You Can’t Handle the Truth

Hello, dear readers. The sun is shining here, which I’m enjoying from inside, settled in my favorite comfy chair. Honestly, I’m pretty exhausted, as I spent Wednesday-Friday at the Public Library Association conference. It was exciting for obvious reasons, like all the advanced reader copies (ARCs) I scored from the publishers who were there.

^{A small sample of what I returned with.}

But there were also some surprise highlights, like members of The Ohio State marching band.

^{No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, or a marching band.}

Point is, you really never know what to expect from Librarians. We’re a pretty crazy bunch. But that’s not all that has been on my mind lately. I’ve also been thinking a lot about Vikings, and now you’re going to be thinking about them, too. (Aside—Can we make Vikings the next Roman Empire? That would be cool.)

So, just as a general rule, I like Viking history. Actually, I like Medieval history overall, and the Vikings played a big part in that. It’s battles for power and thrones (sounds like a good book title), as well as exploration and the totally underappreciated ability of the Norse people to assimilate everywhere from Kievan Rus to France to England. Thanks to the TV shows Vikings and Vikings: Valhalla, I’ve been inspired to delve into the real history of these folks even more with some great nonfiction books, the best of which I think is The Wolf Age by Tore Skeie, translated by Alison McCullough.

But I recently read another excellent book about the real life of a central character on Vikings: Valhalla, Harald Hardrada, The Last Viking by Don Hollway. I enjoyed the book a great deal, and it got me thinking about what the plan might be for the upcoming third and final season of V:V. Given the arcs that have been set up, there might very well be some shifts in power, (spoiler, King Canute currently reigns over the North Sea Empire), but to whom power might shift and how far into history the show will go, is hard to say with only a limited number of episodes left. But the storyline I’m most interested in (and frightened to see) is what they plan to do with Harald as he reaches the Byzantine Empire.

^{Mmm. Hello Harald, aka actor Leo Suter.}

As I said, given the dramatic arcs the show has been building, I feel like they are heading toward Harald’s attempts to claim the thrones of Norway, Denmark, and England, but I’m not sure how the writers would plan to approach that, because of the blending and compression of time, particularly the fact that in real life, Harald was a generation younger than the other main characters, like Canute, Olaf, and Leif. Anyhow, Season 2 left him on the road to Constantinople, where in real life, he spent about a decade. And what did he do there? Well, that’s the truth I think the show won’t dare show.

According to Hollway, Harald was very close to two Byzantine Empresses—Zoe and Maria. How close? With Zoe, almost certainly very close, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. And with Maria, if not physical, the closeness was real and intense emotionally, but also possibly in that other way. Why do I think the show will shy away from this? I mean, having your hero bang a couple of empresses is exactly the sort of thing a Netflix show ought to go for. And you know what, they might go there, but I’m willing to bet a million dollars that I do not possess that, if they do, an important fact will be left out.

They were both old enough to be his mother.

Actually, Zoe was nearly old enough to be his grandmother.

Because, apparently, Harald liked cougar hunting, if you will forgive the metaphor. Which, honestly, just makes me like him all the more. Not simply because I am a middle-aged woman who likes when the world acknowledges that women this age might still be desirable, but because I love the idea of Harald being attracted to women of experience and power. And think of the character arc—he goes from banging the skinny young thing in the pilot to having years long relationships with women of a certain age.

I would so be here for Harald’s appreciation of mature women, but the show already started to destroy his character in Season 2, and I’m not holding my breath they will fix the problem in Season 3. As I mentioned at the time, the show took Harald from being a clever man who could talk anyone into anything in Season 1, to being an incompetent himbo in Season 2. And as I’ve learned from the Hollway book, the Season 1 portrayal is much more accurate. Harald was incredibly wily, as well as a poet, a trait much admired by the Norse people. In fact, for folks who watched the original Vikings series, remember how in Season 3 Ragnar sneaks into Paris by pretending to have died and hiding in his own coffin? Harald pulled that trick for real to capture a city, because he was just that cunning.

The real Harald is an utterly fascinating guy, and that should be enough for me. There are books and the true history to delve into. But I can’t help being irrationally annoyed that V:V has made him less interesting already, and will likely make him even less awesome in the final season. Apparently, the writers just can’t handle the truth*.

