The Strength of the Few – James Islington – Episode 136

 

The Buddies dive into James Islington’s ambitious sequel “The Strength of the Few” – a book that takes “go with the flow” to a whole new level when you lose an arm AND get transported to three different worlds simultaneously. This one had all the elements of a kick-ass sequel: distinct worlds, epic fantasy elements, and tea that makes broken legs feel like a light jog. The Buddies got to chatting about whether this was better than the first book, The Will of the Many, how chariot racing has never been relevant and still isn’t, and insults that keep you up at night. So steep your tea, practice your one-armed spear fighting, and join us we immerse ourselves back into the (three) world(s) of The Strength of the Few. 

Intro (0:00-2:21)

Stock Up/Down (2:22-36:28)

Favorite Scene/Character (36:29-42:40)

Love/Hate/Lingering Questions (42:41-54:39)

Conclusion (54:40-57:31)

NEXT BOOK: The Searcher by Tana French

 

Transcript for SEO Purposes 🙂

All right, welcome to the book club.
I’m Dylan with the man that makes us stronger
together, Keith, what’s up buddy?
– And I am here with the man,
or is other two worlds known as Dylan,
or Big Dilly style for 2069,
so the three alter-egos he’s got.
I wanna know the world where that one exists.
– You know, no, that’s your IM name, kid, come on.
So let’s start talking about it.
– It was Dill O-17,
and I was, ’cause 17 is the day, I was born,
and did not understand the connection between Dill Dose
and what those were, so, yeah.
I was like 12, and it stays that way forever,
so then you’re in high school, people like–
– People don’t forget.
– People like Dill Dull, they know it’s Dill O, Dill O.
Either way, here at the buddy book club,
we’re bringing down some best sellers,
and this week we’ll be discussing the recently released
second part of the hierarchy series,
The Strength of the Few by James Eilington.
I’ve heard it all so many ways,
but it’s his own fault for doing all these characters
like that too, so I’m gonna go with Eilington.
So yeah, this is part of the hierarchy series.
Our last book was Will of the Many.
We were gonna do a little,
a little detour, but said,
let’s just go with it.
But if you’d like to recommend some books for us to read
or reject us any past episodes,
you can visit our website, butibooklub.com.
Slime to our DMs on X, Instagram,
that’s Buddy Book Club podcast,
List of iTunes, Spotify, or your podcast, please download
five star reviews would be great, leave us a note,
all that stuff, please, and thanks.
So yeah, like I said, we’re going to do
listener-suggested book, which we’re still doing,
but Keith has already almost done with this book.
It’s a 30 hour book.
We had just read Will of the Many.
There were so many questions.
The whole thing was a question mark.
And I also had run out of my time on Spotify
to listen to other books, including our next book.
So I just started listening to this again,
and I was like, you know what?
Hi, I think we need to discuss it.
So 4.39 on Goodreads.
I don’t remember Will, actually, I think I have it here.
It was 5.39, or 4.39.
So this one’s a touch last, but it came out in November,
so I feel like people are still getting into it.
Seems like there was a lot of love for the series in general,
or people that are interested in the series on, like,
Reddit and Goodreads and whatnot.
I was surprised at how much,
how many sub-reddit banners there were going on,
not only about the story itself, but about potential theories,
which we may or may not get into.
Let’s get into some stock up, stock down,
Keith, stock up for the strength of the field.
What do you got?
Go with the flow, stock up.
Yeah, I’m someone that tries to go with the flow more.
And I know just this is one of my things,
is I’m kind of a stubborn, plain, spineless baby,
who knows what he likes.
So, you know, I kind of know I need to get out of my comfort zone,
and that’s kind of my thing, but this is just
not a completely different level.
I mean, they do lose it at arm,
and let me tell you something, if I lost an arm,
I’m Debbie Downer, or Keithy Cressfallen for five to 10 years.
I lose an arm, and then also get transported to a new world,
where I don’t speak the language.
I don’t know the rules of physics, or the society,
or anything, like everything’s completely different to me.
No one’s explaining it to me, especially in the second world,
I’ll call it, that’s like the world where you go to school.
Oh wait, no, lose, I see him.
– Yeah, I’m swan diving off that cliff.
That’s the opposite of me.
Like, what are we doing here?
This is kind of like, oh, I’m in a different area.
No one speaks my language, not one person is heard of where I come from.
That’s kind of whatever.
I’ll just kind of figure it out.
I’ll just learn the language.
Oh, there’s teradactyls up there trying to murder people from the sky.
Yeah, I guess that’s just part of the,
that’s that’s a new thing, I guess.
I’m like, wait, wait, what?
He kind of fulfills, like, get busy living,
or get busy dying kind of thing.
He’s just like, yeah, whatever, just fucking go with the flow.
So, that was pretty impressive, and then just sidebar.
You know what, he goes through like the acid thing,
because he even goggles when he’s doing this?
– Oh, his Dante’s peak situation?
I just think about his eyes the whole time.
I don’t know, anyways, but yeah, so,
Ksaka for going with the flow,
I’ve tried to do it more like this, I guess.
Yeah, that whole acid thing was quite interesting.
Yeah, go with the full for sure.
I’m not that person anymore.
When I was in my early 20s,
we did like a Euro trip, and we stayed in hostels and whatnot.
And some of these hostels,
there’s like eight people in a room.
I couldn’t even imagine.
I sleep with the wife next to me and the dog on its bed,
and I have ear plugs in.
You know, like, (laughs)
That’s the world I live in now,
and I was sleeping in a room with 10 other people
from all sorts of different countries.
No way, no way.
For 19 days, like, what are we talking about?
Yeah, the acid thing, I thought was kind of funny.
I feel like throughout our conversation,
we’re just gonna bring up random topics,
’cause this book is 30 hours long.
I don’t even know how many pages it is,
but so much happens.
But the acid thing, it reminded me of Dante’s peak.
I don’t know if you haven’t seen it, but the lake turns to acid
because of the volcano,
and then they’re stuck in the middle of the lake,
and the grandmother takes it upon herself
to jump out of the boat and push them to shore
as the acid’s burning her body to pieces.
That’s beautiful.
But yeah, it was pretty much what this was doing.
Unfortunately, the grandmother didn’t have a scarab
to cut under her, like, that’s what he does.
He basically, because the strap was wearing off,
he slices his skin and then shoves the scarab
underneath his skin, so he’ll be kept alive,
which then reminded me of the mummy
when the scarab’s going to the person’s skin,
so that freaked me out.
But yeah, it was a wild, wild move by this,
to just go into a poison lake, or a poison river,
whatever the case is, but good for him.
Well, my first stock up, kick ass sequels, stock up?
Terminator two, judgment day comes to mind,
empire, of course, the dark night, back to the future two.
I personally like it more.
A godfather two, of course.
Naturally, which we here watch Godfather one,
and then the wife fell asleep during Godfather two,
and we’ve never finished it, but whatever.
Yeah, I don’t know if you have any other sequels that you love,
but I wanna say this one, for me, loved it.
