Episode 98 - Mary Mary Quite Contrary and Her Space Spiders

Hey Everyone! It's the first book chat of the year and we have some great ones in here. From dirt books, to many Mary's, to space spiders and octopuses, there are plenty of run recommendations in this one.

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Transcript

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[MUSIC] It's time for a new episode of the Reading Room Ruffians, your favorite library podcast. Surprise, we're out of order and bring you a book chat. We're missing Ariel, but she told me to tell you she's only read Dungeon Carlar Carle, and she still loves him, same. So let's just get right on into it. Zach, do you want to go first? Sure, when was the last time we talked about books? Does anybody know? There's been a while. Yeah, our book chat, like wrap up for $20,000. The wrap up, yeah. I think since then, I've read, okay, so I've finished up the expand series. I don't know if I talked about that. I do. I talked about reading the books, but I don't think I talked about actually finishing it. I did finish it. It's really, really good. I liked the ending for the most part. It's sort of like a controversial one, I think. Some people love it, some people hate it. There's some aspects that everybody agrees is just the best. One of the characters is still around at the very end, even though it's in the future. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, fantastic book series. Everybody should definitely go check out the expands I've talked about it and I've flown this podcast that people should know about it. So, but I'm done now, so I won't talk about it anymore. The other book, I guess I want to start off with. Notice that one's brief. Is I've read The World We Make, which is The Great Cities Book Two by N.K. Jemisin. So this is the sequel to The City We Became. And that book takes place basically right after the first one. And it's all about, well, it's the same group of people. The lady in white is still over in Staten Island. So that's interesting. And it's about basically a lot more weird world-billy type stuff where they go into the like weird timeline space. This sort of like, she describes it as more of like a tree, right? But it's sort of a similar vibe to the, if you guys have seen Loki, right, the timeline and the tree at the middle and all that good stuff. Yeah, it's sort of like that sort of. It's really, it's pretty good. I didn't like it nearly as much as the first one though. It just felt a little bit too large in scope and she got really, really weird with her, uh, I guess, strange like logic from people and how, I guess how the world is made up and how it all fits together. Like, there's a point in there, mild spoilers, when they go to the tree thing and they're, she's talking about how their universe, which they can sort of stand outside of for this purpose, they can see it falling down to the root of the tree and it's accelerating and it's just strange. It feels like she gets a little loose to go see with her own internal concept, but pretty interesting. And you also find out who the, the they or whatever that, um, the lady white is talking about and they talk to them a bit. So it's interesting. It's interesting. Like I said, I didn't like it as much as the first one. You do get a lot more of the other cities in it though because Manhattan especially goes around, he tries to talk to all of the younger cities for the most part and get them to call a meeting. Right? Because all the old cities don't want to do it. But you do get to meet a lot of the other cities. London is great. Um, I mean, what's the other one? There's one of the old cities that was actually pretty chill. I liked him. Cannot remember who it was though. Yeah, it was, it was a good book. Just not as good as the first one. That's kind of a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe, maybe you guys will like it more. I just didn't like it as much. I literally just finished the first one. When we talked about it before, I had three chapters to go. So I thought, I'm just going to listen to this instead of reading it because I was tied up with other things. Yeah. And um, of course, there was an eight week old wooden. I finally finally got on it. That's how it goes. Yeah. And finished the last three chapters. I thought it was kind of anti-climactical. It was just like, I wanted more at the end. I wanted it to be something instead of. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. No, I agree. I think it was for me, it was more of a building characters as opposed to building a story. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was good. I mean, it was worth the read. It's just that. Yeah, I agree with that. I am. I just really want to more at the end. Yeah, great. Well, to see the thing is that the ending was done. It's like, I was like the ending of, was it the fellowship of the ring, you know, it's going to stop. Yeah. There's sort of like a climax there. Like at the end of that, there's the big battle. And then I think it would have been, it would have been a better climax to watch than to to read because had it been done as a movie, you could have seen all the, you know, and you would have been like, oh, this is so cool, but just to read it was not. Yeah. And it wasn't, she wasn't super descriptive with what was actually happening in a loss of happened off screen. Yeah. Yeah. In that one. So I think it would have made a better movie than a book. Oh, yeah. I don't think I say that very often at all. That would make a really fun. It would kind of be really cool to do almost like a semi cartoonish. Yeah. semi like live action almost kind of like a into this by verse. Most of most books would just be better as animated. Well, then you would miss all the their internal thoughts, which is what I like about a book because yeah, you could hear them come to that decision, instead of just doing it. But this one, I don't think there was