Ep01 - Fourth Wing

Summary
In this episode, Jon & Kristy talk about complex character development, the awesomeness of dragons, as well as themes of trust, betrayal, and the power of self-belief. The episode ends with a discussion about the different quadrants and where they feel they'd fit in.

Links
Official author website: https://www.rebeccayarros.com/
ReCaptains recap: https://recaptains.co.uk/2023/07/fourth-wing-by-rebecca-yarros/
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BIMMHR Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/booksimakemyhusbandread/
BIMMHR email: [e-mail]
Kristy's Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/kristypritzl
Jon's Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/jkpritzl

Takeaways

• Intro and summary of the book
• Violet’s character development
• Xaden vs. Dain 
• Book reveals and conclusion

Chapters

• (00:50) - Kicking things off
• (02:51) - Format of the show
• (03:28) - Subscribe plug
• (04:06) - ReCaptians
• (05:14) - Fact checking ourselves
• (06:08) - Should we start the show?
• (07:33) - Summary of the book
• (11:04) - Spoiler alert!
• (14:39) - Jon's favorite part
• (16:04) - Kristy's favorite part
• (16:46) - Violets mantra
• (17:34) - What would your mantra be?
• (18:02) - Why is Violet in Riders Quadrant?
• (20:58) - Frickin' Dain...
• (23:08) - Dreamy Xaden
• (25:30) - Communicating through a bond
• (26:38) - Xaden's secret
• (30:47) - Did Jon see any of it coming?
• (32:20) - What Kristy saw coming
• (33:44) - A great and terrible price
• (36:48) - What quadrant would Jon be in
• (38:03) - What quadrant would Kristy be in
• (39:30) - Final thoughts

Creators & Guests

Host

Jon King-Pritzl

Host

Kristy King-Pritzl

What is Books I Make My Husband Read?

A conversational podcast between husband-n-wife pair, Jon and Kristy, about books Kristy makes Jon read.

It has dragons. I know. There's like, there's nothing else cooler than dragons. And honestly, to the point of I think my next tattoo might be a dragon. They're just that cool.

Hello. Hello. And hello listeners. Welcome to this week's episode of Books I Make My Husband Read. I'm your host, Kristy and this is my co-host, my darling husband Jon, whom I make read the books. Hello listeners. Do people say darling anymore? No, but we should bring it back. Okay, my darling husband. That 1950s shit they want from me. Right?

So this week we're going to be discussing Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Fourth Wing is a fantasy slash romance fantasy, which I know we're calling romance-y now. It's new adult on Goodreads. It's listed as young adult, but I have issues with that. So. Why is it? Why? Why is that a thing? Why do you have issues?
So young adult is technically supposed to be marketed to 13 to 18-year-olds. And I'm sorry, I don't want my 13 or 14 year old reading this book. I mean, there are some super steamy scenes. So, this is not a John Green, Fault in Our Stars or Hunger Games, you know, type book. So, that's my PSA for maybe parents listening out there with some younger teenagers. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, there's definitely some pretty complex character development type things in this book too that I think would be really hard for a younger adult audience to like really fully understand or grasp.

Yeah. So the book came out of May 2023. So just last year, it's just a year old and it's been everywhere. I think I'm pretty sure I read the other day also that Michael B. Jordan's production company bought the rights to it. So I'm sure it's going to be developed into, would think a series versus a movie. I haven't specifically heard yet, but it has dragons. It has a super steamy enemies to lovers romance. It has world building, villains, villains who we don't even know our villains, a pending war, there's some hilarious banter between our two main characters, and there's just like a lot of character development overall. Yeah, mean, what more could you want? Alright, I know, right? So I thought Jon would like this book because duh, the dragons. But also, I know you really appreciate a really good world character building story, ... I do. I thought that was it. And the dragons. And the dragons, yeah. The formatting of our podcast is...
We're going to open up with a brief summary. It's not going to be too much more than you would get on Goodreads or the back cover or the inside flap of the book. We're going to tell you that the spoilers are ahead, so we'll pause so you can jump off if you haven't read this book and you have an interest in reading the book. And then we'll discuss it. I'll start by or mostly ask questions and I think you'll probably have some questions for me, but we'll just kind of go back and forth and have a little chat. Yeah. A little chatterroo about the book.

