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Hello and welcome to another booooooktacular episode of Is This Just Fantasy?

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The podcast where every other week two nerds get together to rate, read and review a fantasy novel.

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I'm your host, Geordie Bailey, and I just remembered right before we start recording

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that I can use my special Halloween intro because it's October!

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Congratulations Geordie, I am your other host, the version of Duncan Nicoll that turned left.

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I wonder if the version of Duncan Nicoll that turned right would have a radically different opinion of this book

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despite only having been separated from the Duncan who turned left by a couple of days.

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And that is an intro that will make no sense if you haven't read this week's book, Even the Worm Will Turn

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by the fantastic author Hailey Piper.

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We read the first book in this series, The Worm and His Kings, last year.

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Do listen to our episode on it.

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And we got to do an actual interview with the author which is always amazing.

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Hailey was an incredible person to talk to.

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Go and listen to our interview with her from last year.

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Great episode. Absolute blast.

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But Geordie, before we jump into this week's book, have you read anything else?

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We recorded the last episode of this podcast like three days ago.

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So no, I finished The Heroes and I immediately started reading this

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because we are able to record on one day in October and that is it.

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Yes, sorry. I am out for the end of this month.

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I've got a wedding and a holiday.

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Back to back. I'm so sorry Geordie.

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But what a great short book to read.

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And yes, if not obvious because it's only been three days, I have only read this book as well.

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But yes, much like The Worm and His King, this is a novella.

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Hailey Piper is a writer of short stories mostly.

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And I believe that these series of books are amongst the small number of novels or novellas she's written

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as opposed to a lot of short stories.

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What was it she gets like a hundred or something?

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Near that number. I think when she speaks about it in the interview, it's incredible the amount of works that she's put out.

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This is one of her longer stories as far as I'm aware and that only is coming in at about 150 pages, if even that.

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Yeah, seriously, it's like a great epic of, you know, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, like that sort of length.

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But as I've often been told, size isn't everything.

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Duncan, let's talk about the content of this book.

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Very well. So as I said, this is the sequel to The Worm and His King's.

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You must read that book to get this book.

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This is a piece of cosmic horror fiction in the sort of Lovecraftian tradition.

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Lovecraft by way of like Doctor Who?

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That's an interesting one, definitely darker and more mature than any episode Doctor Who I have seen.

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I don't know, man. There's some really sad episodes of Doctor Who.

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To be fair, now I'm thinking, you say sad, I'm thinking terrifying and I still to this day have not gotten over the Angels episode.

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The Stone Angels, the Blink, I think it's called Blink.

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Yes, Blink is a scary one.

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I think my scariest episode was probably, oh gosh,

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maybe The Slitheen? Really? I was quite small back then.

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I started when we still had Christopher Ecclestone for his one season of Doctor Who.

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And there's an episode in that with the Gas Masked Children who are terrifying.

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Oh God, you're right.

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Yes, they are so scary. Definitely one of the best episodes of Doctor Who ever though.

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And I also did, I want to say, start watching Christopher Ecclestone.

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My first ever episode of Doctor Who was The Last Dalek.

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I remember my dad being really excited because he had watched Doctor Who when he was a kid.

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It's like, oh my God, there's Dalek's back.

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Honestly, Doctor Who is just, I mean, I'm a fan.

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I think it's incredibly solid, but I know it gets a bit of the piss taken out of it, I think, for its effects and some of its writing.

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But it's such an episodic adventure, like those golden episodes like The Last Dalek, which deals with our main character.

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But basically, he's the nice guy.

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He's here to help people and he just has this one enemy who he's like, no, no mercy.

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I will destroy them all.

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And it's such a great episode to explore that kind of relationship.

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It is. It's not relevant to this book, though, because when I say this is, here's Doctor Who elements,

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I mean, because the fantastical elements are all about timey-wimey stuff, you know,

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it's all about time being fluid and cyclical and stuff.

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And in this book, especially, Hailey Piper really takes the money and runs.

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Definitely. So just kind of shoot through the plots and got a framework to kind of put our discussion off.

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This book picks up after the last book, which people who listened to that last episode might be a bit confused about

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because The Last Book ended with all of humankind being undone by a time travelling protagonist going back

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and setting the world on a different course to its original Pangean roots.

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It's quite out there, whereas this book can...

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It is. It's out there and it's one of the boldest and most striking endings to any book we've read on the podcast.

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I'm not going to say that this is like, you know, comparable to some of the best stuff we've done,

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but that ending is incredible.

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Like, it really just makes your jaw drop and it takes you to an emotional place that you really don't expect to go.

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It's not often that you feel yourself cheering for human extinction.

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And the complexity of that extends into this book because the sort of big question is,

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is the anti-hero of this book, Donner, who was the bad guy of the previous one,

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but also like the damsel of the previous story, is she going to undo Monique's great act

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and like restore time to that which the worm corrupted in the first place?

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Is she going to save humanity?

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And you have to decide for yourself, whose side am I on here?

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It's a really interesting moral dilemma.

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We have our protagonist from the first book who does not make an appearance in the sequel,

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who is actively traveling back in time to create a better world.

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And when you read the first book, you do really get into her headspace and why she's going to make these decisions.

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What this book exists in timewise, timeline wise, actually,

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is the idea that that journey back to the past takes time.

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So the people in our timeline are still experiencing time moving forward while she's on the journey back.

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It's like, yes, because if you remember precisely the end of the previous book,

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what's kind of happening is the worm, you know, the thing which is both Monique and the worm,

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before they circle back in the end all of time, they actually go to the end of the universe.

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Like they wait out all of existence.

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And then when all the stars have died out, that's when she goes back.

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That's when she restores time.

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And this is the classic like time loop conundrum,

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where you're like the time that exists within the loop kind of doesn't really matter.

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If it's all being erased, surely like they should just wipe out instantly.

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They never existed, so they don't have time in which to exist, to experience the changing of time.

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So Donna seems to be sort of under the impression that like she's in a hurry,

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like she needs to rush to save humanity.

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I don't think she does.

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I think she has literally all of the time left in her universe in which to save the day.

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That's certainly a point of interpretation.

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I completely lost track.

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I like the agency it brought to the story, but I was like, it's so nebulous.

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I think it's even addressed by the main character, Donna.

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She's like either time is going to end almost imminently or not.

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But you might as well act like it's going to be imminent,

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because you know, it'd be really awkward if you're like,

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I've got all the time in the universe and two days later the universe ends.

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Yeah, and that's the thing.

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That's the thing.

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We need to get into left and right Donna soon.

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But before we do that, the real thing that drives Donna to despair in this is the fact

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that none of her actions are going to matter.

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She believes because the universe is going to end,

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but nothing she does matters.

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And that fills her with a deep, deep, deep despair.

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A despair that then manifests into anger and a desire to change things,

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to turn things back, to change the world.

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Whereas the experience of reading the first book is a sort of relief

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of seeing everything come to an end, that it's just over now.

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But all the suffering is going to go away.

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And isn't that nice?

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The world is unjust.

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So get rid of it.

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There is.

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So it's interesting.

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Sorry, I think you're missing a slight element there.

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Monique is, although she's undoing the universe,

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she is creating like a new path that is established to have already existed.

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Yes, she's, I called it like, I can't remember if it's called it Karmic

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or I think I called it Cosmic Justice in our previous review.

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Time should belong to the Pangeans,

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the people who already lived before the worm arrived on Earth,

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on the supercontinent of Pangea.

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And they only were destroyed.

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They only, our timeline, where we existed,

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only came about after the destruction of Pangea by the worm.

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And their time was wiped out, leaving behind like refugees from old time,

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capital O, capital T.

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It's sort of that weird, I don't know how to describe it.

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Do you know like Back to the Future 2, where they go to like the bad 1985?

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Yes.

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It's like if someone from that timeline, the bad 1985,

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discovered the time machine and was like,

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well, if I go back to stop it going bad,

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I would still be undoing all the experiences that people have had.

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Even if it's the bad timeline,

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there are still people who would have existed in that timeline

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because they would have gotten together with someone else,

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met a different husband, like some people are being undone by Marty McFly in that film.

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For sure.

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It's not addressed, but that has to be happening.

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It is not addressed in the same way that in a way, Martin McFly kills all of his family

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and then replaces them with doppelgangers.

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Yeah, but better doppelgangers, so it's okay.

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Yes, superior doppelgangers who play tennis.

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Yeah.

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Okay, so what happened to this book, Duncan?

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So in this book, we open on a very chilling scene,

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but it's quite mundane and that is Donna, who survives the events of the first book.

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She crawls away out of the collapsing cave system that we see her in in the last moments

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and she's living a normal life, but she is being hunted by a mysterious organization.

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At the start of the book, she's being chased by this man down the street

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and she has a choice, turn left or turn right.

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And the first Donna we follow turns right, get back to that point, and is captured.

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And this book basically spends a lot of time going over Donna's experience

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and relationship with the worm, the cosmic being, this shadowy organization,

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who's trying to get involved in the cosmic horror stuff.

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And the really interesting point is there is shown to be another Donna.

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A Donna is introduced later in the book, about a third of the way through.

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We jump back in time and we see a Donna that turned left

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and how that small decision changes her experience.

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And I've got to jump to the key point of this, Geordie.

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The Donna that turns left eventually goes looking into the shadowy organization that she avoided,

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sneaks down into their lair, which is in the ruined cave systems of the last book.

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The Palace of Time, the Unknown Palace, what's it called?

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The Palace of Lost Time.

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The Palace of Lost Time.

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And when she sinks down there, she finds and rescues the other Donna who turned right.

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And in the book, they do call the left Donna D to make it easier for the reader

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and the right Donna, Donna.

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I think I'll probably do the same for sanity and clarity's sake.

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Up until this point, the book was okay, you know?

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It starts off a little slow.

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It's a bit weird just having Donna be the main character

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when she's such an interesting but loathsome character in the first book.

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She's like a true, true traitor.

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Now that she's just the main character, it feels weird.

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I'm 100% with you there, Geordie.

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She sympathises with the villain and someone I thought was pretty nasty ultimately.

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And now you're giving me all these reasons why to think I can see things from her perspective.

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And she's not as bad as I sort of led myself to believe in that book.

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She does still care about Monique, even though their relationship is iffy.

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It's a really hard one for me.

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Because when it first started and we were following Donna, I was like,

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I don't like Donna, you did an amazing job to make me not like Donna.

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In fact, what was on the brilliant work in the first book was seeing Donna from Monique's perspective.

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And Monique, in the start of that book, is in love with Donna.

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She's trying to rescue Donna.

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But also, it's like it subtly layers red flags in about their relationship.

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So before you even get to the cults and the betrayal and the human sacrifice,

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you still have a woman in Donna who is shown to be manipulative and taking advantage of our main character.

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It's not just she ran into a cult and turned evil.

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She was really well portrayed as loathsome and unlikable before that moment.

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And the cult just sort of revealed her inner evil.

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And the fact that this book, one, follows her and two,

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feels like it tries to justify her a bit more or shows it from her perspective.

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I wasn't quite there.

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So she did get through to me, you know.

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I bought into some more Donna sympathy stuff, especially when you get to D.

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Something about D is just more palatable than Donna,

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which is weird because they're the same person.

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But you get much more of a sense that Donna and D are not in control of their lives.

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They are a more sophisticated, older person than Monique.

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They were someone who had a lot more power in that relationship than Monique.

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But actually, deep down, as we know, Monique is the stronger person.

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And Donna didn't really have a lot of control of her life.

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She's living out a lot of secrecy.

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She wasn't able to protect Monique.

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And she feels shame for her inability to keep them off the streets when she was a lawyer.

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And Monique was a pizza delivery person.

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That is good.

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And I think at the start of the story, what I felt a lot of is,

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00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:18,100
because I distrusted this character, because she literally betrayed my last protagonist,

226
00:16:18,100 --> 00:16:21,900
a lot of her early thought processes, I was like,

227
00:16:21,900 --> 00:16:26,300
oh, is this her twisted way to justify what she did?

228
00:16:26,300 --> 00:16:29,700
Or in her point of view, she was doing nothing wrong.

229
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By the time we got through this book, I did begin to come around and go,

230
00:16:32,900 --> 00:16:37,900
okay, maybe she really wasn't being malicious.

231
00:16:37,900 --> 00:16:44,000
Like, she really was struggling and she did have her best intentions were in the right place.

232
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:45,500
But...

233
00:16:45,500 --> 00:16:46,800
Yeah, but...

234
00:16:46,800 --> 00:16:49,900
But, like again, as I said in our previous episode,

235
00:16:49,900 --> 00:16:56,200
all you have to do is not be susceptible to propaganda, like me, who cannot be propagandized.