much decision making. It was just some of it there was, but yeah, you didn't get to see a whole lot of it. No. Queens, you would have missed out on because she had stuff going through her head more so than yeah. I know sometimes it improves the book, though, because I didn't want to hear any of Katna's internal thoughts after the first book. I was like, she's such a bite. But in the movie, you don't get that because she's you don't hear her inner thoughts. So you don't know how how much she just hates everything. True. I feel like that's the book, portrayal is probably more realistic in that case, but yeah, and she was difficult to listen to sometimes. Am I going next or Carla? Do you want to go next? The other one I read was it was a clive-custler one, which I like him every now and then called Celtic Empire. And this one was a little bit different because the bad guy was a woman. And she was like, good villain. Oh my gosh. She's like, you know, all men must die, basically. Love that. And they had and she had been searching her husband, who I guess wasn't the best husband. Because they handed it some stuff and it was like, yeah, that's I can see what that would make you mad. But I yeah, but you shouldn't take out half the world because of it. But that's beside the. But anyway, they had there was a plague. He was into Egyptology. And there had been a plague during, uh, knockout in this rain, that killed, affected the men more. It was like that biblical plague of the first born type stuff. But it was the boys that it affected more. And they were the ones dying more. But it changed, um, your genetic makeup to where women would only give birth to daughters after that because it damaged that those chromosomes, the Y chromosomes. And the in the man had trouble being fertile after that. So she was her husband had, um, had this bioremediation thing where it would help. He built, he made, I guess bacteria, I can't more exactly whether it was bacteria or something else. But anyway, it cleaned up oil. Yeah. They would eat it and then they couldn't live without the oil. So they died and it was all good. Well, she took over that. But she also resurrected that plague and kind of like tweaked it a little bit and released it into the environments where she cleaned up the oil into like the main water systems of these big cities. Yeah. And it caused the cholera like. Yeah. Yeah. Um, thing where people and the, it wasn't the first, I think the first two were more deadly. Mm-hmm. But she didn't want it to kill them off right because you would, you know, after a while you're going to get suspicious. Yeah. They tweaked it so it was like it affected the genes more than it did the immediate. So she released it all over the world before they caught her. And I won't tell you what happened, but uh, it was, but she was like so, um, so and manipulative. Yeah. She would manipulate, didn't care who she manipulated to get her way. Mm-hmm. It's like other women she would manipulate them and literally drug them and mess with them. She would have it, her big meaty, she would have stuff in the air to help them relax, like essential oils and stuff like that. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she was like major, yeah, put drugs in their food. Uh, that's right. Yeah. It was, I mean, she just covered all the bases so that they wouldn't realize they were being drugged. But it made them highly susceptible to her ideas. That's fun. Yeah. She was interesting to work. Yeah. That's a good villain. Mm-hmm. She had two daughters. Only one of them was all in like she was. The other one was a little iffy. Yeah. But it was. It's pretty good. I mean, it's just silly like James Bond type book. Yeah. But it was good. Very good. Sometimes you need the escape. I'm gonna knock out actually like one whole trilogy. Yay. Um, so I read, I reread the daughter of the pirate king and, um, daughter of the siren queen. I read those. Oh, yeah. In 2019. And then, um, because she finally came out with a third book, which is Vengeance of the pirate queen. Um, and all three of them were really good. The first two are about Elosa. She is the daughter of a pirate king. Um, and you also know that she is like her mother was a siren queen. Um, but she died giving birth to her. And her father is horrible. Like we hate him. And, uh, she is on this secret mission to get kidnapped by a rival pirate ship. Wait, she's, did you say she's on a mission to get kidnapped? Yes. Okay. Just make sure you're on this mission to get kidnapped on this ship, where, um, they, they suspect they aren't 100% positive. Um, but she is supposed to find a piece of a treasure map that is split between the three major, uh, pirate families, uh, before her dad took over as king. Um, that leads to the island of sirens because he wants to go back and get the treasure. Um, so she spends the first book on the ship and basically trying to convince them that she is which would ship the the rival ship. Okay. Yes. Um, and she spends most of the book trying to convince them that she is actually, uh, captive and not sneaking out literally every night because she can break out of the cell. Like she is, she's, she's a pretty, pretty good badass, honestly. And, um, she gets caught a couple of times, but she's able to like kind of turn it around. There's a, uh, supposedly a couple of spies on this ship who work for her dad. And, um, one guy announces himself to her like whenever she's caught and she's just kind of like, I need to kill you. And he's like, no, he makes like the sign of her father's, whatever. Anyway, so whatever. The second book, um, she's trying to find out what happened to her mother. I don't want to like say any other, like, anything crazy with that, but, um, I should also note that Alosa has her own ship. And she runs it almost entirely with girls and women. And we love that. I think she has like a total of four men on her ship the entire time. Like she just, she said we can do it as women were better. And