Ryan, Megan, and Professor Craig (whose elbow patches are back from the shop and in better shape than ever) tackle book 5 of The Lord of the Rings. There are battles and ghosts and pirates and dramatic suicides, among many other exciting things, so Craig kicks off the discussion with ... 5 minutes about word order in the hobbits' speech. Riveting stuff, rest assured.

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Music: "Adventure Time" and "The Seven Seas" courtesy of https://www.philter.no/

Todd, Kenn, and Stephanie are back, once again recording remotely for their second conversation about Abaddon's Gate, book 3 in The Expanse, by James S.A. Corey. Great times are had by all, which is made apparent by the fact that a simple laptop microphone clearly cannot handle Todd's laugh.

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Craig is joined by author Maram Taibah to discuss the assertion, "Great art has an age floor but no age ceiling." They get into contextual issues, content issues, and what place YA fiction has to play in this discussion. They also talk about Maram's book, Weathernose, and Craig gets an education on "children's steampunk."

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Megan and Kenn are joined by Todd (AND TODD'S F****** BIRDS) on this episode to further discuss Small Favor, the tenth book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, as well as the associated novelette The Warrior.

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Craig, Ryan, and Megan reunite remotely for the next installment of their Lord of the Rings series of podcasts. Up today, Book 4, or the latter half of The Two Towers. In these ten chapters, we follow Frodo, Sam, and Gollum through the Emyn Muil, the Dead Marshes, Ithilien, and Shelob's Lair. The panelists will discuss the split nature of the narrative, Sam's place in the reader's experience, and why Gollum's final betrayal is possibly Tolkien's best writing in all of The Lord of the Rings.

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The original Blue Team is back! Todd, Kenn, and Megan worked around their social distancing requirements and came together over the interwebs to discuss Small Favor, book 10 in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. If there's a pool out there on when Todd would cry (we're way past if), then get out your stopwatches.

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What quarantine? Oh, THAT quarantine. Todd, Stephanie, and Kenn wanted--no, needed to talk about the third installment in The Expanse, but had to rely on some remote software to do it. And it will take more than crappy sound quality and missing 10-minute chunk of audio to stop our intrepid trio. (In other words: forgive us, we tried.)

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The Ladies of the Legendarium are back! This time they take on a listener suggestion: Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. Stephanie, Megan, and Kate all read the book for the first time in preparation for this episode, so they've got some fresh takes for you. They also address some listener questions and comments to round things out.

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On this return to the "weekender" episodes, Craig is joined by Travis from The Fantasy Inn for a two-parter. In this episode, we talk reminisce about their own entry points into fantasy, both as young readers and again as adults. What is it about certain books that sucks us into a genre and won't let us go? And does that thing change as we age? Can lightning still strike as an adult, or does our entry point need to happen earlier? Let us know what you think by commenting on Reddit, Discord, Twitter, etc.

And stick around for part 2, which will be published on 3/24 on the Fantasy Inn podcast. In that episode we extend the discussion into what we think are the best books, and the best ways, to introduce someone to the fantasy genre. Go subscribe to hear more.

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Craig, Ryan, and Megan (no Kyle today) talk about book 3 of The Lord of the Rings, being the first half of The Two Towers.They take on the entrelacement writing technique Tolkien employs, Aragorn's character arc (yep, he has one!), and the nature of the palantiri. Craig is of course back with his recap poem, but Megan decides to one up him by singing on this episode. Trigger warning.

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Music: "Adventure Time" and "The Seven Seas" courtesy of https://www.philter.no/