Marie and I are contractually obligated to discuss any book with dragons on the cover, so in the end, we couldn’t avoid chatting about the publishing phenomenon Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (2023). While it’s not entirely to our tastes, we also wonder if the backlash to the novel might be for all the wrong reasons, and try to identify why the book is so popular as well as the right reasons for grumbling about it.

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Source of our theme song

We look back on the things we most enjoyed in 2025, covering films, games, books and whatever else strikes our fancy.

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Stuff we mention

• Cory has a poetry collection!
• By-the-Bywater podcast
• Save Your Game podcast
• If Books Could Kill podcast
• Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster
• Beaverton podcast
• Mayday
• Vaporama Vision

Over 20 years have passed since I first read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1869-1870), so I roped in Cory and Marie for a re-read. We find 20,000 problems with the science and struggle through 20,000 lists of underwater species, but they never obstruct the fun. Additionally, Marie “does a Zork.”

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We wander through a vast mansion full of looming statues in Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020).

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We try to get the jump on Canada Reads by discussing Bird Suit by Sydney Hegele (2024), the first pick for our 2025 book club. This southern Ontario gothic novel tells a story of generational trauma in a tourist town that also happens to have some bird-people living nearby. Opinions are decidedly mixed. We talk through our impressions of the book, and answer the important question: “How Canada?”

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We decide to finally discuss something J.R.R. Tolkien-related on our podcast, but in the stupidest way possible: by comparing the 2024 animated film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim to 1980’s The Return of the King. This episode has been a long time coming, but as the orcs might say, where there’s a whip, there’s a way!

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As the end of 2024 draws ever closer, we reflect on our favourite arts and culture from the past year.

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Some things we mentioned

• Invincea and the Warriors from Hell
• Orchard House
• Folding Ideas
• Drumeo
• Goebelins
• Stories from my Gay Grandparents
• Münecat
• Nick Lewis

Our 2024 book club concludes with Roger Zelazny’s 1963 novelette “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”, wherein a poet goes to Mars and discovers he’s not very good at describing dances.

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We have only good things to say about The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed (2021), though that doesn’t extend to the term “hopepunk” used in the marketing copy. Is this post-apocalyptic novella set in Alberta the best specifically Canadian piece of science fiction out there? We make the case that it is.

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90s fantasy is back, baby! We discuss The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (2019).

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Will we survive the fungal infestation that lurks beneath Toronto in The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan (2023)?

This horror/near-future science fiction/fantasy novel is packed with ideas and has plenty of relevant criticism of the direction Canada is heading, but doesn’t bring things together in a satisfactory way for the three of us. We talk about what we liked about the book, and the many (many) things that we didn’t.

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In the dying days of 2023, we came together to reflect on the best things that we read, watched, listened to and played this year. Tune in to the end for our “dishonourable mentions” as well, where we consider…the opposite.

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We wrap up our 2023 book club with a recent release, The Terraformers (2023) by Annalee Newitz. This throwback to the fix-up novel explores a lot of big ideas about ecology, biology and society, but do all the many, many elements work together as a whole? And what’s up with all the references to Canada? We discuss.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Our Opinions are Correct podcast with Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz

Tech Won’t Save Us podcast

A working-class memoir? In this day and age? We sit down to discuss Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) by Kate Beaton.

Warning: Includes mentions of sexual assault and workplace harassment.

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We talk about Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler, which begins in the far-future year of 2024. And yet somehow, this still seems like a shockingly plausible representation of what next year could like.

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We discuss Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, and marvel at how much literature you can pack into so few pages.

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Just before the holidays, we’re back for a reflection on culture we experienced over the past year. Books, comics, films, TV, games – we talk about them all!

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Some things we mentioned:

• Order of the Stick
• Tigress Queen
• Honbarian
• From a Knight to a Lady
• The Remarried Empress
• Critical Role
• You’re Wrong About
• The Triple Click Podcast
• Tech Won’t Save Us

We triumphantly re-convene after over a year’s absence to talk about The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem, a book of fairy tales for robots, by robots, about robots.

