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Rock Music in Narnia and 1980s Fantasy Highlights · Mythmakers

• 0:05
  Hello and welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding.
• 0:18
  I'm an author and writer, but I also run the centre. Today I have been joined by my good friend from across the pond, Jacob Renniker. Jacob, you're sitting over there in Seattle, aren't you, I think? I am, yep. Yeah. And Jacob has not only expertise in Tolkien and things Tolkienian, but he is also involved in the world of making games on the basis of various fantasy IPs. Interesting.
• 0:46
  things to tell us about that. But we are going to start with the big Narnia news, which is shaking the wardrobes around the world at the moment. So, Jacob, what did you sniff out and tell me about today?
• 1:00
  Right. Well, so there are reports about early test screenings for The Magician's Nephew. Now, test screening is something that is commonly done in the film industry to kind of get a gauge for what audiences are reacting to favorably, negatively, negatively.
• 1:18
  I actually have attended several of these when I lived in Los Angeles. Oh, right. Classic guinea pigs. Right. Is it that thing where you sit there and you squeeze buttons saying, I like this and I don't like it? No, not at the ones that I was in. There was one that was a suspense horror film, light horror film. And there was something where you had something that was measuring your pulse during the film so they could see how...
• 1:48
  agitated, heightened you were during which parts of the film. It wasn't that scary. And it ended up, yeah. So that was one. But the most of them were just like watching. For instance, actually, I actually was part of a test screening for the Tolkien, recent Tolkien biopic, the most recent one.
• 2:07
  With Nicholas Hout, that one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got to talk afterwards. So you sit in there, you get to see the film, and depending on where you are in the process, it's in various stages of completion. So anywhere from just kind of like rough cut without full performance,
• 2:29
  video, you know, video special effects. They usually might have a either like a temporary score. So taking a music background from something else that they haven't quite finished yet, because usually that scoring is later in the process when they've locked the different scenes and done reshoots and whatnot, so that the music can flow naturally to then like basically right before the final
• 2:53
  product is ready to show. Just kind of like final editing tweaks, voiceover things, that sort of thing. So for the Tolkien one, it was like very close to being finished. And then so after you sit down, you watch the film, then they give you a questionnaire, you fill that out, and they select people from that for kind of an additional...
• 3:20
  question and answer with a portion of the audience to ask what their opinions to elaborate on some of the things that the notes that they that they left. And then yeah, so different people are there sometimes. So I know for for the Tolkien one, I was selected for the other group to talk about certain things that ideas and even and then not just about like,
• 3:42
  at that point, they're not looking to change the film. They're just kind of looking at things to be able to adjust. They've already shot most of things. And they're looking for ways to make it the best kind of theater going experience for the broadest possible audience. And so there was one, I was at Inferno, the Dan Brown, Tom Hanks film Inferno. And Ron Howard was actually in Inferno.
• 4:05
  in the stadium right behind us. The director of the film was there listening in. And we didn't know that until the very end. My wife was also chosen for the additional question and answer for them to get more information. My wife is an actor, humanities specialist, comparative literature, with graduate degrees. And so very bright, very aware of...
• 4:33
  storytelling, book, film, written. And there were some issues that she had with the structuring of the film and just how things were working. So they asked her, and so she launched into this. And then after that, they're like, okay, great, thank you for that. And then they're like,
• 4:49
  heard like a cop or something and somebody like standing up and walking out we turn around and it's Ron Howard leaving and my wife is like I just did I just did I just offend Ron Howard am I is this barring me from any sort of like he's not going to be casting me in anything um so anyway so this is yeah so there's different things so here with the back to Narnia yes let's
• 5:08
  Yeah. So Narnia, some of these early test screenings were done, and now this is in a very early process. Visual effects have not been finalized there. But there'll be people wearing green leotards. People wearing green leotards, or sometimes in some instances, they'll show the storyboards for those scenes. So people can see visually images of what's going to be happening there instead of the...
• 5:37
  the CGI portion of it, so that people can get the flow and get a sense of it. They do a lot of that in that video game thing now, don't they? They create the VFX in, I can't remember what it's called, but it's that big video game creator thing. Yeah, the Unreal Engine. That's it, Unreal, yeah.
