Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

This is a Buddy Read for Broken Mirrors by T.A. Pratt starting on March 13, 2024.


Happy Reading!

Thank you!

Some stories are free on the author's website: (http://marlamason.net/?page_id=46)
These shorts are also all collected in the book Do Better.

Proposed Schedule:
0. Bone Shop (December 27th) [link]
・The Doorman (takes place during Marla's Apprenticeship)
・ Mommy Issues of the Dead (takes place during Marla’s Mercenary years)
・ Ill Met in Ulthar (another story from Marla’s Mercenary years)
・ Haruspex (the first real story to feature Marla Mason; an early version of the Belly Killer case)
・Encounter on a Back Street (flash fiction; the very first piece to feature a magic-user named Marla)
・Pride Is an Engine (an early version of how Marla became Chief Sorcerer)
・ Pale Dog (an early story of Marla in her first years as Chief Sorcerer)
・Down With the Lizards and the Bees (an early story that has the seeds of what would become Bradley Bowman)
1. Blood Engines (January 13th) [link]
・ Grander Than the Sea (Marla returns to the Blackwing Institute—as Chief Sorcerer of Felport)
2. Poison Sleep (January 27th) [link]
・A Void Wrapped in a Smile (Joshua Kindler’s backstory)
・Life in Stone (A Mr. Zealand story, set before he meets Marla)*
・ Little Better than a Beast (A story from Marla’s time as Chief Sorcerer)*
3. Dead Reign (February 13th) [link]
4. Spell Games (February 27th) [link]

5. Broken Mirrors (March 13th)
・Shark's Teeth (a story of Marla’s time in exile)

6. Grim Tides (March 27th) [link]
・Snake and Mongoose (a story set right after Grim Tides)
・Sorcerer's Honeymoon (title says it all)*
7. Bride of Death (April 13th) [link]
・Mother of the Bride (Marla wrestles with her new dual nature...)*
・Do Better (...and is determined to do better)*
・Cages (a tale from Marla’s time as a monster hunter)*
・Manic Nixie Dream Girl (Further adventures of Marla the Monster Hunter, accompanied by Little B.)*
・A Cloak of Many Worlds (Bradley does a favor for Marla)*
8. Lady of Misrule (April 27th) [link]
・That Time Hell Froze Over (Marla’s friends take care of business while she’s in the underworld)
・Ice Murder Safari (Crapsey and Squat team up to take out a villain)
9. Queen of Nothing (May 13th) [link]
・The Atheist in the Garden (Pelham watches over the Underworld while Marla is away)
10. Closing Doors (May 27th) [link]
・Three Petitions to the Queen of Hell (a peek at Marla’s life after the series ends)
・The Gift of the Anthropophagi (Little B and Rondeau team up)
・The Four Horsepersons of the Eucatastrophe (Marla and Elsie go on a road trip)*
・Ghostreaper, or, Life After Revenge (an Elsie story)*
・A Pathway Up and Down (an Elsie story)*
・Happy Old Year (an Elsie story for New Year's--has a youtube short adaptation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGL7gQI3dzc)*
・Under the Tree (an Elsie story for Christmas)*

*all stories with a * after them I'm guessing at the time frame. But I did do research.

Started my re-read... this is the book I've been waiting for... it's alot safer for me to talk, now that we've reached this point, in general... one more revelation in the next book, and it's super safe...

Through chapter 3: (view spoiler)[The Possible Witch is falling apart, her multiversal domain is in shambles... Marla keeps killing her across the multiverse to get a new Bradley Bowman... and OUR Marla barely cares and continues on like it's no big deal... true to form really...

Ends up back in Felport (I think it's in an alternate world, but it hasn't been very clear so far, and I forget)... if so, it means re-traveling to LA to find Bradley for her plans...

And... in the meantime, Crapsey and The Mason, evil versions of Rondeau & Marla from a world where she failed to control the cloak, are now on HER dimension, and about to go on a rampage...

THIS... THIS is the culmination of all her misdeeds and rash actions in the past 4 books... and if I haven't been ominous in all my comments in the BRs before this, it's not gonna be pretty... (hide spoiler)]

Let the fun begin... in the meantime, I feel like I'm being jipped in the competition, calling this book 226 pages :D

The 3hr Animorphs book I just read counted as 176 pages... altho the 120 page editions would be a more reasonable estimate pages to audio hours... this one is 9-10hrs, so you'd expect closer to 300 pages... I think it's an indie publishing thing... doesn't matter, we're reading it anyway :D

Also, there's a line about doors opening in this, that reminded me of the fact the final book in this series is called Closing Doors

Chapter 14: (view spoiler)[bit of a possible Retcon, about Rondeau and Bradley Prime's brain, given him some ambiguous forgiveness...