236
00:16:56,200 --> 00:16:57,400
Unlike me.

237
00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:00,300
I'm very easy to get my mind to change.

238
00:17:00,300 --> 00:17:03,900
Geordie does it every episode.

239
00:17:03,900 --> 00:17:05,500
Less so recently.

240
00:17:05,500 --> 00:17:09,300
It's been a while since I bullied you into disliking a book.

241
00:17:09,300 --> 00:17:10,900
It won't happen today.

242
00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:12,500
Yeah, we're on the same page here, I think.

243
00:17:12,500 --> 00:17:19,100
Unless, unless we come down differently on the left and right divide.

244
00:17:19,100 --> 00:17:20,500
But that remains to be seen.

245
00:17:20,500 --> 00:17:27,100
So, Donna gets kidnapped by this secretive organization,

246
00:17:27,100 --> 00:17:30,900
which kinda has a name, kinda doesn't.

247
00:17:30,900 --> 00:17:34,400
They're referred to as Engine,

248
00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:37,700
and their building has the name Engine on it.

249
00:17:37,700 --> 00:17:40,700
But it's not really clear who they work for.

250
00:17:40,700 --> 00:17:43,300
I wasn't clear if they weren't building an engine.

251
00:17:43,300 --> 00:17:45,500
They're building a keyhole?

252
00:17:45,500 --> 00:17:48,700
That needs, that is not adequate phrasing.

253
00:17:48,700 --> 00:17:56,100
They're building a thing to unlock the door through time and space.

254
00:17:56,100 --> 00:17:59,100
But not the key, yeah, it is a keyhole.

255
00:17:59,100 --> 00:18:00,700
It's weird.

256
00:18:00,700 --> 00:18:06,700
So, they have built a structure within, like, the Palace of Old Time,

257
00:18:06,700 --> 00:18:12,900
under Empire Records, and they're using the material they find there,

258
00:18:12,900 --> 00:18:17,700
this, like, the fragments of old time, to build structures.

259
00:18:17,700 --> 00:18:22,900
And sort of unknowingly, partially unknowingly, partially knowingly,

260
00:18:22,900 --> 00:18:28,700
they're creating a tool for which to, without really understanding it,

261
00:18:28,700 --> 00:18:32,900
recreate the song that pierces the universe.

262
00:18:32,900 --> 00:18:37,900
In the previous book, the people, the cults of the worm,

263
00:18:37,900 --> 00:18:44,500
knew how to sing the song that would open time and space to summon the worm.

264
00:18:44,500 --> 00:18:47,900
And they were doing it for their own ends, and we find it in this book,

265
00:18:47,900 --> 00:18:50,900
or maybe it was in the previous one, and I don't remember, because it was a year ago,

266
00:18:50,900 --> 00:18:56,500
but there have been, okay, no, full stop, wait, yes, this was in the previous book,

267
00:18:56,500 --> 00:18:59,100
but we just get more detail on it this time.

268
00:18:59,100 --> 00:19:02,700
There were previous groups who also tried to summon the worm,

269
00:19:02,700 --> 00:19:06,100
and who paid the price for it, and got skeletonised.

270
00:19:06,100 --> 00:19:11,900
They're the previous kings that Donna is trapped with when Monique finds her.

271
00:19:11,900 --> 00:19:15,100
It's just the way we throw out so much from this book, and be like,

272
00:19:15,100 --> 00:19:23,700
the previous kings, the previous sort of chosen channels for the worm to influence the world,

273
00:19:23,700 --> 00:19:27,900
who once selected, have to basically stand guard over the entranceway

274
00:19:27,900 --> 00:19:31,700
until the worm dismisses them, or shows up.

275
00:19:31,700 --> 00:19:35,300
That's right, the dismissal, I have not been dismissed.

276
00:19:35,300 --> 00:19:37,300
Oh, man.

277
00:19:37,300 --> 00:19:40,500
That was a, Woman is King is a really good book.

278
00:19:40,500 --> 00:19:42,900
This book is interesting.

279
00:19:42,900 --> 00:19:45,700
It's, as I said before, slow start.

280
00:19:45,700 --> 00:19:53,100
Once the split between Donna and D shows up, that's where things really get interesting.

281
00:19:53,100 --> 00:19:58,700
That's why I sent Duncan a text saying, oh yeah, this is a good book.

282
00:19:58,700 --> 00:20:00,900
Because what happens is...

283
00:20:00,900 --> 00:20:05,700
Okay, Duncan, are you familiar with the filmography of Gwyneth Paltrow?

284
00:20:05,700 --> 00:20:07,300
No, I am not.

285
00:20:07,300 --> 00:20:10,500
You're more of a fan of her, you know, pharmaceutical stuff.

286
00:20:10,500 --> 00:20:11,500
Oh, definitely.

287
00:20:11,500 --> 00:20:13,500
The candles that smell like her vagina and stuff.

288
00:20:13,500 --> 00:20:15,700
What else do you like when you get in the bath?

289
00:20:15,700 --> 00:20:20,500
Um, are you familiar then with a movie called Sliding Doors?

290
00:20:20,500 --> 00:20:24,100
I'm actually not. I have no idea where this is going.

291
00:20:24,100 --> 00:20:27,100
Sliding Doors is a movie that came out in the 1990s.

292
00:20:27,100 --> 00:20:36,100
It's about a woman who is going to get on the London Underground and either, in a moment of, you know, cosmic splicing,

293
00:20:36,100 --> 00:20:42,100
she either gets on the Underground or she misses and she doesn't get through the sliding doors.

294
00:20:42,100 --> 00:20:49,700
And this sets off this chain reaction because in one timeline, she gets on the Underground,

295
00:20:49,700 --> 00:20:55,100
she gets home in time, and she discovers her boyfriend in bed with another woman.

296
00:20:55,100 --> 00:21:00,100
And in the other one, she arrives late, she arrives home and everything's normal,

297
00:21:00,100 --> 00:21:06,100
and the movie is about these two timelines working parallel with each other up to the end,

298
00:21:06,100 --> 00:21:12,100
one where she has made this discovery and there's a lot of drama, and the other where she's in blissful ignorance.

299
00:21:12,100 --> 00:21:15,100
I mean, cool concept and something that I...

300
00:21:15,100 --> 00:21:16,100
Yeah, great concept.

301
00:21:16,100 --> 00:21:22,100
I think it's fun. I love it when people play with that. I like seeing butterfly effects play out.

302
00:21:22,100 --> 00:21:30,100
Oh yeah, it's some of the best parts of, you know, of a time travel story because we all have what-ifs in our life.

303
00:21:30,100 --> 00:21:34,100
We all have moments we want to go back to. What if I had done this?

304
00:21:34,100 --> 00:21:41,100
You know, I have, like, when I think about this, I can go back to two moments in my life specifically.

305
00:21:41,100 --> 00:21:48,100
I'm like, different courses of action that I could have made would completely change my life, completely.

306
00:21:48,100 --> 00:21:54,100
Like, split-second decisions. One I think probably would have made it better, one would have made it a lot worse,

307
00:21:54,100 --> 00:22:01,100
and thank God I don't think about them as much as I used to, but they used to come be in my head all the time.

308
00:22:01,100 --> 00:22:08,100
See, I actually used to have that as well, Geordie. I think what really just killed it for me is when it just occurred to me that

309
00:22:08,100 --> 00:22:14,100
every time I get in my car, I'm generating thousands of those moments of,

310
00:22:14,100 --> 00:22:19,100
what if I had not hit the brakes then? This would have gone very different. And to give you a point, you just go,

311
00:22:19,100 --> 00:22:21,100
yeah, I'll just be happy I'm still here.

312
00:22:21,100 --> 00:22:29,100
Yes, what if I let the intrusive thoughts win? Yes, so, but we have these focal moments where they change,

313
00:22:29,100 --> 00:22:37,100
and the point of this story is that this tiny decision, left or right, could completely change your life.

314
00:22:37,100 --> 00:22:45,100
Now, it's a little bit more complicated than your typical string theory, because what might actually be happening here

315
00:22:45,100 --> 00:22:56,100
is space-time manipulation by a being that exists outside of our understanding of normal, you know, the normal flow of time.

316
00:22:56,100 --> 00:23:04,100
Well, definitely, because in your normal string, the two versions don't bump back into each other.

317
00:23:04,100 --> 00:23:14,100
There's definitely an element here where the character that turns left, D, so she's being chased by a guy called Tower.

318
00:23:14,100 --> 00:23:19,100
Mr. Tower. Mr. Tower. Very foreboding, gentlemen.

319
00:23:19,100 --> 00:23:30,100
Dee gets away, but later when D gets to the engine in the Pass of Lost Time, she's there with Donna, who was captured by Tower,

320
00:23:30,100 --> 00:23:36,100
and it's very clear that the Tower that she meets in that scene is the Tower that captured Donna.

321
00:23:36,100 --> 00:23:43,100
So, D must have transitioned from her timeline, with a Tower standing there going,

322
00:23:43,100 --> 00:23:50,100
adoi, where did she go, to a different version of reality, with a Tower going, I have caught her.

323
00:23:50,100 --> 00:23:59,100
Well, I don't know about that. I don't know if I want to say, like, she is travelling between timelines,

324
00:23:59,100 --> 00:24:06,100
because I really think that the idea is that there is just one, and it's going to be unmade by the worm.

325
00:24:06,100 --> 00:24:16,100
I think what's more likely to happen is that, literally, by the manipulation of our universe, our one whole universe,

326
00:24:16,100 --> 00:24:20,100
there are literally two Dons.

327
00:24:20,100 --> 00:24:30,100
Instead of, like, the classic string theory thing being, when you make a decision you create two universes,

328
00:24:30,100 --> 00:24:39,100
I think the implication is, literally, Donna splits like a raindrop. One goes left, one goes right.

329
00:24:39,100 --> 00:24:42,100
Oh, okay, and you're saying the reason why…

330
00:24:42,100 --> 00:24:46,100
Literally, yeah, there are literally two Donnas in space, in New York City.

331
00:24:46,100 --> 00:24:52,100
And in that moment when they split, that's why D gets away, because Mr. Tower captures Donna.

332
00:24:52,100 --> 00:24:57,100
Literally, he turns right to capture the one that he can see clambering over a fence.

333
00:24:57,100 --> 00:24:58,100
Yes.

334
00:24:58,100 --> 00:25:05,100
Okay, and that would explain D basically goes back to her apartment and isn't really bothered again,

335
00:25:05,100 --> 00:25:10,100
and that could just cover by the fact that they think they've got her.

336
00:25:10,100 --> 00:25:13,100
Oh, maybe I'm wrong.

337
00:25:13,100 --> 00:25:14,100
Well, there's the thing.

338
00:25:14,100 --> 00:25:20,100
I think it's true, D, because they do come to her door and ring the phone a bunch.

339
00:25:20,100 --> 00:25:25,100
But, I would like to point out, we never get confirmation that's Mr. Tower.

340
00:25:25,100 --> 00:25:32,100
She's terrified, D, like, hiding in her apartment, the phone's ringing, someone's at the door,

341
00:25:32,100 --> 00:25:36,100
but we never actually find out if that's Mr. Tower.

342
00:25:36,100 --> 00:25:42,100
You know, that could just be she's scared, it could be her girlfriend, it could be someone else trying to contact her.

343
00:25:42,100 --> 00:25:45,100
I guess, I guess that's true.

344
00:25:45,100 --> 00:25:47,100
But that actually goes against the argument I was first making,

345
00:25:47,100 --> 00:25:50,100
which is that I think she somehow steps back into the other timeline,

346
00:25:50,100 --> 00:25:58,100
which I thought happened when she goes back to the palace, so even interpretation should get to the same point.

347
00:25:58,100 --> 00:26:01,100
It's going to get more complicated later when we talk about the ending.

348
00:26:01,100 --> 00:26:07,100
But yes, so, and one thing that you've set up to now is that D goes to find Donna,

349
00:26:07,100 --> 00:26:13,100
but what's actually happening is that she's hearing a voice, and she's being lured back to Donna.

350
00:26:13,100 --> 00:26:21,100
That's right, and D thinks throughout this stage that this is Monique, this is Monique as part of the Worm,

351
00:26:21,100 --> 00:26:29,100
and it's really kind of nice, and I air quotes around the word nice, that D is like, I think she needs help,

352
00:26:29,100 --> 00:26:36,100
am I going to like save Monique, like Monique tried to save me, and I like the fact that D kind of sets off,

353
00:26:36,100 --> 00:26:39,100
because D at this point basically has gotten away.