So before we get into the book this week, we are asking our listeners to head over to Apple Podcasts and please leave us a review about what you think of the show so far. Also, don't forget to subscribe while you're there if you haven't already. And we would also like to give you a little, a little bit of an incentive for doing so. So if you go, leave us a review, and then you email us at [e-mail]. We'll send you a show sticker and a button. All you need to do is email us your address and then a copy of whatever review you left. Nice. That's fun. I'm excited to get those. We just ordered them yesterday.
Now, since this book is super popular, I'll say, and I know, I mean, I specifically know I've had friends and family read this book, but if it's been a while since you read it, and you don't want to reread it, although I do highly recommend rereading it. I reread it recently and I think fell in love with it all over again, and picked up new things. But if you don't want to read it, because I do realize it's, she's kind of thick, she's a little big. I recommend checking out this great website that I personally use. It's called ReCaptains. It's a gal that's in the UK. Her name is Amber. She's pretty hilarious.

She does a lot of fantasy, but she does a lot of series of books. And so if you are coming up on, for instance, Iron Flame is already out, which is the second book of the Fourth Wing series. And you were like, what the heck happened in Fourth Wing? You could go find that video, and she gives you like a pretty thorough recap. I know we watched it together too, just to see what was going on. We did. And we'll put a link to that in show notes too. Yeah, good. Okay.

The next thing I need to do before we get started is I want to fact check myself because I'm a big fact checker. So I have to hold myself still accountable. I said in our introductory episode that I thought I had only given one book two stars, but it turns out I've given a handful of books two stars. I found a way to figure out how to review all your books on Goodreads and then you can like sort it by least. And yeah, there were several actually there.

It's a tiny percentage of the books that I have read, but there were definitely more than one. And I looked through the list and I stand by, I said what I said. So just wanted to clear that up. Fair enough. So you said last, in our last episode that you get fact -checked, but you just didn't realize that you would be the one fact -checking yourself. Yes. Okay. Yep. Good. I mean, I have to hold myself accountable. Sure.
Should we start talking about the book? We should start talking about the book that you made me read. Yeah.

All right, so Fourth Wing, I have said this a couple times that this book is a mashup between A Court of Thorns and Roses, which you have read. You didn't read the whole series. You stopped about halfway through the third one. House of Dragon, which when I say that I am referring to the show, I have not read the books. I know, shame on me. But a mashup between those two plus Hunger Games plus Divergent. So A Court of Thorns and Roses based on the bond, the ability to talk to each other without speaking. dragons because the dragons; House of Dragon because of the dragons, but also because of the idea that a dragon chooses its rider and that there's a relationship there. And then also they call Navarre, which is this main country, I guess, part of this new world, they call it the Vale. I thought that was funny with House of Dragon. Sure.

And then Hunger Games because there's a lot of cutthroat - people are killing people to survive in this world. And then Divergent because of the factions. yeah. And both those because there is an impending war, which it seems like we're moving toward. For sure. All right. So let's give a summary of the book.
The book introduces us to Violet Sorrengail, she's 20 years old. She lives at Basgaith War College in Navarre. And her mother, Lilith Sorrengail, is the commanding general there. Up until about six months ago, Violet lived what I would say is a pretty quiet life. She sequestered herself in the archives with the hopes of joining the scribe quadrant. However, Violet's mother, the general, decided that instead of joining the scribe quadrant, Violet would do what all Sorrengails do, and that was to become one of the elite of Navarre, which is a dragon rider.

Yeah. And there some challenges with that because we learned that Violet has some physical attributes that make her stature less than ideal for riding dragons. Plus it's worth noting to your Hunger Games reference is that the rider quadrant is pretty vicious and pretty cutthroat. Really the point of those whole classes and that first year of that quadrant is to weed out the weak. And so here you have someone who has a, they don't call it a disability. It's not really a disability, but basically she, her bones are very fragile. I thought like of an autoimmune disease. That's what I've always thought. And when I've talked to people about the book who haven't read the book, I've thought about it like that, but sure. Yeah, that's good. Add that to the point that she's also the daughter of the general and we'll just say that the odds are really not in her favor. But the one thing she is looking forward to is that one of her childhood friends, Dain was also in the riders quadrant. And so she was looking forward to seeing him again and kind of hoping that she had an ally already within her first year of the school, but more on him later. But not only is she fragile, which doesn't make her suited to be a dragon rider, but dragons don't bond with weak or fragile people, they incinerate them.