As readers, we know it's real, but Rondeau can't tell if it's just wishful thinking...

And now, learning to bodyhop, Rondeau is suddenly reminding me of the skinjacking ability we just finished reading about in the Neal Shusterman trilogy... never really made that connection before... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 19: THIS (view spoiler)[is the tragic thing that I thought happened in the previous book, for some reason... Granger kills himself / turns himself into fertilizer to protect his park... all the time, thinking it's Marla that made him do it... (hide spoiler)]

This book (view spoiler)[pretty much blows up the Marla Mason / Felport universe... guess you can do anything, when you're no longer under contract and basically writing a web serial...

The fact that the series continued for 5 more books is kind of amazing...

I haven't even mentioned everything going on over in Beta B World, or the other things The Mason has been doing, like freeing and losing Nicolette, unraveling Dr. Husch, etc etc etc... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 20: (view spoiler)[Rondeau finally reached his breaking point, and gave Marla a rude awakening / intervention, about her reckless tendencies... and she listened... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 22: (view spoiler)["No offense to your anus" LOL :D (hide spoiler)]

Later chapter 22: (view spoiler)[and this is another big plot point I've been sitting on...

The Impossible Bradley Witch... the Bradley Collective...

Marla literally almost destroyed the multiverse... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 23: (view spoiler)[clever and almost anti-climactic... but makes sense...

And finally, a way to get rid of the cloaks forever...

Omni-B?... I'm trying to come up with a good name for the new Bradley Bowman... or the one Pratt came up that I forgot... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 24: Consequences: (view spoiler)[I love how Marla assumes she should still be in charge, after all this mess... is outraged at being ousted... and assumes they'll come groveling to her, sometime in the future...

The plot was basically constructed to also give her a way to give the Council A Dagger of Office, without having to give up HER Dagger, made by Death...

Her dreams of dual-wielding were short-lived... (hide spoiler)]

Late chapter 24, more of an epilogue moment: (view spoiler)[Nicolette meets up with Crapsey and starts planning her payback scheme against Marla for the events of books 3-4... the Sinister Six plotline I teased... other members include (view spoiler)[Marla's brother (more of an unwilling participant), some people we've not really seen before, I think... and Dr. Husch being unhappy with the events of this book and releasing Elsie Jarrow, the chaos witch that Nicolette fangirls about (and TA Pratt's favorite character)...

She's kinda my favorite character, too, but that's a spoiler thign, and not really related to anything that happens in book 6... she's just a great concept character... unlike Nicolette... Nicolette is basically a stereotypical evil bitch... Elsie is the true embodiment of chaos... she doesn't care if her actions meet goals... she's chaos for the sake of chaos... (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

I'm about four days behind on BRs at this point, but trying to catch up.

Nirkatze wrote: "I'm about four days behind on BRs at this point, but trying to catch up."

I'm a bit behind, mostly because I keep going rogue on a whim...

Love Crafted on the 6th...
Stray Cat Strut: A Young Lady's Journey to Becoming a Pop-Up Samurai on the 8th...
The Daily Grind: A Slice-of-Life LitRPG & The Daily Grind 2: A Slice-of-Life LitRPG on the 9th...
The Wizard's Butler yesterday...
Cinnamon Bun with choko this weekend...

I'm only 3 BRs behind right now (Carrion City, Threadlight, and reading InCryptid right now)... but we got 4 more starting in the next 2 days (Empire of the Vampire, Broken Earth, Alex Verus, Eli Monpress)... 105hrs of audio combined...

I engulfed this! Best book of the series so far, in my opinion... (view spoiler)[ Let's start with how insane it is for Alpha Marla to choose to go through the gates between the universes, when she sees how other versions of her have treated The Possible Witch and she ignores all of that and all the possible consequences of this place falling apart, and still goes on with her plans! Overall, I think she got away way too easily with everything she wroth on her world!

