Before They Are Hanged – Joe Abercrombie – Episode 141

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1586869/episodes/19214705

The Buddies return to Joe Abercrombie’s grim dark world for “Before They Are Hanged,” the second book in the First Law trilogy. The Buddies debate whether getting your face smashed in with a mace is the ultimate character development, how useless corporate leadership seminars actually are beneficial, and if chivalry is indeed not dead. So, bring your north man mentality, practice your nose-biting techniques, and join us and all our Buddies from last time: The Bloody-Nine, Bayaz, Jezal, Ferro, Glokta and many more!

Intro (0:00-1:54)

Stock Up/Down (1:55-31:06)

Favorite Scene/Character (31:07-41:18)

Love/Hate (41:19-48:49)

Conclusion (48:50-52:22) 

NEXT BOOK: Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

 

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

All right, welcome to Book Club.
I’m Dylan here with the Freckled 10.
Keith, what’s up buddy?
I’m here with Dylan.
I don’t have anything.
Uh, we’re here with the Buddy Book Club, we’re breaking down some best-dolars this week.
We’ll be discussing the second book in the first law trilogy before they are hanged by Joe Abercrombie.
If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read, reach out to us in the past episodes, you can visit our website, but at bookclub.com.
Signed to our DMs on X, Instagram, that’s Buddy Book Club Podcast.
You can list us iTunes, Spotify, please download those, subscribe, faster reviews.
It would be great.
Please, and thanks, Keith.
Before they are hanged, publish in 2007, 4.36 on Good Reads.
I was pleasantly surprised about that.
We had previously read The Blade itself, which is the first book of the first law trilogy.
First of the series.
Two years ago.
Yeah, it was, I looked it up.
It was just over two years ago.
So Keith, my question to you is, what made you want to return for the second installment?
We really liked the writer, we liked the story and characters, but it just didn’t really have any ending.
And then it was, it kind of just didn’t go anywhere.
So I think we were like, well, let’s give it another shot.
But it wasn’t one of those things where we got it done.
It was like, what we have to get a book to.
It’s always been sitting there in the back of my mind being like, I’ve really enjoyed that first one.
Why haven’t we gone back?
And I broke my cardinal rule.
I went back and I listened to our episode on it because I remembered nothing from it.
Any good?
Episode was enjoyable.
I was like, oh, these guys can have a conversation.
And it reminded me of like what was actually happening in the story, which more importantly, I was proud of.
Because nine times out of ten, I’m thinking when we do our pods, like, we give no, we don’t talk at all about the book.
Let’s jump right into before they are hanged with some stock up, stock down.
Keith, what do you have for stock up?
Yeah, stock up, getting your face smashed in.
Okay.
Stock up.
And another way to say this is getting a slice of humble pie.
But but, Jacelle is kind of that one dude you don’t want on a road trip.
You know, it’s just complaining about everything.
The food’s bad.
Oh, there’s no showers out here.
I guess I don’t have showers in my brain.
But you know what I’m saying?
They’re just complaining about everything.
And it’s like, bro, everyone’s in the same situation.
Just buck up.
You’re gonna have, if you’re not sleeping well, if you’re not eating a lot of food, you’re gonna have one of those days where you’re like,
Yeah, I’m fucking pissed at everything.
That happens. I get it.
You can’t be that guy, the whole trip.
And then the dude gets smashed in the face.
With a mace too, which sounds honestly like one of the worst ways to get smashed in the face.
Not great. They don’t have like dentistry, anything other, either.
So it’s not gonna be a good time.
But all of a sudden food tastes better.
The sun shines brighter.
He’s just a good dude all of a sudden.
And so I think there’s somebody to be said about just getting absolutely dominated in the face.
You know, makes you appreciate life.
And I will say one thing.
I mean, I think growing up in New England, you kind of, which is nice.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, is like, you kind of get humbled all the time because
all your friends and family are always making fun of you as like a way to keep you in check, you know what I mean?
You know, we invented the, you think you’re better than me.
So, you know, slogan.
And that’s because you want to keep people in your place.
You know, they try to get where some fancy you, you shit on the fancy thing.
They try to show off a car, you shit on the car.
You know what I mean?
Like it’s, you got to keep people in their place.
And this guy just hadn’t been kept in his place.
So you need a physical violence, unfortunately, to do that.
I do appreciate that.
But I was gonna tell you a story there is we were playing flag football.
I played flag football on the side here.
And there’s one dude on the other side is just trash talking the whole fucking game.
The whole game.
And I just kept on thinking like no one’s ever punched this guy in the face.
Like he called one of the guys on our team fat.
Oh.
And he was like you’re gonna lose 10 pounds.
You want to stay with me?
I’m like bro, this is a 30 year old plus flag football league.
What are you doing?
This just, oh motherfucker needs to go in the face.
Did you bring your face?
I wasn’t gonna do it.
Did you bring your face out of your football bag?
Anyways, that was just like just a little moment I was experiencing.
I was like, this guy needs to smash the face.
So, do you think he had that new, the new lease on life where he fell he was so close to death in that moment?
That he then felt like he could hang or was it the way that he was brought into the group?
Because my first stock up was those useless leadership slash managing people seminars.
Some of us are forced to do in the corporate world.
There’s a lot of like, you know, managing up like you have to you’ve required to attend the series.
And you know, or how to give bad news to you or how to talk to your subordinates and stuff like that.
It’s, it’s honestly.
I had a friend recently, he’s a professional poker player.
We were, we had a, we had a golf weekend, we’re, we’re hanging out.
And this other person had just got a job after being off for a while.
And he said, I forgot how soul sucking being a cubicle monkey is.
It’s just absolutely soul sucking.
And my friend that’s a poker player, honestly, was like, what do you mean by that?
He has no, he’s never worked a corporate job.
He’s never really worked any job except for working for himself.
I mean, obviously what he does is difficult, but he has, he has no understanding of that.
And so I’m trying to explain these types of things to him that you’re forced into doing like working for the man.