So she's got a challenge ahead of her. Anyway, so she goes to the riders quadrant, because mommy says so. And while she's there, she meets Xaden Riorson who is the son of Fen Riorson. And Fen is the rebel who killed her brother Brennan roughly five years ago before the events of the book really take place. Brennan's also a rider or he was a rider and Violet's sister, Mira, who is currently living, she is a rider also and she warned Violet to stay away from Xaden. But that didn't work out so well. When do sisters ever listen to each other? I don't know. I don't have one, so I don't know. I have two of them. I didn't listen to either of them.

Violet and Xaden. They have what modern society, I think we call a complicated relationship. Yes, their Facebook status is it's complicated. Violet's basically convinced that Xaden wants to kill her because it was Violet's mother Lilith who wound up executing Fen Riorson, Xaden's father, during the rebellion that he started, which takes place earlier before this book begins. really that whole dynamic is complicated.
I can't think of a better word for it. It's messy. And really the whole book is about Violet surviving her first year as a cadet in the riders quadrant. And it's pretty epic. Yeah. We'll have all the details about it for later though. Anything from here on out shall likely contain spoilers for anyone who has not read it. Yes. If you have not read it, if you want to read it and you don't want spoilers, exit now, take the ramp on the right. But if you've read it or you don't care about spoilers, please listen. And rate and review. And tip your server.
All right, so I freaking loved this book. I gave it five stars. What'd you give it? I also gave it five stars. I mean, it has dragons. I know. There's nothing else cooler than dragons. And honestly, to the point of I think my next tattoo might be a dragon. They're just that cool. I don't know if I'm gonna get a dragon tattoo, but I mean, I don't know why, I think in the last handful of years, I've gotten more into fantasy books, but I feel like for some reason, dragons are making a comeback. I don't know if it's Game of Thrones or I just hadn't been into fantasy, but I just feel like they're everywhere. Yeah, possibly. That's true. Yeah, but I loved it.
Of course the dragons. It had the enemies to lovers trope which is absolutely my favorite. It had some world-building in it. We're learning about Navarre. We're learning about the conflicts there. There's I thought some really great character development. There's characters who seem one way and then turn out to be different. As we pull back the layers on them. There's the possible war. There was a ton of banter, not just between Violet and Xaden, but Violet and her dragons, I felt like, and just some of the her other friends. I just loved it. I loved it the first time. And I think I loved it even more the second time. Yeah, right on. I mean, you hinted at it earlier for me, too. It's like, besides the dragons, the character development in this in this book was outstanding. You really cared about every single character, whether they were on the good side or the bad side or whatever it was, they're very complex. I didn't care about every single character. Okay, that's fair. I mean, like Jack Barlow. Yeah, he was kind of the worst. I hope that his soul is not commended to Malek. Fair enough. And yeah, I mean, you have Violet and Xaden, but like characters like Liam and Ridoc. Yeah, Liam. And Imogen. Even Dain, and the different professors that they introduced throughout the first book are just, they're deep and have a lot of layers. And I really appreciate that about any book that I'm reading. And the world-building. It was a little hard to follow some of the, as you're reading, there's a lot of different areas and factions like you were saying, but if you have, if you have the hardcover, I don't know if it's in the, but there's a detailed map here. mean, yeah.

