Red Rising Book Discussion

You are being watched . Sword and Laser has a secret system , a machine that spies on what you read every hour of every day . We know, because we built it. Go to patreon. com slash sword and laser , and pledge support to the machine Hey everyone, welcome to the Sword and Laser. I'm Veronica Belmont, and I'm Tom Merritt. Sword and Laser is a book club, but 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. Sword and Lazer is a book club, but it's so much more. It's also a place where we talk about food. Sometimes, what's your naming, Tom? Dunjong pasta . Tell me about that. That is Dunjong is basically the Korean version of Miso. You buy it in an old tub, you know ? And Eileen has a recipe for using the Denjang that you usually would make a jig out of like a little stew and she had made a pasta out of it and then put some steak in it and it was delicious. Nice . I'm changing mine on the fly . Oh, you were just gonna say you were drunken. I am drunken a little bit. I'm having a little bit of pinot rose this evening I bought a bottle of wine because I was in a good mood because I thought I had good news and then the good news turned out not to be that good. So then I just have been kind of drinking the bottle of wine . It turns out wine works in both those occasions. It does, it does. And just, you know, just a glass of wine every night for the last two . A glass of wine every hour. Yeah, yeah, I'm a light drinker now so like I can't yeah I get very sick if I try to drink more than one glass of wine in an evening so which, you know, not a bad thing per se, but it's I definitely so we were discussing before the show Nerdacular was this weekend and lots of people said to say hello so hello hi and at nerdacular they Scott had it at a hotel . we So were in a conference room and then you could just go up to your rooms. It was like a snowbird anymore. No more snowbird. It wasn't a snowbird this time. The hotel did have a snowbird conference room. They didn't have any spectacular stuff in it though. But yeah, so I would go down to the hotel bar and I would have a drink and it wasn't even difficult for me to be like, Nope, that's it. I had my one drink. Yeah, that's how old I am. Very impact ed. I'm in my herbalism era or herbalism. I've noticed herbalism. Herbalism and the St. John's Wort is blooming up all around squamish right now. So I'm making things with St. John's Wort. Oh, so when I think of St. John's Wort, I think of buying a little plastic bottle full of pills. You're talking about the actual a beautiful plant. Yeah, it's a beautiful yellow plant. It grows wild all over the place and the flowers and the buds can be used to make all sorts of things . I'm making an oil infusion and that's going to be used to help with nerve pain. I have a lot of nerve pain in my foot and elbow right now so you can use it as a skin like a, put on your skin for that. And then I'm also making a tincture , which kind of, you know, St. John's were famously used for like as an antidepressant . And so I'm making a little tin cture with this is funny. So I was like, oh, I need like really high proof alcohol for a tincture . It needs to be like, you know, over ninety proof, like one hundred and fifty one, for example. And I learned that you don't they don't sell that in, well , the tariff fees on American Everclear are now quite high . And so someone in BC was like, oh, I should just make like ever clear, basically, like BC ever clear. Yeah. So now there's a company called , Oh, I'm going to forget the name of it. It's like something proof anyway, or proof something . And I walk into the into the BC liquor store and to BCL and the guys like, Oh, what can I help you with? And I was like, I'm looking for like very high proof alcohol or like ever clear? Eddie looks at me and he goes, Oh, are you being tinctures? I was like, Yes. That's great. He's like, perfect. I knew it because like, oh, you just basically looked at me and was like, No, probably. No, you're a tincture lady. You're a tincture lady. The only tincture I know I have experience with is the tincture of viodine that my dad used to put on cuts when I was a kid. Yeah , yeah. There's a lot of good stuff for that. I'm actually trying to find an aloe plant . Yeah, you can't drink this stuff, dude. You cannot. You have to really, really water it down or you die. So don't drink, don't drink this almost. Yeah, don't drink iodine. Don't drink iodine either. Tinctures or iodine. That's my medical advice. Yeah. We're not doctors, but we pretty much stand by that one. Yeah, I'm pretty, I feel pretty good about that. Positive about telling you that . So anyway, that's what I'm gnawing. I'm making stuff with J Soainhtn's Wart. All right , yeah. All right, let's jump into then the Quick Burns. So many awards . So many