354
00:26:39,100 --> 00:26:48,100
She could jump on the next train and get out of town, but she's like, no, I need to say goodbye to my, you know, on-off, not on-off,

355
00:26:48,100 --> 00:26:55,100
see occasional girlfriend, say goodbye to my cat, I need to go, and I think it's a bit of a journey of redemption.

356
00:26:55,100 --> 00:27:00,100
Yes, she's being led there, yet there are Cosmos powers at play, but I think internally for the character,

357
00:27:00,100 --> 00:27:05,100
she is genuinely seeking to help and to redeem herself.

358
00:27:05,100 --> 00:27:11,100
She's being invited, she's being lured, but she's doing it because, you know, she's trying to do the right thing.

359
00:27:11,100 --> 00:27:21,100
She's like, she's making the decision to cross the threshold, like she's answering the call, the thing that all heroes do in their stories.

360
00:27:21,100 --> 00:27:23,100
It's quite fun when it's a literal call.

361
00:27:23,100 --> 00:27:31,100
Yeah, you know, if Frodo's phone started ringing and Gandalf said, hey, hey, I'm just out here with my pal Gwaii here,

362
00:27:31,100 --> 00:27:36,100
please just head to Rivendell and drop some of my old stuff off. Thanks so much, mate.

363
00:27:36,100 --> 00:27:43,100
I'll see you there, maybe. I might try and run into you at Weathertop. I might be busy at the time. I'll try and see you there, dude.

364
00:27:43,100 --> 00:27:45,100
And off he goes. No problem in the world.

365
00:27:45,100 --> 00:27:51,100
So, but exactly, this is a really good kind of positive character and reputs D in a much better light.

366
00:27:51,100 --> 00:27:52,100
D...

367
00:27:52,100 --> 00:27:53,100
Van Donner.

368
00:27:53,100 --> 00:27:57,100
...is good Donner. Other Donner.

369
00:27:57,100 --> 00:28:07,100
Yeah, now this is the interesting thing. We are more inclined to like D, and the framing of this is really interesting,

370
00:28:07,100 --> 00:28:14,100
the way in which Hailey Piper creates a difference between the two of them.

371
00:28:14,100 --> 00:28:22,100
Because fundamentally, what makes Donner like a worse person than D?

372
00:28:22,100 --> 00:28:32,100
Nothing really. They've had the same four years of the exact same experiences in between now and when we last saw them as a villain.

373
00:28:32,100 --> 00:28:38,100
The only thing that separates them is like two days. It's two days of experiences.

374
00:28:38,100 --> 00:28:54,100
Donner's two days have been spent interrogated, abused, and being forced to re-engage with the cosmic horror that impacted us so much four years ago.

375
00:28:54,100 --> 00:28:55,100
Whereas D hasn't.

376
00:28:55,100 --> 00:29:04,100
And most of all, the discovery that all her actions are pointless and that her universe is going to come to an end.

377
00:29:04,100 --> 00:29:17,100
The way in which she discovers this is great because it's not spelled out, and she has to deduce it for herself in a way which I'm really amazed that it manages to be convincing.

378
00:29:17,100 --> 00:29:27,100
Because it feels like it should be a huge leap of logic. She has no idea when she leaves behind, when she leaves Empire Records,

379
00:29:27,100 --> 00:29:34,100
what Monique has really done to the worm or what she's going to do next.

380
00:29:34,100 --> 00:29:42,100
The fact that she's able to sort of buy pretty clever but believable deduction to figure it out. I think that's really well done.

381
00:29:42,100 --> 00:29:51,100
I agree. It was really nice. And particularly at this point in the story where I was still like, this Donner was like my protagonist.

382
00:29:51,100 --> 00:30:00,100
I was getting quite like, yeah, go on, work it out. You can get out. You're smart. You can get out the situation. This is where we're going.

383
00:30:00,100 --> 00:30:11,100
Oh, I thought you were like, yeah, now you know, don't you, you piece of work. You know everything's doomed and you're going to come to an end.

384
00:30:11,100 --> 00:30:19,100
The thing is, I don't know, maybe this is clearly very much a personal me thing. I'm sure lots of other people feel the same way with me.

385
00:30:19,100 --> 00:30:28,100
But the idea of like, oh, no, all the time is going to come to an end. I'm like, well, yeah, I think that's actually kind of a known thing.

386
00:30:28,100 --> 00:30:43,100
Exactly. I mean, that's something I was trying to hint at earlier, which is that Donner's inability to cope with that is actually an inability to cope with the very things which we already know is that we're going to die.

387
00:30:43,100 --> 00:30:51,100
And Donner, for some reason, some part of her background means that she can't cope with the fact that she's going to die.

388
00:30:51,100 --> 00:30:56,100
You know, she, I think part of it is that she says, I want to make a world without suffering.

389
00:30:56,100 --> 00:31:05,100
But I think part of her really wants to live forever. Like, she's just terrified of her own extinction, whereas D isn't.

390
00:31:05,100 --> 00:31:16,100
And it's not quite clear why, as you alluded to, I don't think the experiences that Donner goes through would, no, actually, let me put it this way.

391
00:31:16,100 --> 00:31:24,100
I don't feel like the difference should purely come from the fact that Donner's been having a really rough two days and she's been having a rough two days.

392
00:31:24,100 --> 00:31:36,100
So I'm not going to back away from that. But I don't feel like D has had sufficient moment of, like, realisation to change her and what Donner is.

393
00:31:36,100 --> 00:31:48,100
I feel like there should have been two aspects. A moment for Donner to kind of, like, snap and a moment for D to be like, there are more important things, like maybe an interaction with her girlfriend.

394
00:31:48,100 --> 00:31:50,100
Is it Shell? Shelley?

395
00:31:50,100 --> 00:31:51,100
Shell, yeah.

396
00:31:51,100 --> 00:31:57,100
Like, a moment there to make her kind of go, oh, it's not all about me. Something.

397
00:31:57,100 --> 00:32:01,100
I mean, I feel like it kind of is that, but done in a much really subtle way.

398
00:32:01,100 --> 00:32:08,100
Like, the big difference I say between them, aside from the whole captivity thing, which again, we don't want to undersell, it's really bad.

399
00:32:08,100 --> 00:32:16,100
I think there is something you said about the fact that D is the one who gets to see Shell. She gets to see her interact with her cat.

400
00:32:16,100 --> 00:32:26,100
Like, she gets to have a little vision for, yeah, I'm not alone and I have stuff that matters out there and stuff I want to live for.

401
00:32:26,100 --> 00:32:36,100
Maybe, literally, it just comes down to the fact that Donner, you know, right Donner, has been pricked by a needle and has made her really sick.

402
00:32:36,100 --> 00:32:38,100
And, like, she thinks she's going to die.

403
00:32:38,100 --> 00:32:47,100
I certainly think that's a fact. Obviously, with her further treatment as well, she clearly is off the mind that she might not be walking out of this scenario.

404
00:32:47,100 --> 00:32:48,100
And she's been reminded that...

405
00:32:48,100 --> 00:32:54,100
Yeah, it might have induced a sort of fatalism combined with the knowledge that her reality is going to come to an end.

406
00:32:54,100 --> 00:33:02,100
Which, we should point out, D doesn't know and I don't think has ever revealed her in the story, period, full stop.

407
00:33:02,100 --> 00:33:04,100
I think you're absolutely right.

408
00:33:04,100 --> 00:33:08,100
Dee, there's no point where Donner goes, this is what Monique is up to.

409
00:33:08,100 --> 00:33:10,100
They don't have that conversation.

410
00:33:10,100 --> 00:33:14,100
So, do you know what? Actually, they've only rolled back.

411
00:33:14,100 --> 00:33:20,100
I still feel like Dee's experience could have been a bit more heavily pushed for my preference.

412
00:33:20,100 --> 00:33:30,100
But Donner's reasoning for kind of going more off the deep end, despite the fact that I would argue, you know, terms of your own mortality and, you know, the end of the universe and the pointlessness of humanity,

413
00:33:30,100 --> 00:33:41,100
are somewhat universal concepts, she's definitely have them shoved in her face in a way that I think would make anyone more irritable on the matter.

414
00:33:41,100 --> 00:33:42,100
I certainly would be.

415
00:33:42,100 --> 00:33:52,100
Yes, and it's also appropriate for like a Lovecraftian story, for characters to go a little crazy, to see the truth of reality and be unable to cope with it.

416
00:33:52,100 --> 00:33:55,100
So, what happens when they get back together?

417
00:33:55,100 --> 00:34:00,100
I feel like I'm jumping over Donner's experience, I should say quite a large section of this book.

418
00:34:00,100 --> 00:34:08,100
The first half, definitely the first third, is just Donner's capture and experience in captivity.

419
00:34:08,100 --> 00:34:12,100
There's actually a really nice moment that I want to talk about.

420
00:34:12,100 --> 00:34:17,100
I don't really want to spend too much time on like the time in the white room and the torture and the beating me up and the fighting.

421
00:34:17,100 --> 00:34:23,100
But there's a really nice moment when she's in her cell and she taps a message on the wall.

422
00:34:23,100 --> 00:34:28,100
Oh, so good. That's the bit where it's like, oh man, we're cooking here.

423
00:34:28,100 --> 00:34:35,100
This is a scene where Donner on her first night, I think she hears a tapping first through the wall.

424
00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:44,100
Yes, that's important. She hears a tapping and it's the tapping that puts out the rhythm of the song that pierces the universe.

425
00:34:44,100 --> 00:34:51,100
And she goes, there's someone else, there's another survivor, because no one else could possibly know that song.

426
00:34:51,100 --> 00:35:03,100
So she hears the first half and then she taps out the rest of On Her Cell wall, which is made from like some of this space time material, you know, stuff from old time.

427
00:35:03,100 --> 00:35:07,100
And so she communicates through the wall with another prisoner.

428
00:35:07,100 --> 00:35:12,100
And so a big mystery that you have in this book is who's the other person.

429
00:35:12,100 --> 00:35:19,100
It can't be anyone else, so who is it? Oh, and then...

430
00:35:19,100 --> 00:35:28,100
The next day she goes to us, gets thrown back in her cell after a horrible experience and she's like, I need to reach out to that person again.

431
00:35:28,100 --> 00:35:34,100
She taps the first half of the song on the wall and they tap back the second half.

432
00:35:34,100 --> 00:35:40,100
And Donner has a realisation. There's no other person.

433
00:35:40,100 --> 00:35:50,100
Well, the first important clue is that she taps the first night she hears it in like her left wall and then the reply comes from the right.

434
00:35:50,100 --> 00:35:57,100
And she's like, did they move the prisoner? Why would they do that? That doesn't make any sense. Is there another prisoner? Why are they tapping back?

435
00:35:57,100 --> 00:36:07,100
Because it's her. And by her I don't mean D, I mean literally the walls are transmitting her tapping through time.

436
00:36:07,100 --> 00:36:12,100
And this is the first real inkling. This is before we find out the split, by the way, between Donner and D.

437
00:36:12,100 --> 00:36:15,100
This is the first bit of time travel to an elegance that's laid in.

438
00:36:15,100 --> 00:36:22,100
And when this happens, I was like, as you said, now we're cooking outside. Oh, you can bring time travel into this.

439
00:36:22,100 --> 00:36:28,100
I'm not going to lie. I thought we were just going for some cosmic minor kind of torture experience.

440
00:36:28,100 --> 00:36:34,100
And that was quite good. I was a little bit. I was on the road to disappointment. I'll be honest. I did lose faith.

441
00:36:34,100 --> 00:36:42,100
I'm like page 30. I'm really sorry, Hailey. I really shouldn't have. But I did. It shook. My faith in the worm shook.

442
00:36:42,100 --> 00:36:47,100
But this moment happened. I went on an arm back. I'm here. Let's slide.

443
00:36:47,100 --> 00:36:58,100
I will say I was I was really at high hopes for this thing. It gets sort of the way this works is that it heralds the arrival of D, of left Donner.

444
00:36:58,100 --> 00:37:06,100
The idea that like, you know, you can communicate through time and that you can communicate with yourself.

445
00:37:06,100 --> 00:37:11,100
That's obviously to like sort of set up for the other Donner to show up.

446
00:37:11,100 --> 00:37:18,100
But I was really hoping some really cool, interesting stuff would be done purely with this mechanism.

447
00:37:18,100 --> 00:37:27,100
Like, I thought like, OK, I know what's going to happen. She's going to like ask questions to the wall.

