The Sword and Laser discussion

This is not a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles podcast but it sure does end like one. But before it comes to that we boggle at all the awesome award winners, and talk about our good first impressions of The Spear That Cuts Through Water. Oh, and we have an idea for a cafe filled with Brandon Sanderson puns. Oh the puns!

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Wanted to reply to the discussion of the Utah book banning. Thanks, Tom, for breaking it down a bit when it comes to the mechanism of how books are actually removed. From a librarian perspective I think this mechanism is even more insidious than it seems. Tom, for example, said the state isn't picking the books to ban, but while that's true, it's also designed so that the state legislature can say they aren't on the hook for book bans but instead point to school districts. It is completely ridiculous that a group like Moms for Liberty only needs to pack three local schoolboards to effectively ban books from every library in the state.

It should be noted that a similar law in Iowa pulled lots of books off the shelf already (more than 3,000), but is currently on hold due to challenges in the courts - one from authors and publishers and another from the ACLU on behalf of students.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/sto...

On the Maas books in particular. My guess is that the "Court of" books were ordered as YA since Maas's earlier series (Throne of Glass) was more truly YA and super popular with high school age kids, and that by the time the Crescent City books rolled around, High Schools recognized them as adult books and didn't buy them in the first place. The Maas books may not represent the sort of qualities that would make banning them as big a deal as banning a classic (The Bluest Eye, Slaughterhouse Five), but instilling a love of reading in kids is a part of absolutely every reading curriculum and finding the right book to get a kid engaged in reading is a really effective teaching tool.

Also, thanks for actually saying book "ban" instead of the more subtle terms that book banners want folks to use: "reclassification," "removal," etc. Yes, these books are still available to buy, or maybe at the public library, but removing books from the easy access of a school library absolutely puts them beyond the reach of many students. It is a ban, it is censorship, it is disgusting, and it is completely against the principles of American Democracy.

The book ban in Idaho is even worse: the Republicans there passed a law that allows people to sue public and school libraries if they feel that the library is allowing children to have access to “harmful” materials.

In response, some libraries have instituted ridiculous rules to keep kids from seeing these books, like keeping a mother with a 1-year-old baby from entering the adult section: https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscom...

Even worse, some libraries don’t have the funds or staff to deal with this, so they’ve closed.

Parents should police what their kids read, not the government. This right-wing extremism is ridiculous, and it is utterly baffling to me that people support this nonsense.

I just wanted to say that the reason it sounded weird is because you got the lyrics just a tad wrong. It's "Heroes IN A halfshell." Not "on the".
However, I never would have thought of that reference if you hadn't said it that way and mentioned the painting. Of course the people who wrote it were trying to do the thing where they throw in some adult references so that the parents forced to watch and listen to this catch jokes the kids don't, especially with all the turtles named after famous painters.
As a child watching the tv series in the 80s, I definitely had no idea there was a painting of Venus on the halfshell, and only knew OF the painters because of the turtles.

Also, the Crescent City series is marketed as Adult Fiction, while ACOTAR is YA. So it makes sense that Crescent City isn't mentioned and also is spicier. It should be spicier!

And BTW, I LOVED A Spear Cuts Through Water, and it confirmed that stories within framing stories is one of my wheelhouses. But I'm not rereading it with you because there are TOO MANY books I want to read being released right now.

These are just my random thoughts as I listen.

I have a vibes 'The Spear Cuts Through Water 'that the story is set in the Austronesian people timeline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austron...

ACOTAR is YA? I would have thought the murder death kill, dungeon torture and lengthy sex scenes would put it solidly into, well, "adult" has a different meaning but for adults.

Katie wrote: "I LOVED A Spear Cuts Through Water, and it confirmed that stories within framing stories is one of my wheelhouses...."

Are there other good SFF examples? Historical fiction does the "I found this document" frame story sometimes...

The Arabian Nights stories are often fantasy and come with the frame story of Scheherazade trying to stay alive by telling stories to the king.

Do holodeck episodes of Star Trek count? Those are always great.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks springs to mind. It's an excellent book in any case.
There's several "stories in a bar" books like The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven, Tales from the White Hart by Arthur C. Clarke, and Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson. The last is one of my favorite books.

^ Sandman concluded with a story within a story within a story. As I think about it, the Nada story included a tribesman telling a story to his son about her, and noting that the women tell a different story. (Probably about what an incredible jerk Morpheus had been.)

And now that I think about it, there's the book we read last year, The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Maybe it's more of a dual-timeline story (if that's a distinction that's worth making), but there's action in the present with Chih talking with the older Rabbit, and then the bulk of the story is Rabbit's history.

Haven't listened to the 'cast yet, just curious, does the Wheel of Thyme provide Sage advice? Or perhaps it approaches topics Ginger-ly?

I generally enjoy story-within-a-story stories, but I did find the constant jumping around in A Spear Cuts Through Water a bit much and I've decided to put it on the DNF pile. A shame as I was looking forward to reading it, but you can't win them all!

Seth wrote: "Katie wrote: "I LOVED A Spear Cuts Through Water, and it confirmed that stories within framing stories is one of my wheelhouses...."

Are there other good SFF examples? Historical fiction does the ..."

Some of Vonnegut’s books are like this.

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text is a combo of epistolary and story-within-a-story, which kind of comes with the territory of epistolary books.

Hyperion is a modern one. I don’t like it but lots of folks do.

The Princess Bride, too.

Movies are pretty good for nested stories. A Christmas Story, The Usual Suspects and Titanic are famous examples.

Katie wrote: "I just wanted to say that the reason it sounded weird is because you got the lyrics just a tad wrong. It's "Heroes IN A halfshell." Not "on the".
However, I never would have thought of that refere..."
"Heroes ON THE halfshelf" makes me think of oysters on the halfshell. And while those are yummy, er, yeah, turtles that way would not be good.