So there's a lot going on. I mean, we're talking this is supposed to be five books in the series. Dang. Yeah. But I mean, even this one, the second, mean, just like Fourth Wing, I, couldn't put it down. I kept wanting to learn more. I wanted to learn more about all the characters. I want to learn what happened next. Like the end of every chapter is just, it was really well-done. It was easily a five star book for me. I mean, it's 4.58 on Goodreads, which is huge, and it's 4.8 on Amazon. Yeah, dang. It's fabulous. So if you haven't, if you're still listening and you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

So what was your favorite part of the book? The first time they kissed, right? I know, I know, right? Yeah. I went back to that over and over. I know. You could hardly, I mean... I could hardly control myself. Yeah. No, really? The first time they had sex, right? Yes, absolutely. It was both of those things. I knew it. I knew it. That's why I had you read. You got me. That's the real reason why it's five stars. I mean, but. But those, mean, it's true. Those are part of it. They are part of the character development and it was really well done.
I think the favorite part though, not to sound cliché was really the battle at the end. You had this entire book and really this lead up to this lead up to what you don't know exactly what's going to happen. But then you thrust these kids essentially into this experience and how they handled themselves and what happens through that battle. And, I know it's at the end of the book for a reason to keep you like engaged and hooked, but it was just really well done. And not cliché in the sense that you go into this battle and everyone survives. Like there were casualties and there was like real loss there. And that just made it feel more real. Yeah.

What about yours? What was your favorite? Besides the two you already mentioned. I mean, come on. The way Violet transforms through the story. That's a good answer. Yeah. I just really appreciated she has this mantra which we kind of outlined for ourselves to talk about that I will not die today. And I won't unpack that right now, but we just see her become this new person because she's forced to be. And I think by forcing herself to be, we actually get down to who Violet really is. Yeah. You know, on a level that she didn't even know.

All right, so let's talk about that mantra. So she says, I will not die today. I view this as not the actual words, like I will not die today, but I will not let my physical limitations prevent me from using everything that I have to make it through. And I'm going to figure it out in unconventional ways. I'm going to do whatever is needed of me to make sure that I make it through.

I mean, we've even sort of adopted that in our own real-world life too. Not the dying part. I'm pretty sure on a normal day that I'm going to make it through, but there are some other things like that have been challenging and we have said that. I will not quit today. I will not quit today. So if you were at best, Gaiath, what do you think your, what do think your mantra would be? What would you say every day to get through?

I mean, that one's pretty good. That one. Yeah, that one. I will be awesome today. Yeah, maybe I would try to think of something from like how I met your mother and just like be Barney or something. I'm going to choose to be awesome instead of being dead.

All right. Let's continue to talk about Violet and why she's there. So why do you feel like General Sorrengail, Violet's mother? The mama, why do you think she made her join the riders quadrant? Cause she's ruthless. Do you think that or do you feel like that's cause she's portrayed in the book that way? I was definitely feeling that as I read it. She didn't respect scribes or the history of what the archives had. And she wasn't going to allow her daughter to be lowered to that. You said in the beginning that Sorrengails are riders. Yeah. That's it, period. And so you either be a rider or you be nothing.

I have a kind of a hot take on this because I don't know this to be true, but I do wonder, and hang with me for a minute here, is if we find out later and we can talk about this that Xaden really pushes Violet in ways that no one else has pushed her before. We know, Dain wants to coddlel her and protect her and he says that, like he's holding you back. Xaden says Dain is holding you back.

Dain sees that as his way of protecting Violet. But maybe, just maybe, that's how General Sorrengail sees her. She says, you've been coddled, maybe she's even been part of the coddling. I see where you’re going. Letting her father scurry her away to the archives because she was a little bit more fragile.

You know, she breaks bones easily. She bruises, like all those things are true. But maybe Violet's mom sees things in her that no one else has really seen. She knows how smart Violet is. She knows Violet will figure it out. Even if she doesn't have the physical strength, she's so smart and resourceful that she will figure this out. So maybe instead of her actually being ruthless, maybe she's the first person really in Violet's life who sees the potential in Violet. And yeah, there's a possible, you know, chance that she might die, but if she doesn't think of all the possibilities. Yeah, that's, mean, that's great. That's a great perspective. I definitely hadn't thought about it that way. But as you're talking about that, there was a part in the book, maybe it was after gauntlet or something to that effect, where Violet survived and she runs into her mother and she, Violet says in the book that she thinks she saw like a little hint of a smirk or a little hint of a smile that she made it. Yeah. Violet took this as just like different than that, but maybe you're right. Maybe there is something a little more to that where Violet's like proving her right almost. Yeah. I just have a feeling that there's more there.