And he was just had no, could not fathom that idea.
So it was funny.
Be like sitting at the table for two hours and having to fold your hand all over for two hours straight.
But then having someone behind you telling you you should fold that, you should fold that every time.
That’s a good analogy.
That’s the analogy.
Imagine I would make you.
But those useless seminars and whatnot, I think Logan sat on a few because they sure worked for him.
So one of our groups is the Pharaoh, Bias, Logan, Jizouk, we got Quai in long foot.
They’re headed to the edge of the world to find the seed.
But it’s a bit of a rag tag group.
None of these people obviously have much relationship together.
Most of them don’t even like each other.
They don’t think anyone really likes anyone else, like maybe Quai and Bias.
But other than that, they don’t want to be there.
Logan is the glue though, or at least he identifies himself as being the glue.
And he takes very different approaches with Jizouk and Pharaoh.
Pharaoh doesn’t even want to be around Jizouk.
She thinks he’s soft and pompous and whatnot, which is true.
But Logan knows at some point we’re going to all have to rely on each other.
So I better bring this group together.
He’s like Denzel in “Reverved the Titans.”
He’s like, “All right, I got to figure out all these different personalities
and how they’re going to mesh.”
And with Jizouk, he doesn’t talk down to him.
And that, “Oh, you’ve never fought anyone you’ve never killed anyone like you suck.”
He’s just like, “Hey, it’s going to be all right, you know what I mean?”
Whenever Jizoum messes up, he doesn’t scold him for it or make fun of him.
He builds up his confidence, which is great.
And with Pharaoh, he just straight up ignores her.
And so when she’s mean to him or whatnot, because he knows that she just kind of wants to get into it.
And so instead, he just doesn’t get it.
He refuses to get into it with her, well, you know, until he does, if you know what I’m saying.
But, you know, he refuses.
And because of that, they kind of bond because they have like a mutual respect for one another.
Because she’s a super badass.
And so they respect each other that way, even though they might not see it eye on a lot of stuff.
And then it totally works out.
I mean, Jizouk ends up doing well in that fight.
He just unfortunately gets maced in the face at the end by the last person who he didn’t know.
And Pharaoh and Logan create this kind of like,
Rambo, home alone type situation for those 12 guys that are coming at them up the hill.
And they survive when they’re all thinking, you know, it’s pretty much three of us, two of us really.
Because Jizouk hasn’t even swung his sword in anger.
So it’s really two of us against these 12 guys.
And they end up all surviving, even though Jizouk takes a hit.
But yes, so stock up to Logan really taking it in for those leadership meetings.
Most of the time I’ve got drool hanging out of my mouth when I was sitting in one of those.
So the leadership things there would be like, hey, you got to make an acronym.
The defines unity and teamwork.
You know, it’s like all that type of shit.
Instead of it’s just supposed to be you should probably treat each individual based on their individual needs.
That’s it. That’s all you need to do.
And that’s what he’s doing.
So it’s the opposite of these like one size fits all put everything in a fucking acronym.
Have a flywheel, have a whatever, the other five other things they do, not every corporate thing.
Is it flywheel like a spin spin place? You go to that’s like half of the companies do now.
They’re like, see, we first we bring this in and we create, you know, demand.
And then we do this and it turns to this and then it starts all over again.
Gosh, shut up. That stuff.
So yeah, I think he does the opposite of the corporate jargon.
Well, the one I was in, we talked about, you know, focusing on people’s individuality and like what works for them might not work for someone else.
Unfortunately, then when you do that, they have everyone take like Myers-Briggs stuff.
And it’s like, who cares about any of this stuff?
Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? It’s like let’s put everyone in a box in a different way.
Yeah, but my second stock up, which was related was that a tiger can indeed change his right stock up.
And once again, which is out, I think we had talked in the first book about how I pretty sure you hated just out, which is understandable.
And thought he was going to amount to nothing.
And I said, I think something’s going to come of this guy and lo and behold, he takes a maze of the face.
But he changes his whole behavior and he’s not the, you know, the douchebag that he was in the first book.
Is he an asset though? He’s just now a normal person?
Well, he is extremely skilled at sword fighting.
So he just had never done it in anger.
Just not dodging maces?
Yeah, that was, that wasn’t included in the training.
Okay, fair enough.
But now at least if you get into a fight, if you get into a scrap, you feel like, alright, he can contribute as opposed to before.
It was, alright, you go guard the wagons.
Yeah, that’s my point.
What else did you have for stock up?
Well, mine also, I guess, we’re staying in the same realm here, but mining the pot?
Stock up? I don’t know if he caught that term, but I fucking loved it.
No.
It’s basically the cook of the night.
So everyone takes turns mining the pot.
Oh, okay.
And that’s like the, you know, you’re starting in your own ingredients.
I think you’d love this.
I want to camping on a journey and everyone has a job.
And so one person is mining the pot that night.
The other people are gathering firewood.
The other people are getting herbs, things like that, right?
So I was making fan.
I thought that that’s, he was like, that’s how you bring the chemistry together is like you, you mined pot together.
You know, I was like, alright.
Yeah, I like that. I’m sure Carol, I’m like that whenever we go on family trips, I’m always the one minding the pot, which I don’t necessarily do different turns as well.
Yeah, but she’s like let someone else take a turn.
Like someone else has to cook.
This is ridiculous.
Yeah.
You know, we can’t hang out.
You can’t parent.
You’re just cooking all time.
But I’m like, I’m the only one that can cook, you know?
So if no one else can mine the pot, then what are we doing here?
Well, I feel like everyone should bring their own, their own family.
Yeah.
I’m a burger guy.
I cook burgers all day, every day, and then, you know, the next person’s, you know, maybe you’re more of a fancy guy.
Maybe, you know, more of a, you know, fancy, or maybe a bit of a bratwurst.
Yeah.
Chris gets a peanut butter.
No, my step-toe makes a good steak.
So he usually, he usually cooks up a nice sous vide’s in a steak.