448
00:37:27,100 --> 00:37:31,100
She's going to say like, what's going to happen tomorrow? Are we going to do this?

449
00:37:31,100 --> 00:37:44,100
And then she would hear like a thunk from the other side of the wall as she like communicated messages to herself from tomorrow back in time to like help her get through the next day.

450
00:37:44,100 --> 00:37:48,100
I got really excited for that, but it didn't happen. No, you're right.

451
00:37:48,100 --> 00:37:52,100
It's not really a mechanic that gets used in the story at all.

452
00:37:52,100 --> 00:37:59,100
I think it even really just gets referenced when D breaks Donner out and Donner basically has that moment where he's like, oh, yes, there were no other prisoners.

453
00:37:59,100 --> 00:38:04,100
I was right. And that's really where it gets left.

454
00:38:04,100 --> 00:38:09,100
Yes, it's a cool moment. And I think it had, and as you say, Duncan, had the same effect on both of us.

455
00:38:09,100 --> 00:38:12,100
We're like, hell yeah, now we're getting into it.

456
00:38:12,100 --> 00:38:16,100
Like, this is clearly like the element that works in this story.

457
00:38:16,100 --> 00:38:24,100
And it's great that it then introduces D because the split between Donner and D is like the novel part of this story.

458
00:38:24,100 --> 00:38:30,100
It's the part that makes you go, ah, this is what I can tell people the story is about.

459
00:38:30,100 --> 00:38:39,100
That's the thrust of the story. And it builds on the stuff that was really interesting and worked in The Worminers Kings.

460
00:38:39,100 --> 00:38:43,100
And it takes it to a new, exciting, different place.

461
00:38:43,100 --> 00:38:50,100
We didn't see anything like this in a previous book, aside from the fact that they were like two separate histories of Earth.

462
00:38:50,100 --> 00:38:55,100
And the place it goes in the climax is really interesting as well.

463
00:38:55,100 --> 00:38:57,100
Duncan, are you ready to go there?

464
00:38:57,100 --> 00:38:59,100
I actually think we need to pull back, Doradie, just a tiny bit.

465
00:38:59,100 --> 00:39:03,100
I know you're disappointed because I want to talk about the climax.

466
00:39:03,100 --> 00:39:06,100
But I think we should talk about it in our own climax.

467
00:39:06,100 --> 00:39:10,100
And just before, let's just touch on two other characters.

468
00:39:10,100 --> 00:39:14,100
Because there's one character who I think is quite important to climax, who we've not even mentioned.

469
00:39:14,100 --> 00:39:16,100
OK.

470
00:39:16,100 --> 00:39:18,100
Who's interviewing Donner?

471
00:39:18,100 --> 00:39:20,100
What's her name? Dr. Ezra or something?

472
00:39:20,100 --> 00:39:22,100
Dr. Ezra.

473
00:39:22,100 --> 00:39:24,100
Wow, you're right. I didn't have that much to say about her anyway.

474
00:39:24,100 --> 00:39:28,100
You're right. Yeah. Just a doctor in the suit who asks the questions.

475
00:39:28,100 --> 00:39:36,100
Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is someone you could get really excited about because Dr. Ezra is someone who can't let go of the past.

476
00:39:36,100 --> 00:39:42,100
Kinda like Donner, who is like, who longs after like what could have been before.

477
00:39:42,100 --> 00:39:50,100
And Dr. Ezra longs after like her mother who vanished because she was in like a previous worm cult.

478
00:39:50,100 --> 00:39:58,100
And she wants to approach the same search for the worm as a scientist, not as one of the faithful.

479
00:39:58,100 --> 00:40:02,100
And Donner is dismissive of her and contemptuous of her.

480
00:40:02,100 --> 00:40:10,100
She's like, you can't understand a worm. You refuse to understand it in a way you should, which is as something of the divine.

481
00:40:10,100 --> 00:40:20,100
And this is great because when I read novels like this, I always come into it as a skeptic.

482
00:40:20,100 --> 00:40:24,100
I can't remember in what review I talked to you about this, Duncan.

483
00:40:24,100 --> 00:40:31,100
But whenever I experience something that's like the narrator says, this could be magic or there could be a rational explanation.

484
00:40:31,100 --> 00:40:38,100
I always go for the rational explanation, even in something like the X-Files, where that's a stupid thing to do.

485
00:40:38,100 --> 00:40:41,100
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm with Scully here.

486
00:40:41,100 --> 00:40:50,100
I mean, I would say I'm probably the opposite because I read a lot of fantastical fiction and I'm just always sat there going,

487
00:40:50,100 --> 00:40:55,100
well, if it's the rational explanation, this would not be a fun story, guys. Come on.

488
00:40:55,100 --> 00:41:00,100
Rational explanations are for the real world documentaries. Let's have something fantastical.

489
00:41:00,100 --> 00:41:05,100
But I know what you mean. It's very interesting to have this cosmic horror.

490
00:41:05,100 --> 00:41:13,100
And for someone want to be like, I think because I feel like this is the frustration that Dr. Azura feels a bit.

491
00:41:13,100 --> 00:41:20,100
And when Donna's doing this whole you should see it as divine because Azura is like, I feel it's basically kind of response with,

492
00:41:20,100 --> 00:41:24,100
no, we should try to understand it because you're just refusing to.

493
00:41:24,100 --> 00:41:28,100
You're just going, no, it's divine. Let's not investigate anymore.

494
00:41:28,100 --> 00:41:31,100
I just call it divine. Shut down that conversation.

495
00:41:31,100 --> 00:41:36,100
And I was like, no, we must push further. We must understand as much as we can.

496
00:41:36,100 --> 00:41:42,100
Obviously, from the reader's perspective and understand, you know, I know the genre. You're like, that's a mistake.

497
00:41:42,100 --> 00:41:47,100
You'd be probably better off as an individual just calling it divine and not investigating.

498
00:41:47,100 --> 00:41:52,100
But I like your attitude. I like to poke at things.

499
00:41:52,100 --> 00:41:58,100
So she's the scientist. She's you know, she believes it must be a rational explanation.

500
00:41:58,100 --> 00:42:02,100
And as the story goes on, those scales fall from her eyes.

501
00:42:02,100 --> 00:42:10,100
And she struggles to cope with the nature of reality because the fact is the worm has an ego.

502
00:42:10,100 --> 00:42:14,100
Like it's resentful. It holds grudges. It has desires.

503
00:42:14,100 --> 00:42:19,100
And much to my surprise, it does appear in this story.

504
00:42:19,100 --> 00:42:27,100
It does. So at the end of the last book, it's kind of very much inferred that Monique and the worm,

505
00:42:27,100 --> 00:42:30,100
they kind of merge. They become sort of one being.

506
00:42:30,100 --> 00:42:38,100
And Monique's consciousness rides the worm's power and does her whole resetting time thing.

507
00:42:38,100 --> 00:42:45,100
In this one, we sort of revealed that a sliver of the worm, part of its essence,

508
00:42:45,100 --> 00:42:53,100
a section of the worm without all of its power, but its original ego and very fragile ego, may I say,

509
00:42:53,100 --> 00:43:02,100
still exists and is trying to find a channel for its revenge.

510
00:43:02,100 --> 00:43:05,100
And that channel is good old Donna.

511
00:43:05,100 --> 00:43:13,100
Donna, King Donna, by preying on her ego and manipulating time to split Donna

512
00:43:13,100 --> 00:43:23,100
into the worm leads D back to Donna to rescue her and to allow her to sing the song,

513
00:43:23,100 --> 00:43:29,100
the piece of the universe, so that she can merge with the worm, much like Monique did.

514
00:43:29,100 --> 00:43:36,100
And it's revealed, like, because we don't realize is that these characters are marched to be to someone else's drum.

515
00:43:36,100 --> 00:43:43,100
We can say, you know, D went down there because she wanted to, because she was trying to do the right thing,

516
00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:45,100
she was trying to redeem herself.

517
00:43:45,100 --> 00:43:52,100
But in reality, it's possible that D only exists for the sake of this one purpose,

518
00:43:52,100 --> 00:44:00,100
that she has been created by a force of destiny to achieve a purpose and do nothing more.

519
00:44:00,100 --> 00:44:06,100
Rescue Donna, allow her to turn on the keyhole engine thing.

520
00:44:06,100 --> 00:44:08,100
At the end of the book, it's a teeny bit confusing.

521
00:44:08,100 --> 00:44:11,100
So I think that's what happened.

522
00:44:11,100 --> 00:44:15,100
And allow Donna to fuse with the worm.

523
00:44:15,100 --> 00:44:17,100
Correct. That's definitely what's implied.

524
00:44:17,100 --> 00:44:24,100
It's made very clear that the voices that D hears, which she thinks is sort of the Monique worm, is not.

525
00:44:24,100 --> 00:44:27,100
It's this sliver of the worm.

526
00:44:27,100 --> 00:44:35,100
One thing I just want to kind of touch on here, like, the worm really is quite interesting because Donna speaks about the worm.

527
00:44:35,100 --> 00:44:37,100
When Donna speaks about it, it's such reverence, divine.

528
00:44:37,100 --> 00:44:41,100
Oh, what is it? It is, we are like ants to it.

529
00:44:41,100 --> 00:44:47,100
What is it? What is this thing? You know, how can we relate to the opinions of a tiny individual ant?

530
00:44:47,100 --> 00:44:54,100
And I'm like, that metaphor doesn't quite fly because even good old vegan me,

531
00:44:54,100 --> 00:44:57,100
I don't care what an ant thinks of me.

532
00:44:57,100 --> 00:45:00,100
The worm does.

533
00:45:00,100 --> 00:45:07,100
Which makes me think that the worm isn't as high above the ant as Donna thinks it is.

534
00:45:07,100 --> 00:45:09,100
Oh, I know what you mean.

535
00:45:09,100 --> 00:45:13,100
Because you're talking about the fact that the worm is spiteful and vengeful.

536
00:45:13,100 --> 00:45:14,100
Yeah.

537
00:45:14,100 --> 00:45:18,100
And it like, it wants to smash Pangaea because these guys slighted it.

538
00:45:18,100 --> 00:45:23,100
There's no indication that it has any actual feelings towards Monique.

539
00:45:23,100 --> 00:45:32,100
But it definitely wants to stop Monique from undoing its actions and probably wants to like, eat Monique.

540
00:45:32,100 --> 00:45:42,100
Or like, replace the part of Monique that is now part of the greater worm-ness and like, become itself again.

541
00:45:42,100 --> 00:45:50,100
Its desires are opaque and, you know, it doesn't convey anything to the narrative except by its actions.

542
00:45:50,100 --> 00:45:53,100
Which is great. I love that.

543
00:45:53,100 --> 00:45:58,100
I never ever want to watch a series where Cthulhu talks.

544
00:45:58,100 --> 00:46:01,100
Except for Ant and Another Thing by Owen Cawford, but that's different.

545
00:46:01,100 --> 00:46:05,100
I think one of the great things about the worm, I love that we call it the worm.

546
00:46:05,100 --> 00:46:12,100
And I'm not gonna, even while reading it and saying that, I, you know, my mind conjures up an image of an oversized worm.

547
00:46:12,100 --> 00:46:17,100
But it's never described in such physical terms.

548
00:46:17,100 --> 00:46:19,100
It's just an influence of Pangaea.

549
00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:23,100
Why it's a worm is that it makes wormholes.

550
00:46:23,100 --> 00:46:27,100
It burrows through time. It's, and it rends.

551
00:46:27,100 --> 00:46:32,100
That's the verb which is used by Monique and later by D.

552
00:46:32,100 --> 00:46:38,100
It's not a maker. It's a destroyer. It carves. It cuts. It slices.

553
00:46:38,100 --> 00:46:46,100
And when you think about like, the scale of, I don't know, time in the cosmos, it seems really petty.

554
00:46:46,100 --> 00:46:56,100
And it just makes me then think it isn't as grandiose as the characters sort of, Donna prescribes it to be.

555
00:46:56,100 --> 00:46:59,100
For it to then be that individually petty.

556
00:46:59,100 --> 00:47:05,100
But that's just my view on it. I picture that actually, although the worm is obviously much greater than the humanity,

557
00:47:05,100 --> 00:47:11,100
I think maybe on the cosmic scale, minor predictions, I don't think it's actually that big.

558
00:47:11,100 --> 00:47:15,100
I think there might be things out there that are like, the worm is a worm to us.

559
00:47:15,100 --> 00:47:17,100
That's just the vibe I've got.

560
00:47:17,100 --> 00:47:23,100
It's totally possible, really. I mean, I hadn't really troubled myself to think about that.