All right. So let's talk about Dain's feelings. I just hinted at those. What did you think about how he kind of coddled, protected her? He wanted multiple times to sneak her off to the scribe quadrant because that's where he thinks she should be. But he does it we know or we can assume he does it because he loves her and he sees this as his way of protecting her. Frickin' Dain. I think that his intentions were coming from a good place, but I think Dain's view of Violet was limited to that of her as a child. They were childhood friends and so he only saw her through that prism and it blinded him from giving her a chance or opportunity to grow and develop and become someone different. And so for him, the only way that he knew how to protect her was to remove her from something as opposed to challenging her to step up into it. It's frustrating as shit as you're reading it. It's just like, are you freaking kidding me? You really going there right now? I just want to shake him. I want to punch him so hard sometimes.

Yeah, Dain is really, like you said, he's looking at her through the lens of what he thought she was and maybe not who she is in this moment. So he hasn't seen her in a year. He's a year older than her and he went to the riders quadrant. He is a squad leader. He's her squad leader. And yeah, he's constantly trying to, you know, send her back to the scribe quadrant because he sees that as this where she belongs. This is what she's been really preparing for. There's no way that she can be a rider. He thinks she's weak. He thinks she's not capable of it. Yeah. And I think as the book progresses too, and as his frustration with her grows for not wanting to do that, he abuses that friendship and against her and yeah, I mean, it winds up really driving the stake, the final stake between the two of them. Yep.

All right, so we just talked about Dain. want to talk about Xaden Riorson? Sounds like you want to talk about Xaden Riorson. Xaden Riorson. I say with stars in my eyes. I mean, who wouldn't? The guy is a stud. I know. He's one of my favorite characters. I mean, obviously, because he's the main one, but like his, number of layers to He's a badass. He is. Yeah.

He is a badass, but he also has a soft side to him and some of the things he does for Violet. You know, he helps her train. He has Imogen help her. Even though it seems a little overprotective, he wards her door, you know, after she has the assassination attack. He has Liam, you know, start to be her bodyguard. But he does things also like leave her violets in the room and he has a saddle made for her, for her dragon Tairn and… there's just like these moments where he's like really showing her through his actions, not through, you know, his words, how he feels about her. Yeah.

And I mean, Xaden, as badass as he is, and he has some characteristic traits that I feel like are reflective of Lilith also. He's just kind of ruthless and is definitely portrayed tht way. Yep. He's really the first one. He pushes her. He's the first one to push her. Yeah And she steps up into that. And I think that was really the turning point for Violet too, in the book, in her belief that she could do this was that push and that someone actually believing in her that like she can do this and he was supporting her in that. Yeah. I mean, think about if you have someone, there, is a point in the book when back to Dain, he almost convinces her to go to the scribe quadrant because he keeps telling her you can't do this, you're gonna die, you're not strong enough, you're weak. And on the other hand, she has Xaden saying, you you can do this, you are smarter than you think, you're stronger than you realize, use what you have. And thankfully, she leans into those positive things. You hear it enough, it's easy to start believing it. But you're right, he's the first person to really push her and believe in her. And again, I also think that alludes to her mom.

So Violet and Xaden have this connection. Their dragons are bonded. And when you are bonded with a dragon, you can actually communicate with your dragon without having to speak. They're like in your head. And we find out that not only are Violet and both of her dragons, because she bonds two dragons, because she is also a badass, but because her dragon Tairn who is also the biggest, baddest dragon, is bonded with Sgaeyl who is Xaden's dragon. Now Xaden and Violet can communicate without having to talk. Would you like that? Would you like if we could do that? Yes. I know, right? It's so much energy to talk sometimes. Yeah, for reals. But I mean, obviously, I would like that, yes. So in the general sense, yes, I would love that capability.

I think having magic in general would be amazing. Why don't we have magic? I know. And not like card magic either. Just like real fancy like real magic. Like why isn't there the force? Yeah, that too. All right. So let's keep talking about Xaden and Violet. There’s the whole enemies-to-lovers trope that I mentioned. So throughout, I don't know, three-quarters, two-thirds of the book. Violet thinks that Xaden's is out to kill her. Then we find, then she bonds her dragon at threshing. We find out that dragons are bonded. Or excuse me, the dragons are mates. Sgaeyl and Tairn are mates. And then we find out because that, now Xaden and Violet are bonded and it is possible if one dies, the other one dies.