• 5:56
  Yeah, yeah. So just asking, Jacob, presumably all of this, you go and watch these things under an NDA, a confidential basis? Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. So we shouldn't really know this? No, we should know. Well, yeah, so what they said about somebody should not know. What do we think we might know?
• 6:13
  So what we do, what has been said afterwards against their legally binding non-disclosure agreement after seeing this, was that the film used rock and roll music, more contemporary music, perhaps like 70s rock music, not contemporary as in 2020s rock music. But this is something that's looking at...
• 6:40
  I think maybe classic rock, a little bit later classic rock era. And that is causing a stir among folks. So there's the possibility that this movie, which again has been changed from its original setting from 1900, right? Book was set in the 1900s. Now we've learned that it's been updated to 1955, which was the publication date of the,
• 7:08
  of the book itself. So they're kind of, they're sliding the chronological scale to set it in a, you know, post-World War II England and what's happening there. So there's that kind of shift, but then also we have this edition of
• 7:25
  rock music um that's perhaps at least in these screenings according to this uh this particular source that there's rock and roll music used as kind of the the current contemporary soundtrack for the film presumably to get the audience's gauge on yeah if that was something that was palatable did it did it enhance the storytelling and what it did there so yeah
• 7:51
  So I'd be eager to hear, Julia, your thoughts on the possibility. So again, this is just rumors. These are pre-screenings. Nothing is set in stone. They're kind of tinkering with different things to see what it's about. So what are your kind of first thoughts and reactions to that? Yeah. So I had heard before this, I'd read somewhere that she was, this Greta Gerwig is the director. She'd considered using contemporary music for it. So I'm a bit surprised to hear it's the 70s.
• 8:19
  classic rock. So what's that? That's kind of Elton John, I don't know, David Bowie. Yeah, I mean, like Pink Floyd. I mean, it's a very specific time, which doesn't match very well with the 50s. So there's a possibility here that this is a kind of tease, kind of getting us used to the idea. And there's loads of really good rock music around in the 50s, because it's the beginning of
• 8:43
  you know, Bill Haley and Elvis and all sorts of jazz and all sorts of. So there's, if they're going to go contemporary to 1955, that would be really, really interesting. I find this sort of halfway house of the 70s a bit perplexing. I don't know what that's about. But anyway, let's...
• 9:04
  Let's keep our minds open, knowing that they may be purposely sending us up the garden path just so that we... And then come up with a completely classic John Williams style. So let's have a think what other fantasy films have used different period music to the period setting. So I thought of three things. So the first thing I thought of was that...
• 9:31
  the original film that I remember doing this was The Knight's Tale, which is, technically you could say it was a historical film, but it had a fantasy knights in shining armor, Chaucer sort of feel to it. So it felt verging on fantasy. And they did use contemporary music in a very interesting way there. The scene I remember is the joust scene. Yeah.
• 10:02
  crowd are doing the equivalent of that thing. Yes, yeah, right. Yeah, we will rock you. Yeah. Which of course works really well. There would have been something surely in medieval times for that equivalent of a sort of football crowd behavior.
• 10:17
  So that was exciting and different and I liked it. Then you've got the approach that Bridgerton takes, which again is totally a fantasy as we all know, even though it's loosely based in some strange form of regency. Right.
• 10:34
  And that, what they do there, as you probably know, is they take, I say a Rihanna song and make it sound like the music of the period. And there's a whole sub-genre of this on YouTube. If ever you've gone down a rabbit hole, there's like these medieval bards who do these sort of contemporary love songs, like The Shape of You or something like that. But in medieval style, it's absolutely hilarious. And often it works really well.
• 11:00
  So, they're leaning into that and I think that fits this strange blend flavour of Bridgerton, which is very modern. Going to the third place, I was thinking...
• 11:17
  is that the Narnia films that I remember from the early 2000s did have obviously a more classic soundtrack, but they did have outro music, which was a modern song of some sort. Yeah.
• 11:34
  And if you listen to the... I've got the CDs of these. You'll find these tracks with like a modern song singing about the experience of going through the wardrobe or something. So it has been attached to a Narnia film before, but not as the soundtrack in the middle.