awards. So many awards, all of the awards . Spragana , by the way, this is a battle between Sprigana and Yan this week in the crew. Ooh, exciting. Sprigana noted the Nebula Award winners. The Nebula Award goes to the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Jones. No, it's just Steven Graham Jones. I'm sorry . But hey, they won the Nebula, okay? Yeah. Congratulations, Stephen Graham Jones. Novella went to the River Has Roots by Amal El Matar, Novellette went to Uncertain Suns by Thomas Ha . Short Story went to Laser Eyes Ain't Everything by Effie Seburg. Bradbury Award went to Murderbutason Se one Y.ay . Chris White's gets credited for that one. Norton Award went to Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Nudson, Game Writing went to Clare Obscure Expedition thirty three by Gilbert and Jennifer Fedberg again. Comic to went Mary Shelley's School for Monsters The Killing Stone by Jessica Mazen and Poem Nebula poem went to The World to Come by Jennifer Hudac . NK Jemison was the Grand Master and Mark posted a link to Ms. Jemison's Grandmaster speech if you'd like to see it . That's wonderful. That's really cool . You can see that. Like I'm looking you can actually read the whole thing here. It's not even a video. It's just printed out here. So that would be a good, that's a great read. What a cool honor to a wonderful person and a wonderful author. Congratulations . All right, Jan says from Locus Mag the twenty twenty six Ignite award finalists have been announced. The, I'm sorry, it's not is that just a mispronounce it's Ignite not INGIT awards. I see a typo in the sucker one because it is definitely ignite. It's Ignite . The Ignite Awards quote seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction fantasy and horror nominated as best adult novel R a Song of Legends Lost by M H Inde , described on Amazon as a quote unfortunate taste tale of revenge and rebellion . An unfortunate taste. I'm forgetting Unfortunate taste or an unforgettable tale. You choose . I got it wrong in so many different ways just then. That's hilarious. An unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion when a reckless king implements an ill fitted plan to end a thousand year war. Ripped from today's headline from today's headline . Cursed daughters by Ayunken Braithwaite from the online blur b on Amazon, when Eben gives birth to her daughter, Ayeni, on the day they bury her cousin Monif, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief fanned by an entire family that sorry, Eni is an actual reincarnation of Monif faded to follow in her footsteps. Fascinating. Okay, but everyone says when a baby's born that they look like someone. Yeah. I was convinced that my kid on the first day he was born looked exactly like my father in law . He does not at all look like my father in law. And babies always look like old people. Fald little old man. And that's why I thought that. Sorry . I mean, maybe this is true. Maybe it was like much more I haven't read it, so maybe it's a lot more uncanny. I mean, it's nominated for an Ignite, so it can't be bad. Sere says put down the wine. I have not had that I've had like a sip of wine. It's like stop drinking your tiny . You know I just can't read, okay? Let's go. Actually, that's the sign that she's drank too much wine as she reads it perfectly. That's it. That's the difference. That's how you know. All right, Moth Eater by Linda H. Coudega, described in the online blurb as a nuance queer eco fantasy set amid the Appalachian Mountains. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones Jones , described by Volter as Jones' Interview with the Indigenous Vampire , and Harmoten season by Tochi Onibucci , described in the online blurb as West African lore meets Easy Rawlins. Nice. Good stuff in there to add to your list . And we have the Nebula Award winner possibly getting an ignite . I don't know if there's like an egot for sci fi awards that involves the Ignite. Like that's a good question. Yeah. The you get the Nebula the Ignite and the Hugo . Someone mentioned here that it's Tomahome, I think said that Buffalo Hunter Hunter is horror . So that's, yeah, I don't know much about it, but that sounds well, if it's described as interview with the Indigenous vampire, then perhaps that makes that makes a little more sense. Yeah. Spregana back with even more awards. The twenty twenty five Stoker award winners. These are definitely horror superior achievement in a novel went to the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Okay So yeah, so now we've got a stoker, a nebula, and an ignite . So they have a sin. Okay, what else do stoker ignite neb ula ? And if you put the hug if they got the hugo, then they'd have a shin . Stoker ignite nebula Hugo . Yeah, it could be hins. It could be a hint. SI H. I like