561
00:47:23,100 --> 00:47:33,100
But yeah, if one cosmic force exists that happens to have concerned itself with one planet because of Pangaea being caught its attention,

562
00:47:33,100 --> 00:47:39,100
yeah, there could be scores of worms who don't care what happens to Pangaea.

563
00:47:39,100 --> 00:47:48,100
It's just like the kid, again, going back to that metaphor of bugs, like a little child playing in the garden and literally playing with the bugs,

564
00:47:48,100 --> 00:47:51,100
it's like, I'm delighted to the bugs, that child is all powerful.

565
00:47:51,100 --> 00:47:56,100
But there are still adults in that child's life who would just be like, what are you doing? Come inside.

566
00:47:56,100 --> 00:48:01,100
Yeah, or the worm could be a tendril of a greater being, one of many arms.

567
00:48:01,100 --> 00:48:02,100
What, I like it.

568
00:48:02,100 --> 00:48:06,100
Okay, we're speculating about stuff that just literally isn't even in this book at this point,

569
00:48:06,100 --> 00:48:12,100
and we haven't talked about the climax and the weird places this story goes, such that, Duncan,

570
00:48:12,100 --> 00:48:19,100
I think we're going to have to figure out what happened as a collaborative effort, because I think I know.

571
00:48:19,100 --> 00:48:22,100
I think I do, but I'm not sure.

572
00:48:22,100 --> 00:48:26,100
I said this to Jordie just before we started HitRecord.

573
00:48:26,100 --> 00:48:30,100
I said, quite often when we review books, we give our thoughts on what happened.

574
00:48:30,100 --> 00:48:36,100
And this time, it's like we need to share what we think happened.

575
00:48:36,100 --> 00:48:40,100
So the events as Duncan experienced them.

576
00:48:40,100 --> 00:48:48,100
Dee and Donna escape from their cell, capture Dr. Azura, and are like, you need to shut this all down,

577
00:48:48,100 --> 00:48:52,100
or blow it all up, or something to that tune.

578
00:48:52,100 --> 00:48:58,100
They end up in a room with the keyhole, and they start their singing,

579
00:48:58,100 --> 00:49:03,100
because they want to wreck things.

580
00:49:03,100 --> 00:49:09,100
And Mr. Tower comes in, stabs D, but it's too late.

581
00:49:09,100 --> 00:49:11,100
The hole has been opened.

582
00:49:11,100 --> 00:49:18,100
Donna gets infused with old-timey powers, which is like dark crystals,

583
00:49:18,100 --> 00:49:21,100
and she's sort of metamorphosing into a different being.

584
00:49:21,100 --> 00:49:29,100
Donna uses this power to grab hold of Mr. Tower, and her touch infects him,

585
00:49:29,100 --> 00:49:34,100
and he basically arrives in agony and crumbles to dust.

586
00:49:34,100 --> 00:49:39,100
And then D is all like, okay, Donna, we've got to shut this down now,

587
00:49:39,100 --> 00:49:42,100
because we don't want to make any big trouble.

588
00:49:42,100 --> 00:49:45,100
And then Donna's like, no, I am the Worms' king.

589
00:49:45,100 --> 00:49:49,100
I will ascend with it and bring about my universe.

590
00:49:49,100 --> 00:49:52,100
I am an egotistical arsehat.

591
00:49:52,100 --> 00:49:57,100
And so D and Azura, we've got to hit the switches

592
00:49:57,100 --> 00:49:59,100
and make this whole place blow up.

593
00:49:59,100 --> 00:50:05,100
And they do, and they run out, and collapsing environment,

594
00:50:05,100 --> 00:50:08,100
but bad Donna shoots away into the cosmos,

595
00:50:08,100 --> 00:50:12,100
and we'll do bad things in the next book.

596
00:50:12,100 --> 00:50:15,100
That's kind of what I got.

597
00:50:15,100 --> 00:50:17,100
I think that's really close.

598
00:50:17,100 --> 00:50:21,100
I think the thing is that...

599
00:50:21,100 --> 00:50:26,100
The important thing to note is that D is really ignorant in this whole section.

600
00:50:26,100 --> 00:50:28,100
Donna knows pretty much everything that's happening.

601
00:50:28,100 --> 00:50:30,100
Dee knows very little.

602
00:50:30,100 --> 00:50:33,100
So Donna says to D, before we go,

603
00:50:33,100 --> 00:50:38,100
and Dee's literally hobbling Donna along,

604
00:50:38,100 --> 00:50:39,100
because Donna has a broken leg.

605
00:50:39,100 --> 00:50:41,100
It was broken by Mr. Tower.

606
00:50:41,100 --> 00:50:45,100
She's like, we have to go to this room.

607
00:50:45,100 --> 00:50:48,100
And Dee's just like, I mean, I trust myself,

608
00:50:48,100 --> 00:50:51,100
so I bet this has a good reason to do this.

609
00:50:51,100 --> 00:50:53,100
And they go.

610
00:50:53,100 --> 00:50:57,100
And I'm going to be completely honest, Duncan.

611
00:50:57,100 --> 00:51:00,100
I'm not really sure what she was intending here.

612
00:51:00,100 --> 00:51:05,100
Like, did Donna know that she was going to try and summon and fuse with the worm?

613
00:51:05,100 --> 00:51:11,100
I know that what she wanted to do was prevent Monique from shattering,

614
00:51:11,100 --> 00:51:13,100
from unshattering Pangaea.

615
00:51:13,100 --> 00:51:15,100
I know that's what she wanted.

616
00:51:15,100 --> 00:51:18,100
I wasn't really sure how she was going to do that.

617
00:51:18,100 --> 00:51:22,100
And to be honest, I think maybe I was a bit small-minded about it,

618
00:51:22,100 --> 00:51:27,100
and I thought that she was literally going to try and walk through a portal

619
00:51:27,100 --> 00:51:33,100
and literally go back physically in time and be in the past.

620
00:51:33,100 --> 00:51:36,100
But maybe that was stupid to think that.

621
00:51:36,100 --> 00:51:39,100
Yeah, I guess she did plan on fusing with the worm.

622
00:51:39,100 --> 00:51:40,100
She must have had that in mind.

623
00:51:40,100 --> 00:51:45,100
Yes, at this point, Donna has very much fallen back into the cult.

624
00:51:45,100 --> 00:51:47,100
And she is like, no, now there's two of us.

625
00:51:47,100 --> 00:51:53,100
We can sing to the worm, the bit of the worm that I think is influencing us,

626
00:51:53,100 --> 00:51:55,100
because I don't think that's Monique.

627
00:51:55,100 --> 00:51:57,100
So that's definitely her drive.

628
00:51:57,100 --> 00:52:00,100
And in this room that they're going to is where there's,

629
00:52:00,100 --> 00:52:05,100
didn't even touch on this earlier, the skull of a previous investigator

630
00:52:05,100 --> 00:52:10,100
slash king slash cult leader, which forms a bit of a keyhole

631
00:52:10,100 --> 00:52:13,100
that they're planning to use.

632
00:52:13,100 --> 00:52:15,100
Donna's got the vibe.

633
00:52:15,100 --> 00:52:17,100
Yeah, the mechanisms are not explained.

634
00:52:17,100 --> 00:52:20,100
And it actually made me really funny when they mentioned that like,

635
00:52:20,100 --> 00:52:22,100
like tape cassettes are being used.

636
00:52:22,100 --> 00:52:25,100
I'm like, oh, yeah, it's 1994.

637
00:52:25,100 --> 00:52:31,100
I'm imagining this as being big sci-fi stuff, but this is really old technology.

638
00:52:31,100 --> 00:52:37,100
So, yes, I think you got most of it right in terms of like the action.

639
00:52:37,100 --> 00:52:39,100
They are that one of D gets stabbed.

640
00:52:39,100 --> 00:52:43,100
At first, you're like, oh, my God, it's a very serious stab wound.

641
00:52:43,100 --> 00:52:46,100
And then several pages later, you're like, I guess it wasn't that bad.

642
00:52:46,100 --> 00:52:48,100
I mean, she seems to be doing fine.

643
00:52:48,100 --> 00:52:53,100
The conversation between Donna and D, it goes on for a while.

644
00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:57,100
Yes, this is quite an interesting end.

645
00:52:57,100 --> 00:53:00,100
And by the way, I'm loving this story at this point.

646
00:53:00,100 --> 00:53:02,100
I'm really in there. Oh, yeah.

647
00:53:02,100 --> 00:53:04,100
What we I'm loving it as well.

648
00:53:04,100 --> 00:53:07,100
But it's the conversation is really cyclical.

649
00:53:07,100 --> 00:53:11,100
It literally is just like it's literally just a couple of pages too long.

650
00:53:11,100 --> 00:53:13,100
What I felt this month.

651
00:53:13,100 --> 00:53:17,100
So this is the moment where Donna is like, I'm going bad.

652
00:53:17,100 --> 00:53:23,100
And D as her other self is basically going, no, don't.

653
00:53:23,100 --> 00:53:30,100
And I just feel like there's a little bit of what can you say to yourself?

654
00:53:30,100 --> 00:53:31,100
You know, why not?

655
00:53:31,100 --> 00:53:37,100
Yeah, you could pull on your memories or say, don't you know, you feel this and you shouldn't.

656
00:53:37,100 --> 00:53:44,100
And I just felt like, as you said, maybe it went on a little long or for its length, it should have touched a bit deeper.

657
00:53:44,100 --> 00:53:52,100
But I just didn't quite buy these two separate characters fully because they are so different at this point.

658
00:53:52,100 --> 00:53:56,100
I'm like, how you should have a little more common ground.

659
00:53:56,100 --> 00:54:06,100
The only way I sort of brought it is the fact that the worm itself was really getting mind tendrils in Donna.

660
00:54:06,100 --> 00:54:08,100
I've got it. I know the difference.

661
00:54:08,100 --> 00:54:10,100
Lay it out for me.

662
00:54:10,100 --> 00:54:15,100
We've both convinced ourselves of something different.

663
00:54:15,100 --> 00:54:25,100
We've told ourselves that the reason why D was going back in was to seek redemption because she thought she could help Monique.

664
00:54:25,100 --> 00:54:34,100
What's actually happening is that as she's going down into somewhere she's afraid to go, she's thinking about what Monique would do.

665
00:54:34,100 --> 00:54:42,100
She's making herself braver and more compassionate by thinking, I need to draw on strength here.

666
00:54:42,100 --> 00:54:45,100
I'm going to act like Monique would.

667
00:54:45,100 --> 00:54:50,100
And in this moment, in doing that, she has changed.

668
00:54:50,100 --> 00:54:55,100
She has, in trying to be a better person, I think she's succeeded.

669
00:54:55,100 --> 00:55:06,100
And in this moment now, she's almost been like the worm infected by Monique and the stuff that makes Monique good, courage and compassion.

670
00:55:06,100 --> 00:55:14,100
And the fact that she finds Donna, the wounded, injured Donna, and then cares for her.

671
00:55:14,100 --> 00:55:17,100
I think there's something really different.

672
00:55:17,100 --> 00:55:19,100
One Donna is out for revenge.

673
00:55:19,100 --> 00:55:23,100
The other is out to protect, to save and rescue.

674
00:55:23,100 --> 00:55:34,100
And it would kind of show a really nice kind of parallel by the fact that the worm influences people in a very physical and intrusive sense.

675
00:55:34,100 --> 00:55:38,100
Whereas Monique, even Monique in all her power, she's not here in the scene.

676
00:55:38,100 --> 00:55:45,100
She's off in the cosmos or time traveling weather, but she's influencing D in the very human way.

677
00:55:45,100 --> 00:55:47,100
She set an example.

678
00:55:47,100 --> 00:55:53,100
She's with D, but in her mind, in spirit, but not the literal spirit.

679
00:55:53,100 --> 00:55:57,100
And that's how that's influencing her.

680
00:55:57,100 --> 00:56:06,100
It's much more of a pure, comfortable humanities kind of achievement of how we can influence others rather than what the worm does.

681
00:56:06,100 --> 00:56:18,100
Yeah. And what's occurring to me now is that what's happening simultaneously is that we're seeing the duality of Donna and they're both undergoing a transformation.

682
00:56:18,100 --> 00:56:28,100
Donna, right Donna, who is incorrect Donna, so poorly named there. Right Donna is fusing with the worm.

683
00:56:28,100 --> 00:56:30,100
She's becoming King Donna.

684
00:56:30,100 --> 00:56:35,100
She's regressing. She's going back to the things she was trying to achieve before.

685
00:56:35,100 --> 00:56:37,100
She's failing to change.