• 11:56
  So what's your gut feeling? I kind of want to trust that Greta Gerwig knows what she's doing, but I'm a bit worried. If it does end up in the 70s, I'm going to take quite a bit of persuading that this works. Yeah. So the film that most recently, I think, did this sort of thing with a later soundtrack, later, like, the time period for the soundtrack
• 12:24
  changing that from the time period of the film was Marty Supreme, about a professional, semi-professional ping pong player. And they had, you know, the film was set in one era. I want to say this.
• 12:41
  60s and 70s and then the music was firmly coming from like 80s like 80s 90s and so there's this kind of purposeful juxtaposition and disconnect between like the music and this music though it was only played when this main character Marty was engaged in something and the reason that was stated there for why they chose to do that was it was kind of to
• 13:10
  suggests that he's ahead of his time in what he was doing. So there's kind of a layer of storytelling there with somebody who's stuck in one time, but who is years ahead and is thinking in more contemporary ways. He's ahead of the curve, and they were signifying that by...
• 13:31
  the change in the music from the rest of the music that was being played on the radios during that time. So it was kind of thematic to that character. So it would be interesting to see if that rock and roll is tied to a particular character, like Jadis. Oh, like she's a rock and roll queen. Yeah, so she's a rock and roll queen. So if that is supposed to set a tonal difference for that character...
• 13:57
  Yeah, exactly. So if she is kind of like a more like harsh, like sounding things, like when she's doing things versus the more, you know, Harry Gregson Williams, who did the original Narnia, if they're like the Blind, the Witch, and the Wardrobe soundtracks, if it's kind of like more like you're saying, like John Williams, like,
• 14:14
  classical for regular and then to interrupt and to signify not just like visually that something different is happening but also through the soundtrack um it could be additive so i think that i mean that there could be some interesting things and she's clearly like very smart um and so she's calculating and trying to find interesting ways um to uh to tell the story and you know and and i'm reminded of something that c.s lewis himself said um which was you know
• 14:43
  Part of what he felt his purpose in writing fiction that had undergirding principles of his different philosophies, bringing these medieval thought, we discussed in previous podcasts, kind of reinterpreting or updating things.
• 15:01
  medieval cosmic models for what that means to contemporary audiences. He said one of the reasons he was studying these things in fiction was to steal past the watchful dragons who might be predisposed to say, well, I can't accept this. He was talking about that in particularly about a setting of, say, traditional dragons
• 15:23
  church setting with somebody being predisposed culturally to kind of have their guard up against certain ideas, certain philosophies. But then so, but what he felt fiction did was that kind of bypassed the traditional, you know, ways of logic and ways of thinking in order to open somebody up for a new experience. So if she's taking that kind of approach here, that she's, there's this story that's beloved and everybody feels that they know, and for that reason might be
• 15:53
  their senses might be dull to some of the magics that are there because they're so familiar with it and they're expecting it to be a certain way. This could be a way to kind of,
• 16:02
  you know, shake up the box in a meaningful, intentional way to try to help people to engage with this story in a different way and to get to a part of it or a heart of it that perhaps they didn't because of the way they've been reading it for the past 50 years. So if that's the case, if that's kind of intentionally done, I think I'd be very interested to see how that plays out.
• 16:28
  Yeah, I think for me, one of the things, if I was going to go this route, what I would do is I would have the 50s music for the 50s scenes and really lean into that and have fun with picking, you know, when she's.
• 16:43
  you know, cavorting around London, it can be like Jailhouse Rock or something, you know, something really sort of, you know, out there, really sort of. But if I'm on chan, well, what is the music as chan? You can have heavy metal, you could have dark side of the moon, you could say, well, my flavour here is she's going to be some kind of, well, we mentioned a rock queen. I think Killer Queen would be a bit too on the nose and a bit, it wouldn't be quite right. But you could have some sort of,
• 17:12
  really heavy track to sort of get the sense that this is a dying world. Right. But then, but then, but then you've got Narnia starting from darkness. Right. And purity and song. Of course, it's brought, because obviously creation in, this is where we're getting a bit clever here, creation is through music.