Big fan, big fan.
Not like, oh my god, gushing, you need to read this level,
but I thought this was much better
than the will of the many,
mostly for scope purposes.
Finally, we understand that there’s other worlds out there,
you know, Obedeem and Lyceum, and Rez, obviously,
but it gets us out of Rez.
It gets us out of the school thing,
which really didn’t work for me in the first one.
I just wanted to see what was going on,
and we learn more about will, its abilities,
although it does get a little muddied as to like,
what will, does what where.
But I just thought the story was more enjoyable.
I think it being three different stories
and having viz be different in each of them to some degree,
but also the same, and I liked the Lyceum stuff.
I feel like on the internet,
a lot of people wanted more Rez,
and didn’t love the Obedeem and Lyceum stuff,
but I like the Lyceum stuff a lot.
It just hit my fantasy interests there.
And Obedeem, I thought was an interesting story,
and like an interesting dystopian,
or even like post-apocalyptic world that he had created.
And then all this stuff that happened on Rez was cool too.
So I felt like we were actually going somewhere,
and maybe it’s ’cause we already had the backbone
of the knowledge of what we had learned
from the Will of the Many,
that allowed me to enjoy a strength of you more,
but yeah, I’m glad we went this route,
because I likely probably wouldn’t have gone back
to the series after Will of the Many,
but now I’m excited for the next one.
– Oh, wow, I think we’re complete opposite
into this culture, I like that.
We’re usually not like that, we’re usually kind of aligned.
I’ll just burn my stock down
because it’s specific to this.
I thought it was more like the Matrix sequels,
where, oh, I still like all these people that are in it,
and I know we compared it to like lost and tenet,
though for the first one,
but I just got, I know some people love the Matrix sequels,
I remember being like in the theaters watching,
but they’re like, wait, what’s that?
– Yeah. – What’s, what’s, what’s going on here?
the architect, who?
– I’m lucky I looked this up,
but I didn’t know the names of the worlds
where Rez, who see him in Opetit,
I didn’t even know that shit.
I was like, I’m so over my head on all this stuff.
Like Rez, I was just trying to get a grasp
of what’s going on Rez.
I’m like, why are they fighting?
And where is, he’s like Batman now in Rez?
I’m like, it’s just like so over my head,
and then we have two other planets to deal with.
I do love the originality and the idea of like,
I was splitting in three,
I think that was really, really creative, super good,
but for me, I was, I was swimming in acid,
I was trying to, with my, no goggles,
I was trying to, I can figure out,
I want to see in there, I couldn’t do it.
So, yeah, I think we’re just on the opposite side.
In book three, I was out, I’m like,
I can’t even find a grasp book too.
I don’t know what I’m gonna do in book three.
I will say, and I’ll learn one of my hates here too,
but in book three, that he goes into the chamber again,
and he splits into nine people,
and it’s nine stories.
I’m back in, I’m 100% back in.
Then, I’m in, if it becomes the actual,
if it’s the spider,
if it’s the spider, just breaking away,
no, it gives the actual hierarchy,
keep on splitting down, I mean, listen, I’m in for that.
Yeah, what if he just creates his own,
like, will pyramids in each,
and he’s like the head of each will pyramid,
and then he combines those into the ultimate will pyramid.
It was a good way, well, I guess I’ll get to my next stock up.
So, my next stock up is, play to your strengths, people.
Play to your strengths, very important.
Think about the Patriots and the Super Bulls,
like, hey, how are they gonna game plan this thing?
Play to their strengths, stop the run,
use Gonzales to try to lock down JSN,
and make Sam Darnal beatcha.
That’s what you gotta do, right?
And I think that that’s what Islington does here
with these characters.
We noted in Will of the Many
that there was a real lack of character building.
The supporting cast was pretty mad.
We had Caledis, I think it was his name,
and our buddy, what’s Aiden, our buddy, Aiden.
We’d like kind of those two and then Aekwa
and the other one that was supposedly the love interest,
whatever, but they didn’t really build them out.
We said that, so, what does he do here?
He says, okay, I had a good character in Viz,
and I was able to write him pretty well.
So let’s just make two more of them, you know?
Small to one. – Yeah, well, next one.
– We got Viz, he’s like, okay, well, let’s create another one.
We’ll call him like, see a moon,
and then we’ll go like, Deglon or Deglon,
whatever his name is,
and we’ll just put him in different universes,
and I’ll just write one character in those,
will be all the characters.
So yeah, I have supporting cast characters,
but it’s all the same character.
– Smart. – Yeah, so I, I like that,
and I thought it’s an interesting way to approach a second book,
and it’s a pretty, it’s some heavy lifting that he did here,
and we’ll need to do in the future,
which is to differentiate them, right?
So they all obviously come from the same place,
but now like, Viz and Res is now split off
from Viz and Obedeum and Viz and Lucium.
So they’re, you know, now they’re all in their own pads in life.
So they’re all gonna go through and evolve
into different characters even though they’re the same person.
So I’m excited to see how that goes,
and we can talk about some potential theories later,
but I feel like one of them’s gotta do like a heel turn,
you know, is one Viz at the end,
gonna have to kill another one,
so that he’s not synchronous anymore, you know?
Who, who knows?
It’s pretty wild, and I’m excited to see,
’cause he did do a good job,
in the beginning, this one off towards the end,
they were already grown,
and they were already different from when they started.
So unfortunately with that comes a lack of creating more side characters.
Now you have three different worlds that you have to run,
that have their own storylines.
So we don’t really get many supporting cast here,
and you know, we do get a new batch of spear wielding warriors in Lucium,
you know, unfortunately outside of Tara,
we really don’t get much from them,
and even her, like just a little,
you know, it’s just hard to do
when you’re juggling two other storylines in different worlds.
So, let me ask you this,
would you rather stay in your current world,
but lose an arm or go to another world,
but keep both arms?
Well, I don’t even know,
I’m in that other world,
but I mean, like I’m good.
What?
No, well, you’re conscious of this right now.
Lose an arm, you get your arm cut off,
and he goes, yeah, ’cause then res his arms off, and, uh,
Obedeem he has both arms.
No, no, no, he’s gotten, he’s got one arm in all of them.
Oh, I thought he was missing a right in it left,
and then Obedeem he has both…
No, I don’t think so.
He definitely doesn’t have it.
They don’t talk about his…
That’s for sure.
Yeah, ’cause he gets the arm,
he like picks up the arm,
but I think he sure has both arms and Obedeem.
I don’t know.
Let’s see, hold on a second.
Does Viz have both arms in Obedeem?
Yes, the version…
A-I says yes.
‘Cause he doesn’t really reference it at all in Obedeem.
He’s like, yeah, then I pick something up.
He does not like, you know,
anyway, I like I said, he goes to the flow,
so he might just be missing an arm,
but he don’t even know.
He’s like, yeah, whatever, no big deal.
‘Cause he’s like dancing, I feel like they’d be kind of a big thing,
but like, you have a one arm dancer?
What the fuck is this?