And so she still thinks that, you know, Xaden hates her. Now he can't kill her because he might die, but he still, you know, loves her. But then we find out that's not been at all true. And they start this romantic relationship. And then we find out during the end in the war games that Xaden's actually been keeping a pretty big secret from her. She finds out that Xaden's been providing weapons to these griffin fliers who are the enemy by the way. They live in Poromiel which is like another we'll say country. She believes they're the enemy. She has been grown up to believe that. Yep. And so there's this idea that Xaden has lied to her because he didn't tell her this big thing.

Yeah. And she thinks they should tell each other absolutely everything. Right. And this new relationship that is still in it very much in its honeymoon phase, I would say, just feels very betrayed. And I think that betrayal is cumulative, meaning like everything you just outlined, it's not just about him keeping that secret, but she's questioning everything she's grown up to ever believe and be taught her entire life. And I think she packages that up into this narrative in her head that Xaden has kept all of this from me. Therefore, it's like she's looking for someone to blame for all this. And he happens to be the one that she's going to hold accountable for all of this. All these secrets that have been kept from her. And do I think that everyone should share every single thing about themselves with anyone or every single person or they're... definitely not every single person, but she thinks that this is the person that she is in an intimate relationship with. Yeah. And she thinks that he should have told her. Right. I don't. Yeah. I don't either. I think there are things that individuals just have the right to keep to themselves as an individual.

Also, I mean, Xaden says this, and there are many reasons why he didn't tell her, which we find out a little bit later even at the end of the book. But there was a real threat that Dain could read her mind. And that there was something going in there. Now Dain is a sort of intinsic, they call it something else. He can read short -term memory, but he has to actually like touch the person's face or head. So Dain, yeah, so there's this real threat for Xaden that there was something going on between Dain and Violet that he wasn't sure of, know, until, you know, they said they were exclusive with each other. And so he didn't want, he said part of the reason he didn't want to tell her is because what if Dain would have touched her and his, secrets would have been revealed. Yeah. Which is fair. I mean, yeah, think that's totally fair thing to keep from. Well, and especially when you learn the extent to the things that he's hiding.

And I guess sticking on that same thing, so there's a lot of reveals there. We find out that, you know, as we've already mentioned, Xaden and the marked ones are providing aid, you know, these weapons to the, like what they call the enemy. We learned that the venin and the wyverns are not fables, they're actually real. And then we learned that Brennan, her brother, who she thinks died five years ago, is actually alive. What? I know, right? Mind blown.

And so you get a lot of foreshadowing about these things happening. So I guess, did you see any of those coming? I definitely did not see Brennan being alive coming. They referenced him a lot through the entire book, but I thought he would really just be this sort of like underpinning guiding light for Violet through her growing up because it clearly had a strong bond while he was alive and through this journal and everything. So I just thought that was going to be his, his storyline that he was just this really underpinnings supporting character that was dead. So I definitely did not see that coming. I do feel maybe subconsciously that I, I was picking up on the fact that venin and wyvern would be real that when those books weren't showing up in the archives and she was starting to put the pieces together. And I think I was probably piecing it along with her maybe, I guess would be the best way to put that. But yeah, I didn't see Brennan being alive. It was a great way to end the first book for sure.

So I knew something was going on with Xaden because he has multiple times where he like, you know, say sneaks off. And even we see some of those scenes where he's kind of in the shadows of stuff. Violet catches him. She say, yeah, she doesn't say anything when the marked ones are meeting. She's like, they're just discussing. He's helping them with which he was. And there's a couple other times similar to that. And then I think there is at least one time where she doesn't know where he goes, but she knows he's gone somewhere and it's not like on record or whatever. So I knew there was something happening there. I didn't suspect that it was, was, you know, aiding the enemy, so to speak, is what they say in the, or what she thinks of it as.