Yeah, that’s his thing.
Oh, okay.
I love that.
My next knockup was the butterfly effect.
And I’m not talking about, no, I’m not talking about the hit.
2004 movie starring Ashton Kutcher.
That is a candidate for the Rotten Tomato Variance, by the way.
It’s a 3481.
I looked it up.
I remember being good.
Yeah, I was one I didn’t want to rewatch it.
Kind of had the similar effect as, as that drug movie that we talked about.
Record for a dream.
Yeah, it has like a little nightmarish, like it’s definitely not a scary movie, but it’s very scary.
I remember being kind of like Tony Scottish, where, if you see a man on fire,
lately, or.
Man on fire.
Yeah, but it’s a lot of like quick cuts and there’s like weird colors going on in the screen.
And it’s just like, whoa, it’s kind of dizzy.
Yeah, yeah.
Tony’s got trying to be artsy.
But like the way that I make an artsy is like by blurring the screen.
And I don’t get that or like being out of focus.
It’s like, why is that artsy?
I don’t get it.
Yeah, I’m just like harder to see.
Tony’s got some legend.
Your favorite movie.
That’s right.
Yeah, got it.
The train’s blurred.
Man, it’s the enemy.
But I’m talking about the butterfly.
Yeah.
But I’m talking about the butterfly effect, the chaos theory that a minor thing like a,
you know, butterfly fapping is wings can cause massive unpredictable changes elsewhere, you
know, tornado and chile or whatever the case is.
I just made that up.
But, you know, in the example here is column west tossing Prince Latislaw off a cliff after
he finds him trying to rape a catail or whatever, whatever her name is.
But obviously west was into catl and catl, catl and he, when he, I mean, I get it.
You see someone trying to rape someone.
Fuck yeah, toss them off a cliff.
I get it.
But he acted in haste and obviously that’s the, that’s the guy who’s going to be king once
the king dies.
So it creates an interesting string of events, which are that eventually by the end of
the book, Prince Raynald, who’s his brother, he gets murdered.
So now it’s like the, the, the king has no heirs and you know, something’s going to happen
in the next book.
So, so yeah, it’s just, you know, one little situation by Latislaw and column west gizm
the old heath hoe.
I kind of love the Northman’s mentality and this is a, I think goes back to the corporate
world a lot actually.
The Northman’s like mentality is like, they want like money, I guess, but that’s not really
the end of the all for them.
It’s more about like someone that they can lead and follow in like trust as the leader.
So the idea of a prince that just inherits this, it doesn’t make any sense.
They’re like, why is this fucking dumbass?
Why do I listen to him?
It doesn’t matter.
It’s like, well, he’s like lineage.
It’s like, so who cares?
Like, was he done for me lately?
You know, so the Southern people are the union people, I guess it’s because they have
their hands and everything and the money is kind of what they fall.
So it’s almost like a middle manager or someone that’s like higher up, you have to listen
to him with their an idiot because they’re paying you, right?
So like, that’s kind of where I saw that.
The best part was when the North, there’s my favorite scene, spoiled that.
But when West does that finally, I’m like, thank God, get rid of this fucking shitty person.
The Northman ever just response was just like, well, I guess that’s the end of that.
No, like they didn’t even care.
Like, wasn’t like being like, oh my, there was no reaction.
I think they said, well, that’s the end of that I reckon that’s there.
That’s what they said about it.
I fucking love that.
Yeah, I love all the Northmen in this book are amazing.
Who’s the guy that they meet in the woods?
Scissors or whatever?
He basically wants to leave Bethod and grab his calls and I think it’s calls, whatever they
are and bring them with dogman’s crew and three trees.
But that in exchange is so good when dogman is like hunting him down and then he’s like,
you know, do you have a knife?
It’s funny, but it’s also tense because you’re like, what is this guy being for real or
not?
And then he goes back to camp and it’s a lot of like, can I sit down or what’s the deal
here?
The Northmen are just, they’re good hangs.
They’re awesome.
Yeah.
Where Ladislah is clearly not a good hang.
But I did enjoy Ladislah’s scenes.
He was his ineptitude and the way he approached things, I thought was hilarious.
I was an LOLing per se, but he was the brave heart, the son in brave heart.
That’s who he was.
The son in brave heart.
You know the King’s, the Kings, who was like, I hired my guy.
He’s really good at strategy and the guy just throws about the wind out.
Yeah.
That’s the kind of Northmen.
And he gets tossed out the wind too.
Yeah, so there he is.
Well his son doesn’t.
Oh, his son is a good friend.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So Ladislah had more bravado where he was like, you know, wanted to go into battle.
I was like, I could do this.
Like, oh, chase them down.
They’re retreating and West is just like, you’re an absolute moron.
This is a faint.
Like what are you talking about?
So yeah, but I really did enjoy Ladislah while he’s around and is bitching and moaning.
And it’s funny because you know, he might be the King or the heir to be the King, but once
you’re in a survival situation, everyone is equal.
There is no hierarchy.
Yeah, that’s why Gim is jacket.
I was like, pro.
That’s it.
Yeah, when West did that is like, come on.
Yeah, just keep that for yourself.
But West is also trying to, he’s trying to work his way up the corporate ladder.
He was hoping for something afterwards, but then he ended up tossing his boss off with
a lift.
So there you go.
Did you have any other stockups?
Last one, quick one, dirty work stuff.
Oh, movie?
Yeah.
Super-oderated movie, amazing movie.
But West gets into a fight and is like kind of first time in front of the Northman and
earns the name.
Was his name angry or something?
But they give him procious.
Furious, right?
Furious.
There we go.
Yeah.
He’s a named man.
Yeah.
Because he goes in the middle of fighting, like in the middle of a fight, he bites like a
good old nose off.
Every time, any time, any time there’s a nose bite or anything like that, I immediately think
that’s the Saigon Horde that bit my nose off.
Yeah.
Stockup.