Shane. Let's think of another is there another Arthur Clark award . Oh yeah, we're gonna get to that one in a while. Then you could have an Ashen . Do we need acronyms? Shane . They got a shame . Okay, keep reading and I'm gonna Yeah, sorry. Spirit Juban in a novel went to the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, Spiritchevan in her first novel went to the October Film Hunt by Michael Weehunt. Superior achievement in a graphic novel, went to Bolling with Corpses and other tales from Lands Unknown by Mike Magnola, superior achievement in a screenplay, went to Sinners by Ryan Kugler, and the full list is available at locustmag com dot which Spurgana linked to and we will link to in the show notes. All right, Spregana also says the shortlist for the twenty twenty six Arthur Clark Award Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinim an, The Dream Hotel by Leila L ami . Luminous by Sylvia Park . There is no anti metrics division by Quintum Quantum, Quantum. Quantum Q and T M, quantum. When there are that's the only reason I know that . Right . And the Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson. Oh, sorry, when there are Wolves E. J. Swift. I talked over you Yeah, Arthur C Cl.ark alert Hmm, okay. Dudecrawler curl. I yeah, like the original, like, what is it? No, it's the first one . Anagrams. Okay, so we had can have shin the shin. Yeah, I like the shin. If you drop one letter, so if we drop, if we drop one of them, we can have San Sonny, Anus . Enus . Anus or hins ? I got an anus . Yes, you do. Yeah . And if it's all five letters, we could have a niche . What if we had the lammies ? How would you do that ? Yan said the twenty twenty six Lambi announced this year's Lambda Literary Award winners for the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books in the category LGBTQ plus speculative fiction is by Alana Mossad . The novel receives high praise from author Ruff Medeski on the book's good reads page Quote, The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Okay, if we add an L , but if we drop another letter, we can have nails. Nails. Snail. Yeah. Snail, the snail words. Yeah. That's SNA L , the Hails . Now, I think Snail is the best there . So that's the what's what was S again? The Stoker? Yeah, the Stoker award. Stoker , Nebula , Arthur Clark , ignite , Lemmy . Lammy. So I don't think Lami, Lami. Yeah, let me win our award show the lemmys for the book I read the least of this year The Lemmy Goes to Guys, I think it's actually gonna be Red Rising . Oh no you read. No, I finished it. I finished it. For some people in the audience I think for the group, I think it's going to be the letmi this year. Sadly . Okay , and then Spregana says the Oh, we have an M now , the twenty twenty six Mythopoic Awards , Mythopoic, the Mythopoic Award finalists have been announced. It's the third year of a separate award for YA books. Children's book had their category since nineteen ninety two. Personally I've read three of the adult literature finalists, Audition for the Vox by Martin Cahill, Snake Eater by T. Kingfisher and the Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Mythopoic Society gives out the mythopo ic awards to let have to get this , to writers who best channel or honor the tradition of the inklings . And of course, then you have to find out what the inklings are and the inklings are CS Lewis , J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams . And so the mythopo ic awards are honoring people that write in the tradition of those three authors. Got it. I had to do a little digging. Do a little research there. Nice. And then Yan has a post that's not about an award . Yan says coming back to Goodreads statistics , Goodreads has crunched their user numbers and published their list of readers hit new books of the year so far . Yay . Books published between January and June categorized by users as read , currently reading or want to read, and including only books with at least a three and a half star rating based on that the following books are at the top of their genre lists. In romantic , the talk books is Rights of the Starling by Devonne Perry, book two in the Shield of Sparrows series , for fantasy, The Astral Library by Kate Quinn about a bookworm discovering a secret door in the Boston Public Library into a magical library where books are literal portals into familiar fictional worlds , and for science fiction , Operation Bounzhouse by Matt Dinaman just edging out his own a parade of horribles . This one is totally different as it's about a sinister military corporate force recruiting gamers to remotely kill off distant planetary colonists . You can understand the other books on the list as well as non genre winners at good reads . All right, so McLerker says mythop , it's mythop ic , not mythopoic mythopoic. You