women are also not susceptible to sirens. So she's always like, yeah, you guys can say that you're really cool, but you have to wear earplugs. So I guess you suck. And then the third one is actually from the point of view of one of her, um, best friends who is like one of her, I guess her right hand and, um, they travel to an island. They get stranded. And then wake up this really creepy ice king dude ish. He's terrifying, honestly. Um, he kills things and then immediately resurrects them. And they can like see he can see through them. He can hear through them. Like it's, it's kind of creepy. Like a very good villain in this one. Like very, very good. Um, because he attaches himself to, um, her second, right? And she's supposed to be the captain of the ship. She's never been a captain before. She does not like being seen by people. She is an assassin. So she does not like being the center of attention. So she's the captain of the ship. And she's like, I'm doing everything wrong. Then she wakes up this dude and she's like, I'm really doing everything wrong. And then he's like, you're my soul mate. And she's like, I'm doing everything wrong. She's been the entire book trying so hard to fix everything. And it just gets like worse and worse. And, um, it's such a good, but like these three are their YA books. Uh, but they have like high action, high adventure and some really good fantasy elements. Um, I would not say that they're like for the super week of heart because like bad stuff does happen. And it's not, um, it's not glorified, but it's also not played down. So, um, you know, just go into that. But I love these books. They are so good. Um, I do recommend them. They're by Trisha Levinseller. She's fantastic. So there are those. Cool. Yeah. That's interesting. They are. It's my kind of book, but you know, it sounds interesting. I think I would read it, especially if it says they're like rolling in the deep days are really good. It sounds. It's not it's not that scary, but yeah, it's yeah, that's kind of theme. Yes. Yeah. No, it's basically one piece. That's why I'm here in Sareens. Sareens. Sareens. Got to watch out for them. Sareens. Yeah, yeah. Seeing with them. Pretty little voices. All right. I guess I'll go next. Um, so my next book, it's actually, I've read two of these. I'm not, I'm not read the third one yet. Uh, the first one is called Children of Time. It's by Adrian Chikovsky. First of all, great name. Uh, second of all, this is a dummy thick book. I actually wanted to do this for, um, our deep dive ones and you get it because it is, it's only 600 or eight pages. It's not that bad. Oh, we're struggling. It's kind of a hundred pages. What do you mean? Just six hundred and six hundred eight pages in the hardcover version. So my God, it's probably a lot more. Our job must be much harder. Yeah, because none of us can do it. Yeah, that one's, uh, kind of, kind of thick. Anyway, so it's a sci-fi book. It's based on I couldn't get exact like sort of, uh, date range, but it's some time in the future. It starts off like I'm guessing somewhat near future, maybe like a few hundred years. Uh, basically there is an advanced race of humans or a civilization of humans. They go out there doing terraforming projects all around and one of them is this lady. Her name is Kern and she is trying to seed a world with monkeys and she's going to give them a virus. There's a virus that goes down on this, uh, already prepared world. It's got like most a lot of, um, animal life there. It was a dead world. They terraformed it and they put a bunch of animal life there from earth, right? Mostly bugs and like crustaceans and things. Anyway, and like squirrels and whatnot. So she sends down, she tries to send down the monkeys. She does send down the virus, but while she's trying to send down the monkeys, um, there is a, there's been like some strife that was happening. So between the sort of people who were, uh, wanting like the technology to advance more and more and then the people who were kind of anti tech and the anti tech people set out like this virus that like could take out a bunch of ships just basically everywhere and it screwed up something about that screwed up, um, the monkeys they burnt up in the atmosphere. She ends up staying on the monitoring station and cuts it off from everything else and goes into cryo sleep. Anyway, yeah, she goes into cryo sleep because she's wants to wait for her monkeys and she's just got betrayed by everybody. So it's been a while. I can't remember all the details of exactly how it happened, but basically that's the idea. There were some sabotage happening. It was a big war, basically wiped out all of humanity. We don't know that at this point, but you find it out like right afterwards. Spoiler. I mean, it's right after this is the beginning of the book. I'm not until I page three, I think anyway. So then we do the skip to a different group of people and they're all on the ship, which is a generation ship was not a generation ship. It's just a cryo ship like it's all long hauling a bunch of people and this is, um, one of the last sets of people from earth who have survived and built up their stuff and they have a technology that is not as good as current technology. So they're going out there. They're trying to find current world because it has that beacon like flashing out there and they know that this place was probably terraform. So they go out there and they're looking at it and they're trying to find it. There's a bunch of people they all they're all in cryo sleep. There's a group of core people they wake up and they're supposed to be deciding what to do with it. They get into a little bit of a scuffle with Kern who's like, no, you can't have this. This is where my monkeys are blah blah blah and she like spooks them and sends them off to some other place. And so they start going off that way. They try to stay keep a group of people around on the moon. There's like some sabotage that happens