And also people would definitely recognize him.
I think the internet saying that C-Rour gave this
one of those like stones that prevents injuries.
So when…
Oh, it heals.
‘Cause if something happens to you in one,
I guess you like lose in the other or something like that.
So when this like pays the cost,
quote unquote, to enter Lucium, which is his arm,
it like trickles down to Resviz,
who loses hair was our red res,
but he doesn’t know Batilla.
I don’t know, there’s a good question.
I didn’t even honestly, I didn’t even know.
I didn’t even know he had bell times.
That’s, you know, that’s why this book is a little weird,
you know, in some ways.
I didn’t even know.
I knew he didn’t have it in Lucium,
but yeah, so the question was,
would I rather lose an arm in my current world that I live in
or have two arms in an unknown other world?
Yeah, that’s right.
I mean, unfortunately, I’m gonna lose an arm.
Do I keep my family and I’m in this other world?
But it’s like set in Victorian era
and there’s no adaptations to the modern dentistry?
What are we talking about?
Are you going to the next world?
You’re in the Civil War, you’re gonna show up in the dark?
I got damn it.
Yeah, it’s like one of those, the sliders or something like that,
that old shirt, so you all isn’t slide into the Jurassic era.
And, you know, the question for me would really be which arm?
Because I play–
Well, obviously it’s your–
No, it’s for sports.
I would have an after arm and then I do all the normal stuff.
What’s your dominant hand if you’re not a man?
That’s the most important.
It’s my foot, think about it.
Feet.
Yeah, you’re good.
But I take both of them.
Did you ever get a stock-ups?
Insults that keep you up on it, stock-up?
I’m calling Lucium World Two.
World One is the first world to lose a World Three is open to him.
Oh, okay, just a minute.
I would have pictured it differently, but I can’t go.
Oh, well, you’re picturing correctly then.
But he’s basically in the round-tool of schooling and all that stuff.
So he’s been forced into another school.
I understand why he’s like, bro, I have a normal life now.
I’m, you know, with a family, I stub one arm,
but, you know, at least I can just chill out.
It’s, I don’t have to worry about things.
He’s living the kind of, like, you know, just a farmer’s life.
But he gets to the school, they give him the name Leith Fear.
Or, I’m sure I’m pushing to that.
It’s an Irish, actually, phrase, but–
And he assumes it’s because he’s missing an arm,
and he’s like, kind of fucked up.
It’s a bit on the nose, but like, you know,
if you’re in like a top-gun training, they give you a name that’s–
Yeah.
Whatever, right?
So it’s not like that bad.
I wouldn’t, that wouldn’t hurt me.
That’d be something called me like, cast with a ghost.
I’m like, yeah, I’m pale.
Whatever, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna give a shit.
But I would not be able to handle
when he finds out what the real meaning of it is just,
oh, you have no heart.
You just don’t like to give any effort.
I was like, holy shit.
Imagine just being cut down to the knees like that.
Oh, yeah, you’re talented, you’re good,
but you just fucking, you don’t have a takes.
Like Coach McGinty is rolling over in his grave right now,
thinking about this, you know, from a place that’s obviously–
That would be, that’s the number one meanest thing you–
Yeah, because it’s the same exact to somebody.
Being talented but not giving enough effort
is literally the worst thing a closet would be, right?
Like I was just, oh, so anyways, I’m, I’m,
I’m glad he was able to pick it back up and figure things out
and get a new name, but yikes, that hurts.
Yeah, I almost think what is different than like,
it’s not effort.
It’s in like an interest in getting back up when you’re knocked down.
Oh, I think those are kind of married.
They are, they are too to agree, but it’s more for him.
It’s like, she’s like, hey, you know, Tara’s like,
your heart’s like not into this, it’s not that you wouldn’t
come and save your, your buddies here, your soldier buddies.
Well, that’s when they started a respected when you did that.
Yeah, it’s just that, yeah, it’s just that you don’t have.
It’s not, it’s not your number one priority.
And so yeah, he had to show that.
My last one was Cadmos’ T. Oh, same as mine.
Oh, okay, no.
Yeah, I got around the same page here.
Yeah, that’s just like morphine plus adrenaline
and has like a two day half life or something.
It just lives in your body forever.
He’s breaking his legs and they’re like,
oh yeah, I’ll just add some tea, that was what we’re good.
I was like, wait, what?
Yeah, he gets straight up vekned by whatever the guy’s name is.
Desimist or whatnot.
Like legs snapped off at the ankle pretty much bent sideways.
And he uses his metal contraption thing,
his doc-oc situation to support his legs.
But you still have two presumably compound fractures
in your legs plus all the other injuries.
And he’s like running through the city,
doing whatever the hell he wants.
And just briefly every now and then being like,
oh, it doesn’t feel great.
Yeah.
Yeah, he’s like, we’ll likely add some tea this morning.
Yeah, huh?
Yeah.
It’s not like you know, like if you had a thermos on him
and they were like, hey, you better go slow on that
because you can have a heart attack and die
from overdoing Cadmos’ tea.
But no, he just had like a couple sips that morning
and he’s good.
Well, I will say to the, I mean, the reason again,
this book was like way over my head is,
the dude that breaks his legs, I have no idea who that was.
I have no idea what the backstory is, why he’s a villain,
what his motives are.
I’m like, who is he?
He’s one of the leaders.
I guess he’s not in militaries, like one
of the other leaders in governance or religion or whatnot.
He hasn’t been built up as a bad guy.
So, like, that’s unfortunate is that he’s pretty new.
He’s only in this book.
It was the chariot race situation was–
I didn’t know who that guy was.
That’s the same guy.
I think so.
All right, but I don’t know what his deal was.
He wanted his son to be whatever the thing was at the end
to win if he won the–
Dominar.
#NAME?
He wanted his son to be dominer.
And somehow, he’s blaming this for his daughter dying
or his daughter already died.
And then, because of all this civil war bullshit,
his son dies, too.
And so, now he’s like blaming this for the whole thing.
I agree.
Not a good foil.
Not like a great foil.
So, they just like all of a sudden be at the jail like,
aha, I have aqua here.
And he’s like, oh, OK.
And, you know, it’s like, who are you?
I’m like, you’re really making this dude torture this dude
for what reason again?
I didn’t get it.
So, the other thing I’ll add about T– and this is more just a thing–
I need to have my money on a video conference,
and I see someone drinking T. I get so excited, because I’m
a big T. Yeah, a huge T. Yeah.
I’m like, hey, hey, what kind of T are you drinking?
And I’ve never seen anyone give a fuck less than,
whenever I ask people about it.
They’re always like, I don’t know, like, black– green T.
I’m like, oh, yeah, totally.
Wait, T. No.
I’m not going to put myself.
No, I just want to– because I’ve been trying–
everything’s I’ve worked from home.
I like very much drink every morning, if not, too.
And I’ve been trying all these different types of tea,
because like, coffee you kind of figure out,
yeah, what’s the best coffee?
How do I like it?
You know, there’s like 100 variations,
and I’m like, all right, let me find the best tea.