say tomato, I say mythopoic . I feel like it's funny , but also it makes sense that everything, if you're ever being fooled into killing other people using technology, people are going to say, people like me are gonna say a little bit like Enders game for like all of eternity. Yeah, that's your thing . That's my thing. Yeah. You're always saying. I think it's just I was like, I had a sandwich today and you're like, Little like Enders game. A little bit like Enders game. It's been to Tom . It's just a piece of ham on milk bread. How is that like Endros ? Yeah . All right, and then Mark says Bummer, subterranean press will be closing. They will continue publishing work through the end of twenty twenty seven as they wrap up their commitments. I've bought a lot of terrific SF and F books from them, Mark says great. End of an era . Indeed, indeed . All right, well thank you everybody for submitting stories for the Quick Burns . Right now we're going to jump into Barrier Sword, which is our feedback from the audience. Yan writes, What are we nomining from the extensive Red Rising Wikis Food and Drinks section, or anything else really? And as the Venusian fury cocktail made using rums, stout and squid ink doesn't sound that great . My cocktail suggestion for this month is the tequila sunrise. Ingredients are two ounces blanco tequila, four ounces orange juice freshly squeezed, a quarter ounce of grenadine, stir the tequila and orange juice in a ch illed high ball glass over ice topped with grenadine. And personally, writes Yan, I like using a half ounce apparall instead of the grenadine for a nice variation, even though the red rising effect is less pronounced. Very nice , very nice . Ruth says, I very much enjoy the discussion of slow gods in this episode, especially about Maw's agency within the story and his powers and how he chooses to use them or not use them. I also like the part about the ultimate lesson to live with love , although Tom's quoting of the line Nothing's forever, so nothing's to fear has lodged the song Boom a by La Seraphim in my head. I don't know if this was an intention al quotation or if Tom has simply been earwormed as badly as I have by this insanely catchy K pop mashup of the Macarena with snippets of Indian philosophy. Yeah, it was intentional, Bruth. And you pleased it . You passed the test. One other person mentioned it to me and yeah, no, it was definitely me quoting boom pala. How does that go? Boom pala boom pala boom pala yeah boom pala boom pala boom . Nothing's forever, so nothing's too fear. A boom pala boom pala boom pala yeah. Where's the macarina come in? It's like mixed in. It's like sampled. Yeah, yeah, it's sampled at the beginning and end and kind of underneath Got it . All right, Jan says motivation for Tom to walk away from DC to start with this month's pick. What is it? Well, if you go to our discord . You'll see new achievement . Walked away . And I believe it's me holding Princess Donut , walking away while you are riding Mongo? I guess it's Mongo,, ye itah must be Mongo. course Of it's Mongo. Mongo, what else would it be? This is the greatest picture I have ever seen. I mean, we look great . I mean, it doesn't look like you at all. It doesn't look like me at all either. Definitely doesn't look like me. I did finish a parade of horribles, however. Me too. And I have begun reading Red Rising. And as usual, I don't dislike it nearly as much as most of you. Guess what? Ryan's reading Dungeon Crawling Carroll. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah, he's almost he's he just finished book one. Wow . Amos , who produces for Daily Tech News Show is a huge fan and he got his daughter into it and then his wife got jealous so she started reading it and now she's into it so yeah. Yay very infectious I love I love it. Just all of his questions are so adorable and make me so happy to get to answer. Oh yeah. So it's very fun . Anyhow, okay, well that's it for Barrier Sword. We didn't have a lot of stuff. People are on vacation this month , clearly. Book of the month discussion. What was it? That was a lot of, I mean, it's we scroll back up. That was a lot of bugs. There were only two barrier swords. Oh barrier swords. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not as bad. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. Yeah. We don't always need swords. Let's just talk about let's talk about this book a little bit. Okay. Let's talk about this book. All right, so we are checking in on Red Rising by Pierce Brown . It was my pick this month. It is it is a laser . It is a laser that feels sordy . And so there's there's some conversation about that, I think, happening over on the discord as well . It is so I tried to read it first on Kind le and I it was not grabbing me. It felt it was feeling very YAS , which I guess it kind of is in many ways And then I switched over to the audiobook and that helped move things along a lot faster for me. At first I found the audiobook narrator who is, you know, a very good narrator, a well known narrator. He's been at it a while , but it was like I don't know. Like maybe because it is YA, it was it was feeling skewing very young to me. Yeah . And then I've seen people quote what have been your interviews with Pierce Brown that he said that the publishers encouraged him to make this YA because it was sellable . Yeah , and that once it was popular , then the other books veer away from that because people liked the non YA aspects of it . So if you did like this and YA, the YA ness of it was the only thing that we were like, I don't know if that's my thing. Apparently it doesn't continue in that vein in the series. Yeah, that's what I've heard. I've heard it also gets a little more space opera e, which makes sense given the I think I had a hard I've had a hard time not drawing parallels to a lot of other books as well . You know, there's a little bit of hunger games. There's a little bit of a little bit of The Will of the Many. There's some fourth wing . There's some fourth wing even though this predates fourth wing, I'm just saying there's similarities there . There's oh what's Harry Potter book that I just read ? I guess. You think Harry Potter? Why? I don't know. There's a school just make that up. Yeah, I just made that one up. I was just wait, there's a school . Yeah. Yeah. So I have to I have to check my good reads to remember what the other one there was a romantic book that actually it really reminded me of. Oh life. Yeah , in some ways Empire real fast . Anyway, so what did you tell me what you thought so far? I really liked when we were in the in the beginning . The community we're in at the beginning and the world building . I liked that quite a bit I think the plot is well engineered . So I do care what's happening next . I do like, you know, the way the story is being told and strung along I don't think this is a writing doorway book for most people and I don't think it's meant to be . I think the characters might be a little flat for some folks . They're not paper cutouts or anything, but but they are not there are not any like woo, that's a creative, you know carry. I've never seen that kind of character in this kind of story before they they are pretty expected, but I think it's a very competent telling of this kind of story and I really like the world. So that is what's carrying me along. I think for me the doorway to this story is the world because I really like that it gets a little simplistic on the class struggle aspect here and there. Yeah , you know. It's not that I have a problem with the message so much, it's just like, oh, well that's that's not digging into the subtleties that cause this. The class system is very much like and they just did it because they could. And I'm like, you could probably come up with a more intricate explanation. But then again , that's we're not here for the history lesson. We're here for the action. Yeah . I am so confused because now I cannot at all find this other book that I read that it reminds me of, even though I know that I read it . Like geez, okay, I guess I Oh, blood of Hercules. There it is. Hercules, Hercules. Yeah, it reminds me of that because there's, you know , Roman gods and goddesses. Yeah And now you don't mention Enders Game. I got is it Ender's game? Well, it's got to school. Children killing each other and the school . So yeah, I guess there is that. That was a bit of a true show . Sorry, I can't really make the rope is the spacebook of it. Yeah. Sometimes I find it clever, sometimes I find it a little clunky . Like and also it is the kind of trope that I expect from a fifties novel where they're like, you know, ooh, let's weave classical literature into sci fi. And it's been done so much that it falls flat for me occasionally. Well, that's the thing that made me laugh about the audi o book too is like when they start to talk in their like their high society voice, they sound like they're using their like mid Atlantic accents. Yeah . And they're like, Oh see, like Ronald Blood, you little kind of hurt her. Like, stop it. So creepy . You sound so good. Oh, such a pixie, see ? Exactly, exactly. A hundred percent . And so that makes that kind of took me out of it . Like I'm doing the thing where I'm reading it most of the time, but I will listen to it occasionally . And it was really like because you get that really guttural Irish style accent at the beginning and then it I read a lot and then suddenly I'm like, what happened? What happened? Oh, right, we have to sound different now because we're in a different total situation. Totally. Yeah . Yeah. I actually