~S

*Yes. I appreciate that history in this era can be hard to pin down, so some of Hollway’s book is the historian’s best guess. But tell me his guess wouldn’t make awesome TV drama, and I’ll call you a liar. Point is, when this version of Harald is an option, I don’t understand opting for something less compelling.

High Expectations

^{This book cover is complete bait and switch. This blog has nothing to do with Dickens.}

I often feel as if a lot of life is about managing expectations. Set your expectations low enough, and there’s nowhere to go but up. Go into something with high expectations, and it’s almost sure to let you down. Have a couple examples from my weekend.

Obsession

When I saw a headline calling the new limited run series Obsession “Netflix’s Kinkiest Show Yet” or something to that effect, and saw it stars Richard Armitage, a terrible thing happened. I went from not having even heard of a show to having sky high expectations for it. I did a little poking around and discovered that it’s based on the book Damage by Josephine Hart, and my ridiculously high expectations went even higher. I’ve read the book, and I liked it well enough, but the important thing is that it’s definitely source material that could genuinely live up to that headline.

So, after a long week, J and I settled in Friday to watch the four episodes, because bless J, he’s always willing to indulge my inner dirty old lady. And what did we think? Were we blown away, or at least happy with our prurient interest being satisfied?

Not really.

The show, frankly, is meh. It was a perfectly fine way to spend a Friday evening, but as far as being especially kinky, I’ve seen kinkier (and definitely far sexier). And as a story, it was flat and unfocused. Would I have enjoyed it more if I’d just gone into it without that headline and reminding myself that I liked but didn’t love the book? Probably. Certainly couldn’t have hurt.

Lolita

Then last night after J and I had dutifully done our daily allotted proofreading of Old Habits Die Hard, I decided I really wanted to read something. All I knew was I wanted to read something really good. So, already, my expectations were unmanaged, but dammit, I wanted to read. I poked around out shelves, and finally decided on a classic I’ve never gotten around to—Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

Now, here’s where my expectation theory might be about to get blown out of the water. I’ve always heard that Nabokov’s writing is exceptional, but while I assumed that was true, I was, in point of fact, unprepared for just how good. Somehow, I went into the book with high expectations for how good the prose would be, how psychologically astute and disturbing the characters would be, and yet Nabokov blew right by those expectations. The writing is just so phenomenal, I’m rethinking all my theories about expectations.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. There’s a book I need to read.

~S

A Good Day to Be Inside

_{It doesn’t show signs of stopping….}

It’s snowing here again at Unicorn HQ, but fortunately we have nowhere else to go today. We saw the weather forecast, so we got our grocery shopping done yesterday. Now we’re sitting around and reading. Later, we might take our new snowblower out, but we’ll see.

As S noted last week, we’ve been in a gritty/cheesy historical drama mood lately. We watched the new season of Vikings: Valhalla, and having finished that, we were a bit adrift. So, we did what we sometimes do in this situation, and we had ourselves a Pilot Night. That is to say, we watched the first episodes of several different shows, hoping that one would strike our fancy.

We tried Diriliş: Ertuğrul, Rise of Empires: Ottoman, Knightfall, and Heirs to the Land. None of them were truly awful, but we didn’t find any of them exciting enough that we simply had to watch episode 2. (That’s how we judge a success on Pilot Night—when we find a show that’s so good we no longer care about going on to the next show on our list and simply want to see the next episode of this one.)

There were a few common threads we noticed, though. First of all, it’s obvious that the producers of all those series were going for a Game of Thrones grimdark kind of vibe. Rise of Empires: Ottoman even hired Charles Dance to do the English language narration, so they weren’t even shy about their intentions. Unfortunately, that show also turned out to be a docudrama, with scenes of talking heads discussing the real history between scenes of the fictionalized drama. And frankly, we’re not big fans of that sort of thing. We bailed on it as soon as the first historian showed up.

A few of the actors in these series were quite good, particularly Engin Altan Düzyatan, the titular lead in Diriliş: Ertuğrul. But beyond him and a couple others, there was a real charisma deficit on some of these shows. As we’ve discussed before, charisma and chemistry between actors can really elevate otherwise mediocre material. Legend of the Seeker is the best example of this, of course. Sadly, when we finished Knightfall and Heirs to the Land, we both agreed we didn’t really care about any of the characters.