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Book Depository page for The Cyberiad

Marie’s website

Source of our theme song

Despite the title, we are in fact talking about movies. But also books. Because this episode is all about adaptations!

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Marie’s website

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A short discussion about Raya and the Last Dragon (2021).

Part of this episode references the YouTube video “Raya’s Moral ISN’T A Good Lesson to Learn” by La’Ron Readus.

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Marie’s website

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After 5 years of people yelling at me to see this film, we finally watch The Witch (2015).

Books mentioned:

• Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft by Robin Briggs (1998).

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Marie’s website

Source of our theme song

Marie watched the Netflix adaptation of The Witcher! Michal indulges in his teenage obsessions. We end up comparing The Witcher to Dealing with Dragons.

Correction: At one point, we make it sound like Dandelion is the English translation of Jaskier. This is incorrect. Jaskier in fact means Buttercup.

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My blog post about the Polish television series from 2002

Source of our theme song

…There’s a new Kwisatz Haderach in town.

We talk Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki.

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Recording this episode cost us an arm and a leg.

We talk Fullmetal Alchemist.

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Marie’s website

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We were supposed to record an episode about Fullmetal Alchemist, but we got distracted by Cybersix, an animated Canadian TV show from 1999 that should not exist.

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We finally talk about Bone.

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Marie’s new website

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Marie talks about Marie Brennan’s Memoirs of Lady Trent series, which begins with A Natural History of Dragons.

I am also present, largely to provide colour.

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Marie’s blog (Podcast Marie, not Brennan Marie)

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We remember the internet being a lot more fun a decade ago. Why did our attitude change, and what major milestones did internet culture experience between now and the time we first logged on?

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Marie’s blog

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A reflection on the life and works of Ursula K. Le Guin in light of her recent passing.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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So little of 2017 left, but just enough time to post our year in review! We discuss media we enjoyed this year, whether it was objectively good or not, including the University of Alberta murder-mystery-but-not-really-a-murder-mystery The Next Margaret, Haruki Murakami’s slow melancholy, Nausicaä  of the Valley of the Wind (again!), Roger Zelazny’s fiction, and more.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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In which we speak of books we never finished, or wish we had never finished. Normally, I would provide a list of the novels we talked about. But this time, I think it’s better if you go in blind.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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We settle down to talk about another classic work of fantasy: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, specifically the first three novels, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore.

Also: dragons.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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We take a break from civilized life and get our barbarian groove on with a discussion of Robert E. Howard’s character Conan, focusing on the 1936 serialized novel The Hour of the Dragon. Topics include the wide-ranging influence of these stories, reprehensible anthropological themes within them, the enduring appeal of the character, approaches to world-building, and Hobbes’ Leviathan.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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Incidental tunes:

“Oppressive Gloom”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

What does heaven look like? We find out by reading Steven Brust’s novel To Reign in Hell (1984).

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

Source of our theme song

Japan makes lots of cartoons, so our planned cartoon episode ended up being all about anime junk: Kill la Kill, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Vision of Escaflowne, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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I already did my year-end blog post, but my usual podcast hosts haven’t, so here’s the podcast edition! We talk about all the movies, books, television shows, comics, anime and art gallery shows we enjoyed this year.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

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The Giver by Lois Lowry is the one book on elementary/high school reading lists that Canadians our age remember fondly. Why is this, and why is the cover so darn memorable?

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Marie’s blog

Episode 26: Get Urras back to Anarres (Discussion of The Dispossessed)

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The internet has provided ways for artists to skirt around traditional channels to get their work out to the public; web series are one of the more ambitious examples. We chat about our favourite web series and the idiosyncrasies of the medium.

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Marie’s blog

Episode 8: Eeee!

Source of our theme song

Web series mentioned:

The Guild
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Welcome to Sanditon
Emma Approved
The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy
Nothing Much to Do
Lovely Little Losers
The March Family Letters
Frankenstein M.D.
Job Hunters
LARPs
Humans and Households
Enter the Dojo
RWBY

We’re back! This time, we’re talking about adolescence, isolation and social anxiety in the anime series No Matter How I look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m not Popular! AKA, WataMote. Includes verbatim readings of entries from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and plenty of cringing.