Beta Marla is horrible, but I think it's because it is not really her, but her body possessed by the cloak alien. I actually felt really sorry for the actual Marla underneath when she took control for a second and bagged to be killed...

Crapsey, having been dominated by his Marla, never really had a chance to settle into some humanity, so it kind of sucks for him too... I was very happy that our Rondeau was able to make him less lethal by bonding him to his body, and I really hope it's not reversible. However, him hooking up with Nicolette at the end doesn't bode well for anyone in the future... Nicolette is still bet-shit crazy and she terrifies me.

Despite the random murders, I first got upset when I thought Crapsey took over our Genevieve's body and killed her, but was relieved to realize that was a memory from their world. Then I was upset that the bitch destroyed Dr. Husch! I liked that lady!!! I am hoping she can put herself together again though....
Then my heart was completely broken and I was devastated when that horrible bitch killed Granger!!!! Nooooo!!!! He was my most favorite character of the whole series!!!! That bitch destroyed, not only physically but emotionally as well by not telling him she is a different Marla, the best soul we had met in the whole place!!! I actually cried for him! My heart wishes he would somehow magically reconstruct himself, but I know that will not happen... And he was never able to train an apprentice! Just broke my heart! Couldn't even get upset over the death of the junkyard magician because of Granger's loss... :((((

I wasn't that invested in the story of what was happening with our Marla in the other universe. I just didn't feel any attachment to any of those characters and I knew that M+R are going to be fine. I was worried that Beta B was not going to make it and he kind of didn't. However, his becoming this Omni-B, as Iain called him, taking over as the Possible Witch, is pretty cool! I was also happy to see that he is taking care of the cloak aliens, and I really hope it's forever!

I liked the way Alpha Marla took care of Beta Marla, and I wander if the freed Beta M will ever recover from all the trauma of the possession and everything she did while being possessed. As far as Alpha Marla is concerned, I think the council was way too lenient with her - I would have probably put her in a dungeon or had her executed, not just banished from the city. I know I am being harsh, but her throwing herself impulsively into situations without thinking about any consequences or how it would affect anyone else, was criminal in this case, and numerous people died. Let's be honest, I just really need her to pay for Granger's death!!!! He was such a beautiful soul! I am still upset about it!

It was nice that her and Rondeau will stay together for the future, that last scene was kind of touching, so I am hoping they can find a way to make amends... (hide spoiler)]

I am looking forward to seeing how things go from here...

Mmm...maybe I'll move this up in my queue...

Good summary and points, Choko... covered alot of what I've been saying and then some...

Iain, I am still so upset! Tell me there will be a way for him to come back somehow?!?!

LOL @Iain, re: Pages--I've started copying your page counts, since you often have a higher number than what I find when I look at the top three editions on GR, and I just want to be the same. ^^

Started! Through Chapter 5--(view spoiler)[Love @Iain's bullet points of consequence...

Though what I was thinking is--hey, stealing a B from another dimension does NOT bring B back--you just stole a different B. Like, stole a B twin. OUR B is still dead and lost. So no, Marla, you FAILED.

I also got the feeling that we're in a different dimension... but I guess we'll see... though, if the new purple Marla and Crapsey are in the original world, I'd guess maybe our Marla & Rondeau are too?

I also find it interesting that Purple version of Rondeau is named Crapsey. Kind of sounds like Marla might have named him in that world.

I wonder if this means we'll finally find out more about the cloak, too... (hide spoiler)]

The rule is top 5 english, unless they changed it without telling me... and I generally ignore editions with no page count listings, which is a nebulous thing that might break the rules... if there's alot of editions / alot of foreign language editions, and the page counts aren't changing much, eventually I just give up on finding 5 english editions sometimes and accept what I've already found and move on...

If there's no page counts anywhere, the "Iain Math" that was immortalized into the official rules, based on my audiobook experience when the question came up, is 1 page for every 2 minutes of audio... 30 pages/hr...

I got lazy with tracking audiobook duration a few years ago, and generally just go with 0.1 and 0.05 increments these days... or 0.16 for multiples of 10 minutes...

Copyiing someone with a similar BR list that's done all the work makes sense, tho...

Re: discrepancies: if it's a re-read, I might be cheating and not even know it... the edition I reviewed in the past will automatically be the top listing on the edition page... if it was a new release back then, other editions might have come out and gotten more ratings/reviews since then, knocking it down the list, and I'll never know...