So, we kept looking, and that was when we finally watched Barbarians, the German historical drama about Arminius, Varus, and the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. We had actually started the first episode a while ago, but we stopped when we realized it was all in German and Latin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (especially the Latin—how cool is it that the writers actually have the Romans talking in Latin?). But there are some times when we are tired, or we need to be able to multitask, and we don’t want to have to “read a show,” as we like to put it. Hence, we had stopped watching a few minutes into the first episode and gone on to something else.

This time, however, we were actually in the mood for something subtitled, so we watched the first episode to the end. And we quickly realized we had found our new show to binge watch obsessively. Needless to say, we’ve already seen all six episodes of the first season this weekend, plus the first episode of season 2. I have no doubt we’ll be watching more tonight.

_{Quintilius Varus, give me back my Saturday evening!}

The characters are interesting and they have chemistry together. I wouldn’t want to speak for her, but I’m sure S is already thinking of the fanfic possibilities.

In the meantime, though, we have a busy day ahead of sitting on the couch, reading, and watching the snow fall.

By the way, in writing news, don’t forget to preorder the next book in our Reign of the Eagle series, When You Are King. And be sure to follow our various social media—S has been doing a lot of fun promotional stuff this month, and you’ll want to check it out. Oh, and For Her Own Good, the second book in our previous series, Of Duty and Silver, will be available soon in paperback! Keep an eye out for the formal announcement.

J

Holding Out for a Himbo

^{Silver tongued brains of the operation or himbo? I know which Bonnie Tyler would pick. Gif by nina-zcnik.tumblr.com}

It’s a snowy Sunday of a long holiday weekend, and we are enjoying the comforts of home. We had wanted to go to the movie theater yesterday to see the live simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Fedora, but alas, with the icy roads, we decided to wait until it comes to the Met’s streaming service in a few months and watch it at home.

So what did we do instead? Well, we tried out our new snow blower (it is awesome!), and we did a couple loads of laundry, but we assume folks aren’t interested in our delicates. We also watched the new season of Vikings: Valhalla, and since I discussed S1, some of you might actually be interested in my thoughts on the latest adventures of a bunch of pretty Vikings running around doing crazy stuff. (If not, skip to the end for some publishing news!)

My major complaint about S1 is the bad habit of the greater Vikings TV universe to skip the scenes you actually want to see. That, unsurprisingly, happens again in S2. One of the most annoying also aids in turning a favorite character into someone else. Without getting into too many spoilery details, Harald Sigurdsson (IRL best known as Harald Hardrada to the history buffs in the crowd) in S1 is handsome and charming and has the gift of being able to talk just about anyone into doing just about anything. In S2, to borrow the terminology I see most frequently applied to him on Tumblr, he’s become a himbo. Yes, he’s still handsome, but instead of being incredibly clever and persuasive, he’s kind of a brutish dumbass. There are lots of scenes of him beating people up, but when he needs to convince folks to help him, he’s kind of incompetent, and the one time he succeeds in winning someone over and financially backing him, the audience is told about it after the fact and it’s not shown.

This is just one example of the show’s example of skipping the important scene. (Like last season, we once again get a couple of very powerful people in bed together without seeing the moment they decide to sleep together and instead jumping to them naked and chatting after.) There are also several moments of characters being conveniently stupid or incompetent (or overly competent) for the sake of the plot. This has always happened in this universe, but if you aren’t feeling particularly invested in the plot and all you have to cling to are your favorite characters, then when they behave out of character for the sake of the bad plot, it’s especially frustrating.

On the upside, the last episode was the strongest of the season, so I wasn’t left with a completely bad taste in my mouth. Which means I’ll tune in for S3, in which I sincerely hope we get more Canute. (Seriously, giving him something like 5 minutes total airtime scattered through the last 3 episodes is not enough for the most charismatic actor on the show. I sincerely hope his absence was a matter of the actor being in demand because he’s so good and not that the writers couldn’t come up with something interesting for him to do.) The other big question J and I have been asking ourselves is will there eventually be a big time jump (original Vikings did this), because the show spends a fair amount of time in S2 setting up 1066, even though that’s decades away.