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Marie’s blog

“Anxiety, Anger and Porn” – Alasdair Czyrnyj’s review of WataMote

Source of our theme song

We egoize about Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 classic, The Dispossessed.

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Marie’s blog

Episode 10 – The Left Hand of Podcasts

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A short, impromptu review of The Witches of Lublin, the holiday radio play “by Ellen Kushner and a bunch of other people in the cast.”

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Marie’s blog

The Witches of Lublin website

After suffering through TSR’s gamebooks, we decide to try one that’s actually good: Ring of Thieves by S. John Ross.

Dice will be rolled! Blood will spilled! Genies will be petulant!

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Get Ring of Thieves for free!

Risus: The Anything RPG

The Dungeoneering Edition reaches its conclusion (Thank God) with Circus of Fear, and there is much rejoicing.

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Marie’s blog

Theme song:
Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Our ill-advised experiment drags on as we play our way through Revolt of the Dwarves and The Dragon’s Ransom. Despite covering two books, this might well be our shortest episode yet.

Only one more book remains before this series draws to a definite and unavoidable close.

Apologies for the intermittent background noise!

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Marie’s blog

Theme song:
Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

The Dungeoneering Edition of the podcast continues with Light on Quests Mountain.

(We’re sorry. We’re so, so sorry.)

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Marie’s blog

Theme song:
Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

I found a stack of TSR Endless Quest Books at the dump. After that, this podcast was inevitable.

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Marie’s blog

Theme song:
Five Armies by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Young Adult literature is a Thing now, but it wasn’t when Marie and I grew up! Join as as we talk about the books we read as teenagers and realize with dawning horror that we had terrible, terrible taste.

Warning folks, this one’s a long one.

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Marie’s blog

Blog post: Underground Reading – Dragonlance Chronicles

Source of our theme song

Book mentioned at length (in order):

Redwall series, Brian Jacques
Animorphs series, K.A, Applegate
The Sword of Shannarah, Terry Brooks
The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan
The Sword of Truth, Terry Goodkind
Everything by Mercedes Lackey
The Belgeriad, David Eddings
Forgotten Realms series, various authors
Dragonlance Chronicles, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Harry Potter series, JK Rowling

Tangentially, we mention MANY more.

Cross-posted with Iatropexy. Thus the dueling theme songs.

We watch Doc Zone’s last documentary, Volunteers Unleashed.

Then…we rant.

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The documentary! (Video available for Canadians only)

Pippa Biddle’s blog post: “The Problem with Little White Girls (And Boys): Why I stopped being a Voluntourist”

Source of my theme song

Source of Marie’s theme song

It’s 1962. Marijuana is legal in California, massive amounts of farmland was recently recovered from the Mediterranean, and human colonization of the Solar System has begun. Everything seems just peachy, if it wasn’t for the pesky fact that the Third Reich and Imperial Japan won the Second World War…

A discussion of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.

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Source of our theme song

Frank Hebert’s Dune is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time. Naturally, we have a lot to say about it.

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Source of our theme song

Marie’s blog

Science! Religion! History! A far-ranging discussion of Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s epic post-apocalyptic Catholic-monks-in-Utah novel A Canticle for Leibowitz.

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Source of our theme song

Marie’s blog

We watched Dracula Untold, then tried to salvage the utterly ruined evening by recording a podcast wherein I mispronounce “caricature”, Marie talks about bad anime shows, and Cory is confused.

Our verdict on the film? Go read The Stress of her Regard by Tim Powers instead!

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Marie’s blog

Download the Podcast (30 MB, right-click to save)

Marie’s blog

Films discussed:

Ticket to Heaven

Porky’s

Quest for Fire

The Bear

Dance Me Outside

Rock and Rule

Heavy Metal

Maelstrom

A Dangerous Method

Take this Waltz

Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster

Men with Brooms

Paschendaele

Margaret’s Museum

Anne of Green Gables

Incendies

Rock Paper Dice Enter

Carts of Darkness

The Trotsky

We talk about an obscure 13th-century French verse romance you’ve probably never heard of: The Romance of Eustace the Monk.