again. Lots of sabotaging. And that's what's happening with them. But the coolest part of this book is that because the monkeys died on entry to the atmosphere, there was nothing for the virus to really latch on to that was like primate like. So instead it it latched onto a few different things. The main group that we follow is spiders. Oh, you lost me there. It's like, I'm done right. They're the Portiid like Porsche. What kind of spider is that? It's like the coupon Porsche. Porsche spider. Yeah, it's just called a Porsche spider. POR TIA. And it's a jumping spider. If you Google a Portiid, Portiid spider, they're the adorable ones with all the fur. They're really cute. Like to keep ones. Huh? Is it to keep a little jumping spider? Okay. It's to keep a little jumping spider yet. It's like they're not like the size of like trucks. I think I can handle it. I mean they get to be about the size of trucks. No, like a dog log. Oh, still. Okay. Thousands of years. Can you just imagine a little baby spider? Oh, no, being all cute. No. And a dog. No. Well, these guys are pretty smart. Anyway, so the virus latched on them. It latches on to you some ants. Then it latches on to like some crustaceans and things. We haven't really followed them. This is my nightmare world. And the spider is important. Ants and spiders. Ants and spiders. Because they're way too organized. Yeah. To, uh, I literally watched it. It's very strong. Yeah, this video where they had given a bunch of men and a group of ants is like weird t-shaped, um, object to move through a couple doors, but it was really kind of hard to get there. And the only thing they told the man is that they could not talk. Yeah, they couldn't communicate verbally or stuff like that. They just had to do it. The ants and the men finished at the same time. Sounds about right. And I thought the ants were going to win. That's wild. I've seen videos of them doing like weird challenges like that where they had to like orient stuff around and they're like trying to figure it out. I mean, this one really was like major. They really had to work at it. That's crazy. But yeah, it was kind of, I was like, wow, they're too, they're too smart. Yeah. And then if they get smarter, we're in trouble. Oh yeah, well, that's why happens here basically. I feel like quite a few different types of animals are like that. Like you say, if, if we allowed them to get smarter, we'd really be in trouble. Yeah. I kind of think it should happen. We should be in trouble. So anyway, these spiders, the virus gets in them. It starts basically trying to make them be a little bit more nice to each other, less loners. And it's trying to also make them basically smarter and pass on their knowledge. They don't really have any like good writing system or anything because what happens is that when they, they can distill their knowledge into like little knowledge packet and like pass that around to people eventually, but also just like they have some sort of genetic memory from the virus allowing them to like, you know, learn stuff faster. They don't have to like do as much. They just like learn it. And then when they have kids, it gets dispersed into all the kids and they all have what is called understandings. Right. You can only hold a certain number of understandings in your mind later, but you could, in theory, just like learn whatever you want almost instantly. You just have to get new understandings. It's really cool actually. But, um, Miles poils, spoilers here. They do end up running into the ants at some point sort of in their middle or early history. And, um, have a great big fight with them. Eventually they win. But when they do that, they start of turning them effectively into computers. Right. Because it's like each little, each little ant is acting sort of like a neuron and a big brain. And they can use that to not basically calculate things. It's really cool. This book is very long. So there's all kinds of stuff that happens. I'm hitting like some highlights here. But yeah, it's a very interesting book. The first one is I really, really enjoyed it. It was cool. Honestly, I got tired of the people most of the time, especially since it was mostly told from the point of view of one guy. And he would just wake up and terrible stuff was happening. And it like, uh, didn't freeze him again. He'd wake up like 50 years later. They'd freeze him again over and over and over again. Uh, well, they're going back and forth to this planet. And yeah, because it takes thousands of years to travel and space this way, because they can't, they can go really fast, but, you know, you have the speed of light as a limit. Yeah. And people can't stay alive that long. So they just freeze them. So it's just the whole time is this guy waking up, uh, basically hitting the fan and then him going back to sleep. And it's all kinds of crazy stuff. You got one of the main, um, I guess captain guy, he is, he goes crazy at some point and starts wanting to be like basically God emperor. Oh, you know, love the people or the planet. Okay. Well, they're good. They're trying to get back to the planet. Oh, okay. But the ship is starting to degrade and stuff and they've used up way too much food, going back and forth and keeping people awake and trying to prep the ship for, um, for, uh, in attacking current, because this current's got way, way better tech. I mean, it's just this tiny little satellite, but it can straight up zap their ship and two, like they they couldn't do anything about it at first until they got there. They came back. Anyway, though, I like the spider portion of the best. The spider spiders were a lot more interesting than the rest of them. And I think if you like sci-fi and just like weird, weird worlds and stuff like that, this is great. And also it was, I think Adrian Tchaikovsky is done. Maybe the best are close to the best of trying to get across alien thinking to people. That makes sense. Yeah. Because like it's, he's trying to