Anyhow, enough Vikings. (Although, if you want to read about Vikings, let me take a moment to recommend once again The Wolf Age. OK. Now I’m really done.) We have actual publishing news! Last night we uploaded our next novel, When You Are King, to Draft2Digital! If you follow our self-publishing process, you might remember it takes a few days for new books to roll out to all the online stores so that you can place preorders, but it will pop up soon if you want to hang onto this handy link.  We are also hoping before the month is out to have For Her Own Good available in paperback! You will definitely want to watch this space for that.

And that’s all for us on this snowy day.

~S

Standing In

_{Taken before the place really started to fill up.}

S and I finally have managed to make it out of the house and go see our local orchestra. Tickets in the summer are really cheap, because they play at an outdoor amphitheater with lawn seating. You can bring your own lawn chairs or a blanket, along with the food and beverage of your choice. S and I opt for a blanket, which is the more fun option, in my opinion. But this time we remembered to bring pillows, because when you’re 47 years old, an hour-and-a-half or two hours is a long time to be lying on the ground.

Anyway, the concert was really good, with Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto (or “Rocky 2,” as my brother calls it). We had a substitute piano soloist, however, as the original guy somehow managed to injure his arm before the concert. Hope he’s okay, obviously, but his stand-in did fine in his place. On the drive home, S and I talked about what an interesting and potentially awkward situation that must be. What does a soloist do when he has to take over with little or no time to rehearse with the orchestra? Does the conductor just say, “Well, here’s how the other guy was going to do the piece, do your best to match it”? Or does the orchestra try to fit with the interpretation of the new soloist? The former would make more sense, I imagine.

So, that got me thinking about how that applies to writing. This came up recently, because we’ve started sending out our short stories for our next novel, Unspeakably Wooed. (The first story is called “Magy by Choice,” and if you’re a subscriber to our email newsletter, then you should already have it.) The next two stories will be from the POVs of characters whom I have written before, but S has not. But for various reasons which will be clear once you see the stories, they were a much better fit for S to write, rather than me. Naturally, then, S had questions. What is this character like? What sort of person is he? How can I get a feel for him, so my version of his POV sounds like your version?

We sat down and talked about the two characters, and by the end of it, S seemed to be pretty confident that she “gets” them now. In the case of one of the characters, I was trying to describe how he was a jock, but also a nice guy, so he’s super self-confident, but he’s also perfectly willing to admit when he doesn’t know something or when he’s in the wrong. And S said, “Oh, he’s Paxton Hall-Yoshida from Never Have I Ever.” (Which is a fun show, by the way, and you should check it out if you’re looking for something to watch on Netflix.) And I said, “Oh, yeah. I suppose he is like Paxton, isn’t he?” So, the funny thing is that I now think I understand the character better, myself, after that conversation, even though I’m the one who made him up originally, and I wrote a whole novel in which his is one of the main POVs.

As for the other character, I told S, “She’s the anti-Elwyn. Whatever Elwyn would do in a given situation, this girl would probably do the opposite.” And I think that helped S understand her, as well.

Obviously, that only makes sense if you’ve read one of our books that feature Princess Elwyn, like our most recently-published book, Siege of Kings. If you haven’t read it yet, then go buy yourself a copy right now and read it. And then, trust me, the idea of someone being “the anti-Elwyn” will make perfect sense.

Keep an eye out for S’s stories–the first one should be coming sometime next month! Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter so you get them first, before any of your friends. And be sure to follow us on social media, so you get fun bonus stuff, like the recent recipe for Elwyn’s Peppermint Shandy, in honor of Elwyn’s birthday (which was just this past week).

We love all our characters equally, but if we did have favorites, Elwyn Sigor would be one of them. And guess what? Today is her birthday! Celebrate by checking out her latest adventures in Siege of Kings while sipping this cocktail we made in her honor.https://t.co/Rn4rK6Mw9n pic.twitter.com/7ykgX4nCaD

— J.S. Mawdsley (@JSMawdsley) August 11, 2022

_{Doesn’t that sound tasty?}

J

I Think You Forgot Something

^{Made by ardaercane on tumblr, a little foreplay between Queen Emma and King Canute.}

Things are proceeding well here at Unicorn HQ. This past week we met with the color specialist recommended by our painter and selected colors for the rooms we’ve decided to redo. I think it should be a lot of fun to have several of our main rooms looking great, cracks patched with a fresh coat of beautiful color. Depending on how stressful it all turns out to be, we might go ahead and do the rest of the house sooner than expected; it’s so fun thinking of how good it will all look.