And so I’m asking people and they’re like,
do not give a fuck at all.
Are you loosely for a bag T?
Bagged– my go-to right now is Yorkshire Gold, which
is like what a lot of the British people drink, which
is, I think, is fucking unreal.
And it’s super super cheap.
Yeah.
You can buy like a box of $180 for like $10.
Oh my god, this is the cheapest thing.
But like, that’s why I get excited about it,
because I think I found a good tea, and nobody gives a fuck.
So give me some time.
I love this guy’s other guys’ tea.
I’m like, I’m going to Yorkshire Gold.
It’s like, oh, long for me.
It’s like, ooh, wow.
They’re like, great.
I’m drinking fucking English, but I was just like,
let’s get out with the meeting.
I’m like, all right, sounds good.
That is.
Whenever I think the world’s going to shit,
things like that make me feel good.
The fact that tea can buy like 100 pounds of tea
for $10.
Yeah, yeah.
And throw it in the water, yeah.
We used to have taxes on this stuff.
Like it was a big deal, you know?
It was a big deal.
And now it’s just, yeah, whatever.
You know, I can buy so much of it that I pour half of it out.
Don’t even care.
There’s no other thing in the market where it’s like,
this is the premium item of this thing, and it’s cheap.
It’s super cheap.
Like, you think about it.
Even if coffee, you’re like, oh, I want Columbian
or Costa Rican coffee.
It’s like, all right, we’ll put Costa Rican on it.
And now we’re going to fucking–
Especially if you’re trying to get fair trade, organic stuff.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
If you go to one of those actual coffee shops, too,
or like, we know, not the chains, it’s like, oh, yeah,
you want a cup of coffee?
It’s $12.
Yeah.
I think about it with sugar, too.
Like, you go to the store and I buy a giant bag of sugar
for like five bucks.
And there’s the processing for this to be made
and to be just available for me is so wild that I can just,
I can just have as much of this as I want.
You know, I think about–
I have a big World War II fan, as you know.
And I’m just thinking about people in World War II
who are like rationing stuff or–
Oh, eggs.
We have that book.
Yeah.
Just trying to get a couple eggs.
Yeah.
And people stuck in Russia just–
if you have a cake, it’s made out of shoe leather.
Just wild.
And I’d go to the store and I’d buy it for five bucks
and then blast me forever.
And I think about it– actually, I think
about when I go out to breakfast and stuff like that
when there’s sugar packets there.
And I’m like, I’m using a third of this sugar packet,
and I’m just throwing it away afterwards.
It’s just gone.
And no one cares.
And it’s crazy how awesome that is to live in a world
where we can do that.
Well, they should also have my invention
or my theory that they should have caramel,
as instead of ketchup, mustard, sugar packets, cream,
caramel, I was feeling like caramel sauce?
Yeah.
It’s genius.
Don’t question–
What are you putting it on your coffee?
Is it OK in your coffee, sure?
What are you not putting it on?
Yeah, pancakes.
Yeah, it’s pretty good, for sure.
Oh, god, eggs?
No, definitely not.
No, yeah, I mean, it does make a lot of sense.
I mean, but that’d be like, what, would you put sugar packets
on your eggs?
It’s like, no.
I obviously, but you could put it on a lot of stuff
that you put the sugar on.
Yeah, anything you put your ground sugar,
you could put– I like it.
I like it.
Thank you.
I’ll get into stockdown because you already fired one off.
My first stockdown is agency.
A lot of talk in the communities about agency,
like having agency.
And–
Yeah, I got you.
This has none of it in res.
It’s all– he’s a total puppet of a character.
And he’s just going about doing the bidding of others.
And I thought that was kind of going to change in this book,
because in the world of many, it was like either Al Quiscore
telling him what to do, or the headmaster, whatever,
trying to tell him what to do.
He’s like, oh, god, I didn’t listen to him.
It’s like, OK, cool, bro.
But it seems like he’s just doing other people’s bidding,
nonstop.
And then he come into this book.
And he’s doing the exact same thing.
He’s doing whatever governance or tells him to do.
He’s doing it.
Then Austius comes in.
And he’s–
Call it the flow.
Like I said–
Just following whatever Austius says,
even though Austius killed all of his friends at the Utiquium,
yeah, and I feel like Viz didn’t really grow a lot, although,
at the end, he makes a pretty presumably crazy decision
in taking over all of these UTI or UTI or whatever, who
are now going to be his army or something.
And it seemed like that was something that items, like,
dude, don’t do this.
This is messed up.
But is he working for Khan now?
I don’t really know.
Or is he now finally making a decision for himself?
Because he knew it all before.
And up seeing is dead mom and dead sister and whatnot.
So to assume this army of the dead is pretty interesting,
I thought.
The stakes for that for me weren’t–
I just didn’t understand the stakes as much.
So I think it was interesting.
But I’m just like, I don’t get what this whole thing is.
I don’t understand who–
why are all these dead people being collected?
I don’t know.
Well, they said the UTI or whatever, or whatever,
the guy who presented himself as Khan,
he said that they had been collected over the last few–
or like the last 100 years or so.
And it wasn’t for the purposes that the place or whatever
had intended, which was like to fight against the concurrence.
They had collected them as a way to kind of like fight
against the other factions or something.
Like it was basically like–
Does some Order 66 type shit we’re going to join in?
Yes, exactly.
And I got some of that later.
But yes, it’s exactly that.
So yeah, it’s like, now he’s going to presumably
be using them for their intended purpose, which
is to fight the concurrence.
But they also have the ability where somehow
through the will system, if they kill anyone,
they can then turn them and they come back on their side.
So it’s basically an endless–
Yeah, like an endless zombie kind of–
I mean, it’s really like he’s becoming the night king
from Game of Thrones.
Because it’s like, all right, cool.
He kills all army and then he just turned them all.
So yeah, and they don’t–
like Napoleon going into Russia, you know,
it’s because you can’t feed them, so you’re screwed.
But these guys are empty, so they don’t eat.
They don’t sleep.
I don’t think they sleep.
But they don’t need anything.
They don’t bleed.
This is great.
And you get to see his family again.
Yeah, and presumably, Caledist, right?
I guess that’s a lingering question.
But the last sentence is like, hey, old friend,
or something along those arms.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I see him that too.
Yeah, that’s a joke.
OK, that’s a joke.
I wonder how they all got–
like, how do they all get there, though?
So someone’s just like–
like, his family was killed in Sioux,
so someone took their bodies on a boat, brought them back over
to Katen and then found this place
and shoved them in this hole.
Yeah.
I didn’t really get it.
What about stockdown?
Yeah, last one, charit racing stockdown.
You’re very touched on it a little bit here.
I’m not sure this stock’s ever traded.
They’re very–
Well, what?
Then her?
It hasn’t been traded in millennia, potentially.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, I don’t really get charit racing.
It sounds like you want to just big crash
and just done the horses on it.
Gladiator?
Didn’t you like the char–
I mean, it’s great.
It’s not a race.