Ah, I thought it was top 3, not top 5. That's good to know.

Chapter 14--(view spoiler)[I like Rondeau learning to astral project... didn't draw the skinjacking comparisons but see it now... if skinjacking left the subject dead/mindless...

I'm enjoying all of the geeky references--Star Trek, Skrulls... talk of the Mirror Universe and the title being Broken Mirrors, very apt title... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 15--(view spoiler)[Feeling bad for Crapsey... I mean, he's basically Rondeau, but had a worse life... Hoping he gets a chance to turn things around by the end..

Also appreciating how so many little characters are coming back up again--taking me a while to place everything, but Georgia was the sleeping lady who Marla helped in #2... Back to SF again and those connections, lots of things coming together... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 19--Aww man... (view spoiler)[Grainger's death was so tragic! Basically like killing a child...

Hoping Dr. Husch can pull herself back together somehow... (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 22!! (view spoiler)[So Marla DID save B!! By breaking the universe, she got him a new job! So... the Possible Witch, by retiring, did actually answer Marla's real wish... she did save B... This'll be interesting...

And, the universe is only a little broken. Put a bandaid on it. (hide spoiler)]

Finished! Love Choko's summary--I notice that we hit most of the same points going through! High-Five!! I agree on this being my favorite book so far--series really hitting its stride... (view spoiler)[The ending was a long time coming... I'm wondering if the dagger of office off the other Marla is also a Death sword? Is the Death in the other world now missing his sword forever?

Still Hoping Crapsey learns his lessons and Husch pulls herself back together... and helps beta-Marla-shell too...

Looking forward to Big B having shenanigans... he's got to spin off a part of him to have fun with Marla sometimes...

And imagining Marla in Hawaii... and looking forward to her punching Nicolette in the nose. I don't really see Nicolette being in Marla's weight class. Though it'll be interesting seeing how she functions without her web of connections, and cut off from everything except two suitcases and Rondeau. (hide spoiler)]

Also, I think Pratt calls him Big B.

I am hoping she kept the (view spoiler)[ the original death dagger/sword of Beta Marla, so she could cut everything and also sculpt people and things like she did with baby Death... That would be awesome! Also, Omni-B getting part of himself to visit from time to time would be fun too:))) (hide spoiler)]

I think (view spoiler)[she kept the one Death gave her, to replace it... hold on... yup! Just checked the ebook--she gave them the Mason's dagger and held on to her Death present. (hide spoiler)]

Just read Shark's Teeth and it was a nice little story, very compact with an on-the-nose message on colonialism. Also I swear I attended a wedding at the same resort they were staying at. Summary: (view spoiler)[Marla & Rondeau are living the life at a resort on Maui, and Marla is bored out of her mind.

She does a divination--the only focus of which is "show me something interesting." One of the tools she used, a shark's tooth, starts acting like a dowsing rod, so she follows it to the beach outside Lahaina. There she meets a minor shark god, whose powers of transformation have been stolen by another random outsider, and is thus stuck in a human body.

Marla offers to help him, she tells him so he'll owe her a favor, but really because she's bored. She collects Rondeau and they follow the trail to a bookstore in a fold of space. They break in and find a man from the East Coast dressed in a feather cape, wielding a shark-tooth club, and standing over a dead shark, claiming to be the "King of Priests" in Hawaii'an. Marla decides to dub him "Greaseface" instead, accuses him of cultural appropriation and colonial arrogance, and proceeds to kick his ass. Turns out, the club has the shark god's transformational power and will turn anyone it hits into a shark--unless they're as stubborn as Marla. There've actually been a spat of strange kidnappings around the island lately, where people have been disappearing and a dead shark has been left in their place. Not kidnappings, it turns out.

Marla decides karma is to turn him into a shark and kick him to the waves--where the shark ghosts of the people he killed proceed to rip him to pieces. Marla returns the shark-tooth club to the shark god, who says Marla would be a Megalodon were she hit with the club, a shark that snaked on blue whales millions of years ago. He says he owes Marla a favor--she replies he can pay her back by telling all his godly and sorcerous pals there's a new occult detective in town, and to send her all their problems. He replies that won't clear the debt. Marla's cool with that.

At the end of the story, Marla is moving into the now vacant bookstore in fold space, looking forward to less boring days ahead... and still hoping that if she's just patient and makes enough of a name for herself, her city will call her home. (hide spoiler)]