So when we used to work together and when we did work together, you know, this was when
you were on that other team, but it was my first week and our boss took us out to lunch,
like the whole team took us out to lunch.
There’s, I know, 10 people there.
And someone said dirty work and I was like, oh, the movie, I love that movie.
And then at pretty much the top of my lungs, I said, that’s the Saigon Horde that bit my
nose off.
And immediately, as it left my mouth, was like, that was not the right thing.
No one knew what I was talking about.
They were not talking about the movie dirty work.
They were just talking about something that was dirty work.
They’re like, construction is dirty work.
You’re like, wait.
Yeah.
No one had seen dirty work.
So they couldn’t even reference the quote.
It was so bad.
It was so embarrassing.
I said Saigon Horde, like in front of all these people, I just met.
It was, I can’t believe I ever recovered from that, but yeah, dirty work, 2166 on the run
tomato meter.
Honestly, terrible.
I got to do that.
Yeah, that’s, I’m not the right, though.
Yeah, you don’t have to put crazy under there.
I didn’t know Saigon, I thought Saigon was a typo horror forever.
I didn’t know it was a place.
I remember begging to the Vietnam.
And I just remember like Saigon, the capital is kind of crazy.
And it’s like, that’s kind of like the, how they call that, it’s dirty work.
And so I was like, 30.
And I was like, oh, it’s because she’s from Saigon.
Yeah, good stuff indeed.
My last stock up, a little on the nose, but, but creatures stock up.
So this book and kind of the first one too, we don’t get a lot of the fantasy elements.
It’s really just kind of a medieval thing that’s going on.
We know that there’s Bias and we’ve seen him like blow people’s heads up with magic.
But outside of that happening like once or twice, there’s really nothing magical about
these books.
There’s nothing, there’s no real fantasy elements.
We know, or we kind of know, which we’ll probably get into later, that, you know, there’s
this whole thing from the original world or whatever, where Bias, there’s Juvin’s, there’s
the maker, the master maker, you know, Canadian.
Whatever those things are, we know that it exists, but we really don’t see it.
So I do like that in this book.
We get a lot more of the shankah, the flat heads, who are kind of like ork-like people.
And supposedly it was Canadian who birthed them.
He like made them out of mud and clay or, he was like mud and iron and stuff.
I don’t know.
Yeah, kind of like putties from Power Rangers.
Power Rangers?
Yeah, there we go, one thing.
But also like the scene in Lord of the Rings when they show Sauramon birthing, some Urokai,
just like kind of popping the mud of sacks and the mud under the underground.
So yeah, and they are kind of orkish, these, the flat heads.
So I like those.
I’m glad they were in it.
It was, it was kind of like the non-sentient, even though they are sentient beings that
you can fight against, like the big hordes, which we see Logan and Farrow do when they go
to the, the old empire.
And then also we see them, you know, with the Northmen too, because Bethod has employed
some, some shankah, some shankah.
But then we also get a little taste, but unintended, of eaters with glaucta.
We haven’t talked about it at all, but I’m hoping we talk more about glaucta, my guy.
He’s got a lot of glaucta from Boston.
And yeah, so he finally gets, you know, he traps a needer basically and we learn a little
bit more about them.
So I’m glad we had some creatures here to increase the fantasy element, because otherwise
it was just this, you know, medieval book, which I’m, which, okay, with two.
I can enjoy that as well, but just like to expand upon it.
Stocks down, what do you got?
Stock down, bias?
Yeah, I think he was, but you might recall, but I think it was one of my favorite characters
from the first one.
You didn’t say that in that, in that episode.
I feel like I remember saying like, you know, all bizzards are all the same.
They’re all just like rambling, you know, kind of going off the cusp, you know, you kind
of can drone them out, but they’re like, actually saying insightful stuff.
They’re smoking pipes all the time.
And then like they’ll get angry and you’re like, holy shit, I didn’t realize how powerful
this person was.
But I also forgot that a lot of the wizards also will use their powers and then just all
of a sudden be like dead to the world.
You got Yoda, you got Dumbledore, you got Gandalf kind of just, I don’t know what I have
like, Gandalf, he just jumped down a hole.
Yeah, what?
He just fell down a hole and then there’s like, oh yeah, this is his brother.
He fell to the other side of the world and he fought a ball.
Yeah, he never stood there.
He battled a ball, dog beer fest where was the guy that drank a lot and then dies and
then his brother shot.
Oh, this is either fire house or something.
Oh, fuck, yeah.
Anyways, he’s like, this is my brother.
I just call me the same name.
I’ll be exacting all the jokes I know.
That was so cool.
Yeah, that was good.
Anyways, but that was Gandalf and the white wizard or whatever came back and just him,
it’s like, what?
Anyway, get some lore, bro.
Okay, holy smokes.
Landfill, his name is Landfill.
Landfill, oh, okay.
Yeah, that’s the real lore right there.
Anyways, by his uses his power is blows like a fucking hole in the ground.
Then the next half of the journey is just a corpse.
Can’t do anything.
Bro, you’re supposed to be the first to match.
I grow up.
He’s all your man.
I burned all your man on one spell.
Yeah, I’ve played match.
I didn’t have to take an army out.
He basically did the, put a light on his wizard staff like Gandalf and then he was like,
and I’m done for the rest of this time.
It’s like, you didn’t even do anything.
It’s honestly like any RPG game where you’re playing or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever
the case is when you’re playing as a sorcerer, they have like a mana pool or whatever they
are like a magic reader.
I think that much mana would be burned doing that little with that.
Any, any game you use your super power, he has to regenerate.
It’s exhausting, all right?
I saw him saying, I thought he was the magic.
I thought he’d be either replenishing quicker or have a much bigger mana pool or anything.
He popped a bunch of heads.
How dare you?
I will say that Bina’s in general was less funny in this book.
He had less quips.
Maybe it was because I was getting a little more serious for him where he really wanted to
get this seed.
And oh yeah, not to mention the seed, they bring up on a fucking whole journey and nothing’s
there.
I was like, how bad is he?