I mean, I don’t understand the whole principle concept.
Now, we’re talking pod racing.
OK, now this is pod racing, which
is a great neighbor podcast, by the way,
that’s a story.
Now, that would be a stockup, because I’d
always is.
But anyway, in this book–
and you might have to clear this up for me, but this wins
the competition, right, at school.
He then goes and proves that he’s as strong as anyone
with what one arm.
So he gets diameter.
And then this dude from an 80s bully shows up.
I don’t know who this guy is.
We already talked about it.
He’s like, oh, yeah?
You’re not the real diameter, because you
don’t– can’t win a chariot race.
And he’s like, no, I can’t.
All right, we’ll prove it.
Sucker, and I’m like, what’s going on?
And so the stakes are–
you lose, someone else gets diameter.
You win, you stay diameter, which is what you’ve already earned.
I was like, what the fuck is he formally recognized by
Desimiss or whatever?
No, just say no.
Didn’t make any sense.
And then he still wins.
And then they don’t give him the top position, right?
They give it to someone else.
And then I was like, what was the whole point of this old
series that we’ve seen here?
It was very much the Aspen episode of South Park,
Standarsh situation.
Aspen is going to sing.
Yeah, the sking.
Oh, you’re getting it, boy.
He’s like, what?
Yeah.
I didn’t– I didn’t want to just–
All right, fine.
Meet me at 5 o’clock.
Yeah, it was– the whole item with you.
It was on my hate, the chariot race thing.
It didn’t make any sense.
We haven’t even heard about chariot races or even,
like, horsemanship being a thing in here.
And then all of a sudden, they’re in an arena for their tests
that involve chariots.
That there are chariots there.
So they’re like, OK, cool.
Just like, get the horses out.
Let’s do chariot races, which are super dangerous.
And people could have died right there.
And the stakes didn’t make any sense.
Mostly, it just seemed like a way to introduce
this bad guy character that’s going to eventually–
Right.
#NAME?
It made no sense.
And there’s so much other stuff going on with this book.
And we talked about supporting characters.
And so much other of the stuff could have been–
I would have given that time to just give me
exposition to be like, hey, we’re
going to take a break from the book.
And we’re just going to give you exposition
about what we’ve learned about this world so far.
And I would have loved it.
The chariothing, yeah, made no sense.
I also don’t know their stuff in Roman.
I remember in the first book I talked about this too,
I’m like, they just randomly are like, dominos.
What?
And they don’t ever say to keep their stuff up.
Is this red-rise?
Why are they Roman?
Red-rise is the whole theme is, you know, Roman stuff.
This one just throws it in like, sprinkles, chariots racing.
So I didn’t really make it done a sense to them.
Apparently, I looked up, it’s supposed to be each planet,
or each thing is like, this is Rome, this one’s Egypt,
this one’s some other empire, I was like, oh, I guess,
I didn’t, is that supposed to be known?
So like, Obitim’s Egypt and–
Yeah, what’s the other one?
Lucasem is Celtic tricycuse cymbals, I assume it’s–
As a–
Ireland?
Or–
It’s Celtic as someone who is–
Sorry.
You should know this.
I guess that’s where the Dalai gone name comes from.
He’s definitely an Irishian.
Deglent.
And they’re speaking Galic.
Yeah, I was going to–
I worked on Viking or Galic, so yeah.
My last talk down is people online, talk down.
Everyone’s still like, well, them anymore,
like I talked about.
There’s just a lot of hate on the internet
because I was going through Reddit,
because now I was a little bit interested in the theories.
You know, I was like, OK, where do people
think this thing’s going?
Especially because we’re presumably not
going to get a book for a long time,
and I just finished reading it, so I mean,
I spent a little time digging down the rabbit hole.
And interestingly, there’s a lot of hate
on the Obitim and Lucyem storylines.
People, like I said, they just wanted
to get back to Rez, which Rez is kind of like a political drama
and not in a fun, dune way.
It’s more of a confusing, I don’t care way.
Well, they keep on jumping around time on Rez, too.
It gets not linear.
It’s just like, all right.
And now, I guess he’s like Batman in it,
all of a sudden.
You’re like, what?
You didn’t explain why he did start doing that.
I mean, I guess I’ll burn a hate, too,
but it’s one of my hates the whole time thing.
I have no idea how much time is passing in this book.
So he gets hurt when he kills all the leaders of military,
like all the Ducodons or whatever they’re called,
the head people.
And he’s injured.
He goes back to Casa Telemis or whatever the case is.
And then someone’s knocking at his door
because they’re hunting for the guy who killed him.
And they’re like, yeah, he killed all these people
like a week ago.
I was like, wait, one page ago, he just did this.
So it’s been a week or whatever the case is.
Time was very confusing.
I had no idea how long he was in Lucía.
I think that instance is he killed the thing that happened
that was a week ago.
And then now he’s out there being Batman,
doing different things, starting a briots
and whatever, doing all that stuff.
And he just got back from his most recent mission.
That’s what I read it as.
Just started doing that all the time now.
And then he just was on a very, very specific mission
recently.
Oh, OK.
I could be wrong.
Yeah, well, that would have made more sense
because he was so wounded.
Like he was wounded in one eye.
Yeah, yeah.
I don’t think he got wounded when he–
because the other just attacked all of them and killed them
and that was that.
I thought, right?
You don’t think he got injured from that?
Yeah, but then even with Lucía, he was with that family.
But it wasn’t clear how long he was that family.
Presumably, he was there for a while because he got healed up
and had a nice relationship with them.
But I have no idea.
And I don’t need it to be like, you know, the SpongeBob,
like two days later or whatever the thing is.
I don’t need that.
But give me something here because we’re
jumping in three different worlds and times
moving at the same, I guess.
But how is it moving?
I just– I didn’t know.
But back to my–
I stalked down on people online.
I don’t know why they think so much cool stuff is happening
in res because it’s not.
And over to him, it’s a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland
with flying dead people that have blades for hands.
Like, that’s pretty cool, right?
That’s got to be interesting to some people.
Like the Gleaners themselves is like, holy shit.
Like, that’s cool.
Lucium is some sort of, you know, you said Celtic.
I said Viking or Galic, Fantasy Realm.
There’s Druid, child soldiers, the good kind
of child soldiers, not the bad kind.
And unknown magical elements.
It seems like Will there is much more magical than cut and dry.
I mean, it’s definitely not cut and dry
in the other two for sure, not.
But it’s more like has the theory all elements as opposed
to physical ones that you can clearly define.
I don’t know.
I found both of those storylines to be interesting.
And I didn’t just want to be in res.
So that was my take.
Yeah, I would rank Lucium one.
And then–
Res and Obateam, both to me, I just was very confused.
I thought Obateam’s picture they painted of that
was really, really cool.
I just imagine that is like this desolate temples and pyramids
and things I was like, oh, shit, that’s a really cool point.
Like, I’d be like, they really did separate the three of them
really well.
But yeah, I had no idea what’s going on.
Obateam other than that.
