This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Join me as I discuss whether or not
the Book of Three belongs in a place of glory in the fortress fiction. I'm discovering it,
I'm discussing it chapter by chapter. I'm talking about chapter five this time,
which is called The Broken Sword. And I have a few topics I want to talk about. So the first one
I'll start off with is soft magic, which actually, let me adjust my notes real quick. The magic
system that Lloyd Alexander is using here is very soft. And by that I mean, we don't really,
as the audience, understand how it works, why it works, what exactly people are doing with
their magic. And I think it's a good thing. It's very much in line with the way Gandalf,
the Grey, operates in the Tolkien books. It's very much in line with the way that
the old queen or old princess Irene works in George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.
It also kind of defines how the goblins themselves work in The Princess and the Goblin. And even in
The Princess and Curdie, some of the magical things that go on there are definitely more within the
soft magic category. And I like that. I think it's a good thing. I had a preference for hard magic
before I was better read, I think, and before I was writing my own magic into things. And as time
went on, I realized, you know, doing a hard magic system, it's not as fun for me, as not as appealing
to me as the author. And to some extent, it's not as appealing to me as the reader and as the
audience. It's just something I enjoy less. Hard Magic by Larry Crea, which is not for children.
I do talk about family friendly stuff here in Forced Fiction, but Larry Crea is a prolific
author. He's the author of the Monster Hunter International series, as well as the Grim Noir
Chronicles, which features a trilogy plus some extra books. The first of which is called Hard
Magic is about a hard magic system, sort of. And it's, I think he describes it as an epic fantasy,
but it's in a noir setting. And it's very interesting. It treats magic as something
systematic. And you discover the origin of magic. The origin of the magic isn't, it doesn't preclude
there being real magic in the universe. It just defines the source of the real magic in a
to something very finite and not so much infinite versus the grass net that Gwydion uses in here.
He learned it from Dolbyn. He learned that technique from Dolbyn. So he's some sort of,
he's got some sort of magic capacity or capability. It's unclear. He refuses to say,
and Alexander refuses to divulge that to us. And Ahren has very unclear magic abilities as well.
She seems to be at one point healing Tarin, or at least making him feel better, making him feel
more comfortable, making him susceptible to talking to her and possibly giving up vital
information. So she's enchanting him. And it's kind of hard to tell what's going on. Gwydion
realizes what's happening. And so he breaks, he interrupts her flow and she's not able to fully
enchant Tarin. Although she was certainly working on it. And then we also get to see,
I don't know if this was magical or not. And that's kind of the way soft magic works. She
tries to break the sword that Gwydion has and sparks fly. She crashes it into a pillar and
throws it to the floor. And then finally she grabs it with her bare hand. She grabs the naked blade
and her hands ended up bleeding, but she's able to break the sword with sounds of thunder. And
I think flashes of lightning and things like that. And she tells Gwydion that she will break him,
just like she broke his sword, which makes her pretty scary. But that's all done through a soft
magic. Her eyes roll in the back of her head and she starts muttering something that Tarin is
unable to understand. At least I think we're seeing the scene from Tarin's perspective,
pretty sure. In fact, I'm mostly sure. And it's really interesting how it's executed. It's almost
like a sword and sorcery thing where magic is bad and magic is scary. And you don't want to have
anything to do with it. Sword and sorcery referring to things like the Thomas E. Howard's Conan,
or what I have more experience with from him, which is Solomon Kane. And so it's like you get
to see, you can kind of observe what magic does and the kinds of things magic is able to do in a
world with soft magic, but you don't understand at all how it works. And there's no real attempt
to explain it to you. In fact, there may be attempts to obfuscate how the magic functions
by the author. But I like it. I think it's very effective. And it's a lot of fun. It definitely
helps to keep a sense of wonder, I think, because I, like Tarin, was wondering how exactly Gwinn did
this grass net thing. And then it made me wonder and have awe and have fear a little bit of Ahren
and what she's able to do because she totally trashed that sword. And we don't know how. And
it makes her more scary. So that's good. Also, speaking of Ahren and what makes her scary,
her duality is scary. She ends the chapter very much in a position of power and in a position of
making threats and letting everybody know that she is the one who wields the power and that she is
in control of their lives. And yet she starts off the chapter softly. She says something,
this lad can barely keep his feet about Tarin. And she's saying, you're injured. And, you know,
oh, this must be a terrible mistake. And wanting to help these men and fix the situation that
they're in. But the softness that she has is strategic. And it's just kind of hiding the
metal underneath. And it's like an iron fist with a velvet glove. She's both, you know,
and that's really interesting, her duality. And she even seems to be hinting at something a little
unsavory when she tells Gwydian that there are like other ways to negotiate or other ways to
bargain or something like that. And kind of was very interesting, very suspicious about,
I'm very suspicious as an adult, like what exactly is she hinting at? But it's very unclear. And
there's no way Tarin would know. And we probably would fly over most kids' heads. But maybe she
just means torture. She could mean torture. Gwydian tries to make space for Tarin to run away.
And Tarin refuses to run. He settles himself in and he decides to fight with Gwydian. And he
strikes a blow against one of the Cauldronborn. And Gwydian says, why didn't you run away? And
he expresses gratitude for his bravery and some respect for him, for him standing and fighting,
even though he should have been wiser and ran. But Tarin really does show courage. And while he is
full hearty, he is hearty. And that is good. And that's something to be proud of. And that's
something to admire in him. And I think it's clear that we can see that Gwydian does respect
that. So that's really neat, neat exchange, neat representation of both of their characters and
what's going on under the surface. And then he passes out a bunch and he goes into fever dreams
as he's getting carried off by the Cauldronborn to the castle or tower or whatever, where Achren
is and where she's holding them. And the horror, the silent horror of the Cauldronborn is really
effective. One of them, Gwydian stabs in the heart and he just like shakes off and then keeps
fighting. They don't speak and they seem to not want others to speak as well. They have these whips
that they wear around their waists. And at some point, Tarin is talking to Gwydian and one of the
Cauldronborn whips him into silence. And they talk about how Oran has driven all humanity and all
memory of joy and all these other good things that made them human out of them. So that they're just
like really just shells. They're combat competent shells and they have no more humanity left. And
they almost even seem to detest or well maybe there's a shred of it, which is like they detest
and they resent the humanity of others and the camaraderie and the brotherhood of others who can
talk because they can't talk. And they keep silencing Tarin and Gwydian throughout their
exchange. And it's really interesting to me, like I don't understand what exactly Alexander is
hinting at with that, but it does seem to be profound. And it is scary and it makes them creepy
and effective. So that's nice. So anyway, this was a really good chapter. The book keeps coming
along. It just keeps getting better and I'm thoroughly enjoying it and I hope to continue
enjoying it and hope to keep moving forward quickly. From this point on I took a break for
a while, but I'm back now. And in the meantime, I did some things like finish my book Mawkuing
Mayhem, which I'm working on getting cover art for. And I'm working on running up my email
campaign and my launch campaign and all that. So hopefully I'll be announcing that soon. And be
sharing that with you and the rest of the world and hopefully we can make a good go of it. It's a
fantasy story with magical bugs, battling monsters. And if you want to find out more about that, go
to grobugs.com. There's also going to be a cool bonus. If you sign up, you can get a field guide
to Mockwing Mayhem where you can learn more about the world of Mockwing Mayhem and more about the
world of the grobugs that feature in the book. So that's it for now.