explain how spiders think or would think, and all this stuff. Like, for example, they capture a person who comes down to the planet at one point and they, they can't figure out if she's like intelligence or not, because they can't hear her speaking or anything and they can't communicate because they just, they don't understand that, uh, talking, uh, could communicate information. Because they, when they talk, they just tap their feet, right? It's through vibration is what they think and they, they don't have good enough ears to be able to hear it very well. So they do. Even at that size. I mean, they could see her like opening up her mouth and stuff like that, but they're like, what is she doing? They come figure it out. Okay. I feel like they don't think they would still have the ears that I don't know. Their ears would get bigger. You might not like be able to hear super, super well, but no, they could, they could sort of hear, but it's not enough for them to really put any importance in hearing because they didn't need to before. So why would they put them? It's like us trying to, um, if something, uh, uh, communicate with smell, right? Yeah. I would be. I guess like, it's like, it's like, what would, we wouldn't even know, because it could be like, super subtle sense. Okay. I get that. Is that information? Or you just like, whatever, you just don't know because it's so such an alien concept for us. Like sure, we can say, oh, there's pheromones and stuff like that, but that took us a long time to figure out in the first place. And if there was some complicated language inside the pheromones, we would have no idea for like a long time. You know, I mean, these people weren't, this is like a sort of, I think at that level, I mean, at that point in the book, they were sort of in the like 50s technology, maybe early 1900s, sort of technology level. They had radio, but that was about it. And they had radio, uh, and they were kept listening to, um, hern's broadcast, right? But for a long time, because of like some religious reasons, they wouldn't send anything back to the satellite. Because the satellite was basically beaming down, um, math problems, right? Yeah. For them to solve. So that once that they could solve them, they could, you know, they would say the older intelligence, but they didn't do it for a very long time, despite the fact that they had solved all the stuff because of, you know, you don't send stuff back to the, to the ship or whatever. I can't remember what they called it. I don't remember. Anyway, but the first book, very, very good. The second book takes place. Uh, it's like 50 years after that, something like that. Maybe not quite 50 years. Anyway, it happens after that. And I don't want to spoil anything, but there's another set of, uh, aliens based on octopi in it. Oh, that's chemical. And the octopi are, I would say even more alien sounding than the, um, the spiders, the way that they communicate and stuff. Wow. Do they use their colors? They use their colors. And they have, um, because they don't make noise, right? So they mostly just use their colors and, they send out like data streams, right? So that you can like communicate or whatever, but it's mostly color based. And the thing is they, they work sort of weird because their tentacles are like the analytical part of them. They're actually what does this stuff because you, the octopi tentacles sort of like act on their own anyway, right? So think of that. But then they became like super smart, math genius type tentacles. And then the main part, the mantle that contains like, I guess what you call the octopus. It, uh, at least by our understanding, that is just all emotion and desire, right? So they that part says, I want to do this thing. And then they call it the reach, which is their tentacles just does it. That's how all of their technology works. They don't know, they don't consciously know how any of it works. They just have desires and their tentacles go do a form. And they're, they've also been sort of engineered by a similar sort of virus. If not the same virus, I think it's basically the same virus. Because this was like a typical thing that people were trying to do at that time. It's based on a different planet, a different set of humans. Um, I think the main thing I didn't like about that one is just like, it just wasn't as exciting and it kind of like jumped around a little bit. But you also just didn't get as deep into how the societies worked as you did with the spider society. So, but overall, I really like the first one. I thought it was fantastic five stars. And then I think the second one was I rated four, but you know, they're both good. The first one is much better. And I think that it honestly, if you just read the first one, you'd be fine because yeah, there's not much, much else you get from the second one that you don't get in the first one. I mean, the octopus stuff is pretty cool. The issue is, so all the concepts in there are interesting. I just didn't like the overarching story in that one nearly as much, I guess. It's also that one shorter. It's only five hundred and ninety seven pages. Yeah. So way shorter. Way shorter. 