• 17:37
  So we need to, if that very important theme survives into the film, what Aslan sings and the music you sing there and hear there surely can't be something you've already heard. Right. Yeah. You know, it needs to be...
• 17:57
  hey composer, here are the things we've used. What would this theme be for this brand new world where everything is full of life and growing? And I would find that idea of saying, right, this is the soundtrack for this world. This is the soundtrack for this world. There's an eerie different one, melange maybe for the Wood Between the Worlds. And then Danya. Yeah.
• 18:22
  That's what I would do. But if she does like a rock soundtrack all the way through, I'm going to be disappointed. The whole through, yeah. Yeah, why would you do that? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, she won't be listening to us. But if you are, I'm very excited, but please think about creation through music as an important theme.
• 18:38
  Right, right. Yeah, I don't imagine that they would be singing, you know, All Shook Up by Elvis Aslan, that that's what he opens his mouth to sing. So, yeah, so I think that that is important. That music does play an important part in the founding of this new magical world. And that's also setting the tone for this entire franchise, right, for Netflix. So they've kind of committed to doing...
• 19:07
  the whole thing in, in, in, in theory with, with Greta doing right. The magician's nephew and a lion, the witch and the wardrobe. So we'll see that that's, that's essentially setting the foundation for what's going to be happening here. So I can imagine that there's an awful lot of,
• 19:24
  oversight as as unique uh of a voice as she has um she's also doing this this is a movie by committee everything that you're filming because it has to be funded by something that's being funded by a major studio that wants to make sure that this has a long tail on it that this is something that they can
• 19:43
  produce all of the films for. And so I feel like there will be some other people are surely urging caution to make sure that this isn't... Yes, right, right, right. They can be enthusiastic, be like, yes, test this out, see how it works. But then I'm sure they're also watching closely to see how people are reacting to that information to say like, okay, is this something that is going to backfire? Is this something that people are excited about?
• 20:06
  And if so, is it something that can be additive and applied to the whole franchise as opposed to just kind of a one-off? This was kind of like a splashy, attention-grabbing kind of stunt. Is it a gimmick or is it something that can actually sustain further storytelling? I'm sure that those are part of the discussion. So while it is her film, it's her. She's writing the script. She's directing it. She has a large amount of control over this.
• 20:31
  Like any film, it's a whole community. It's a whole village, city, town, depending on how large the production is, that are all giving input, feedback, and that have some sort of creative control or at least contribution to this. So yeah, but like you said, Julie, we need to open mind,
• 20:51
  We don't have all the information. I think it's good to think about different ways that this could be additive and so that we're appropriately prepared. Yeah, we don't want to condemn it out of hand because who knows, it could be a really good idea that she's working on. I did notice, though, that the release date has slipped.
• 21:10
  Right. To next year. Right. Possibly they don't want to go head to head with the new Harry Potter film coming out. You know, they were, well, film, TV series. Right. These days, the sort of difference. Film quality TV series. Yeah. Kind of the difference is, you know, it's hard to tell these days. Yeah.
• 21:32
  Or maybe they do have problems about actually concept. We don't know, but we'll see. Okay. So we're now going to just carry on with our trip through time in another way because we have begun a little series where we pick out...
• 21:47
  our sort of top reads, fantasy reads from different decades. And we tackled the 1990s in our first attempt, which was a bit of a, that was a tricky decade because there was so much happening in terms of big titles coming out then, a real little golden age of its own. And we're moving back into the 80s. So before we start saying to each other what we've picked, and we haven't colluded,
• 22:12
  Right. What were you doing in the 80s? Were you a bit younger than me? So you might have been... Just a touch. I was learning to walk and then up through... So I was being born...
• 22:26
  in 1980. You're quite a bit younger than me. Okay. Yes. So you're not reading these... Yeah, you're not reading these... I was reading by the time that, you know, when the 80s ended, I was certainly reading. I was not reading some of the books that we will discuss today. I did not read them at the time. No. So the books that we... I was at secondary school and college in the 80s. That was my 80s. And I was reading...
• 22:56
  fantasy at the time, as well as English literature for my degree. So, you know, it was a lot of reading in that decade. Okay, so I have picked my three. So, we both have picked roughly age bracketed or different categories because this is, throw a, you know, throw a dart at a board because there's so much to pick from. I'm going to start with looking at...