Yeah, Obateam also, it seems like a totally weird place
because there’s pretty much just two sets of people.
There’s the Yunk-D who are the dead people.
And then there’s like the carar or the Qatar or whatever
the case is who are supposedly the not dead people, which
is like the girl that he met that was farming and whatnot
over there.
So there’s two types of people.
There’s either the dead people or the not dead people.
And all the dead people are working for cop plus the cleaners.
And obviously we get like netacrat too.
But yeah, I didn’t–
I’m not saying I loved Obateam by any means.
I was definitely Lucium was my number one.
But I thought it was almost as good as Res.
And it just also happens to be the one place where
Seeror who does most of the exposition of what the will
elements are and how he’s there happens in Obateam.
So that’s why that was helpful.
Because whenever we went there, I was, OK, well, maybe I’m
going to learn something about the actual elements
of these worlds.
Favorite scene or storyline?
Yeah, I mean, I kind of just burned it,
but I was going to say World II, a.k.a.
Lucium was, I think, the best.
I also thought it was nice.
There was some cathartic moments with his dad.
The ending duel was really great.
I didn’t really get the whole journey
to prove himself thing with all the statues when he gets his arm.
Yeah, I started to come into life.
And then he’s taking control of them.
And then they gave him granted him an arm.
He comes out of that and he gets kidnapped.
I was like, what do I–
Yeah, I think it’s like some walkabout slash.
What’s that thing that Native Americans do
when they find their spirit animal?
They go out– They do that for the 300, right?
Or whatever?
Those people did it too.
They’ll be like, you got to go off and kill a bird or whatever.
No, kill an animal and come back and even can’t until you do that.
Yeah, so I think it was kind of like one of those things
where it was like a test.
OK, everyone’s journey is different.
And presumably, this is where a lot of these warriors
would get their magical weapons or something,
but everyone’s journey is totally different.
But whatever happened to this here that the Druid saw,
whatever his name was, was completely off crazy,
off the whole– off the reservation from what?
Off the reservation.
I shouldn’t say that, but I’m also talking about the Native.
But it’s totally different, way different than anything
else that I know to everyone.
And obviously, he gets his arm out of it, which is a whole
another story.
But most people are taking a staffer thing out of there
and he cuts off one of their arms.
But he’s obviously able to use the will much differently
than anyone else because he’s synchronous.
You like the dad’s that I was like, oh, cool, it’s his dad.
That’s weird, but also–
All right, and then–
That was nice.
Yeah, yeah, you get to see his dad.
They talk shop.
Yeah, dad’s like, his dad gave him that it’s not your fault,
which was awesome.
It’s not your fault.
It’s like, also, his argument was so terrible,
but it worked out vises of being like,
I made the mistake the first time of not going back.
It’s like, Viz, you were a child.
If you went back, they were going to slaughter you.
Like, what are you talking about?
You made the right decision.
He’s like, I’m not going to make that mistake again.
It’s like, OK, cool, don’t.
Like, what?
That’s not– what are you talking about?
For me, favorite scene, I don’t know.
Diago working the throw outside of the Heads and Military,
which kicks off a civil war.
That was pretty cool because it was unexpected.
You know, new Diago is there.
Obviously, Austius is an interesting character.
He– I need to know more about him.
I’m excited for that for future books,
because he travels through the wood for worlds, which is,
like, how does he do that?
We have no idea, but he’s able to do that.
Presumably, that means that Viz would be able to do it too.
Like, on his own, not just like, with Austius as a guide.
But yeah, I thought that scene was cool,
because it obviously kicked off the civil war on res.
And then he’s like, legitimately ripping
the throw outside of these people.
And Viz also deals with, however much will,
more will than anyone has ever done pretty much.
And you know, he can do anything at that point, physically,
with how the will works in res.
Viz– I really like Viz becoming Neo in Luceum, which
is when he’s fighting Tara, and she’s beating the shit out
of him, and all of a sudden he feels the will take over.
It is the end scene of–
It’s all loses, though.
Yes, it loses.
But it’s legitimately the end scene where now he’s
using his spear, but he’s like, I don’t even feel it as anything
besides an extension of my body.
And he sees Tara, I like, start to get freaked out.
It pretty much was that scene.
Or not to be confused with Viz becomes
the Winter Soldier in Luceum and beats Gulkavar at the end,
which is also in my top three, because all of a sudden
he’s got this silver arm and people
like, what the hell?
And he’s Neo and the Winter Soldier?
At the same time?
So yeah, I might go with that one.
I like that one.
Because also, fuck Gulkavar.
Now, that’s a bad guy.
That’s a foil.
Yeah, I agree.
That was– you seriously built up well at least.
Yeah.
Stabbing people in the stage.
Anytime someone gets stabbed in the stomach
with a spear in a violent manner, in a movie, or anything,
it’s like, that’s fucked up.
I don’t like that person.
So yeah.
What about the best character?
We got like, Amos, who we haven’t even talked about.
He’s in Obatium.
He’s the Jungti that is like, this is friend/right-hand.
And man, Desimist, the head popper, Tara, Gulkavar,
Nettacret, Osteus.
You could pick Lieners if you wanted to.
I don’t know.
Those are just a couple that I thought for new people.
Yeah.
I had a tough time with this one.
I think I’m going with the AGO though.
Just like–
Just repping the rest out.
Is protector?
Is dire wolves, I guess?
But I never bring David Thoreau.
The dire wolves just disappeared all of a sudden.
Nothing to do with anything of the story.
I don’t know if that happened.
No, actually in the book, Arya’s dire wolf
is like, almost has her own storyline.
Like, she’s out in the woods.
It’s like through Arya’s dreams, I think, Nymuria.
But she’s like, out in the woods basically creating a wolf
army that she’s at the head at.
So presumably, that whole thing that happened
when they fight the Night King in Winterfell
would also include a giant army of wolves
led by Nymuria.
But I don’t know.
That’s conjecture.
Yeah, I think Deago’s a good answer.
I got to go with Cadmos, my guy, the tea maker, Cadmos.
OK, yeah.
I couldn’t think of it remember his name.
I kept on calling him Alfred at my time.
Well, it’s funny because in my head, it’s same thing.
I said he was giving off Alfred vibes from Batman.
It’s like, oh, Master Viz, welcome home.
Yeah.
Here’s some tea for your Batman.
Yeah, it’d be hard.
Bandaging him up, helium, and then giving him
the tea and covering for him.
And he knows Viz’s secrets, but also doesn’t–
you know what I mean?
Doesn’t ask.
He’s just a good Alfred character.
Yeah, I think I go with Cadmos for me.
What about loves?
Would you love about the strength of the few?
I mean, I think it’s similar to the last one.
It was just super impressive.
I think I’d say it was ambitious the last pod.
That’s all the reviews.
I was like, oh, he really took a swing on this one.
And I commend that because he did really create three distinct
worlds.
He’s somehow combining all of them in some ways,
and there’s all these different–
no, it’s not enough that it created a system of will.
I’m going to do systems of will across three different–
Yeah, the will land it.
