While Gen and Irene's negotiation goes, quite literally, over Costis's head, we discuss palace secrets, sneaky power, emotionally significant ink pots, and how Gen and Irene are kind of like your parents. 

Costis starts to realize just what a piece of work Gen really is and clearly Gen’s reign is going super well. Chip joins us again, and we wonder: just what are all these people doing in the prologue? What’s the right way to pronounce all these new names? Is Attolia secretly jacked?

In the grand finale of The Queen of Attolia, our hero sacrifices a goat and we end up with more questions about the gods than when we started. Also featuring: Gen's humility (or lack thereof), mushy romance, the psychological impact of violence, and how hard it can be to say "I love you." 

Chloe breaks an amphora, Kamet can't swim, Eugenides doesn't know how to talk to his fiancée, and Irene is skipping church. Treaty negotiations are going great. Also featuring: a brand new river, Beauty and the Beast, divine agendas, ambiguous feelings, and callbacks (forwards?) from Thick As Thieves. 

While Eddis and Attolia bond over driving the Mede army from their shores, Eugenides has another nap and realizes that his happy ending may be more complicated than he'd thought. Discussion points: gender, paragraph breaks, passive aggression, and the power of love. 

 Attolia finally shows Nahuseresh she’s a BAMF and we consider getting matching tattoos of this moment. As Eddis and Attolia combine forces to oust the Mede we discuss Attolia’s hatred for Eddis, the pitfalls of gendered thinking, and the nature of gifts. And just where IS this book’s climax, anyway?  

Attolia makes a life-altering decision. Nahurseresh does some murder. The Minister of War gets a concussion. Meanwhile, Noelle is a dumbass who can't remember what happens in this book and we heroically resist laughing at the word "titular." 

 While Nahuseresh has his moment in the sun, Gen’s night goes from great to less great and Attolia’s priorities drastically realign. We discuss POV shifts, Eddisian self-sacrifice, and all of Megan’s sneaky little hints. Also, after we finished recording we found an answer to the question we couldn’t figure out here—we think the chamberlain WAS looking for the Minister of War because he didn’t know the Minister of War was already with them, in disguise. Thoughts?  

Eugenides and Attolia take a romantic boat ride while we discuss water imagery, lesbian merging but with Byzantine straights (?), bluffing, power dynamics, and Hannibal Buress. 

Gen accomplishes the first part of his mission and we analyze just why exactly he was able to pull it off, touching on the topics of deception, perception, feudalism, and agrarian economies. All according to plan …