Terrible, terrible book for him.
Yeah, it was weird because he used Logan to talk to the spirits and the spirit had to
give it to Pharaoh and then I was like, oh, it’s a rock.
But what?
Like, it’s just a rock.
Yeah.
Who?
I had no, my guy long foot throughout that whole thing.
Maybe, maybe the best.
He’s just like, oh, it was good journey.
We’re here.
That was nice.
We saw this beautiful places.
Oh, so good.
But no, I just thought we lost him a little bit and I’m going to save the other stuff that
I have for later.
My first talk down is the idea that chivalry is dead, a stock down to that because our guy
nine fingers, he breaks his dry spell by offering his coat to Pharaoh.
It was legitimately, he says, hey, you’re cold.
Do you want my coat?
She says, yeah, do you want to have sex with me?
And he says pardon me?
How does it should work?
Yeah.
And I appreciate that Joe Evercrombie got into the real, the real details of the
refractory period.
You know, he was like, oh, I’m glad we’ve read 50 shades of gray and a few other smut books
because I was kind of on zero to 100 real quick, but I’m so used to it from other books
that it wasn’t as.
She was like spit on your hand and I was like, what?
Oh my God.
50 shades, right?
I think this is the fourth time we’ve read Throbbing Co.
So yeah.
Yeah, people got to figure out a different word to use.
Yeah.
One Throps?
But, but yeah, he was the refractory period.
He was like, yeah, yeah, it’s been a while.
So I’m sorry.
You know, that was faster than fast forwarding through a commercial break.
But luckily, I’ve got a banana clip in there.
So round two is coming up.
You know what I keep that thing on me?
What?
What else have you ever stuck out?
Last one, ending on a low note stock down.
Look about every trilogy, or the second movie of any trilogy.
They always end on a low note.
The Empire Strikes Back, Red Rising, Golden Sun.
Feel like the Missborn.
And I just remember Booktubing Bats.
I don’t know if I don’t know.
No, Booktubed kind of had its own.
That was like when they met the Emperor, whoever the guy was.
And he pretty much said, like, I was doing this to hold the world together and now you’ve
unleashed hell kind of thing.
Oh, so it is.
Yeah.
And the Dark Knight, the Dark Knight, kind of, not really.
But I know we’re trying to set the final chapter, but…
Now, I think I mentioned this before, but we end the book and I’m like, what happened?
Nothing happened.
All the relationships that were built up seem to be kind of crumbling.
They lose all the fronts.
Like, nothing’s happening in the north.
They’re losing that war pretty much.
They got decimated.
They lose, Glockdown loses his battle.
What’s the third storyline?
The seed.
The seed?
I don’t find the seed.
Like, so what did we just do?
I mean, I know all books are supposed to end in a low note for a second one.
But could it kill us to have one storyline that was good?
Come on, but I was thinking about this.
Why don’t they do a good book to the N’s and is solved?
I was trying to think of any series like that.
The only one I could think of was the worst movie of all time.
What’s that?
The last Jedi.
Star Wars book or episode.
Oh, is that when they killed?
Did they kill the…
That’s where they killed the main guy.
It’s a “mogor” what’s his name?
That’s “mogor.”
It all solves everything and it was literally the worst movie of all time.
Nevermind, it’s a stock up.
I should have had that correct.
So, in the middle of writing this, I said, maybe it’s a stock up because I don’t want that.
Whatever that is, don’t do that.
Yeah, so…
Nevermind.
It’s just so bad because the Force Awakens, that’s the first one.
It was great.
It was so good.
It was like…
I’m so excited for this next trilogy.
It was a great movie.
The nominal soundtrack, soundtrack completely slaps and it opened up a whole new thing of
questions about, “Oh, who is she?
Who’s Ray?
What’s her deal?”
This other thing.
Yeah, and then it just unfortunately went so far downhill.
So once they went to the casino and I was like, “Oh, we’re at a casino.
Why?”
I don’t want to be here.
Yeah.
Sorry.
What’s that guy’s name?
Who directed it?
The third one or the second one?
That’s the second one, I think, when they go to the casino.
Oh, I mean, they’re all…
Yeah.
Second and third words.
So bad.
Yeah, I honestly don’t remember them.
I would rewatch…
It was May 4th, not that long ago.
May the 4th be with you.
Yeah.
And I thought about rewatching the Force Awakens.
I was like, “Ooh, I would…
I would like that.
I would like to watch that.”
No, but that’s a disappointment.
And then yeah, I would just say, “Oh, it’s…
I was going to do Andor for the third time.
I would do that way before.
Andor is so good.
And I started watching the Obi-Wan series.
So bad.”
It’s more like…
It’s nice to see Obi-Wan again.
That’s all really it is, but it’s…
Yeah, the story like that.
It’s nice to see Obi-Wan, but it was like Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules show, or like Xenor,
or Princess.
The episode where the lion’s running away.
Yeah, when she’s running away, like, shipping up those guys in one of the cases.
I just got to be like, “Is that…
Is that the basis to run out, Joy Pepper?
Is that the tracker down?”
And I was like, “That checks out.”
Yeah, this all actually doesn’t make sense.
Oh, god.
All right, my last talk down was…
Nepotism.
Stocked down.
And it just goes back to Prince Latislaw, who we’ve talked about probably more than any
other character, but yeah, he shouldn’t be in charge.
Big mistake by the king.
Don’t let him get out there.
And then also, what do they think was going to happen?
You give him a rat, like, this like terrible untrained, like, military presence, whatever
those people were.
And he has no leadership himself or around him, and they’re fighting its Bethod, who’s
a good battle commander and overall good strategist.
Well, I think they thought they weren’t going to see any action.
They’re like, “Yeah, we’ll put them in the place that, you know, it’s basically all the
politician’s sons that’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’ll be at the…
You’re in Vietnam, but they’re really, like, actually in some other country and you
know what I’m doing.”
You know, they’re actually…
Yeah.
Did you have a favorite scene in this book?