I 100% thought Brennan was alive because I just felt that there was a lot of talk about him for this person not to have like this main part in the book. She references him many times. She gets his journal. She starts referencing quotes from his journal and different things like that. So I was not surprised when he shows up in the last scene, which is pretty bad ass. But the wyvern and the venin, I don't know, maybe subconsciously because like you said, they talk about a lot, the books missing and what's going on. But I don't know that I really thought, this is going to come up. Yeah.

All right. So back to kind of things that I picked up on in chapter 37, as I mentioned, you know how like you have the quote from a history book or what whatever it is. So in this chapter, the quote starts off, I'm just going to read it, "But it was the third brother who commanded the sky to surrender its greatest power; who finally vanquished his jealous siblings at a great and terrible price." This quote was from one of those books with the fables that Violet's father gives her. And it's really similar to, so every time there's a quote, then there's something in that chapter that relates to the quote. So in that chapter, the venin who she's fighting tells her, “You could command the sky to surrender all its power.” And Violet even says herself, I am the sky and the power of every storm that has ever been. am infinite. So I think there's just this theme that Violet commands the sky or she has the ability. She hasn't figured it out yet. She has the ability to command the sky. And are we really going to see, there hasn't been a lightning wielder in a hundred years, they say. Are we really going to see Violet come into this being?

But also back to the quote, the third brother who commanded the sky, she's the third sibling. This brother vanquishes his jealous siblings at a great and terrible price. I don't know. We know Brennan's alive. Brennan's part of the revolution. Violet's now part of the revolution. We don't know about Mira. I mean, is she the great and terrible price, is there going to be something there? I don't know if you caught up, and again, you catch these things when you read through a second time, but just what do you think maybe the significance is and about Violet's signet? Yeah. I definitely didn't catch any of that reading through it the first time.

I mean, who knows? Maybe with this great power comes great responsibility. mean, it's a great line. Thanks, Spider-Man. That she maybe at some point in a battle or something, like she has to choose between saving the continent and saving her sibling or something to that effect. Yeah, it's like Julius Caesar. It's not that I didn't love Caesar. It's that I loved Rome more. Yeah. I don't know that it's the only thing that pops in my head listening to you say it just now is, is she going to have to make an impossible choice? Right. Yeah. The people she cares about and loves the most and the power that she's been given to protect, protect everyone else. Yup.

All right, so last question, unless you had something else. No. Last question. So we know we've talked a lot about the riders quadrant. We talked about the scribes quadrant a little bit. There's also a healers quadrant, which we don't see a ton of in the book, and we don't really get anything about the infantry. Right. But those are the four - Assume there's an army of some kind.

Right. So those are their four quadrants, which quadrant do you think you'd be in if you were at Basgaith? Which one would I want to be in or which one would I like the sorting hat to put me in? Hufflepuff! You're a scribe. Yeah. I mean, I would want to be in a rider. Like who wouldn't want to ride a dragon? But reality sets in and knowing myself, if I strip myself down to the core as it says, I would probably find myself in the healers quadrant. I think my empathy within my personality would lead me to go to that quadrant. Yeah.

What do you think stripped down to my core? Where, where's the sorting hat going to put me? I think you are a lover of facts. You love history. You are a researcher at heart. I feel like I think you'd find yourself in the scribe quadrant. Yeah. History is only as good as the historians. Right. And even though you have more of an action oriented personality type also, where that doesn't really seem to on the surface, it doesn't lend itself to a scribe to be action oriented. They're more observance and reflective. I still think that would be the quadrant for you. Yeah.

Where would you put yourself? I think you're right. I want to ride a dragon. Like not just in this book. Like I really want to ride a dragon as a real person right now. But you're right. I'm a person of knowledge through and through, which is interesting though, because I am a Gryffindor and I'm not in Ravenclaw. So I don't know, maybe the bravery part of it puts me in the riders quadrant. I might not make it to threshing, but all right.

So any final thoughts? Just, I'm excited to finish the second one. I'm excited to see where the rest of the series goes. And I'm glad this was the first book we chose to do. Yeah, me too. This was a good one. I hope the listeners agree. Yes, and thank you for listening.

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And who knows, maybe this will be the one your husband reads. Maybe. Thank you.

See you next time. Bye bye.