We’ve also been getting ready to leave Unicorn HQ for a few days. It’s hard to believe, but at this time next week, we will be on a plane back from New York City. We have tickets to see Don Carlos (an opera regular readers will know is a Unicorn favorite) at the Metropolitan Opera. Pretty exciting, right? If we don’t post anything new next week, that’s why.

But don’t think in the excitement of paint and opera we’ve forgotten about you, dear readers. We have a newsletter coming your way tomorrow with a new free short story. Since we had to push back the publication of Black Eagle Rising, we thought you deserved it. And oh yeah, don’t forget, you can preorder Black Eagle Rising, Book 1 in our new series, Reign of the Eagle, at most stores. (Not Amazon, though, because Amazon.)

And that was more prelude than I expected before getting to the theme of today’s blog—stories that are missing scenes. This is on my mind because as we’re settling into our new home, we’re starting to get back to normal things, like binging new shows on Netflix. Over the past few days, we watched the first season of Vikings: Valhalla, a sort of follow up with a time jump spinoff of the History Channel show, Vikings. We really loved the first two and a half seasons of the original show, and since this one moves ahead several generations and has a new showrunner, we thought we’d give it a go, since the general idea—Vikings in England in the early 11^th Century—definitely appeals to us.

It gets off to a bit of a rocky start, and not every storyline lands as convincingly, but there is definitely enough going right that we enjoyed the show and are excited that it’s been renewed for two more seasons. However, this franchise has often suffered from skipping over scenes that are dramatically important. For instance, in the original series, one of the Vikings, Rollo, arrives in Paris, marries a princess, and suddenly they are madly in love and he’s learned flawless French. Almost none of it happens on screen, though, and it is one of the things that really disappointed me. (And don’t even get me started on the fact that, if internet rumors are true, the writers originally had no intention of showing Athelstan’s burial. The most compelling relationship on the show ends, and they didn’t want to bother with closure. Sigh. Thank goodness the actor fought for the scene.)

Something nearly as bad has happens on the new series. (Spoilers to come if you haven’t seen the show or don’t know your medieval history.) King Canute (not my preferred spelling, fyi, but the one Netflix uses) rolls into England and wants to rule there. He realizes Queen Emma, wife of the late king and stepmother to the current one, is key to making this work. There are a lot of fantastic little glances, a hand offered here and there, and clearly a romance is brewing, and then…they are in bed together. The actual moment when we see them decide to join together (in all senses of the word) is missing, and honestly, as sexy as it is (and character illuminating, as all good sex scenes should be), I would rather have seen that moment of Canute finally cracking through Emma’s icy veneer than the naked thrusting. (Not that I have anything against naked thrusting, let’s be honest.) Point is, the final piece of the emotional work leading up to the thrusting would have been welcome, but it’s the sort of scene this universe often glosses over. I should stop being surprised.

Anyhow, it’s definitely something we want to keep in mind as we work on Siege of Kings, Book 2 in the Reign of the Eagle series. There are scenes I think a writer owes the audience, and I don’t want to leave any of them out.

~S

Getting Educated

_{It has been A Week ^tm, believe me.}

In the past three days, I’ve watched a full season of TV and finished two books. (I started the books a while ago, but finished them this weekend.) As always, whether good or bad, lessons have been learned, or at the very least, concepts contemplated, and I thought a quick list might be just the thing. So, what have I learned from The Wisdom of Crowds (Book 3 of The Age of Madness trilogy) by Joe Abercrombie, The Waking Fire (Book 1 of the Draconis Memoria trilogy) by Anthony Ryan, and season 3 of Sex Education on Netflix? Let’s see.

Everyone has their own struggles

I’m not sure anyone has ever succeeded in winning reader sympathy quite like George R. R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire series simply by giving a character a POV. Joe Abercrombie and Sex Education, though, both do a really excellent job of building sympathy for characters once you understand their struggles. Just when you’re ready to write off the school’s former head teacher, Michael Groff, as a terrible educator and worse parent, you get a peek at his life and his genuine desire to change, and suddenly Sex Education has me rooting for a character I despised. And just when I was about to write off any feelings of sympathy for Savine in The Age of Madness series, Abercrombie gets me in her head to see her siding with the same character I do, and dammit, if I can’t entirely hate her anymore. And these are only single examples of many from these works. It’s the sort of thing as a writer I would really love to do more often and better.