Yeah, I already mentioned it, the West thing and just the reaction from the Northmen.
I think that was just the funniest part.
The whole Northern attitude, I appreciate it.
Yeah, it’s funny, because I had my first one was just…
It wasn’t even necessarily seen, but it was the Northmen surviving in the woods with West
in his gang, just, you know, that interaction, because they’re so…
The people are so different in that being the Northmen are one way and everyone else
seemed to be in other way, but they have to rely on the Northmen because they know
what they’re doing and all the interactions I found to be quite enjoyable.
But then I was like, “Oh, maybe I don’t know.
The Battle of Dunn Breck at the end, which is the final and really the only Battle of
the Book because the first one that we’re talking about with Ladislah, it was just a
route.”
So, I like Dunn Breck.
We get some great stuff by Dogman here when he’s talking to the random guy who’s next
to him with the guys that wait, you know.
Do we go on three or do we go on go?
And Dogman’s just like, “It doesn’t really matter as long as you go.”
Let’s go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just gotta go, doesn’t matter.
And Dogman’s got a great mentality.
We see, also, see Fenris the Fierd, you know, not from the first time, because I think we
saw him in the last book, but we never saw him running through people like a cave troll
in Moria.
He’s absolutely crushing skulls left and right who eventually takes down three trees
before they’re able to beat him back and they retreat.
But I was wondering throughout the book why we have a first person perspective from Dogman,
and it becomes clear once three trees goes down and the Northmen decide to crown Dogman
as a chief, which is, it’s his two other, it’s his two black dow and I can’t remember the
other one, but Dogman’s pretty much like, “I don’t know because, you know, neither one will
follow the other.
How do we go about that?”
But the rest of the calls will follow either of them.
And so he’s like, this is gonna be a tough situation.
He talks to both of them.
They say, “Oh no, you’re the leader.
What are you talking about?”
And he’s like, “No way.
No one’s gonna agree to that.”
And then the rest of the Northmen are like, “Oh, of course, Dogman’s a leader.
What do you mean?”
So it’s once again, we’ve talked about this before, but the people who should lead are the
people that don’t want to lead.
Unfortunately, they have all the skills to do it, but they don’t want to be there.
And those usually are the best, the best people for the job.
And in general, I feel like the Dogman was a great character to be following throughout
this book, except for maybe his, his thrusting.
There was some thrusting there too.
That’s why you want to follow that guy, you know?
Yeah.
Man, that’s…
They do have a great thing when they’re wondering who should go out and all the other guys in
the group are like, “Well, the only person that should go out to basically potentially get
shot is the guy who got laid last night.”
And he’s like, “Oh, God, dammit, you’re right, you know?”
Yeah, it’s like in the whole one, you have to play for anything at the end of the bar.
I feel like we have a paid enough attention or given enough to Glockda in Degasca.
Because I really did like that storyline.
There wasn’t necessarily a scene or whatnot, but I thought it was the best for politicking
or whatever the case is where he’s kind of thrust into this untenable situation of defending
a city from the Gerkish who are going to take it while also trying to solve why the guy he’s
replacing got killed so that he doesn’t get killed.
And also that there’s potentially a mole in the organization here, or at least one mole.
And so he’s meeting all these people for the first time but then having, and he’s in charge
of them, which they don’t want him to be in charge of them, and he’s having to tiptoe
around but then also use his abilities to not die, find this mole, and hold off the city’s
defenses for as long as possible, basically by borrowing from Paul to pay Peter or whatever
the phrase is.
So he gets in with the bank, that big bank, Verstem Blank or whatever it’s called, I don’t
remember.
But that obviously is going to be a through line through the next book.
And he has the mercenary guy who he basically uses to save his butt.
That was good.
And I liked his 300 moment where they send the emissary over.
And not only does he not capitulate or agree to terms but he tortures him.
So yeah, I thought it was a great book for Glockdown but how did you feel about that whole thing?
Yeah, I think Glockdown was a fan favorite.
I just liked his character in general because he’s kind of a bad guy but he’s also kind of
someone you root for but he’s also kind of shitty but I mean I liked him a lot.
I didn’t think the he’s definitely shitty but he admits to being shitty, you know, which
a lot of shitty people don’t do.
Yeah, that’s true.
If you don’t put him there, if you put any other character there, that storyline I think
is not great.
Yeah, it’s boring.
So like I think the storyline in general wasn’t that great for him to be there but like luckily
he could carry it because he’s such a good character essentially.
And it’s fascinating how Joe Recrombe approached it or just approaches that character in general
where so much of what happens with Glockdown throughout both books is internal.
Yeah.
He says little but he thinks so much and so all like the vast majority of it is internal.
We talked about it in the last book, put the way that the narrator is going to say suddenly
narrator is unreal.
I didn’t think about it until like book three and I was like this guy is incredible.
It was it’s in my it’s in my love and I think it was in my love for the for the last one
but I’m going to reiterate it and I’m going to say it again for the third one because he
might be the best.
He honestly might be the best.
Oh, Harry Potter but you know, Jim Dale.
Jim Dale is usually at the top.
This is this is close.
But if you hear like Jim Dale doesn’t miss necessarily Harry Potter except for when he
does Hermione and it’s kind of a miss there but and I’m really I’m just you know I know
that I’m talking to the margins here.
Jim Dale is the goat but this guy is so good.
I don’t even know I don’t even know where the narrator is but he is so good.
Harry character has a very distinct voice.
You know, he’s like a list of characters and what.
Yeah, Gloucester has this list because he’s missing teeth so he’s able to do that and he
does different dialects.
I don’t know it was I like I’m blown away every time this I really I listened to this guy.
It seems like it’s being acted out you know like it’s a real performance.
So yeah proud of him.
I’m sure I look him up so I can actually Stephen Pacey.
Stephen Pacey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What about a best character for you?
Not a lot of new ones but there are some.
I mean, you already mentioned Logan 9 fingers.