• 23:26
  what I think is really the most dominant trend in the 80s, which is the doorstep fantasy series. So the kind of titles that people listening to this might be familiar with, I think something like Tad Williams and the Dragonbone Chair. We had Tad Williams on Mythmakers last year, I think it was, or...
• 23:53
  not that long ago, because he's just coming to the end of this series. That's a long commitment. And then there was also David Eddings with the Beleri Belgariad. And then another sort of big title in this is The Magician, or The Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Feist? Feist? Not sure how you say that.
• 24:18
  The Wheel of Time actually tipples over into the 90s, so it doesn't qualify. But that's another, if you think about when you go in a bookshop, you look along the shelves. These are the ones that take up a lot of real estate on the shelf because they're all about that thick. So these aren't the kind of books that I was reading at the time.
• 24:40
  but they are the kind of books that I know really have their passionate followers. The one that I've spent most time with is The Magician. You know, Pug, the classic boy who is the outsider who becomes the most important magician in the kingdom idea with The Rift, with the enemies coming in from outside. So that would be my pick of all of these. And my sort of feeling about them,
• 25:09
  is that they are all in the, of course, we all are, in the shadow of Tolkien's books. But you see the sort of thematic, the idea of, well, the peoples are going to be elves, aren't they, and dwarves. There's that sort of reach for those characters. Yeah.
• 25:25
  And this has carried on and still carries on to this day. I was thinking of some of the series I've read and enjoyed later on, which are very much in this tradition and debt, like the Chronicles of Pellenor by Alison Krogan, Eragon, of course, by Christopher Paolini, that big book in the early 2000s. All of these are in this tradition of we all are in the shadow of Tolkien and are sort of,
• 25:51
  in a way, building extensions of his world in our own way. So that's the big phenomenon I thought I'd pick out of the 80s. How about you? What's your number one pick? The number one pick for me is going to be Winter's Tale by Mark Hopren, 1983. Are you familiar with that one? No. There's going to be so much that we don't know. Intersections are so hard here. It gets easier the further back we go.
• 26:20
  And this one, I didn't read this one until I was...
• 26:25
  finishing or finishing up, finished with my doctorate. And so it was like certainly later in life. I wasn't reading this in the 80s. But it's this kind of sprawling. It is a doorstep. I have it here. So this is how big it is. So a large book. So it's actually kind of like a magical, realism-infused kind of epic set in a
• 26:52
  a kind of slightly anachronistic New York City, where you have, it starts kind of at the turn of the century, 1900s, and then there's some time jumping, time traveling to later in the, you know, closer to 2000, so probably closer to when it was published.
• 27:12
  where you're setting this following a mechanic, sometimes burglar, as he's a child and then growing up. Within this city, it's divided into two parts. One that's largely in darkness. The other half of the city is lighted and progress-heavy. The entire city is surrounded by a wall of fog. There's
• 27:41
  it's uh the the main character falls in love with the dying heiress and is trying to heal her um as well as trying to heal the rift in the city right between this like dark half light half um uh but it is uh the it's it's lyrical it's philosophical um there's a lot of the you know the
• 28:03
  goodness uh evil justice um themes that are kind of woven throughout um and it's beautiful there's a flying horse there's there's certain like so it's not it's not purely just magical realism but it's kind of this it's not set in a secondary really secondary fantasy world that's separate it's kind of a
• 28:27
  a one and a half timed secondary. It's not the primary world. It's not a secondary world. It's somewhere in between that that straddles that line of a mythic
• 28:42
  New York City. And yeah, it's beautiful. I was captivated by it. I would always, I was listening to it, but I then got the digital version because listening to it on my walks to and from teaching at university. And so I was listening to it and then would always have to, I couldn't just keep walking. I had to stop. I had to get the digital copy of it to be highlighting that every time.
• 29:07
  block or so that I was walking. Give us the title of that again. It's a winter's tale. I think someone else has used that. Yeah, like slightly earlier. But I think there was the distinguishing difference. It didn't have the copyrighted. But it was actually adapted. This story was adapted into a film in 2014 with Colin Farrell.