11 pages. That's pretty good. Oh my god. All right, go ahead. I got, uh, I got one more book after this one, but I, um, I, the only really fun book I read was the Clive Tesla one. The, uh, other things I've been reading are we're doing these gardening programs. I would read a lot of soil science and companion planning and stuff like that. So dirt books. Yeah, dirt books. Yeah. Literally, dirt books. And the importance of like, uh, nourishing your soil so your plants don't get diseases that type stuff. Sure. No, no, not interesting, but not exciting. All right. Uh, so I will do two more and then I have one more, um, after you have your last one. So that'll be fine. Um, I read, so we remember I read the, uh, Lady Janey's series. So there was like, uh, Jane Gray, um, Jane Air, and then Jane, Clamity Jane. Um, so this, I started the Mary's series. And the first one is, um, Mary Queen of Scots who was in the Jane Gray one. Um, and, um, that one is kind of everything that's happening at the same time or actually know what I think it happens a little bit after the end. It does. Yeah. I had to, I had to think about that one. Um, and it's really interesting. She is, uh, so the book is called My Contrary Mary and she essentially does the exact opposite of what you tell her to do. Like she will, like if you're just like, Hey, you know, what do you think about this? She'll be like, Oh, that's fine. But then the second anybody is like, do this. She's like, no. So, um, basically the whole book is about that and how, um, her families basically plotted to take over like England, uh, France and also take back the throne of Scotland during the whole like, Verity and, um, Oh, got ethyans is what they're called. Ethyans are the people who can turn into animals like they have their like spirit animal essentially that they turn into. Um, and there's like a whole big, like a religious war kind of going on between them and the Verities who are like, that is very bad. You can't do that. Magic is awful, you know, whatever. And, um, so it's the plots are fantastic. The bad people are bad. And you know, um, there's, it's, it's kind of high stakes, but it's also not because like these books I like them because they're very funny, still very funny. Um, but, oh, there's just like a lot of a little bit of everything going on and they're just so nice and like filler books. Um, and then the next one is my imaginary Mary which is about Mary Shelley and, um, Ada Lovelace is also in this one and their best friends. And, um, Mary is in this, she is called a Faye. And so, I mean, like how we know that is a little bit different than how it is in this world like they can do magic, but it's usually like the creative types or like, you know, engineers, writers, poets like anything and everything to do with that. They are typically Faye. Like if they're really, really great and they can basically imagine anything they please, but everything comes with a cost. And, um, so there is also a villain in this one. Fantastic. It's a guy who is trying really hard to resurrect, um, life basically. And he has this show that's always been faked before, but she is at this party. And so he has a dead frog on a table and he's trying to electrocute it. And, um, she is sitting there thinking like, my gosh, this is just so rude. Like why, why would you do this to a dead frog? And then she kind of just thinks, oh, it would just be better if that frog were alive. So it actually comes to life. She has no idea that she's done this. But the frog comes to life. And the guy doing it is like, I did it. And so he essentially just like continues to try and recreate this for like weeks, right? And obviously it's not going to happen. Um, and she works on an automaton that Ada Lovelace has built to basically one up her mentor who did something with her ideas. He made a ballerina that moves around on her own. Um, and she said, well, I'm going to make one that's functional. So she built this automaton who is like, he does all of the things like he's, he can be a servant. He can help you with embroidery, like anything and everything. And she names him pan. And, um, they marry and Ada bring him to life. And then they find out that actually what happens whenever you do that is you put your life force into that. Like, you know, if it's just something that's like, you know, I've created an illusion of the moon. And, uh, you know, whatever, that's different than actually bringing something to life. And, uh, they didn't know how long she, like, how much of her life she had given. So it's just like, ah, this whole big, whole big adventure. And, um, Ada and Pan get kidnapped by the evil doctor. And they end up, I think, I think they end up in France. And then Switzerland, I think is a big journey. There's a whole bunch of journey going on. Very good. Very good. So they made a horror crux, basically what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she died. But then she's going to be a ghost until like, you know, I don't know. She doesn't, she doesn't die essentially. She just like basically gave up some of her life. Oh, I know. I know. But also like, it was kind of, it was kind of complicated until the end whenever they really explained because, um, she does. So she's brought the automaton to life, right? But he's still like a metal man. Then Ada and Pan are kidnapped. And he does the whole trick. And he is like, you, he, the evil guy tells Pan, you do what I say or I'm going to kill Ada. And he's just like, that's just so rude. I don't even understand. Um, and at this place, um, Mary ends up coming to the show. And she sees Pan. She ends up causing a distraction. And she then turns Pan into an actual boy. Like she envisions every like brain, like all of his bodily functions, like everything. Um, and so she swapped, she swapped Pan's body with the body that he, the evil guy had in the basement of his theater. And so that's how that was able to come about, if that makes sense. So she'd not only put life force into him that way, um, like to bring him to life as a metal man, but like straight up put even more force into it later. And so they were like, you, you can't keep doing this. And she's like, okay. And then she does lean, it gives him a little bit more to keep him going on whenever she sees him like slowing down and stuff is very good. And parts of it just Pan specifically made you like want to cry because he's really learning about the world and everything going on. And he's already smart like, you know, book smart, but he's not necessarily street smart. So seeing him come to terms with like people aren't always nice. People aren't always good. It just was kind of like, huh. But it's good. It's good. I like the sounds interesting. Yeah. Could have serious romance vibes too. They do. They're