I think team chemistry guy that I always I always appreciate the team chemistry guy you
know the guy that wants to bring everyone together knowing it’s going to help everyone
down the road.
The other thing that I’m going to try to put together for for the third podcast here because
I’ve got to do for this one is just his sayings.
You have to be realistic.
Say one thing for Logan 9 fingers say that he’s whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He’s like five or six.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just I just love the the the sayings and also just anytime is a dude that is a full psychopath
that you never know when that’s going to happen.
Great character.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When you get control which is he’s probably the one character that is actually all the other
characters are doing bad things but they’re kind of in there want to be better but they
don’t really change.
He’s like I want to change and then he’s like but unfortunately I have multi personality
disorder.
I want to get too much into that because I think we’re leaking into book three which we both
started.
No it does.
I mean he happens in this book.
He’s in like memories in the cave with yeah with Pharaoh.
Yeah and he definitely goes full bloody.
He didn’t last book too which I love but I didn’t realize he could kill Pharaoh.
I didn’t realize.
Remember he was like I’m going to kill this fair like Pharaoh and then eventually snaps
out of it.
Yeah exactly.
He’s he’s weapon X.
There’s a reason why his name is Logan and so as is Wolverine because they both go
into berserker mode and you know they see red and there’s no it doesn’t matter what’s
more like this one.
Yeah but it’s more brutal you know it’s more like popping people’s heads with their bare
hands and laughing.
The Hulk is necessarily like thinking as he do it the bloody nine is like I want blood
give me blood you know.
So yeah I do I do love me some Logan 9 figures still alive.
That’s his other one still alive.
Yeah.
I loved the dog man in this one because we really didn’t get a lot of him in the last one
he was just part of the gang and then we you know we did in this obviously but I think
it’s got to be Longfoot the the guy he’s he’s the one he was so absurd that he was he brought
the the calm.
He like a zalyn long foot.
I’m like who are these people you like?
I like Longfoot he was in the the the voice that our guy Steve decided to do for him was
was so good he was like this happy go lucky guy who’s just happy to be there he didn’t matter
for him what was going on.
He just he just wanted to have a good time so my least favorite.
I am the best and I I surely gave us the right route obviously because I’m the greatest
all right voting.
Awesome.
My least favorite was is in will continue to be R.D. West.
She’s a she’s a tough hang.
She’s a good drinker.
Yeah.
But she’s not like a polish is not like a good good time drinker.
No she’s a bad drinker and she’s a sad drinker.
She’s good at drinking she’s not a good drinker.
Yeah she just drinks and gets sad.
What about love?
What about love?
Was you love about before they were hanged?
I think I already mentioned took me a little while but the characters are just so good.
Well I already mentioned to them.
They all have like flaws but they’re all trying to work on them.
They all have like inner dialogues that even when they do something bad they know they’re
doing something bad.
They’re kind of like them more because they’re like yeah at least they recognize it or they’re
doing it for a reason there’s a purpose.
I just you know I just really enjoyed that.
I mean this is kind of like a love slash hate but nothing happens I already mentioned but
I still was like great book fun time reading you know like literally nothing happens.
But you know and I mean you’re gonna I preface this last book but you’re not going to like
this but it does have the tone of a of a Lord of the Rear.
It’s just an adventure with people.
There’s really no goal even at the end.
Lord of the Rings is like the other ring and the fire.
They’re on an adventure and you’re kind of like alright I guess we’ll see where we go
here but nothing’s really really happened.
Yeah this is just not sure whatsoever and the reason why is what you said is the number
one and that’s what’s kind of missing from this book but I don’t I’m not upset about it
necessarily like maybe it’s a hate but we we’re waiting for the payout.
We don’t know we don’t even know what the ultimate goal of the story is.
We don’t know what the purpose of what is happening.
We don’t understand much of a bigger picture at all.
We’re just kind of with these people whereas Lord of the Rings you know who the ultimate
bad guy is Sauron you know who the ultimate good guys are basically ever but but Sauron
and Sauron and Frodo has his ring that he’s got.
No when would you love in a fire.
There’s a road like I have the Lord of the Rings risk game.
That risk game is different because the ring moved throughout the map until you get to
Mordor and then you cast it into the fire’s amount do.
So there’s we know what we’re doing the entire series and yes along the way we go through
Moria and we then have to defend Helms deep and you know Erragorn goes to Ministerath
and does his thing there but we know what we’re doing.
We know who the bad guys and the good guys are.
Stop just nerd showing off here.
Those are naming out places of general.
Those are general.
I didn’t even get into Tom Bompadill.
No one needs to say anything that stuff.
Come on.
That’s one of my issues with this is it’s okay.
We have Bias.
We know there’s this whole thing with the 12.
He does in this book talk briefly about some lore so I’m just getting to my hate because
my hate is the lore because Bias does talk briefly about it.
It is an interesting moment where he’s talking about Canadius and Juvenz and how he fell in
love with someone’s daughter and the you know Canadius’s daughter or whatever and then
killed him and now there’s who’s the guy that’s running Gercal?
Caloo.
So Caloo is the one that Bias is up against.
He’s the one that broke the second law and basically became an eater.
So him and Mamoon and then he found Gercash or whatever the place is and that’s why they’re
not.
So we know Bias is at odds with Caloo and that’s part of what’s going on or maybe even
all of what’s going on.
So we hear it for such a brief moment and then Bias tells these kind of like anecdotes
about the old times.
So we don’t really care.
We don’t know much about it because it’s not like we’ve seen these people interact really
or know what’s going on.
So that whole overarching plot line is what’s potentially missing.
I think what’s clear though is that everything that’s happening is Bias and Caloo fighting
but through other people.
You know what I mean?
The whole thing with the Northmen is like with Bethod is Caloo kind of doing something
up north to mess with the Empire.
The whole thing in DeGasca is Caloo doing stuff there and then Bias is doing what he’s
doing to kind of be on the side of the Empire so they can fight Girk that Girkish people
and take down Caloo.
But we don’t know that.
We just assume that’s what’s going on.
