March 28, 2024 • 46 mins
In this episode, we cover the first three chapters of Lord Foul's Bane, the first book of The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, by Stephen Donaldson.
Hosted by Cams and Barge, two old friends of many years. Cams has read all of these books, most of them multiple times. It's Barge's first time.
If you'd like to read along and take part in our discussions, we've set up a read-along on The StoryGraph.
Join the read-along here: Lord Foul's Bane Read-along
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
Hi folks, welcome back to our podcast
which has a name. It's
called The Unbelievers,
taken of course from Thomas Covenant who
is the Prime Unbeliever. So these are the
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The
Unbeliever, the first book
of which is Lord Foul's Bane.
(01:00:21):
I'm Cams, a constant reader
and I'm here with my pal Barge.
Hey folks.
So we've had a look through the first
three chapters of Lord Foul's Bane.
This is my, might even be my fifth read.
Not sure, I don't keep
count but there's been a few
(01:00:42):
and of course this is Barge's first read.
It's my first read and
I've only read the first three
chapters and I came, as I mentioned in
the intro, completely clean
to this so with no background
knowledge. So I got into it and I was
carried along through the
(01:01:04):
first two chapters kind of
wondering how deep it's going to go and
whether I'm even going
to be able to take it.
Right, yeah because I mean I'm going
along just first of all
wondering why is he being treated
(01:01:24):
like that and then finding out at the end
of the first chapter
and then, you okay with me
carrying on like that or am I jumping
ahead? No, no but I'll
just put out there is anyone
listening to this who's not read the
first three chapters you
might want to do that first
because obviously we're going to be
(01:01:45):
discussing the details of what happens.
So I think then we just assume that
people have read it right? So
yeah, so I came into this and
then I find that he's getting these
reactions from people and
then that he's a leper, alright.
And then the experience of leprosy itself
(01:02:06):
in the second chapter
which I mean is brilliantly
delivered you know and yeah like I said I
was wondering like how
much more of this can I take?
Yeah what's interesting is that the first
chapter is eight pages
(01:02:29):
and it doesn't mention that he's a leper
until the very last line or the
penultimate line in the
chapter. "Don't touch me covenant
murmured to the grip on his arm, I'm a
leper." Right, right.
So you're aware of some health issues
he's going through but you're not
entirely sure what's going on?
(01:02:50):
What's going on? The very first scene is
of the mother who gets a
child away from him because
of something about him, right? And that
just carries on and gets
(01:03:11):
added to from various angles
and you get a sense of not only that he's
an outcast but that he's
really detested in some way.
So what has he done? And I think there's
mention of Joan, his wife and his child
(01:03:34):
you know and that too with you know them
looking at or actually her
looking at him with revulsion.
So it really builds up and as a reader
you're wondering why? What
has he done? What is this?
And then it's revealed at
the end of the first chapter.
Yeah it's really well done. It describes
(01:03:56):
him in the very first
paragraph as a "great gaunt man
who strode down the centre of the walk
like a mechanical derelict."
So that's when the the woman pulls her
child out of his way
and we get that famous line "Beware
outcast unclean" which
(01:04:16):
becomes his kind of mantra.
Oh I see, to get people out of the way.
It's how he thinks of himself as
an outcast unclean and he uses that when
he goes to pay his bill
at the telephone company.
Because what's happening is that the
(01:04:38):
local community are
ostracising and trying to keep
him out of the town basically. So
somebody anonymously pays
his phone bill so that he
doesn't have to go in and
pay it and that pisses him off.
Something awful because he's then this
(01:04:58):
this growing realization that
nothing is left open for him.
Yeah he mentions his rage a lot
and yeah I find that comes comes up in in
(01:05:23):
the next chapter though
when he's when he's in in the
lepitharium. But he uses his anger as a
tool, a tool for survival.
And the the doctor who teaches him how to
live as a leper gives him all the
instructions about his
VSEs, visual surveillance of extremities,
(01:05:47):
which becomes another ritual for him.
Yes and he's very very disciplined about
it. Yeah he is and also
with the shaving discipline
where he's he's obviously vulnerable to
cuts and scrapes,
anything that can get infected.
I mean not only could be fatal but
probably would be fatal.
(01:06:07):
And so as a ritual he
found his old straight razor.
Its long stainless steel blade gleamed
like a layer in the
fluorescent light of his bathroom
but he stropped it deliberately, lathered
his face, braced his
timorous bones against the sink
(01:06:27):
and set the edge to his throat. How's
that for descriptive writing?