Acts differently in three different places.
It’s just high level fantasies.
There’s no other way to put it.
It’s just intense.
I don’t know how you ever think of this type of fantasy.
So super, super impressive for that.
And then I still love me some Viz.
I mean, to your point, hey, you know what?
We should do just split up three times, because it’s a great
character.
It’s like, yeah, yeah, it makes sense to me.
Yeah, I’m good with that.
Yeah, well, yeah.
Yeah, like the three worlds that they were so distinct,
I think you did a good job of transitioning nicely
between them.
I always knew where I was.
Great.
It’s obviously like different chapters.
But sometimes a chapter would continue
with the current world we’re in.
But other times I would jump, and he wouldn’t say, hey,
we’re in Lucium, you know, it was like through the interaction
or the people, obviously, you would know.
And they just had such distinct features
and the things that were going not only just like the will
was different, but the whole purpose was different.
Like in Lucium, he’s kind of doing the training thing again,
but he’s also, you know, with his family,
he’s just trying to like not necessarily
get involved with the politics or not.
He’s just trying to live, but he gets pulled into it
with the druids and whatnot.
Well, I guess the other thing is when he splits,
that was interesting to me.
It was just his knowledge of what the situation was.
In Lucium, he has no idea that he exists elsewhere.
He goes to Lucium, he’s like, oh, I guess I just got here.
I’m in this new world.
Like what the–
Yeah, he did.
He took a boat.
Yeah.
He doesn’t think he’s in a new world.
He’s like, oh, I just took a boat to another part
of the country that no one knows.
Yeah, exactly.
He does doesn’t even know what the situation was.
In Res, he doesn’t really even know that he’s synchronous
until about halfway through when he goes back to Solvargas
and learns it.
But he just thinks like some crazy stuff happened.
And only an Obedeum does he know that one, he’s synchronous,
and two, that he has to kill Ka.
That’s what he knows from that point.
So his goal in Obedeum is, oh, I got to go kill Ka,
how am I going to do that?
His goal in Res is to get in the political thing
and climb his way up so that he can do something or another.
And in Luceum, he’s just like, living.
So that’s why I liked it so much.
It was like, each one had different goals and objectives.
Makes sense.
I thought Ake was death was shall I say mind-blowing?
You know, when you’re at–
Can you blow your head off?
No.
When you’re at the hands of an enemy,
it’s not a good time to lose one’s head.
It’s not the way to get ahead in life.
It’s a shame she wasn’t more headstrong.
Wow, you really heard those.
That’s impressive.
She’ll never be the head of a pyramid now.
Oh, Austin Powers, you–
It’s honestly the first thing I thought
about when he popped her head.
It was like, oh, she’s never going to get in the head in life.
So yeah, I thought– but in actuality was not expecting it.
Granted, we didn’t really build her up too too much,
but it wasn’t fortunate.
I did feel the other thing I loved is I
felt like we got a lot more exposition in this book, which,
you know, what is actually going on.
We learned about synchronism.
We learned a little bit about how Will works,
or at least we learned a bit about it.
You know, they even say, oh, adoption.
Adoption is to see other people’s will and use it or take it,
you know, like, oh, now I know that that’s a thing.
The concurrence that it was a bad guy, I guess.
We still don’t really know what the concurrence is.
It’s very misborn-ass with that.
Exactly, but I was literally about to say that Kha
sounds a lot like whoever the leader was, the bad guy.
And the first one, yeah, they killed him, and he’s like,
I was holding off the real bad guy.
I think that’s the well of ascension.
But yeah, it’s like, he’s the bad guy.
He’s like, I was actually trying to keep everyone alive,
even though all the stuff I’m doing seems terrible,
I’m actually helping because there’s
worse thing behind me.
So like Kha’s not the Kha is doing the, what are the cataclysm?
So like, there’s cataclysm every 200 years
that are killing a bunch of people or whatever.
Like Kha’s doing that, but he’s doing it
to hold back the concurrence is what he’s saying.
So interesting.
We’ll find more about that.
You know, why they killed Vizis family?
You know, they found this weapon, and it’s the same one
that like Esteban used it the Namakia.
So like stuff like that, we actually learn like what’s going on.
So I like that.
And I also like the Yunki, the Yunkai, whatever.
We had seen a little bit about them on Salah Vargas
in the Pyramid and didn’t know what the hell was going on there.
They just didn’t have eyes or something like that.
But JEDF is the one we ended up meeting
in the early on in this one.
And they’re dead.
They don’t eat, sleep, breathe, or age.
And they operate off the will of the person that brought them
back.
Pretty simple.
And now Viz has an entire army of them.
So we’ll see how that works out if he becomes the Night King
or not.
What about Hates?
Strength of you.
Yeah, I think I’ve kind of covered all of them.
I mean, really, it’s just–
I think it’s just I’m not smart enough for this book,
unfortunately.
This is what– when I said it, it’s like Dune to you
on the first one, you were like, what?
And I was like, yeah, there’s too much going on.
And then you times it by three, you know?
It’s just–
Yeah.
This little brain of mine is not really
a cope for this.
I think you need to be locked in on fantasy
to get into this.
I think you just need to be fucking ready to go.
Yeah, I disagree totally.
This is way more complicated than Dune.
Because Dune is a–
I think Dune is much more hard–
Harder to be–
Because the writing is–
Because writing is a collegiate level writing
or something like that.
But once you understand the powers at play
and what they’re doing, which is pretty much spice,
then, OK, now I know there’s houses.
They either want spice or have spice,
and they’re trying to hold spice or trying to buy spice.
Once you start including magical elements, which happens here
and the Benadjezer at stuff in Dune doesn’t count,
because those are more mystical than magical.
Yeah, once you start including a whole will system,
it’s kind of the same with this board.
It was a lot confusing at the beginning
because there’s so many different types of metals
and some push, some pull, some strong, some weak.
There’s exponential ways that that can work.
So yeah, I think this is actually more complicated.
But I agree.
I mean, keeping track of the various will powers
and how they vary by world, I thought was not a great thing.
I did love the metal and viewing.
He does in res with that like suit he created.
That was pretty cool, but I agree with you that this was–
it’s definitely hard to follow for sure.
Chair race talks about–
and then I guess the different factions in Lucien
were kind of hard for me.
I didn’t know who was with who.
It’s like, oh, there’s King Rowan.
And this guy and I’m fighting with Fedorius.
And I’m like, who are these people?
What?
I know there’s a druid sect, but outside of that,
I don’t know who’s with who besides Galcovar’s bat.
So didn’t really get that part.
What about lingering questions, do you have any?
Where do I start?
I think I’ve asked a lot of them during the app here.
I think– but the biggest stuff was really Obatiniam.
I think Res was pretty straightforward.
I was– I wasn’t really super botaned to the–
oh, there’s a big– usually I love political revolutions
and civil wars and we’re fighting for that.
But I just wasn’t botan.
I was like, all right, I don’t know what this takes.
I don’t really know why I should–
Yeah, you’re about to play with side wins or–
Kia to convince you didn’t to come fight with him.