686
00:56:37,100 --> 00:56:45,100
And the thing that defines D left Donna in the final chapters is a desire to live.

687
00:56:45,100 --> 00:56:54,100
She's running for her life and she's helping Asra as she goes, even though she has no reason to do so.

688
00:56:54,100 --> 00:57:01,100
Would it be really low hanging fruit if I was to say that was Hailey Piper making a comment on left wing and right wing politics?

689
00:57:01,100 --> 00:57:08,100
Not saying it is, but it's there.

690
00:57:08,100 --> 00:57:11,100
Do I think that's what she's deliberately saying?

691
00:57:11,100 --> 00:57:28,100
No. Do I think that saying one side believes that helping people is good and the other side that thinks empowering yourself so you can make yourself more high and mighty and then influence things in your own way is good.

692
00:57:28,100 --> 00:57:32,100
Yeah, I guess there's a dichotomy there.

693
00:57:32,100 --> 00:57:34,100
It's certainly a reading I think someone could take.

694
00:57:34,100 --> 00:57:35,100
But no, you're right.

695
00:57:35,100 --> 00:57:43,100
I don't think that was an intentional. If you're listening to this episode of a podcast, it can only mean that you don't hate trans people and that's a great sign.

696
00:57:43,100 --> 00:57:51,100
I would like all of our fans to like our Worm and his King episodes and like trans people and everyone else can fuck off.

697
00:57:51,100 --> 00:57:55,100
To be clear, if you don't like the episode, that is fine.

698
00:57:55,100 --> 00:58:00,100
Oh yeah, but you better fucking watch out, TERFs.

699
00:58:00,100 --> 00:58:04,100
You'll notice which books we've chosen not to read on the podcast.

700
00:58:04,100 --> 00:58:07,100
Anyway, we're getting very off topic.

701
00:58:07,100 --> 00:58:10,100
The ending, not the ending ending.

702
00:58:10,100 --> 00:58:17,100
Let's go for D's ending, which is probably the most nebulous and hard to figure out part of the entire book.

703
00:58:17,100 --> 00:58:18,100
It's the most opaque.

704
00:58:18,100 --> 00:58:20,100
By a long way.

705
00:58:20,100 --> 00:58:26,100
Geordie, you gave your interpretation of the other confusing scene Duncan.

706
00:58:26,100 --> 00:58:28,100
May I go first here?

707
00:58:28,100 --> 00:58:29,100
Oh, absolutely. Take it away.

708
00:58:29,100 --> 00:58:30,100
Okay.

709
00:58:30,100 --> 00:58:34,100
First things first, I don't know what happens this year.

710
00:58:34,100 --> 00:58:36,100
I could definitely stand to reread it.

711
00:58:36,100 --> 00:58:43,100
If I hadn't been quite as busy after work and before recording this episode, I probably would have read it for a couple of times.

712
00:58:43,100 --> 00:58:45,100
I only had time to do it once.

713
00:58:45,100 --> 00:58:46,100
Here's the deal.

714
00:58:46,100 --> 00:58:57,100
As Donna, sorry, as D is racing for the outside with Asra, it's not clear whether she makes it.

715
00:58:57,100 --> 00:59:08,100
It's not clear that she does make it outside because much like in the way, Kirke forward slash Circe, I have strong opinions about that.

716
00:59:08,100 --> 00:59:09,100
Don't worry about it.

717
00:59:09,100 --> 00:59:11,100
Ends.

718
00:59:11,100 --> 00:59:16,100
It ends with like a flash forward, but it's a speculative flash forward.

719
00:59:16,100 --> 00:59:18,100
There's no guarantee that this is what happens.

720
00:59:18,100 --> 00:59:22,100
Dee envisions a future, but it's possible.

721
00:59:22,100 --> 00:59:34,100
Considering if you've read the end of the Worm and His Kings, where we see this exact future play out in that as a vision of Manique, the worm,

722
00:59:34,100 --> 00:59:38,100
traveling through time and visiting Donna at the time of her death.

723
00:59:38,100 --> 00:59:48,100
Does that mean that Donna is literally having a vision of the future, a prophecy, or is it as she's kind of hinting a possible future?

724
00:59:48,100 --> 00:59:56,100
As far as I'm aware, it's definitely, this is my interpretation to what you've just said, Geordie.

725
00:59:56,100 --> 01:00:00,100
Yes, it is clearly a possible future.

726
01:00:00,100 --> 01:00:05,100
There's the future gets described to us and then there's the line, would this fate come true?

727
01:00:05,100 --> 01:00:07,100
Question mark.

728
01:00:07,100 --> 01:00:08,100
Possibilities there.

729
01:00:08,100 --> 01:00:15,100
You know, a simple choice, left turn and a right, could guide the future down separate time shattering paths.

730
01:00:15,100 --> 01:00:21,100
She has no way to guess which turn in life might send her to an early death or guide her to this hospital bed.

731
01:00:21,100 --> 01:00:23,100
Hospital dead being the end of the vision.

732
01:00:23,100 --> 01:00:27,100
My interpretation is she has seen this possible future.

733
01:00:27,100 --> 01:00:32,100
She now knows that left and right is all it can take to what path she's going to go down.

734
01:00:32,100 --> 01:00:42,100
I got the interpretation that that possible future will definitely happen for one of the possible D's.

735
01:00:42,100 --> 01:00:46,100
But it's not saying that this D we're following is definitely going to take that journey.

736
01:00:46,100 --> 01:00:48,100
Oh, interesting.

737
01:00:48,100 --> 01:00:55,100
Yeah, I was wondering if what it might mean is that there was a future.

738
01:00:55,100 --> 01:00:57,100
There was a destiny.

739
01:00:57,100 --> 01:01:05,100
When Monique changed time, like she became the worm, she stepped outside of time.

740
01:01:05,100 --> 01:01:13,100
She created a future in which we see Donna dying as an old woman with a younger woman.

741
01:01:13,100 --> 01:01:17,100
Once again, old habits die hard, sitting by her bed.

742
01:01:17,100 --> 01:01:21,100
And the only thing we know is that the 21st century goes to shit.

743
01:01:21,100 --> 01:01:25,100
We do not survive into the 22nd century, basically.

744
01:01:25,100 --> 01:01:29,100
And she captures a vision of that future as well.

745
01:01:29,100 --> 01:01:34,100
But Donna, right Donna, is now changing time.

746
01:01:34,100 --> 01:01:36,100
She has also stepped outside of time.

747
01:01:36,100 --> 01:01:41,100
So maybe this is only a possible future because this was her destiny.

748
01:01:41,100 --> 01:01:43,100
But now that's in flux.

749
01:01:43,100 --> 01:01:45,100
Now anything could happen.

750
01:01:45,100 --> 01:01:56,100
And the point is that because the future has yet to be decided, presumably it will be in the third book, Song of a Tyrant Worm, all our destinies are in flux.

751
01:01:56,100 --> 01:02:00,100
Yes, I can definitely see that.

752
01:02:00,100 --> 01:02:04,100
One thing that I would also add, maybe this is just an appreciation.

753
01:02:04,100 --> 01:02:09,100
Maybe this is just de-appreciating the little changes.

754
01:02:09,100 --> 01:02:14,100
Because this section ends with her saying,

755
01:02:14,100 --> 01:02:21,100
To see herself from the outside to at last realise she was a monster and she never forgot.

756
01:02:21,100 --> 01:02:27,100
The she never forgot line implies to me that she must live a time to remember.

757
01:02:27,100 --> 01:02:33,100
So she never forgot the rest of her days and those were incredibly short.

758
01:02:33,100 --> 01:02:36,100
Doesn't have the quite same effect.

759
01:02:36,100 --> 01:02:38,100
Yeah, maybe there's something there, to be honest.

760
01:02:38,100 --> 01:02:41,100
That would be my other influence.

761
01:02:41,100 --> 01:02:49,100
But I certainly think the idea that the timeline is now open again, that what we saw in the first book, I'm going to reveal here.

762
01:02:49,100 --> 01:02:52,100
I don't know if we expressly asked Hailey Piper this.

763
01:02:52,100 --> 01:02:54,100
I wish we had.

764
01:02:54,100 --> 01:02:57,100
Of how much she pre-planned the sequels.

765
01:02:57,100 --> 01:03:01,100
I certainly don't get the impression reading this book that this was a master trilogy from the off.

766
01:03:01,100 --> 01:03:03,100
The Worm and his Kings works absolutely works on its own.

767
01:03:03,100 --> 01:03:05,100
No, no, I really don't think so.

768
01:03:05,100 --> 01:03:08,100
In fact, I believe you were outright surprised that it had a sequel.

769
01:03:08,100 --> 01:03:10,100
Because you're like, how could that be?

770
01:03:10,100 --> 01:03:11,100
Yes.

771
01:03:11,100 --> 01:03:13,100
Yes, I mean, literally, how could it be?

772
01:03:13,100 --> 01:03:15,100
The universe ends in the book.

773
01:03:15,100 --> 01:03:21,100
And I think that, genuinely, this is the most audacious sequel we've ever read on the podcast.

774
01:03:21,100 --> 01:03:29,100
There are books we've written, like a lot of books go to publishers with the potential for sequels, but no guarantee.

775
01:03:29,100 --> 01:03:34,100
Take, we haven't read this, but this is absolutely the case.

776
01:03:34,100 --> 01:03:36,100
Throne of Glass.

777
01:03:36,100 --> 01:03:38,100
You don't have to make a sequel to Throne of Glass.

778
01:03:38,100 --> 01:03:39,100
It ends.

779
01:03:39,100 --> 01:03:43,100
There's potential for stuff to come, but it could just stop there.

780
01:03:43,100 --> 01:03:45,100
And in fact, it should have.

781
01:03:45,100 --> 01:03:47,100
I was actually going to say, do you mate?

782
01:03:47,100 --> 01:03:51,100
Classic case of a book that could stand on its own, if need be.

783
01:03:51,100 --> 01:03:53,100
Yes, and a better example.

784
01:03:53,100 --> 01:03:55,100
Thank you.

785
01:03:55,100 --> 01:03:59,100
I thought it was kind of crazy to make a sequel to the previous book.

786
01:03:59,100 --> 01:04:06,100
I know that Hailey said herself, she was sort of surprised by how well the previous book did.

787
01:04:06,100 --> 01:04:11,100
So it makes sense to keep going with the story and go somewhere else.

788
01:04:11,100 --> 01:04:15,100
And this book is like, crazy audacious.

789
01:04:15,100 --> 01:04:17,100
It's a book.

790
01:04:17,100 --> 01:04:21,100
It's a sequel to a book that feels like a sequel should be impossible.

791
01:04:21,100 --> 01:04:25,100
The hero of the story is the villain of a previous one.

792
01:04:25,100 --> 01:04:35,100
It's full of, it starts off with almost no timey-wimey stuff and then introduces the timey-wimey stuff after kind of a slow start.

793
01:04:35,100 --> 01:04:39,100
And yet, despite all that, it really sticks the landing.

794
01:04:39,100 --> 01:04:46,100
No book has ever come close to the amazing ending of The Worm and His Kings.

795
01:04:46,100 --> 01:04:50,100
But this book really, once again, has an amazing ending.

796
01:04:50,100 --> 01:04:55,100
Clearly, that's something, that's a strength Hailey Piper has.

797
01:04:55,100 --> 01:04:57,100
Writing incredible endings?

798
01:04:57,100 --> 01:04:59,100
Hell yes.

799
01:04:59,100 --> 01:05:01,100
Normally, it is the other way round for an author.

800
01:05:01,100 --> 01:05:08,100
Very much. And if you're going to be good at something, I mean, I was about to say being good at the ending is the key thing.

801
01:05:08,100 --> 01:05:12,100
But I suppose if you're really bad at beginnings, people might not make it to the end.

802
01:05:12,100 --> 01:05:15,100
Yes, that is survivor bias right there.

803
01:05:15,100 --> 01:05:24,100
Hailey Piper is the opposite of a manga writer, because manga writers write incredible stories and they fuck it up at the last second.

804
01:05:24,100 --> 01:05:28,100
Oh, I don't know. Certain mangas, they fucked up over the last couple of years.

805
01:05:28,100 --> 01:05:31,100
Decades, maybe.

806
01:05:31,100 --> 01:05:33,100
But, you're right.

807
01:05:33,100 --> 01:05:38,100
And I certainly think when it's short fiction, it gets away with a bit more.

808
01:05:38,100 --> 01:05:47,100
In terms of, I'm more willing to push through 140 pages in the hope of a really good ending, because it's not a lot to push through.