kind of, they're kind of Romancey. They're not like, they're YA books. And so like some of them have more of it than others. Like this one, not so much. It's like, it's like a bottom of the, yeah, but so much fun. This one focuses more on, uh, we're, we're best friends and you're not going to separate us. It's good. That's fair. Yeah. Cool. All right. I guess we'll go with my last one here. Uh, I'm not done with it. I'm like real close though. So I have predictions as to what's going to happen at the end. But we'll see. And the rest of it's been somewhat predictable. So, uh, so this one is called the ministry of time. And it is about basically, there's a group of people who work for, I believe it's the British government. And they are called, uh, bridges. And they're bridges. The bridges basically try to help all of these people who they call expat, uh, sort of come to terms with the fact that they're not in their own timeline anymore. So basically, the British government has gotten their hands on a time door, which allows them to ywing people from the past, right? So ywing to bunch of people from the past, uh, from all different, uh, places and times, like one, this, it goes back to the 1600s, then up to the 1800s, that sort of time range. I don't think that they had any of a bite from the 1900s. I don't think so. Anyway, so they ywing all these people out, basically right before they were going to die, that way wouldn't change the timeline at all, it wouldn't affect anything, was the thought because they've just taken them. Anyway, so the whole idea is that you have these people who are, they're like sort of all, sort of all partnered up, right? You've got the bridge, you got the expat, they worked, they lived together, they talked together, they try to basically make the expat, um, more okay with modern times, because if you aren't like, uh, basically, if you can't come to terms with the fact that like, it's normal here and whatever, uh, the idea is that you start slipping out of time and you just can't be, you can't really live there anymore. They don't explain exactly why that happens. There's something about hereness and thereness that comes into play, uh, if you are using your quote-unquote hereness, then you, I don't know if I want to spoil this, but basically it has to do with them being detected by like technology and stuff like that. For example, if you walk through a metal detector and you sort of like are slipping back into the past, it just doesn't pick you up, right? Even if you've got stuff on you, it just doesn't, or not a metal detector like that, one of those scanners that they have the airports now, you know what I'm talking about, the ones that go"rush" around you. Oh, yeah. I can't remember those are called, anyway. The bodyscanners. Like that. Like the bodyscanners things, yeah. Anyway, but, uh, that's sort of all stuff that happens in there. It's interesting to hear about, um, but that is definitely not the focus of the book. The focus of the book is about the main character who was partnered up with somebody from the 18, somewhere in the 1800s. I can't remember exactly when he used, but anyway, uh, those two and basically their relationship, it's a romance when it comes down to it. There's at least mostly a romance much more than it is like a sci-fi book. Uh, I personally wish they would have leaned into the sci-fi a little bit more, but because there's like a bunch of really cool stuff you could have done with this. And they're finally like at the very end here, like I've got maybe 50 pages of this book left, if that. At the very end, they're starting to get into the weird time stuff that, you know, you sort of think about when you think about people going back and forward in time. And yeah, so that I wish there was been more of that, but also the main character. She's like, she's difficult to deal with sometimes because I guess I just don't understand her motivations a lot of the time. And I don't know. I just, I'm just not a big romance person. So like, hearing her logic internally about the romantic stuff just doesn't make a ton of sense to me. It's a pretty good book, but I think that I actually don't even know if you guys would like it as much maybe. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good overall. I'm enjoying it thus far. I'm probably gonna give it like three and a half around up to four, but yeah. It's by, it's the Ministry of Time by what's her name? Kaleen Bradley. Kaleen? I actually don't know how to pronounce that name. She's okay. So she's, this is basically like a standing character because the character in there is British Cambodian and she is British Cambodian. And actually sort of looks like the character as described. So something sort of thing. Which is fine. I don't mind that at all. It's interesting. Maybe that's the reason why I'm having difficulties like vibe and with her. But the book itself is pretty good. I just don't understand the motivation sometimes. And the sort of I guess really strong adherence to the rules that this character has. Despite the fact that it's clearly not great. I mean there is this idea of her like sort of just following orders type thing that she does break them for some reasons, but it's still it's like I'm sure that this is the right thing to do. Also, there's a twist at the end that you could see from about a like you know halfway through the book. It's pretty obvious at the point what the twist is going to be. So yeah. Also like they, it takes forever for this romance to get going and then it's like nowhere. Like it goes it goes for like 10 seconds and there's over because the end of the book. Yeah, that sounds so hard. But I don't know you guys might like it. Check it out if anybody likes sort of sci-fi and romance together. I think it could be really good. I just didn't think it was that great personally. But the cover is really cool. So there you go. Worth it just there. Just for the cover. Yeah. All right. My last