could totally do that. Yeah Tiltab, AKA Judge Ruth said, I don't know that this adds much to the book discussion. All right, no, I'm just kidding. But feel inclined to post this anyway. I've struggled and felt lost for parts of this book, but I have from the beginning felt fond of Mawakana and some PF the language is this book is rather lovely. I was struck by this small paragraph and wanted to share some of the languages. I think she's trying to say some of the language some of the language in this book is rather lovely. I was struck by this small paragraph and wanted to share. Of all the ships I've flown, I've always enjoyed being M I most . We feel like sap and branch. We feel like leaves moving in the autumn wind. We feel like summer . And Tiltab says, somehow I feel that Yup . All right. And then Jan says regarding the snarky slow gods review snippet that was mentioned, here it is , the narrative structure is peculiar. Let's be generous and call it experimental. Less generously, it is dry and oddly monotone. The story leaves leans heavily on character driven momentum , which would be fine if the central character had any interesting thoughts or qualities? Ma, bless him, has the personality of stale bread. Not freshly stale either, the kind that's been left out for days and can probably be used as a weapon , not moldy either. That would give it flavor, just dry . So maybe that explains a bit why I felt a little bad when hearing people were connecting with Maw so much. That review excerpt is not from me , let's Yon, but from this Goodreads review of small gods by Denise. Wow, Denise . Denise came for that book. I disagree with Denise. I do too. I do that too that Ma has no interesting thoughts or qualities. Ma has very interesting thoughts and very interesting qualities. So yeah , Ma has some interesting qualities. Yeah, I take a little not umbridge because I don't care . I dispute that . I think different . Ian says for around the first half of this book did not give me any space operaes re atviv all, limited scope , one ship, an impending disaster, a creeping sense of dread. It didn't help that I was rereading Galactic Patrol at the same time, which is packed with plots, space battles by the second chapter, and it doesn't slow down. It took a while for me to realize the major difference between the two books is that Maw is neither a protagonist nor an antagonist. He is peripheral to a standard space opera story. In Galactic Patrol, Dune and any number of other space operas, Ian Banks is the exception. The main character is the driving plot or reacting to the antagonist. Most of the time, Ma is confused and just trying to cope as events spiral out of control around him. While Ma has power, he does not have the knowledge or influence to aff ect events around him . Then there's his nature. Maw seems to be a direct commentary on the nature of space oper os, and that is that they are monsters who are usually responsible for mass murder and destruction of countless lives. Maw, on the other hand, and who has a name that signifies a vast open space that seems to swallow everything up around it, does everything in his power to avoid taking lives. He is happiest running mercy missions with medical supplies and flying out refugees. An interesting comparison with those who start and fight wars with those who try and care for the people left in the wreckage. I do disagree on one point. I think I think he's happy as just being on his island and his garden. Yeah, for sure. I think he's or on the ship that is, you know, that one ship that he doesn't have to do much except tend to and grow stuff on. Yeah. You know, I think that's that's yeah, the living shift. Yeah, I feel like this is helping me kind of tease out my own thoughts. I feel like Ma is you could see Ma as the typical human. The typical person . None of us are heroes, none of us feel like we have a whole lot of information or control over the events around us, but all of us do have talents . And that's that's Maw. He has an incredible talent , but he's he's like us. He's like, yeah, yeah, I just want to be in my garden, really, but okay, you need me to do something else, I guess I will, but I don't really have enough information or influence to be the great person of history . Yeah, but he could also and I think someone else maybe it was Ruth again disagreed with Ian in so far that he is a protagonist because he doesn't have to go and help and he does . You know, like he's he could just say no, he could just kill everyone who came and told him what to do. He could he could fly away somewhere and never interact with people like he didn't want to. I like that idea that he is neither protagonist nor antagonist though because he's not he is a protagonist the way you're saying, but he's not the protagonist, right? He's not the main mover of events in the story. I can see