No more orcs

Tolkien later in life said he wished he had written orcs differently, because it’s theologically problematic to have a sentient race whose members are irredeemable. I think he was onto something with this criticism of his own work. The more I read fantasy, the less I’m interested in orcs/Shanka/Spoiled or whatever you want to call barely thinking, irredeemable killing machine races. I find it interesting that in Abercrombie’s First Law world (which The Age of Madness is a part of), he has been getting away from his orcish race, the Shanka, and I have to say it’s a welcome development. In Ryan’s world, the Spoiled are almost zombie like in the fact any person can be made into one. The idea is to make the reader fear that any character they love could eventually be transformed with no hope of return, just like a zombie story, but I’m not really a zombie fan either. I get the appeal, but its not a trope I enjoy.

Dead and dying

So, plenty of folks died in both of the fantasy books I read, and boy, did I really worry a few times about characters on Sex Education. This, as always, got me thinking about when killing a character is the right choice, and if it is the right choice, how to make the most impact. The deaths, I’m sorry to say, in Ryan’s book left me mostly unmoved, but I felt as though all of them were earned and made narrative sense. If either of the two deaths I had worried about in Sex Education had happened, I think the consequences could have been meaningfully handled, and I almost wish one of them had come about, just to see how the show would deal with death on a larger scale than a cat.

The Wisdom of Crowds, however, contains multiple important character deaths, including some who have been around from the beginning of The First Law universe, which is now 9 books long. There are, in fact, five deaths in TWOC that brought tears to my eyes, one of which will set me to crying this very minute of I think about it too hard. So, these deaths all elicited a strong response from me, making them correct and worthwhile, right? Maybe.

This is what’s tough about grimdark from my perspective. Part of the point is that not all stories are supposed to be heroic, and death happens to people who don’t deserve it. And yet, as a reader, it’s especially frustrating when a character death, even if it’s in keeping with the arc of the story and the tenets of grimdark, feels undeserved. The character didn’t deserve that end and it doesn’t serve as a larger sacrifice, it just is, because, well, fate. At the end of the day, all the big deaths in TWOC are probably the correct narrative choices, but they are also why I could never live on a diet of grimdark alone. In fact, I have a smutty romance with a guaranteed happily ever after cued up to read next.

And in conclusion…

And those are a few of the things on my mind, narratively speaking, this weekend. Keep an eye out for a newsletter tomorrow featuring our new exclusive novella just for newsletter subscribers. (Subscribe here if you already haven’t.) And later today we will be on Twitter and Instagram celebrating Brandon Dryhten’s birthday, and you won’t want to miss that.

~S

On Rewatching Game of Thrones

_{We’ll have to agree to disagree about Season 6. But close enough.}

From reading S’s wonderful posts the past two weeks, you might be tempted to think that all we ever watch here at Unicorn HQ are operas. And that is untrue. Yes, we do watch a great deal of opera. But we often pick a TV show to watch over dinner every evening. Lately, that was Game of Thrones. We have the first and sixth seasons on DVD (because season 6 is our favorite, and season 1 has Harry Lloyd, who is always awesome in everything he does). The rest of it we watched with the HBO streaming app (which doesn’t work nearly as well as one would hope).

Recently we got to the end of the show, which means now is a good time for a look back and a brief list, in no particular order, of observations we made on this particular rewatch.

First, let’s talk about Dany’s sudden and highly controversial heel turn. How do I put this politely? It’s clear that people were offended not because of what the show did to Dany, but because Dany’s actions violated their entirely unsupported notion of what sort of person Dany was.

Dany’s heel turn actually is set up. (See below about how she’s freaking insufferable from almost the very beginning.) Looking back, it’s blatantly obvious that things will go very, very poorly when she meets our other favorite characters in Westeros. Fans who thought everything would somehow be sweetness and light between Dany and the Stark girls were living in a dream world. The execution of the heel turn is too sudden, though. This is part of the problem with the last season—it’s all too rushed.

