What do you do when everything's lost? When you
have a plan or had a plan and it totally got
ruined? You have to pick up the pieces and move
on. And sometimes it's hard. And sometimes it's
hardest to admit when it's maybe not all your
fault, but a lot of it is your fault. And I feel
like that's what we're dealing with here in chapter
9, I believe, of the Book of Three, Flute or
Flam. Excuse me, that's the name of the title,
that's the name of the chapter, and that's the
name of the character we meet in this chapter.
At the end of the last chapter, we had this mysterious
man who Tarn had never seen before, who was standing
with Malangar at the tree. He's who Alonbi had
freed from Spiral Castle, and it turns out he's
a relative of Gwydion, but he isn't Gwydion,
and Tarn attacks him, and then after they talk
and regroup and everything, they realize that...
Gwydion is gone, that he's possibly dead, um,
that, uh, Ahren is either dead or she's fled
somewhere, and there are the Cauldronborn still
out there that they have to deal with. Tarin
has to continue his mission of finding Henwen,
but also Gwydion's mission of, uh, carrying word
to somebody at Caer Dathol, uh, to tell them
what's going on, and we have a very interesting
circumstance where It's not literally all Taran's
fault. Well, it is kind of his fault that they
were captured, first of all. So that is a problem.
And then he upsets Olanwi. But it doesn't really
affect too much. But definitely just... He's
had a lot of negative reactions, as I've talked
about in the past chapter -by -chapter discussions
of this, and they have caused a lot of issues.
By the way, this is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an
artist. I'm an analyzer. I welcome you to this
chapter -by -chapter discussion of the Book of
Three by Lloyd Alexander. And, yeah, sorry I
forgot to mention all that stuff up at the front,
but here we go. This is another chapter that
could just be a transitional chapter, but it's
full, but it's... One, it's not just another
transition chapter. It's a transition chapter
that gives us a lot of purpose. It gives us some
texture on the world. It gives us some information
that we didn't know before. And it gives us some,
I guess, emotional and character beats that are
probably necessary. I was going to say, it kind
of gives room to breathe, although there wasn't
a lot of tense action in the last chapter. This
is actually more of a lot of foreboding is happening.
A lot of buildup is happening. Gergie comes back
and he warns them that there's a lot. going on.
The Horned King is still out there. He's still
hunting for, I guess, Tarn. And Flutterflam kind
of convinces, or he almost convinces Tarn to
go and fight, but Tarn actually shows some wisdom
here. He shows some growth and progression. He
thinks, no, that's not what Gwydion would do
right now. He would be smarter and he would play
this differently. And that's what I want to do.
And then they journey together. One of the things
I like that they do here is they actually stop
and pick up as many weapons as they can, arrows,
bows, dagger, swords, whatever, from the dead
bodies of, I guess, were there living guards?
I guess there must have been living guards in
Ashram's Spiral Castle as well as the Cauldronborn,
because the Cauldronborn are gone somewhere.
But anyway, they scavenge weapons from the dead,
and they use those because they want to be as
prepared as possible. They're sticking together.
They're trying to survive. They've got enemy
forces out there who are after them, so to speak,
or who they may very well or very easily encounter.
And they want to escape the encounter. And being
armed is the best way to do that. So there's
a lot of practicality going on here. But there's
also some character stuff going on. And again,
I'm kind of glossing over some of what happened.
I'm just mentioning directly that, you know,
there's the foreboding and the buildup of they
are in danger and they are outnumbered and they're
alone and they effectively don't have competent,
you know, warband leadership. This is despite
the fact that Fleur de Flam says he's, you know,
he's the guy to take care of these things. He
doesn't really take charge like Gideon may have.
He does take, however, an advisory role. And
this is kind of what I want to talk about more
of the. the character stuff. And I don't know
if Flutterflam is technically a foil for Tarin,
but he may be. I mean, I guess by going by my
assumption or my observation so far on the book,
I would say he is. In what way does he foil him?