it both ways. Turpriston says for the record, I do not condone burning books . We didn't think so, Turp. That said, the house I'm currently living in has induction burners, so I don't think I could burn the book if I tried. Not that I would try. My girl cat regularly turns on the stove as she walks across it. That is not ideal. My goodness, it's time . Tomahome says is ask her to make some eggs for you in the morning. Yeah, do that. It's a little non secluder to throw in there for Allio. Turp was saying that something about burning this book . And then one of the clarifies did literally mean burning the John Taloney on what of Theodosius After a lengthy search, Maw finds him at his island home, an island no longer dedicated to housing a dangerous quasi prisoner, but one left to decay as Ma traveled the galaxy and took his part in freeing it. Not just on the island , Ma finds Theodosius in his house, not the glammed up charismatic figure that led the shine, but a worn down figure showing signs of age and dec ay. His various cosmetic surgeries wear poorly. The Odocus has taken over the house without anyone noticing or caring. He's no longer the epitome of desirable traits that the shine had its leaders portray, to the point of having their own inflected pronoun , he's a shadow of what he was, perhaps what he always was underneath that glamour. Theodosius is still the over assuming asshole speaks openly of how he contemplated how he could torture Ma w for an extended period if he still had a team, but oh no , Theodosius has found he wouldn't enjoy it as much. As ever, only his desires matter. They talk about how Ma could kill him and in the end, Maw can't even be bothered to do that. Ma goes to sleep in his bedroom. We never find out what the final end is for Theodosius . He just doesn't matter. I love it. Oh, I love that so much too. I love it. Why did John brought that one up . Yeah, I think that was that was one of my favorite parts of the book where and that that really felt like Ma coming into his power in a lot of ways too. Ooh, that's a really good point. Ma's power. We're like, Oh, Ma doesn't use his power, Ma. That is Maul using his power. That's the biggest power that people forget. Everyone thinks, what action can I take? What action can I take? And Ma shows the power of inaction in the right place in time. He's like, yeah, you just you don't, you don't matter. That's I don't matter anymore . Yeah, I loved that, I loved that . And you know, I will to kind of wrap things up, I will say like huge thank you to Scott and to Yan and to all the people who contributed so much about this book. And if you really want to get deep dive into some of the conversations Sc.ott's written so many great good reads posts that I highly recommend you check out . But one of the things that was quoted in there was also one of my favorite quotes from The Slow . And this is from the conversation the slow is having with Ma when he's essentially saying like you know, you're basically a god now. Like for all intents and purposes, like you're a baby god. And the slow says, I have in short studied what it is to be a god and the conclusion I consistency return to is this that if all life is meaningless, all values arbitrary and all things must end, then while you live, you should live with love. That's the only thing that matters. And I was like , that's seriously, like, what at the at the end of the day is there's nothing more powerful ? And I just I really liked that. Nothing's for throwing bars, happy happiness is a bar, a bar. Yeah, throwing bars . Good, good stuff And actually it didn't feel very long making it through those. So good picks. Yeah . Thanks . And thank to all of you who have submitted so many stories and posts and thoughts to this episode. I appreciate all of you. And of course, I appreciate all of our patrons out there too. If you want to help support us, you can head to patreon. com slash sword and laser. There's also links there to buy books. You can find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites atord S andw laser dot com We are on Instagram X and Mastodon at Sword and Laser. You can email us feedback at sword and laser dot com and our discussions are blowing up over on goodreads and on our Discord channel. We'll see you next time. Bye . Bye This podcast is part of the Frog Pence Studios Network. For more information about this and other shows, visit frog pens dot com Audio program so good. It's like you're there I have in short studied what it is to be a God . And the conclusion I consistently return to is this that if all life is meaningless, all values are arbitrary and all things must end then, while you live, you should live with love, Carl. Let me just listen outside my door. I heard movement. Okay . All right. Probably zombies Yeah, I was right . Zombie child . Gotta go to that. I'll be right back