However, as a matter of character development, Dany turning into a villain at the end is a separate issue from Dany “going mad.” Or, to put it another way, it’s not the destination they chose, it’s the way they got there. Dany going mad isn’t really set up at all. (She “succumbs to the Targaryen madness,” according to the show’s Wiki.) But while her totalitarian and murderous tendencies are set up, actual madness isn’t. The problem here is that if you telegraph her insanity earlier, then characters we like (especially Tyrion and Jon Snow) look like idiots for supporting her. Invoking the Targaryen madness is an attempt to justify the suddenness of her heel turn, and it doesn’t really work.

Even so, of all the moments in the last season where they writers quickly and desperately shoehorned stuff to fit GRRM’s presumed outline, Dany going crazypants at the end actually isn’t the most awkward. That award goes to Bran becoming king. It’s impossible to listen to Tyrion’s “no one has a better story” speech without laughing out loud. No one has a better story, Tyrion? No one? I mean, just off the top of my head, I can think of Jon Snow. And Sansa. And…you know… you, Tyrion. Or Brienne. Or Bronn. Or Gendry. Or Pod. I mean, it’s not as if Bran was the only person who got a character arc in this story. In point of fact, his arc—while arguably one of the weirdest—isn’t even one of the most interesting ones. Not to mention the fact that if his story were really the best one in Game of Thrones, then why was he left off the show for an entire season?

Let’s get back to Dany for a second. And I’m sorry, Dany fans, but Dany is insufferable. She is the poster child for unearned privilege. She’s attractive, she was born with superpowers (controlling dragons and a superhuman tolerance for heat, for example), and Illyrio gives her dragon eggs as a wedding present. So the three things that are the foundation of her power are things she did absolutely nothing to earn. Despite the claims of her fans, she actually has zero charisma—people follow her because of her dragons or because they’re attracted to her, not actually because they believe in her. The scenes in season 7 and (especially) season 8 contrasting her with Jon and Sansa make her lack of charisma painfully obvious. People love Sansa. People love Jon. People are afraid of Dany and/or want to get in her pants.

A random thought: It’s obvious that when the showrunners and writers ran out of source material, the quality of the series became wildly uneven. (At the same time, we have to assume that on the big issues—like Dany going nuclear at the end—they’re reflecting GRRM’s ideas.)

Another problem (maybe the biggest problem) with the last season isn’t really the showrunners’ fault though—it’s inherent in the show and the novels and it was there from the very first scene. Namely, that the show can’t have a single great showdown because the show doesn’t have a single, overarching villain. Is the villain the Night King? Is the villain Cersei? Is the villain Dany? Who knows?

Could they have fixed this with one of the characters or plot arcs they left out? I doubt it. One of the perennial complaints that fans of the books would make was that, “The show left out [insert plot thread or minor character], therefore it sucks.”

Look, the last thing that show needed was more subplots and characters. The showrunners actually did a great job paring down the plot and the cast (arguably, they could have gone even farther—Hello, Euron). And again, we have to assume writers decided which characters to cut based on conversations with GRRM. So, sorry guys. I know you’re sad that your pet theory about Lady Stoneheart being crucial to the ending of the story didn’t work out. But, you know, suck it up.

Show Littlefinger never really works. He’s written as if everyone in the show has read the books (see this video interview of GRRM on how book Littlefinger and show Littlefinger are different). In the books, he’s sneakier, pretending to be everyone’s friend, and people don’t know he’s this grand Machiavellian figure. On the TV show, everyone knows he’s sneaky and can’t be trusted. Which means he’s actually not very good at being devious and Machiavellian.

Anyway, those are some of our thoughts on finishing our long, grand rewatch of the series. If you haven’t picked up The Last Bright Angel and The Metal of Victory, be sure to do so as soon as possible. August is starting, which means we’re going to see all sorts of “Back to School” sales everywhere. These two books are perfect for going back to school.

Okay, fine, I don’t really know how you would use them in school. But if you want something to read that will distract you from your assigned reading in school, they would both be excellent choices.

J

2021–At Long Last!

_{We tease because we love.}

Happy New Year, and Happy Tolkien’s Birthday! Hopefully you’re all enjoying your new year as much as we are here at Unicorn HQ.