He also takes a pen knife with him huh
and when he feels his
concentration or attention
wavering then he takes it out and and
touches the tip to his wrist just to
remind himself and bring
himself back. So I mean what I was struck
(01:06:49):
by is is the the will power. So I mean
what he does develop
and maybe he uses his anger as a tool to
as the engine for the
development of this world power
but the strength to discipline. I mean in
following the VSEs and
(01:07:09):
also in and going to all these
lectures and seminars where you know
they're spouting the same old
stuff that he's having to live
and then and then his dreams you know. So
you know the messages in the dreams
which are also the instructions and then
(01:07:33):
his anger drives him on but
somehow because you see in in the Indian
tradition right going
back it's the tapasya
it's the disciplines that open up the
magic of the universe and provide
answers. So I mean there
was there was there was something of that
(01:07:55):
going on for me. Interesting
because yeah Stephen Donaldson's
father was a doctor and he worked in
India and he was involved with leprosy
that's how the author
came to to know about this. So yeah
covenant lived in India not
(01:08:17):
covenant. Stephen Donaldson
lived in India as a young man or a young
teenager I guess with
his father. Interesting.
Interesting I mean because I did the same
I lived in India until I was
a teenager and I do remember
seeing lepers and I do remember seeing
(01:08:38):
people who would get to the
stage where the leprosy is
manageable but they're scarred you know
either blind or limbs and
things like that and I do have
I do have memories of that. Yeah. So
let's talk about the stranger,
(01:08:59):
the beggar and the ocher robe.
What are your thoughts on that? What do
you remember? Right so the beggar comes
after he's related his six or seven
months spent as it were in preparing
(01:09:21):
himself for the world
right. So then he's done his discipline,
he's done his
self-study, he's built up his
attention and skills and awareness so
he's perhaps ready for
the next phase and then
(01:09:42):
the beggar seems to then be the one that
carries this message of
magic that has been triggered
by his disciplinary efforts and certainly
the message from the
(01:10:02):
beggar when he finally gets to
read it in the bank. Yeah. It's a pretty
mystical kind of one huh. It
is, it's cryptic. And I mean
yeah so he's a representative of this
world who has to take on a
(01:10:26):
representative of another world
in a fight to the death and should he be
defeated not only he but
this his world will disappear
and it takes place in as
it were a different realm.
(01:10:48):
So it's the first time you've had an
indication of possible worlds?
Right and also for me this was the point
at which I realized
right okay so it's not going
to be like in ten volumes of you know the
agony of a guide going through the
(01:11:08):
experience of leprosy.
No, no. It poses a moral question at the
end of this cryptic
letter that he gets handed.
Which uh or ethics as covenant snorted to
himself who the hell
(01:11:29):
makes these things up?
It's a question of morality or ethics. I
won't read the whole
thing out but it's...
I read an excerpt just um. Yeah well the
bit where it talks about
other worlds it says the man
refuses to believe that what he is told
is true so we've got
the word believe there.
(01:11:51):
I'm talking about the unbeliever. Right
and the implication is that
if you don't believe it then
when the adversary comes you will be ill
prepared because you don't
believe that it's going to
happen or worthy or that it's real and so
(01:12:13):
you will be defeated
and um yeah which is more
courageous to actually um take it on or
to pretend that it's not.
Something along those lines?
Yeah so we've got belief he refuses to
(01:12:34):
believe that what he's told
is true he asserts that he
is either dreaming or hallucinating and
declines to be put in the
false position of fighting to
the death where no real danger exists. He
is implacable in his
determination to disbelieve
the apparent situation and does not
defend himself when he is attacked by the
(01:12:55):
champion of the other
world. Question is the man's behavior
courageous or cowardly. This is the
fundamental question of
ethics. So it's a bit Nietzschean in a
sense it's like the
philosophical idea of the Ubermensch that
if you can act in a way immorally because
(01:13:17):
you don't believe that
there are consequences
or if you act in a way
if you're in a world that you don't
believe in and you
act in a particular way
is that unethical because there are no
consequences because it's not real?
(01:13:38):
I think there's also another interesting
angle where we can zoom in
on the word belief itself.
So I mean I don't believe that I have two
legs. Right. I know it.
Yes it's a fact. Well I mean
it's within my living experience it is an
(01:14:00):
unassailable fact. Nobody can convince me
that it's not the case
unless I abdicate my own whatever
yeah sense of judgment about myself
right. But if I have a belief then surely
I'm kind of uncertain.
(01:14:22):
I don't actually really know. I choose to
put my chips there but do I really know?
Well the unavoidable question that we're
going to get to we might
as well get to it now is the
(01:14:43):
idea of the simulation and the matrix
idea that if we're living in
a simulation then is anything
actually real? I think yeah well maybe we
(01:15:03):
can ask ourselves how do we
know that anything is real.
I mean what is what is it that tells us
that anything could even be real? It's
our experience right?
It's our experience but it's also a
biological makeup that our
(01:15:26):
like our retinas are able to
perceive light frequencies and translate
it into objects.
Right and then that forms
the subject matter of our experience. Yes
so if you experience
a situation in a dream
(01:15:48):
and that's recorded into your memory
is that any less real than something that
happens when you're awake?
Maybe this is getting to the root of what
keeps me coming back to
these books. It's going to be
difficult to talk about these books much
(01:16:09):
further without going into
alcoholism which for me some
of you might know has been part of my
life including blackouts
and this is something I
always used to ponder back in those days
when I'm in blackout but
I'm still up and about and
functioning. Where am I is what's
(01:16:33):
happening. Am I responsible for my
actions first of all and
secondly are they actually real? Maybe
that's what keeps me
coming back to these books.