really liked the kind of metamorphosis scenes, like when he's being, you know, when he's going through his evolution with in the very beginning with dancer and those folks, I was like, oh that part was kind of cool. I thought that was like that transformation . I mean, we'll talk clean on it could be spoilery , but I really did like the opening community and the opening section and how is moved into a new pursuit and a new purpose and all of that stuff that they have to do, like you're talking about with Dancer. Yeah, I found all that very compelling And what's interesting to me is I'm reading so many people that are like only got twenty percent in it and then I abandoned it. So I'm like, oh well they obviously didn't like any of that . Yeah , yeah. I think we'll talk more about that in the future. I do want to dive into some of those complaints, I guess, or issues that people have had. There's definitely some misogynistic undertones that a lot of people are calling out that I find interesting , that yes, I picked up on, but also felt like just part of this an artifact of this society some of them I think are intentional because of the way the world is constructed. And I think that's meant to make you uncomfortable because you should not be comfortable with the society the way it's constructed. Yeah . So I think we'll have a lot more to talk about there in the future too. So yeah, I don't want to talk about it, get into it too much right now, but I am very confused why people who read romanticy like really love this book . Like why is it why you haven't got people say the further books get better? Yeah. I'm like, that's always like I always have a hard time diving into a series if the first book doesn't grab me though, you know, it's like it feels like I can just read better books . But overall, I did not dislike it. So we can we can talk about that more later I don't want to get into it too much. And maybe by the time I get to the end of it because I'm not finished, I'll understand the romantic part of it . I so rarely finish things before you . Well, I had to do parade of horribles . I've already finished, yeah, I finished that and then I finished all the parade of horribles and now I'm most of the way through a discovery of witches, which is I'm really enjoying. Witches getting witches. Really great . So that's, yeah, I've been reading a lot this month. Trying to keep off the Instagram. Oh yeah, , good for you. That sounded so dismissive and flip at an insincere. That's good. That is very good. Jason B asks if I saw the show. I watched the show when I was in the States on Netflix or whatever it was on. Maybe it was on HBO, I can't remember , but I can't get it here in Canada. I can't figure out how to see it. It might be on something that I don't have access to, but I'm just reading the book.s, it'll be fine It's fine. I'll imagine it. I am picturing all of the actors in the book now because I've seen like the first four episodes. There's a TV show discovery. Yeah, there's a discovery of Witch's TV show series. It's good . All right. They ended after three seasons. Okay, well then I guess I shouldn't get too sucked into it. It's not in the Canadian Netflix. I can't watch it here. It's on American Netflix, but I don't have access it doesn't have they don't have the right to it fors this one. So because you picked a divisive sci fi book, which is my deal . Yeah, that's right . I think I might pick a midnight pastry shop by Lee Anjo as our next . So it's a young woman inherits a bakery from her grandmother . She must keep the shop going for another month and open it to customers from ten PM until midnight . And of course, there's not ghoulish supernatural reasons why that has to happen. Yeah. And there's it's very cozy because there's desserts and cats . Yeah . Sere says, can't wait to hear if Asta Tech understands why this appeals to romantic romantic .omant Ric syncs ? Romantic as well, thank you everybody. It did turn out to be a shortish episode after all , good for us. We followed through on our only a half hour the normal run of a normal episode of a podcast . Thank you so much to our friends who fund us via Patreon . If you want to learn more about how you can support the show, you can head over to patreon dot com slash sword and laser. You can also support the show by buying books through our links. You can find links to the books we talk about in some of our favorites at sword and laser dot com We are on Instagram X and Mastadon at Sword and Laser and you can join in all of the discussions on discord or on goodreads dot com slash sword and laser. We'll see you next time. Bye . Bye . This podcast is part of the brog Pencei Studos Network. For more information about this and other shows, visit frog pens dot com Audio program so good . It's like you're there