And I’m like, I don’t even know what they’re talking about,
what the context of this is.
He’s like, I got to fight for this faction.
I was like, yeah, but you haven’t really set up the factions,
so I don’t know why you should care.
It’s just the whole conversation is there.
I kind of just was like, all right.
Let me know when we get to the next thing.
Lucie and I think was like, could be its own book,
so I thought that was good.
But Obatiniam was just–
when he started cutting himself and fucking disintegrate people,
I was like, what–
Yeah.
He walked through some door.
He gets the flail and it’s such an Egyptian thing.
It’s a flail and crook, basically like what you see them.
When did he get those powers from?
He went there off to a door.
I didn’t get that.
He went into some hall and found there was a flail and crook,
but he had to bleed on it to get them and then he got them.
All right, that’s the–
I’m gonna put it–
I was like, all of a sudden it was just like the next–
the next time they should see him, he’s like, and explode
another hand.
He just became like a–
who’s the guy that’s an X-Men that could like shoot stuff
from his hands and shit like that.
I don’t know if maybe there was a robots that did that.
But he didn’t listen to that.
Yeah, that person.
And I was like, what’s going on?
Like that one just was much more complicated.
Whereas I just didn’t care as much about it.
And then Lucie–
you see him at least, so I was like, all right,
I can get down with this at least.
Yeah, I guess I’m going to say that through our conversation,
I feel like we find Obedeem to be the worst,
less most complicated, just because we didn’t talk about it
a ton.
Yeah, kind of the end.
What happened to the end of the–
He ended–
He thought it’d go all–
He finds Ka, or what we think is Ka,
like a sleeping Ka on a table or something,
and he’s going to kill him?
Or it wasn’t very clear.
Like something was going on there.
Maybe that’s not even Ka.
I was like, where’s Seeror?
The whole second half of the Obedeem thing,
but I guess he went off.
Seeror says in Obedeem that Ka has been there thousands
of years, he’s got all the empty under his control,
and he must be because of that, he’s the concurrence.
But in Res, Ka says he’s against the concurrence.
So we’re not exactly sure who’s the bad guy.
There’s a lot of theories out there that Seeror
is the bad guy, potentially in Obedeem and elsewhere.
He might also be synchronous, because they said in Res,
they found his body, but it was all mangled.
So maybe that wasn’t his body.
And Seeror still exists in Res.
And we know he exists in Luceum, or at least he says he is,
because he identifies himself at the end as a Rewark
or whatnot, the Druid.
So there’s theories out there that he is synchronous
and that even if not, that Seeror is controlling
the non-UNTY people, that like he is,
like they are, the non-UNTY people are also dead,
and he’s controlling them because they don’t,
like it’s hard to tell who’s dead and who’s not.
And there’s also a potential
that if Seeror is alive in Res, that who’s the blind girl?
Luceum, or Luceum, whatever.
Yeah, Lannestia. – Lannestia.
That Lannestia is his unty in Res.
Oh my goodness.
I read the whole thing.
– I read the books and I didn’t know if you had
read this book in some of the lessons this far,
they’d be like, what the fuck are they doing?
Yeah, Oh my god.
It’s so true.
– Or nerding out so hard and not in like, oh my god,
this is crazy, but yes, a little bit,
no, this is crazy, but yeah, if someone was just like,
hey, let me listen to this podcast.
– Everyone’s Star Wars was like mind blowing
or was like, they think all the force is like,
come on, bro, slow down.
You get to explain that to me a little bit more.
– Yeah, well, to be fair, I’m reading, at the same time,
I’m reading two towers and good god.
Like, it’s, it’s straight four pieces of story,
but if you want, that’s the thing about two towers
or the Lord of the Rings in general,
is like, you can just read it as a story
and you’re like, okay, I get everything.
But if you want to, like, anything someone says,
you can click on something and be like,
all right, now there’s this whole thing.
Yeah, You can deep dive into the next thing.
It’s like, oh, the ends are talking about the end lives.
You can just go into that whole thing,
but you don’t have to.
This one is like, they’re just throwing it all at you
and seeing what sticks.
So Keith, the strength of the few,
who is the force kind of, not fair,
but he’s for anyone that read the world of many
and wants to continue, so I’m not even gonna ask you that.
But what do you give it out of five?
What do you give it?
– So my last one was 4.25 and you were three.
I’m going three this time.
I think, again, it’s just, you were like,
I can’t wait for the third one.
If we get to a third one, I’m gonna have to.
I literally will have to take a college course on this
and what’s happening.
He doesn’t give you any sort of,
oh yeah, you remember in the first book
when I talked, there’s none of that.
There’s zero that.
I think if you like this book, 100% understand.
If you’re with me and you’re somewhat of an idiot,
then I also understand why you wouldn’t like it.
I would buy You a gig of It three.
– Yeah, I’m not clamoring for book three.
I think I will read it, which is more than,
I mean, we’ve done a lot of stuff for books.
So, granted, there’s a bunch of series we’ve done
that I would like to go back and actually read.
Like, primarily two.
I think the one with like, what’s his name?
Fought nine fingers.
Joe, Joe Abercambi, Yeah, I like that one.
I actually downloaded the second book at one point
when we were in like a,
or when we were like, I had finished the book earlier
and I never got to it, but yeah.
The nine fingers one and then the other one
with the warrior that could like go into the death zone
or whatever.
Yeah, in your time, with the African one?
that one was sick.
I’m not clamoring for it, but I will read it.
I give it a three seven five, which I think is,
is really good.
That’s for me.
I don’t know how these numbers work on good reads
’cause like four five, like that means it’s the best book.
The only thing I’m giving four five and up
is literally learn of the rings when it comes to fantasy.
– Should basically be like, you have five five stars,
you’re not allowed to get any more than that.
– Oh, that’s interesting.
– You know what, once you hit one,
that amount, then you’re done.
Everything else should be, you can get 104 stars,
you get 103 stars and then you’ll only
get one in two stars, but like that’s,
you gotta get, so like, you wanna,
I mean, good too ’cause like,
Dan, this book is so good, do I wanna put it?
Yeah, do I wanna get it?
And You can move It, You can shift it.
Five stars, yeah, but you can’t, yeah, you can shift thus,
but you gotta knock that thing out ’cause then it’ll be actually
a fair system because it’s like, all right, well,
I can’t just be throwing out five stars like, you know,
no tomorrow.
– Yeah, well, or like, there’s three worlds
and you just got unlimited five stars
and all the other worlds, come think.
Nine worlds of book three, Yeah.
I’m in, if it happens.
All right, well, that was fun.
That was a strength of a few,
and Keith, can you remind us what we have coming up next?
– The searcher by Tonne of French coming up next,
listen to our recommendations, so we’ll get to that here soon.
Yeah, And now I am actually excited to get out of Fantasy Room.
I need to be grounded, so.
I like it.
– Yeah, I’m here for it.
All right, Keith, well, good talking to you
and I’ll catch you for the searcher.
All right, bye now.
Bye now.