809
01:05:47,100 --> 01:05:50,100
Sure. And I think it's also in line with a horror.

810
01:05:50,100 --> 01:05:53,100
You know, horrors are about building anticipation.

811
01:05:53,100 --> 01:05:58,100
And whilst this book isn't really scary, it definitely has a horror element.

812
01:05:58,100 --> 01:06:05,100
Because it makes you think about stuff like duality and like a severing of a person.

813
01:06:05,100 --> 01:06:08,100
Like, being disgusted by your own self.

814
01:06:08,100 --> 01:06:16,100
Knowing that basically there's evil inside you and only small circumstances have stopped you from becoming that person.

815
01:06:16,100 --> 01:06:18,100
That's good stuff.

816
01:06:18,100 --> 01:06:21,100
It's not, ah, scary.

817
01:06:21,100 --> 01:06:24,100
But it does make me think.

818
01:06:24,100 --> 01:06:36,100
I said in this episode, there are times I look back at my life, there are two moments I can think of, yes, if I had made really small changes, my entire life would be different.

819
01:06:36,100 --> 01:06:45,100
Would I be a worse person? Would I be happier? Would I be sadder? I'll never know. And I don't want to know.

820
01:06:45,100 --> 01:06:47,100
Oh, it definitely wouldn't help to know.

821
01:06:47,100 --> 01:06:54,100
Also, because you can now verify it, I can in theory tell you right now the answer. It would make just as much difference.

822
01:06:54,100 --> 01:06:59,100
And this is good. This is, to me, really good cosmic horror.

823
01:06:59,100 --> 01:07:03,100
We read one Lovecraftian work on this podcast.

824
01:07:03,100 --> 01:07:09,100
I've actually read quite a few of it for H.D. Lovecraft and he's often held as like the originator for what we consider cosmic horror.

825
01:07:09,100 --> 01:07:14,100
And I don't really want to take away from that title, at least not with a bit more research.

826
01:07:14,100 --> 01:07:17,100
But I don't necessarily like his work that much.

827
01:07:17,100 --> 01:07:21,100
And I don't think that is an opinion that we've really kept quiet.

828
01:07:21,100 --> 01:07:24,100
We were very vocal about it in our Shadow Over Innsmouth episode.

829
01:07:24,100 --> 01:07:27,100
Hailey Piper may be my favourite cosmic horror writer.

830
01:07:27,100 --> 01:07:28,100
Mountains of Madness is better.

831
01:07:28,100 --> 01:07:35,100
I think she gets horror, she gets the actual horror of the cosmic really, really well.

832
01:07:35,100 --> 01:07:39,100
If, oh, this sounds really weird. I don't know why I'm back to your criticism, Geordie.

833
01:07:39,100 --> 01:07:44,100
It feels wrong, but I feel like I need to slip this in now just to be just to be fair.

834
01:07:44,100 --> 01:07:47,100
I would say I've sprinkled my problems for it is booked throughout.

835
01:07:47,100 --> 01:07:57,100
The one thing I did have a little issue with this one is sort of moment to moment horror, the horror, sort of the slightly more violent horror,

836
01:07:57,100 --> 01:08:01,100
the horror of Donna when she's like imprisonment in the early section.

837
01:08:01,100 --> 01:08:04,100
I don't know. It's not proper horror. But that's the problem. It's not proper horror.

838
01:08:04,100 --> 01:08:11,100
I didn't feel that as much as I certainly felt the horror elements in the early parts of The Worm and His Kings.

839
01:08:11,100 --> 01:08:18,100
Like when Monique is just following the Grey Maiden and is going to the cult and is working her way down into the underground.

840
01:08:18,100 --> 01:08:24,100
Like that had some real horror moments for me, which this book just sort of didn't.

841
01:08:24,100 --> 01:08:31,100
Not like the classic horror, the fear of the dark and the big monster. And will our main hero make it?

842
01:08:31,100 --> 01:08:35,100
Yes, that's all true. I will counter that with this.

843
01:08:35,100 --> 01:08:40,100
Duncan, I think there's a really good reason why we didn't find this book, the start of this book, frightening.

844
01:08:40,100 --> 01:08:50,100
That's because we're both men. And the start of this book is very specifically the fear of a woman being followed by a man.

845
01:08:50,100 --> 01:08:58,100
Touche, I fully accept that. And now you've literally just said that I've gone, ah, yes, in fact, that I'm sure that scene would be terrifying

846
01:08:58,100 --> 01:09:05,100
because it's actually so mundane, not mundane, so real, so non-cosmic.

847
01:09:05,100 --> 01:09:12,100
You're right. It is. It's a mundane type of horror. It's some horror of like when Shell hears about that later in the story,

848
01:09:12,100 --> 01:09:20,100
she's like, oh, that's so horrible for you. She doesn't go, oh, I can't believe it. How could such a thing happen?

849
01:09:20,100 --> 01:09:22,100
She's like, oh, I hate it when that happens. I'm so sorry.

850
01:09:22,100 --> 01:09:30,100
And you're right. There must be, you know, there's a very real fear of leaving work late and being the last one on an empty street.

851
01:09:30,100 --> 01:09:33,100
So you're right, actually. That is well done.

852
01:09:33,100 --> 01:09:41,100
That's something that I've never been afraid of. So like, it doesn't resonate with me, except for when I first watched the film Halloween.

853
01:09:41,100 --> 01:09:49,100
Fucking hell, does that make you think like, oh, man, being followed by a big scary man is fucking terrifying.

854
01:09:49,100 --> 01:09:55,100
And a key reason why I've never watched that film. Slaps. You should watch it. Duncan's really good.

855
01:09:55,100 --> 01:10:03,100
Not happening. I do not do. I do not do the classic horrors. The closest I've ever got to is Scream.

856
01:10:03,100 --> 01:10:10,100
And that is like my limit. It's not that scary. The opening of Scream is a bit scary, but it's not a very scary film.

857
01:10:10,100 --> 01:10:13,100
No, it's more of a detective, to be honest. That's I think why I enjoyed it so much.

858
01:10:13,100 --> 01:10:21,100
I loved the fact that in that film you're actually asking like, who is the killer? Yeah, I fucking nailed it, by the way.

859
01:10:21,100 --> 01:10:29,100
Oh, well done. 14 year old me. I was with my girlfriend at the time and I said, huh, this doesn't really make sense.

860
01:10:29,100 --> 01:10:34,100
Unless, of course, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she said, she looked at me.

861
01:10:34,100 --> 01:10:39,100
She went and then she looked back at a TV screen and like, did I just nail this? And she went.

862
01:10:39,100 --> 01:10:43,100
And then later I was like, I fucking nailed it. I got it exactly right.

863
01:10:43,100 --> 01:10:45,100
How old were you when that happened?

864
01:10:45,100 --> 01:10:48,100
Errr... 20.

865
01:10:48,100 --> 01:10:53,100
OK, I will let 14 year old me off the hook then for not cracking that nut.

866
01:10:53,100 --> 01:10:54,100
Fair enough.

867
01:10:54,100 --> 01:10:58,100
So back to Even the Worm will turn.

868
01:10:58,100 --> 01:11:00,100
Geordie, do you recommend this book?

869
01:11:00,100 --> 01:11:03,100
Final thoughts? No, wait, final scene.

870
01:11:03,100 --> 01:11:04,100
Sorry?

871
01:11:04,100 --> 01:11:08,100
Final scene. We've done the penultimate scene. We haven't actually talked about what happened to Donna.

872
01:11:08,100 --> 01:11:15,100
Do you know what? It's actually really suitable that I forgot that because I even forgot to read this for a few hours.

873
01:11:15,100 --> 01:11:19,100
I finished this. I thought I finished this book in like a lunch break and then I got home.

874
01:11:19,100 --> 01:11:24,100
I was like, yep, podcast later. And I went. I never actually read the last like three or four pages.

875
01:11:24,100 --> 01:11:27,100
And I had to quickly speed read it 20 minutes ago.

876
01:11:27,100 --> 01:11:30,100
So, yes, the final, final scene, the cosmic scene.

877
01:11:30,100 --> 01:11:36,100
The last week had a similar moment where it ended on us with this more cosmic perspective with Monique.

878
01:11:36,100 --> 01:11:42,100
And now we get the cosmic perspective for King Donna, as she is being referred to now.

879
01:11:42,100 --> 01:11:45,100
Yes, Donna has succeeded in her aim.

880
01:11:45,100 --> 01:11:49,100
She has fused with the worm in a way that's very interesting.

881
01:11:49,100 --> 01:11:55,100
The idea we had before in the previous book was that Monique and the worm had sort of become one.

882
01:11:55,100 --> 01:12:04,100
And that meant that like Monique, her ego was steering the great locomotive that is the worm.

883
01:12:04,100 --> 01:12:07,100
And she makes it do what she wants.

884
01:12:07,100 --> 01:12:16,100
The feeling I have is that the relationship between Donna and the fragments of the worm, it's different.

885
01:12:16,100 --> 01:12:20,100
It's a much more symbiotic relationship.

886
01:12:20,100 --> 01:12:25,100
They depend upon each other, but they are definitely separate.

887
01:12:25,100 --> 01:12:31,100
She doesn't really know where they, where she starts and it ends.

888
01:12:31,100 --> 01:12:34,100
Well, it starts, I guess.

889
01:12:34,100 --> 01:12:40,100
However, she has maintained her ego and her purpose.

890
01:12:40,100 --> 01:12:48,100
And her purpose now is that she is going to hunt down through time and get Monique.

891
01:12:48,100 --> 01:12:52,100
And we know that she's going to stop her.

892
01:12:52,100 --> 01:12:54,100
But what does that mean?

893
01:12:54,100 --> 01:12:56,100
Is she going to devour Monique?

894
01:12:56,100 --> 01:12:58,100
Is she going to separate Monique and the worm?

895
01:12:58,100 --> 01:13:01,100
I don't know. I really don't know.

896
01:13:01,100 --> 01:13:05,100
I kind of want to read the next book in like a year.

897
01:13:05,100 --> 01:13:08,100
I do too. I thought this was a really interesting ending.

898
01:13:08,100 --> 01:13:11,100
It opens so much into the question of what is the worm?

899
01:13:11,100 --> 01:13:18,100
Because I understand that the worm needed Donna in this to sort of get the engine running.

900
01:13:18,100 --> 01:13:22,100
That's like helping it crack through time because the worm doesn't have the strength anymore.

901
01:13:22,100 --> 01:13:29,100
But the fact that the worm kept Donna about to like sing the song or like help it.

902
01:13:29,100 --> 01:13:32,100
I was really interested. I was like, what are you?

903
01:13:32,100 --> 01:13:34,100
Why do you need this human?

904
01:13:34,100 --> 01:13:38,100
How much of you is still you?

905
01:13:38,100 --> 01:13:40,100
Of whatever you are.

906
01:13:40,100 --> 01:13:45,100
And it still doesn't have a voice, which I think is really interesting.

907
01:13:45,100 --> 01:13:47,100
So I'm like, it's Donna just a voice.

908
01:13:47,100 --> 01:13:49,100
Good. I hope it never talks.

909
01:13:49,100 --> 01:13:53,100
I want to see, I am so excited.

910
01:13:53,100 --> 01:14:01,100
And I really want to see King Donna and Monique have a reunion, have a moment where they kind of stand opposite each other.

911
01:14:01,100 --> 01:14:04,100
Again, I think it could be fascinating.

912
01:14:04,100 --> 01:14:09,100
I do think it would be interesting, but I also really don't want Monique to have to go through that.

913
01:14:09,100 --> 01:14:11,100
She suffered enough.

914
01:14:11,100 --> 01:14:18,100
True. But also like Monique has had in many respects an eternity to change.

915
01:14:18,100 --> 01:14:24,100
I've been interested if the Monique if we do see Monique again as a character in the next book, which I suspect we probably will.

916
01:14:24,100 --> 01:14:28,100
Is it going to be recognizable the Monique that we saw before?

917
01:14:28,100 --> 01:14:29,100
I don't know.

918
01:14:29,100 --> 01:14:37,100
So when I finished my audiobook, I also played a sample of the sequel.

919
01:14:37,100 --> 01:14:44,100
Would you like to know who the main perspective character in Chapter one of the next book is?

920
01:14:44,100 --> 01:14:49,100
I'm just going to say if it's a Zara, like I will understand, but I would be a trifle disappointed.

921
01:14:49,100 --> 01:14:50,100
Is that your guess?

922
01:14:50,100 --> 01:14:51,100
Yes.

923
01:14:51,100 --> 01:14:53,100
The Grey Pilgrim, the Grey Lady.