• 29:34
  um leading that william hurt was in it russell crowe as kind of the main antagonist and a will smith appearing as a surprise uh character so it's it's a uh you know this with the book that's like this large it's hard to distill that in many ways to create a coherent film that's broad enough interest and appeal for an audience to be funded um but it was and so it wasn't very it wasn't
• 30:02
  at the time uh for different reasons um but uh it's it's decent it's it's a fun it's kind of like the difference between i would describe as a difference between stardust the novel the novelette um and stardust the film right so it's taking it's taking a lot of the themes and then and say characters and then
• 30:25
  creating its own story kind of based on that. So it was, yeah, it had enough traction to be able to get a script and film and funded and put into theater. So yeah, Winter's Tale by Mark Halperin. If you want, if you're American, even if you're not American, I think it's good. The world that's created with this city is certainly appealing and accessible to anyone. Okay, so my next pick is by a Brit.
• 30:54
  So once you've got a tradition of Dark Lords and dwarves and elves and all that stuff, thank you Tolkien, you then have something to satirise. And Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, of course, has many fervent fans over there. I haven't read my way through the whole series.
• 31:14
  But I have enjoyed very much Equal Rights. There's also, it starts with The Color of Magic, which is a slightly younger book, I think. I mean, these can be read as a teenage book as well, I think. You know, it's that kind of easy. It's not, the themes are funny, but not shocking. You know what I mean? So, Terry, this one, I think, is 1987 Equal Rights. Let me just double check that.
• 31:46
  And yeah, 1987. And what I really liked about this is that he has such a clear acerbic tone, but he is also lifting the lid on what we're doing in fantasy. So...
• 32:01
  I'm going to slightly misquote here, but one of the things in Equal Rights, which he was discussing in his collection of essays, The Slip of the Keyboard, is something along the lines of how wizards get this, you know, fine magic, you know, the sort of grand magic, whereas witches get waltz.
• 32:22
  You know, the sort of sex discrimination between the classic tropes of fantasy. And one of the tips that he put in, that is something I always say to students of creative writing, dark lords should be rationed.
• 32:40
  So these days when I open a book and it says such and such, the dark lord, I think, oh, no, please, can't we find another way of describing your antagonist? You know, please, too many dark lords already.
• 32:53
  So I really enjoy the sort of palate cleanser. That's what it is. The palate cleanser of all these overwhelming fantasy, great, you know, massive series, which seem to take themselves quite seriously. Along comes the jester, along comes the fool. But of course, as in Shakespeare, the jester and the fool have something quite serious, clever, funny to say. So equal rights, Terry Pratchett is my pick. Boom.
• 33:23
  Great. Mine then, next one, kind of going down the age scale. And this is a tough one to categorize age-wise. It's Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card. It's a tale in an alternate history frontier America in the 1800s, like early 1800s, where...
• 33:45
  Oliver Cromwell lived. The Stuart dynasty is still ruling in the south of the United States. So there's colonies are still there. It's not like a fully realized America, but you still have British...
• 34:00
  official colonies. You have French colonies as well there. So distinct empires. And you do have the kind of states, a loose confederation of seven states that are kind of in the middle, that are kind of caught between these different larger empires. So politically, some interesting things that are being done there. The magic is really interesting. So it's taking the kind of
• 34:30
  magic um and superstitions of that era um you know like water dowsing uh you know um uh
• 34:40
  treasure hunting, different curses, hexes that you could put on people. So it's taking those ideas and saying that they're real and had actual practical effects on the lives of these people. So it's not high fantasy magic. This is very small-scale magic, like being able to light a fuse, heat something up.
• 35:06
  So that could be used to like heat up a fuse at a distance. It could be used to like heat your water cup a bit.
• 35:14
  So there's differences there, more of less like smaller scale magic, but the kind of forces, kind of competing forces there are kind of going beyond. And then this is an area where there's religious fervor as well between different religious denominations. You have papists, so you have Catholics that are there, you have...