Tarin... Well, he calls Elanwe a winsome lass,
and he says it's too bad, or it's not good that
Tarin just dismissed her. And he also tells Tarin
that Gwydion wouldn't have dismissed her, because
Tarin wrongly thinks, wrongly assumes that Elanwe
was a traitor, and she was working with and for
Achren this whole time, and she wasn't. And he
castigates her, he verbally attacks her, and
she leaves crying. And Flutter's like... she's
a pretty girl. You should, you know, go talk
to her. And, uh, also that's what Gwydion would
do. Uh, and he wouldn't like, he would see justice
done and he wouldn't neglect, uh, doing the duty
of doing justice. And he also, um, like he would
just follow through on this. And so in a way
Flutters a mirror or foil for Tarn by saying,
Hey, look, you're not being as much like Gwydion
as you possibly could be. Go do that. And also
he shows the tact and the diplomacy that Tarn
lacks because we, well, he's a brash young man
and he's unschooled in these matters. So he is
lacking in, uh, not game, but in, um, maturity
and, uh, well, diplomacy, like I said earlier.
And that's another little thing going on here.
Uh, his behavior towards Gergi. shows his lack
of diplomacy and his lack of understanding, his
lack of wisdom as well. Gwydion treated, you
know, what would Gwydion do? Gwydion would treat
Gergi better, and he did in the past, and he
should follow that example, just like he should
follow the example of being good with Olanwi.
And it's really interesting how Flutter offers
him that opportunity of growth and showing that
level of maturity. In conclusion, that's about
all I have to say about this chapter. Well, except
for this. I feel like I'm not doing as good of
a job selling this as a really fun and really
cool chapter, really enjoyable chapter. But it
is. And I guess you have to read it for yourself,
or I need to get better at telling you why I
like something so much. But it was really enjoyable
to listen to, and it was a lot of fun. A lot
of cool things happened. And a lot of, again,
this layering of character and such. So it was
pretty good. I'm going to close out real quick
and just let you know that I will be doing...
Sometime around the release of this, a Wings
of Fire review, book one of Wings of Fire. I'm
checking out multiple fantasy novels, middle
grade fantasy novels that are going to be similar
to my book, Mocking Mayhem, which has magical
bugs battling monsters, particularly monsters
who attack their home and try to kill them all.
And a couple, a pair of young, untested grow
bugs do their best to fight against these monsters.
survive, save their master and see if they can
survive the attack of the rest of the flock as
well. And if they do this, they survive and they
get to live and they get to go on to protect
children from other monsters. And if they don't,
well, I guess that's the end of the story. So
anyway, the exciting thing will be to find out
how that happens. But yeah, I've already finished
listening to Rings of Fire, book one, and I have
a lot of thoughts on it. So I'd like to talk
about that sometime soon. That'll be released
on Fortress Fiction. It won't be chapter by chapter.
That's going to become my new weekly thing is
I'm going to be talking about different books
that are... tangentially related to um my book
mocking mayhem and as i write other books that
are in the middle grade genre i think i might
shift fortress fiction to being that where i
say okay i like these books you know like the
chronicles of bernina i will continue to talk
about until i'm done with them chapter by chapter
because they're that good and they're that fun
they may become shorter episodes if i don't have
much to say like in this one or i'm not doing
a good job of it i'll just cut myself off um
but other than that um you can expect weekly
chapter by chapter uh covering Chronicles of
Bredain, and then I'm going to try to sneak in
every week as well, when I'm available to do
it, a book review of a book that's kind of an
also -bought, so to speak, for my book, Mocking
Mayhem. And anyway, I hope you'll enjoy that.
If you want to learn more about Mocking Mayhem,
you can go to mgwinners .com. There will be a
link in the show notes here, and you can find
out about the book and sign up for a newsletter
so you can get a bonus story, a bonus guide,
and also an announcement about when the book's
going to come out and other... Good, fun stuff.
So until next time, folks, take care and be well.