924
01:14:53,100 --> 01:14:55,100
The Grey Maiden.

925
01:14:55,100 --> 01:14:56,100
The Grey Maiden, yes.

926
01:14:56,100 --> 01:15:01,100
No. Doesn't she just say like oook or something?

927
01:15:01,100 --> 01:15:03,100
She makes Falkhorn noises.

928
01:15:03,100 --> 01:15:04,100
Yes.

929
01:15:04,100 --> 01:15:08,100
Hang on. I can just, I just remembered I can just do Foley effects.

930
01:15:08,100 --> 01:15:12,100
She goes.

931
01:15:12,100 --> 01:15:17,100
Well, that is fascinating.

932
01:15:17,100 --> 01:15:19,100
And she was one of the old Pangeans.

933
01:15:19,100 --> 01:15:21,100
Oh my God, a different perspective.

934
01:15:21,100 --> 01:15:22,100
Is she alive?

935
01:15:22,100 --> 01:15:23,100
No, right.

936
01:15:23,100 --> 01:15:29,100
I will wait for the time that the next book is picked.

937
01:15:29,100 --> 01:15:30,100
Geordie, that will be on you.

938
01:15:30,100 --> 01:15:35,100
But before we go to our next picks, let's do our summary statements.

939
01:15:35,100 --> 01:15:38,100
Although I think it must be painfully obvious from listening to this episode.

940
01:15:38,100 --> 01:15:40,100
Geordie, do you recommend this book?

941
01:15:40,100 --> 01:15:41,100
And if so, who to?

942
01:15:41,100 --> 01:15:43,100
Yes, I absolutely do.

943
01:15:43,100 --> 01:15:47,100
The Woman is King is such an easy read.

944
01:15:47,100 --> 01:15:50,100
Okay. Hang on. Backtrack slightly.

945
01:15:50,100 --> 01:15:56,100
I don't remember exactly what I said about who I recommend the previous book to.

946
01:15:56,100 --> 01:16:04,100
I have made very clear that this episode of the podcast, and indeed the podcast in general, is not for TERFs.

947
01:16:04,100 --> 01:16:06,100
This is not a TERF-friendly zone.

948
01:16:06,100 --> 01:16:09,100
If you don't like trans people, fuck off.

949
01:16:09,100 --> 01:16:14,100
I happen to like trans people, so yes, this podcast is dedicated to them.

950
01:16:14,100 --> 01:16:16,100
This podcast episode is dedicated to them.

951
01:16:16,100 --> 01:16:23,100
The Woman of Kings was the first book we ever read that had trans protagonists rare to see in a fantasy novel.

952
01:16:23,100 --> 01:16:28,100
However, the book itself, hard to actually recommend to trans people,

953
01:16:28,100 --> 01:16:38,100
because a big theme of that is a hideous, grievous injury that has happened to a trans person in a botched sex change surgery.

954
01:16:38,100 --> 01:16:46,100
And that's a bummer, but that's the first experience we'd have of a trans character in one of the books we looked at.

955
01:16:46,100 --> 01:16:50,100
It's also potentially triggering for like body dysmorphia reasons.

956
01:16:50,100 --> 01:16:56,100
So for that reason, I do recommend The Woman is Kings to everyone.

957
01:16:56,100 --> 01:17:01,100
And especially to fans of fantasy who want to see queer perspectives.

958
01:17:01,100 --> 01:17:07,100
But I also have to put a big trigger warning on top of that book for that exact reason.

959
01:17:07,100 --> 01:17:10,100
It's about a trans person who goes through some bad shit.

960
01:17:10,100 --> 01:17:16,100
This next book though, if you've read A Woman is Kings and you liked it, yes, you should keep reading.

961
01:17:16,100 --> 01:17:20,100
It's a good sequel, it's a good story, it's complex, it's nuanced.

962
01:17:20,100 --> 01:17:28,100
It really sets up some interesting stuff to happen in a third book, which I look forward to reading when I get around to it in a year's time.

963
01:17:28,100 --> 01:17:34,100
And then over to me, what can I say that Jordi has so beautifully articulated?

964
01:17:34,100 --> 01:17:41,100
I recommend even The Worm will turn to every single person that I recommended The Worms and His Kings to.

965
01:17:41,100 --> 01:17:51,100
I will not hide that I thought this story got off a little bit slower, but it delivered full throttle.

966
01:17:51,100 --> 01:17:57,100
It absolutely satisfied me as a continuation and it surprised me.

967
01:17:57,100 --> 01:18:03,100
I genuinely thought that we could never have that experience of surprise that I felt when we first read The Worms and His Kings.

968
01:18:03,100 --> 01:18:09,100
Because that came out of nowhere, I hadn't heard of that book before and it was such a wonderful surprise to read something of such quality.

969
01:18:09,100 --> 01:18:17,100
This book also delivered a surprise, which was the fact that I was so doubtful that the sequel could deliver.

970
01:18:17,100 --> 01:18:24,100
Though when it did, I was like, I'm shocked once again. Thank you very much, Hailey Piper.

971
01:18:24,100 --> 01:18:30,100
This was great. I loved it. I'm sure anyone who enjoyed the first book will love this one too.

972
01:18:30,100 --> 01:18:39,100
And I'm gonna point out, you know, this book, The Worm and His Kings, was a surprisingly well-read book for Hailey Piper, as she said to herself on the episode.

973
01:18:39,100 --> 01:18:44,100
This book has not received the same acclaim and accolades as the previous one.

974
01:18:44,100 --> 01:18:51,100
It's a really good book, so I would really encourage you to not only go out and read it, but leave a review.

975
01:18:51,100 --> 01:18:58,100
This is a good book and it sucks. It has one review on Audible and that's from me.

976
01:18:58,100 --> 01:19:09,100
That is certainly surprising and it's kind of hurtful because I want people to know that if you've read that first book and liked it, you owe it to yourself to experience this sequel.

977
01:19:09,100 --> 01:19:15,100
I'm not going to stand here and necessarily, I'm certainly not going to make the claim that I think I preferred this book to the first one.

978
01:19:15,100 --> 01:19:23,100
No, I'm not going to say that either. That first book is, it's a surprise hit and it's a strong hit.

979
01:19:23,100 --> 01:19:32,100
But this book does nothing to insult its memory as a follow-up. It takes a very bold, different direction and still hits all the marks.

980
01:19:32,100 --> 01:19:45,100
Well said, Duncan. Well, it's my choice what to read next. I am not going to pick The Worm, the Song of the Tyrant Worm.

981
01:19:45,100 --> 01:19:53,100
I don't know when we're going to do it. Probably not for Halloween next year. I think if we do hit it, I think it'll be sooner than that.

982
01:19:53,100 --> 01:20:08,100
However, however, this is a modern horror fantasy book. It came out last year. I figured, Duncan, my objective was I wanted to pick something genuinely scary.

983
01:20:08,100 --> 01:20:09,100
Okay.

984
01:20:09,100 --> 01:20:13,100
We haven't been properly scared yet in any of these episodes.

985
01:20:13,100 --> 01:20:14,100
I feel the fear now.

986
01:20:14,100 --> 01:20:18,100
What is supposed to be one of the scariest books of all time. That's what I've been told.

987
01:20:18,100 --> 01:20:27,100
It? Geordie, we know you have a fortnightly schedule. That thing's like, talk about a doorstopper. That's knocked the door down.

988
01:20:27,100 --> 01:20:36,100
First things first, if I was going to pick a story which I thought would genuinely be a fantasy novel and be scary by Stephen King, I would pick The Shining.

989
01:20:36,100 --> 01:20:48,100
But I'm not going to do that because you're right, fortnightly schedule and pulling the curtain back, which normally won't do.

990
01:20:48,100 --> 01:20:58,100
You're not going to get this episode in October. I really needed to milk that book club thing because that's the only time I'm going to get to do it.

991
01:20:58,100 --> 01:21:04,100
I've already recorded our episode on Berserk and I forgot to do it there. So that was my only other chance.

992
01:21:04,100 --> 01:21:08,100
This one's been recorded and it's being released in November.

993
01:21:08,100 --> 01:21:16,100
Sorry, everyone. It's still a creepy month. You know, it's like the month that time forgot. It's not Halloween. It's not Christmas. What is it?

994
01:21:16,100 --> 01:21:24,100
It's the period of time where Halloween and Christmas candy appears on the shelf exactly next to each other.

995
01:21:24,100 --> 01:21:27,100
And I got very mad and complained about it on my D&D group.

996
01:21:27,100 --> 01:21:34,100
And someone said, Geordie, I knew you were going to get upset about this. And that made me feel embarrassed.

997
01:21:34,100 --> 01:21:44,100
The book I have chosen for this podcast is one which I've told is the scariest book of all time, which isn't The Shining and isn't.

998
01:21:44,100 --> 01:21:52,100
What's the other one that's scary? The Exorcist. It's not a reverse to it is The Woman in Black.

999
01:21:52,100 --> 01:21:55,100
Oh, dear. I'm going to struggle.

1000
01:21:55,100 --> 01:22:01,100
Yes, supposedly very scary. I have experienced this in two other formats.

1001
01:22:01,100 --> 01:22:17,100
I think the fact that I have seen it twice in different formats, the movie with Daniel Radcliffe, which was kind of scary, and the stage play, which was so, so scary.

1002
01:22:17,100 --> 01:22:28,100
Maybe that's going to diminish my ability to be scared by this, but I am going to determine I'm going to read as much of this book in a dark room as possible.

1003
01:22:28,100 --> 01:22:33,100
And I will be reading this book in as much direct sunlight as possible.

1004
01:22:33,100 --> 01:22:36,100
Geordie, you've picked it now.

1005
01:22:36,100 --> 01:22:40,100
With a teddy bear and a hot water bottle and your nightlight.

1006
01:22:40,100 --> 01:22:51,100
Well, I can't wait to discuss it with you and maybe you can help give a bit of therapy to me to get over what I'm genuinely a little bit concerned about.

1007
01:22:51,100 --> 01:23:02,100
But that will be next time. For now, if you have enjoyed listening to this and would like to know more about when new episodes come out, please go and check out our Instagram, if it's just fantasy podcast.

1008
01:23:02,100 --> 01:23:15,100
If you like sending your thoughts and opinions on The Worm and His Kings, even The Worm Will Turn, The Worm and Black or any other spooky or non spooky book that we have ever discussed or not discussed, you can do so one at the Instagram.

1009
01:23:15,100 --> 01:23:20,100
Is this just fantasy podcast or our Gmail, an excellent place to get a message out to us.

1010
01:23:20,100 --> 01:23:23,100
Is this just fantasy podcast at gmail.com.

1011
01:23:23,100 --> 01:23:25,100
We always love to hear from people.

1012
01:23:25,100 --> 01:23:34,100
If you enjoy this episode and you love this book series, go give this five stars on your podcasting app of choice.

1013
01:23:34,100 --> 01:23:36,100
It really does do a lot.

1014
01:23:36,100 --> 01:23:40,100
And when I say do a lot, I mean, it makes me very happy inside when I see it.

1015
01:23:40,100 --> 01:23:43,100
When I see a review go up, I go, yay.

1016
01:23:43,100 --> 01:24:03,100
To be completely candid, recently, especially in between the last unicorn and the heroes, which were two episodes which I either put a lot more effort into the normal or just took a long time to edit because it was a long episode and there was a lot to edit.

1017
01:24:03,100 --> 01:24:22,100
They got me really tired, like physically exhausted and also dreading the process of actually editing the episodes. But when Duncan said one person on our Instagram said they really wants to hear our opinions on the prior of the orange tree, I was like, OK, then fine.

1018
01:24:22,100 --> 01:24:26,100
And it gave me so much more energy and like enthusiasm about doing the podcast.

1019
01:24:26,100 --> 01:24:36,100
So, yeah, hearing from you listeners and knowing that there are people out there who do listen to the show and enjoy it and like to hear our opinions and stuff.

1020
01:24:36,100 --> 01:24:40,100
It really does just perk us up and make us much more excited about doing the show.

1021
01:24:40,100 --> 01:24:44,100
So if you want to keep this train running, just let us know.

1022
01:24:44,100 --> 01:24:46,100
It's always great to hear from you.

1023
01:24:46,100 --> 01:24:50,100
And we look forward to when you hear from us again soon.

1024
01:24:50,100 --> 01:24:53,100
I've been your host, Geordie Bailey.

1025
01:24:53,100 --> 01:24:56,100
I've been your other host, Duncan Nicol.

1026
01:24:56,100 --> 01:25:24,100
So long. Bye.