If you regularly check the “Project Update” widget in the footer of this site, you’ll know that we’re making good progress on our final proofreading of Reunion Vale. And that means we should have it up on Draft2Digital very soon. Release day (barring some catastrophe) will be Wednesday, January 27. So mark your calendars now! Preorders should be available imminently, just in case you want to reserve your ebook ahead of time. And really, why wouldn’t you?

Despite the fact that we’re working very hard on getting Reunion Vale ready to go, we have a little bit of a surprise for you. We’ve got a new short story coming out tomorrow! It’s called “The Changing of the Guard,” and it takes place at the Loshadnarodski court. So Daryna Olekovna and Grigory Sobol both make an appearance. It introduces a new character, though: Agnessa Dalibor. (Okay, yes, technically she’s mentioned one time in Royal Obligation, but we don’t expect you to remember that.) She’ll be very important in both Reunion Vale and The Last Bright Angel, so it’s a good idea to get to know her now, even if she’s not exactly the sort of person you’d really want to meet in real life. She’s a real peach, let me tell you.

_{I haven’t actually finished my coffee yet, but…well, if you insist.}

Yes, she’s a bit like that, only without the wholesome, restraining influence of a drinking problem. She and Muriel will just be best friends forever, I’m sure.

When we’re not working on our various writing projects, we’ve been watching a lot of Netflix. Both of us were a little hesitant to start watching Cobra Kai, but in retrospect, we should never have worried. Everyone says it’s awesome, and everyone is right. It’s very well-written, it’s hilarious, and it panders magnificently to our crusty old Gen-X hearts. Plus, each episode is only half an hour long, and do you know how refreshing I find that in our current era of make-it-as-long-as-you-want “prestige television”?

Last night, we also binge-watched all four episodes of Unorthodox. And it was doing so very, very well…right up until the end, when it mortally offended S (and everyone else who’s ever taken a voice lesson in their life) by suggesting that a person who can’t make it into a highly-selective conservatory program after three years of piano lessons can just switch to voice because, hey, everyone can sing, right? Honestly, it was just so very, very dumb. And at some point, perhaps S can explain her objections at greater length, once she’s able to talk about the show again without shuddering and swearing.

Anyway, that’s what we’re up to here. If you’re signed up for our newsletter, keep an eye on your inbox for the new story tomorrow. And if you’re not signed up, then it’s time to go do that and start your new year off right!

J

December is a Time for Revision

_{Charlie Brown realizes his NaNo project needs a lot more revision than he thought.}

This is our last blog of November this year, which means that this is our last weekly update on our NaNoWriMo projects. After Monday, we’ll have plenty of time on our hands.

No, actually, just kidding. Starting this week, we’re going to have to revise everything we’ve written. First up, as we mentioned before, we’re going to have to finish reading The Last Bright Angel, Book 5 in the Of Duty and Silver series, in order to make sure it matches up with Book 4, Reunion Vale, which we wrote earlier this month. And when we’re done with that, we get to revise Reunion Vale itself, hopefully in time for our January release date.

Last night we did a final readthrough of one of S’s holiday fanfic presents, and she immediately posted it to AO3. So very soon, she will be finishing up and posting more fanfic that she has written. It’s always fun reading through these stories with her, even when I’m not familiar with the source material. In this case, though, it was fanfic for the South Korean TV show Crash Landing on You, which the two of us watched together. (And which we highly recommend if you find yourself on Netflix looking for something to watch during your Christmas vacation.) So at least I knew the characters this time.

I’m also going to be revising The Steel Gray Sea, my nautical adventure novel that I wrote this month. I read it through a couple weeks ago after I first finished it, but I didn’t do any major revisions. That’s what December is for, after all.

But first, before we get to December, we’ve got to finish these last two days of November. Which means we need to keep writing. I’ve written more than a dozen short stories in the past couple weeks, at least some of which you will eventually see in your email inbox if you subscribe to our email newsletter. (And if you don’t subscribe—even though I really think you should—then they will eventually be posted to the blog here.) I may write a couple more before tomorrow evening, though. You never know. It depends on how much of a head start we want to get on revisions over the next few days.

We also have to put up our Christmas decorations. Because the party just never stops here at Unicorn HQ.

J