book. I read "Thorn of Secrets" by Keri Menescalco. It is a Prince of Sin book. It's number two in the trilogy, but it kind of like picks up at the end of her other trilogy. So basically you just follow the Prince of Hell. This one is about Prince Gluttony and his rival Adriana St. Lucient. And she is a demon. I guess you would call all of them demons in Hell. So whatever. But she is a scandal reporter and she hates him. Like hates him. She wants to ruin his life. And so obviously they fall in love. This is definitely a romanticist. So just so we're not like expecting. There is definitely a lot of spice in this one. But in my opinion, there are a lot better well done than Sarah Jamest or Rebecca Yarros. Anyway. I really like this one. It's an enemy syllabus. And then you find out about hex objects some more. This is something that has been visited in the other books. And there are ice dragons. And they suddenly start attacking the realm. Inhale. Ice dragons. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. They're scary too. I guess when hell freezes over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. Does they make that joke in there? There's like, no, they don't. But there is like, like they do have winter and stuff there. So I don't know. Yeah. It's like it's it's kind of a conflict. I don't either. So yeah, it's like it kind of it's fun to think like it's essentially earth but not, you know. But so anyway. Yeah. Ice dragons start attacking the realm, even though they totally shouldn't be. And it's very confusing. And she hears rumors about it. And so is trying to uncover it. And he knows that she is asking questions. So he's trying everything in his power to keep her from finding out because he knows she would be the one to break it. She would be the one to literally ruin his life. And he's like, I just can't be doing that. And it just is a whole thing he decides to host a realm wide search for a bride. So he has like women from all seven circles of hell and like one from each and is either like a royal or noble or a commonborn. And so it's like this whole big thing. And he tries to hire her to be the exclusive writer. And he offers her a million dollars. Essentially they are called something else in the book. A million dollars per story on this right. So she would get at least seven million dollars, eight million if you count the interview with him. So like, that's insane. And she's like, no. I mean, he's like, what do you mean? Anyway, it's great. It's fantastic. They they end up falling in love. I'm not going to say how because it's fantastic. You definitely know like when it happens as soon as it happens, you're like, oh my god, yeah, this but you don't. I thought I knew what was going to happen with the twist at the end. And I did not. I was like, what? So yeah, there were like a couple of different leads that it could have been. Not one of them. I was like, how did we even do this? Oh my god, it was great. Fantastic. So five stars, obviously. I think this is my favorite. Yeah. I haven't read this. It sounds kind of goofy, honestly. They're definitely like, they're not super like, I don't know how to explain. They're romanticies. They're not like, you know, yeah, I know that this is a thing with all the romanticies basically. But this one actually sounds more fun. Yeah. I really think they are. And so the books originally, let me see if I can find them here. She wrote Hunting Jack the Ripper, which is such a fantastic series. And that one is like straight YA, like no, like no sexy time, nothing. And then there's, oh my god, I'm going to have to find it. But there's another series that's a, and this one is more like the new adult. So that's whenever we, that's what all of these are that have like, you know, sex scenes and them and whatever. So yeah, Kingdom of the Wicked. And then Kingdom of the cursed. And then Kingdom of the feared. And then we go into the throne of, and that's the rest of the prince, princes of hell. So I'm guessing each of the brothers are going to have more. You meet them all in the first Kingdom of the Wicked. And you don't like any of them. But it's really, it's, it's really, they're fun. Like they're different. They are very dark. They're not like happy at all. So like don't expect that. But I know there's a lot of wit. And there is romance. But in my opinion, it's well done. Like I never felt cringy. Like there might have been a couple that I was like, well, that's just not for me. Thank you. But it never made me like most romanticies. I'm just like, oh my god, are we like, is, can we just not? But I didn't feel like that at all with any of these books. And I haven't benched them. I'd like, don't, in my opinion, I don't think that they would be bench worthy. I don't think they would be bad to binge. But I don't binge a whole lot. So I mean, when I do, I really do. So anyway, yeah, they're, they're nice. I really like them. I, I really like her writing style. She is, I don't know. She's just well put together. And she does pretty great. So love, Kerry. Sounds fun. Yeah. Is that everybody? I think that's everything. Unless you really want to talk about dirt, which I don't. So I mean, that's her. Okay. Well, so we've been out of order. And we're just at this point, trying to tell you what's coming up. We're not entirely positive. We've got some more shuffling going on. So we will, however, be sitting down next with our special guest, Adam Good. We will be discussing some paranormal supernatural spooky stuff. And so that'll be fun. And then we're going to hopefully do my nonfiction, which is Love and Whiskey by Fawn Weaver. And then I think for episode 100, we're going to do something really special. We're going to have to like work out the details a little bit more, but we'll tell you next time. All right. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's time for us to sign off. But before we go, only the best libraries have librarians who don't choose you.[Music][BLANK_AUDIO]