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Source of our theme song

Leah Shopkow’s prose translation of Eustace the Monk

Alternative Title: The Episode with Dragons in It.

Marie and I survey classic (and not-so-classic) Middle Grade and YA literature that include dragons. Special mention goes to Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons, and we also brainstorm the next YA dragon epic that is sure to be a mega-bestseller.

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Source of our theme song

Marie’s website

Our discussion of the Pit Dragon Chronicles

Our discussion of Tooth and Claw 

We discuss Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (which I already reviewed here), then get caught up in a discussion about Canada Reads and CanLit.

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Canada Reads 2008

To no one’s surprise, the blog of the New Sun posts a podcast about The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.

Under discussion: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch, with some references to The Urth of the New Sun as well.

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Marie’s Blog

Source of our theme song (It’s different this time! More…Urth-y)

Ultan’s Library (Your one-stop Gene Wolfe resource)

Three friends discuss “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, a creepy story about shockingly creepy children and their even more shockingly useless parents.

Plus lions.

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The story itself, as read by Leonard Nemoy

Marie’s Blog

Source of our theme song

A very timely Wired article: “Don’t Blame Social Media if Your Teen Is Unsocial. It’s Your Fault”

There’s even a music video! (Also the source of the above illustration)

One year after the initially-planned recording date, we finally get around to talking about the works of Ursula K. Le Guin–specifically, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest.

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Marie’s Blog

Source of our theme song

Two podcasters enter.  One podcaster leaves.

In this eleventh episode, we discuss Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, and ponder over the oddity of the Capitol’s urban planning.

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Marie’s Blog

Source of our Theme Song

Download the Podcast

Marie’s Blog

Source of our Theme Song

A three-way discussion of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, in which the fit really hits the Shan (tee hee hee). Download the Podcast Marie’s Blog Source of the incidental music

What, THIS scenario again?

And we complete our saga, by talking about Nazis, trench warfare, and the stupidity of some reptilian space invaders.

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Alasdair’s Ferretbrain Contributor Page

Source of the incidental music

And off we go, into the wild blue yonder…

Today I’m joined by a special guest, Alasdair Czyrnyj.  Join us as we take to the skies on the back of a hydrogen-filled whale to discuss the perils of the steampunk genre.

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Alasdair’s Ferretbrain Contributor Page

Source of our Theme Song

A few days (and drinks) later, Marie & I return to enthuse about Jane Yolen’s Pit Dragon Chronicles.

In summary: like Pokemon, if Pokemon was good.

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Marie’s Youtube Channel

Source of our Theme Song

In an amazing turn of events, Marie & I are in the same place together, and although slightly buzzed, still manage to babble about Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw.

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Marie’s Youtube Channel

Source of our Theme Song (“It’s Dragon Tales” by Butterfly Tea.  Rather fitting this time, don’t you think?)

What?  Another podcast, you say?

This time Marie and I talk about one of our favourite book series from the Newbery Era, Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain.

Apologies for the audio quality.  My current laptop has less-than-ideal speakers, so Marie has been recording the podcasts on her end, then sending the files to me for editing.

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Marie’s Youtube Channel

Source of our Theme Song (“It’s Dragon Tales” by Butterfly Tea)

Bonus Material

Our 21-second “review” of Disney’s The Black Cauldron:

Marie returns to converse with me about Watership Down in all its forms.  Correction: to converse rather exhaustively about Watership Down in all its forms.

You have been warned.

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Marie’s Youtube Channel

If you’re wondering, the picture we’re discussing at one point is this one:

The video referenced in said podcast will be out shortly.

Enjoy!

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Links of Interest:

The MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations

Marie’s Youtube Channel

The source of our theme song (it’s “Balrog Boogie” by Diablo Swing Orchestra)

EDIT: the video is now live!