So that’s why this book is kind of hard for me because the lore itself, I’m not heavily
invested in which would normally be a bad thing.
But like you said, the characters are so good and the stories are so good.
It makes it fun to read.
It’s like an episode of Seinfeld or something.
Yeah, sure.
It doesn’t matter at the end that nothing really happened.
They didn’t get the chocolate bobcat and go to the woman’s house or whatever getting
for the party because George wanted to bring Pepsi and not wine.
That’s the funny stuff.
It doesn’t matter about them getting to the party.
So yeah, the characters in the storylines are totally fine for me.
It’s the lore that I have issues with.
Yeah, I hear you.
Do you hear any other hates or loves?
My only other hate was why is it called before they are hanged?
Was anyone get hanged?
Is there potential being hanging?
I don’t remember.
Is there?
I missed that.
There was a phrase.
So the title, I guess, references a quote by some German guy, Heinrich Heine.
He said we should forgive our enemies but not before they are hanged was the quote.
So that’s the vibe, I guess.
Yeah, so it’s just nothing to do with the German quote.
It’s kind of 1984.
We’re going to teach you how, we’re going to make you believe in our cause before we kill
you.
We’re not until–
Well, it’s definitely Logan’s mindset towards Bethod.
He’s like, all right, because Logan’s always talking about having scores that he’s got to
settle.
With him and Pharaoh, he wanted to stick it with Pharaoh.
But when she was like, nah, I don’t think so.
He was like, that’s fine.
I got scores.
I’m going to go take care of my scores in the north.
So all of that stuff is like, I’ll forgive you, but not after hanging in.
Maybe that even applies to Baez and Caloul.
It’s like, all right, we are brothers, quote unquote, but I ain’t going to forgive you and
tell you that.
It should be before they’re in the mud.
Doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Before they’re motted, seventh floor crew?
His mother wasn’t mother.
But one thing I forgot to say about hates is I hate the map because it doesn’t exist.
And they keep talking about all these places.
And I’m like, I have no idea how far one place is for another or where they are on a map.
And then when I looked it up, I was like, this map kind of sucks.
Honestly, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
When you think of middle earth, I can see that map in my head, I go lower the rings.
I can see that map.
I get it.
I get kind of in a general idea where they’re traveling to and from.
And I can always reference it.
This is like their island topping.
You know, it looks more like a video game.
Yeah, how are you not having boats?
Yeah, it looks like Donkey Kong Country, too, or something.
So yeah, not a huge fan of the map.
It kind of looks like Canada, like the topic Canada, where all the islands are.
Yeah, absolutely.
Maybe it is Canadian.
Hmm.
What do you give it and who’s it for?
I think it’s for people that have a little patience with the fantasy realm and know that
there’s a good series.
I give it a 4.0.
I still think there’s a really fun read as a good book.
It’s just, I think I mentioned this on the first book.
I was like, you know, I usually criticize books that don’t have any sort of definitive.
Oh, that’s what happened.
This is the ending of this book one and they could live on their own.
These two first two books really couldn’t live on their own.
You need a third book, otherwise there’s nothing that happens in a series, really.
So that’s my only negative again.
I don’t want to be, I think it’s a really good book, really good writer, really good
writers book three is where it all comes together.
Yeah, I give, I’m the same.
It’s a, it’s a 4.0 for me.
It’s, this is kind of like an intro to fantasy series because if you don’t like the idea
of like, I don’t do sorcerers and dragons and stuff like that, this is great, but you like
almost period pieces or whatever the case is.
This is, this is for you because it’s enjoy, it’s, the characters are amazing.
Like, Joybrook probably absolutely crushes it with the characters.
The story’s fun and it just doesn’t have a ton of the big fantasy elements are those confusing
fantasy elements.
Like even misborn when it’s all the different elements that they can use.
It’s like, oh, that gets really confusing really fast.
So yeah, it’s, it’s pretty straightforward, but it’s really enjoyable and it was fun
to read.
I’m, I’m really glad we jumped right into the next one because I didn’t want to forget
it.
And to finish it and see what actually happens with all these characters that we’ve remat
and refalling in love with.
So yeah, I’m excited to tell you what.
I got the third one.
I was like, are there more of these or what?
I looked, I think there is another trilogy, but it’s after it’s like 50 years in the future
or 20, 20 years in the future.
I think, yeah, yeah, I think it’s like the kids of these guys.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
Oh, Pharaoh and Logan from the cave, round two, banana clipping.
I mean, I don’t know which kids, no spoilers.
All right.
Well, what do we get coming to next?
Next, we’re, well, you already mentioned it.
What’s the third one called here?
Argument of Kings or something like that?
Yeah, the last argument, last arguments of Kings, which is not another, not great title,
but that’s all right.
Yeah, the first one was great.
The blade itself, like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then after Azure is not so much.
And then we’re going to go right into London is following.
Yeah, I already liked it at only 10 minutes in and I was like, I like this vibe.
Yeah, I was one of those ones where my mom was like, call me right now.
And I was like, holy shit, what happened?
I’m, what do moms do this?
You know, it’s, so I call her and like, hey, is everything okay?
She was like, yeah, I just want to tell you about this book I’m reading.
And I was like, oh my god, you’re insane.
That’s a good reason.
Yeah, but she’s so sweet because she’s like, will you do it on your podcast?
I was like, that’s so nice that you even know what the hell, which he doesn’t.
But you know what I mean?
Yeah, that’s nice that she said that.
And then Carol, I was listening to Dak Shepherd’s podcast, which she loves.
We for him to have us on.
And she had, he had the author of that book on and she texted to me like, hey, you should
read this book.
I was like, that’s so weird.
My mom talked to me all this the other day.
So by, there was no rule of three, but a rule of two, I feel like was hit.
So we have to, we have to do it.
And did, did.
All right, well, that was before they are hanged.
And we’ll catch you for the third and final installment of the first law trilogy.
All right.
All righty.
Yeah, I know.
Bye now.