• 35:36
  kind of the, you know, reform Christian movements that are there that are kind of battling it out and other people that are kind of caught in the middle there as well of what to do and trying to honor their own magical systems that are condemned in some ways by these other religious institutions. So it's not a, so the good and evil, sometimes folks would want to frame it as, you know, like God versus the devil. But kind of what's happening here is like a kind of step above that is there's
• 36:06
  bad is a kind of a more of a force um and that's the unmaker and then so this uh a child is born um in a line of people a seventh son of a seventh son hence the title of the of the story um who is who has special powers and his power is to be a maker so he's like helping other people around him making like
• 36:27
  repairing things that are essentially fighting entropy, both socially, materially, and all those things. And so, yeah, it's super imaginative. I was captured by it. Again, I read it about the same time as I was reading Winter's Tale when I first read it. And it only did just recently, as in a couple months ago, finally completed
• 36:52
  uh, the series of seven, uh, seven books. So now it is for those who are waiting until a series is finished to begin. Now's the moment. This one. Now's the moment. So this one was, yeah, this was published. Um, seven son was 1987. Um, and then, so just this year, 2026, um,
• 37:09
  was when the seventh book, there was a long stretch between the sixth book and when the final book was written. But yeah, I've reread it several times and just actually finished a reread just a couple months ago or last month. So it's just one that I keep coming back to that definitely for me holds up in terms of the magic system, conflict, the interesting things it's doing with alternative history. So yeah, really engaging and I recommend it because I like it.
• 37:37
  Right. Okay. So I'm going to one I reread a lot. Um, this book, I think in the States, um, is usually in the young adult section, but here it's usually in the middle grade.
• 37:52
  Certainly the first book in the series. The series is called Song of the Lioness by Tamara Pierce. And the first one is called Alana, The First Adventure. And it's four books, so they're quite short. The reason why it sort of moves Shelf is that she grows up.
• 38:10
  So she starts as a sort of young, you know, nine, ten-year-old. And by the end, she's a married woman, you know. So some of the themes mature and her concerns, you know, the politics get more complicated. A bit like, you know, Harry Potter or something. So you grow with the character, though it's done in four bytes rather than seven books or whatever. Yeah.
• 38:39
  Reason I like this, I've mentioned Shakespeare a couple of times. It has that Shakespearean conceit, which I adore, which is you've got a brother and a sister who decide to swap destinies. The sister is being sent off to train to be some kind of priestess, not having that, thanks very much. But the brother wants to go to this city because he wants to be a magician. Yeah.
• 39:06
  And that's what they teach in the convents and monasteries and that kind of world there, universities. The father thinks he's sending Tom off to be a knight at the court. And that's what Ilana wants to do. So they swap. And of course, we stay with Ilana. And the excitement is...
• 39:30
  Well, one of those various plots about, there's a wicked uncle. That's also Shakespearean. Hamlet, here we come. But there's a wicked uncle and all sorts of things like that. But really what I love about it is her cleverness and her persistence in how she carries on hiding who she is, but is also very much feminine. There's some wonderful scenes about
• 40:00
  her sort of exploring her feelings for people. You know, she falls in love. So it's got just a sort of charming world. It is a medieval style world with magic. She is a sort of chosen person, as often in a book. She's like touched by the gods of this book. And so she has a particular destiny, but that is kind of secondary to
• 40:25
  the experience of her training as a knight. Absolutely adore it. In fact, this is the beginning of a whole series of books set in this same world. And the one that I find the most original, because boy dresses as girl, you know, girl dresses as boy is not. Yeah, we've seen that before. Mulan, here we come. Um,
• 40:49
  But the one that comes after about Kel, who once Alana establishes that girls can be knights, she kind of blazes the trail. The lore is changed. And there's a later generation, whereas a young woman called Kel goes the same route. And that series...
• 41:07
  I think is really original because she's making the same career in the military, I suppose, as everyone knows she's a woman. But some of the books are about things like what happens in refugee camps
• 41:24
  So when there is a war between this magical army and that one over there, what happens to the civilians? And it's absolutely brilliant. I love how she thinks differently about what parts of the world are interesting for fantasy. And it's very human, very humane.
• 41:41
  So, if you haven't, particularly if you've got like a teenage daughter, it's the perfect book to put in her hands, I think. And what's the title of that one again? So this is a combined version, but you start with Alana, the first adventure, Tamara Pierce.
• 42:01
  um she's a veteran writer i think she's still with us um i was friends with her on facebook for a bit so i hope she is still with us i must look her up but so i very much admire her writing so over to you what's your this is the one i enjoyed most of all the ones this is the one i still go back and read if i'm wanting a if i've got a sick day and i'm thinking i can't be bothered
• 42:32
  Oh, that's great. Yeah, I know that C.S. Lewis, he even does, you know,
• 42:37
  final years, he would go back, yeah, sick day, he'd go back to Wind in the Willows. Exactly, that kind of thing. Was his goes-to, right? Yeah. You want something, a comfort read? I think that's a great idea, yeah. So my final kind of like the youngest skewing of these ones was one that I actually read when around the time when it came out in the 80s. So this is the Red Wall series. Oh, yes, I thought about those ones, yes. Yes.
• 43:05
  Yeah, so 1986 is when this one, the first book came out. The series ended up spanning 23 books. He was writing until 2011. I think there's one more recent. You should check that because I seem to remember being asked...
• 43:21
  to review one recently, or I think he might still be around. Okay. Well, if he's still writing, that's, that's a great idea. Uh, it's, I mean, so it's, it's certainly a world, so it's a world that he sets up really well here in the beginning and establishes with, uh, several follow-up books that, and they were written fairly quickly, or at least published, uh, fairly quickly. So this one, Redwall was 86. Um, the second book, uh, Mossflower was 88. And then the next year, 89, uh, Mattemio, uh,
• 43:48
  came out. So it's this world. Redwall is named, the book is named after Redwall Abbey. So that kind of gives you a sense of the time period. So it's kind of like a medieval
• 44:00
  ish overlay on uh on animal creatures um and your main hero on the cover is this mouse a brave mouse um who is uh trying to it's it's matthias trying to find a legendary sword to save redwall abbey from a rat
• 44:22
  Clooney the Scourge. It's a terrifying name if you're a child and you've seen rats. Clooney the Scourge. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. So, like, the world, so it's really populated. It does really well with different cultures. Like, different animal groups have different cultures, which is fun. So the kind of more heroic, skewing...
• 44:41
  The characters are, you have your mice, like the titular character, badgers, otters, squirrels, but the villains are more of those that eat carrion, right? So you have like rats, foxes, weasels. So there is very much kind of dividing heroic and villainous.
• 45:02
  by animal types. But yeah, the descriptions are great. Again, it's just kind of like dressing folks up in some ways, like box and like C.S. Lewis did with box and right, taking animals and kind of setting them in a faux medieval.
• 45:19
  setting and having adventures there. One of the things I do remember that he does particularly well is talk about food, about these feasts, these like woodland feasts that they would have. And so that was very interesting to me as a child, uh,
• 45:34
  in elementary school reading these that I could picture that and that wasn't something that I was reading a lot about elsewhere, but his food descriptions and then also, you know, the culture and just the fact that these are animals having this adventure, it made kind of like a medieval era feel accessible. Yeah.
• 45:51
  through populating it by these animals, you know, that are, you know, everyday common. That was kind of your access point was, I know what these animals are, and here's this world. So Red Bull, I would say, is really my introduction to the medieval world was through mice. Is it Brian Jake's?
• 46:11
  Brian, Jacques, Brian, great please. That's a good question. If he's truly American, then it's probably the worst sounding of the options. But I don't know. Yeah, I haven't listened to interviews with him.
• 46:25
  So we know who we're talking about. Brian? Good book Brian. Good Brian, Brian Jay and Redwall. So that's kind of, I think, books that were published for more younger readers. So again, kind of like middle grade-ish. Advanced middle grade, I'd say. They're sort of in that bridging time and very good for that reason.
• 46:49
  Okay, well, that's really interesting. We went for such different areas, didn't we? Which in its own way just explains what a vast... I didn't even touch sci-fi. I thought, oh, I can't go there. Right, no, same. Okay, well, thanks very much, Jacob. And so we're going to be getting in our time machine and heading back to the 1970s. I can think of one or two books there already, but that's going to be interesting. So thank you so much for chatting and thank you everyone for listening. Thank you.
• 47:22
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