Yeah well um that's that's a very
fundamental uh thing about life right um
(01:16:55):
how do we know what we
think we know? Yeah I mean without that
then we only say that
this is real or that is real.
What actually tells us I mean uh is this
because everyone accepts that
it's real? You see it's it's
(01:17:16):
not such an obvious statement that one
can compare one set of inverted commas
reality with another
I think um but I do think that uh
experience because that's
(01:17:37):
that's that's fundamental that's
primary. Everything is experienced. But
if you experience something in a dream?
That's experience. I mean uh uh the
building blocks of experience
are kind of the same. I mean uh
(01:17:58):
if I have an experience of fear in a
dream then the details may be different
but I mean the quality
of that experience is still recognizably
fear which I would
experience in waking right.
Right yeah um so I think I don't know it
(01:18:21):
seems to me anyway that
experience is a way of ascertaining um
something of reality. So is
that why covenant has these
rituals with the pen knife and the
shaving to experience
(01:18:43):
the cold bosom of reality?
Yeah like again uh for him what is what
is reality? It's I think uh the doctor
said to him right you're
gonna have to live with leprosy being the
(01:19:07):
primary reality of
your life yeah 24 7 3 6 5
basically um so I guess in this case
right. How do you accept it?
Uh he does um remember when he's asked
(01:19:30):
well why don't you end it?
Yeah that would be too easy.
And that's the message he gets from the
leper in the leprosarium
who's got a more advanced
stage and he says to him end it now. Oh
yeah right right exactly
exactly exactly exactly
(01:19:52):
and I mean he's he's got that kind of
thing of defiance right
when someone tells him to do
something he kind of says well f you man
I'm not gonna because even
even when um the big the big
dark figure at the end of chapter three
is kind of trying to get him
to pray to me pray to me right
and when he belittles him too much that
(01:20:16):
Thomas Covens has had
enough and tells him effectively
to fuck off and then the guy realizes
that he's he's gone too far
yeah so I mean he's got that
that yeah I don't know that obstinacy and
and that that uh defiance
which which oh with with the anger
(01:20:38):
kind of yeah good words good words to
describe him obstinacy and
defiance yeah he's definitely got
those in spades so we're still we're
looking at chapter two
here when he's he's having the
conversation with the beggar and he puts
(01:20:58):
he doesn't put change
into the beggar's bowl
he puts his wedding
ring into the beggar's bowl
which symbolizes the anger he feels at
his wife and son having left him
and it's also quite a magnanimous gesture
(01:21:18):
in a sense because it's a valuable item
but the beggar returns the ring to him
and I think that's a very interesting
scene he says that's worth
more than a few coins and he
stamped away and the beggar shouts wait
(01:21:39):
the word carried such authority that
covenant stopped again
he stood still husbanding his rage until
he felt the man's hand on
his arm and then he turned and
looked into pale blue eyes as blank as if
they were still studying
the secret fire of the sun
the old man was tall with power a sudden
(01:22:01):
insecurity a sense of
proximity to matters he did not
understand disturbed covenant but he
pushed it away don't touch me I'm a leper
what a line yeah right so the old man was
tall with power so we've
no idea who this guy is
he's just described as a beggar and an
(01:22:24):
ochre robe but um you see uh I think another clue that he's
some kind of uh as it were uh cosmic
level messenger right um
so uh once he's delivered
his message once he's the interaction is
(01:22:46):
finished uh his
countenance becomes weaker
so the description of the beggar then he
he it changes he's like begins to look old and feeble
and you see it kind of uh his energy is
kind of dissipated as if
he's kind of uh whatever
blossomed in his in his deliverance of
(01:23:08):
the message and now
now can kind of disappear
at least that's what I so
he's done the job he came to do
and he says to covenant why not destroy yourself
covenant why not destroy yourself
zen covenant says that's too easy yeah um
yeah and then he also gives him the
(01:23:34):
the thing of uh you will not fail yeah he
says take back the ring
be true you need not fail
that's right you need not fail right that
is the line on fail that's
the line that was italicized
later on right yeah so that line repeated
(01:23:54):
yeah and it comes back
to him at a crucial moment
towards the end of um chapter three
sometime when he's uh he's in
a state and or it might be a
nightmare or something and this line
comes back to him aye sorry
the beggar says that I was
incorrect there that's the first time we
(01:24:16):
read the line it's then
italicized on the next page
when he's as he's lying in bed his
self-protection is dying like this he
became aware of a huge
blackness which stood behind the sunlight
and the gleaming store
windows and the shriek of
tires so this is the scene where it's
yeah things are about to
change there's the light and the
(01:24:37):
asphalt against his head seemed to be
nothing more than
paintings on a black background
and now the background asserted itself
reached in and bore him
down blackness radiated through
the sunlight like a cold beam of night he
thought that he was having a nightmare
absurdly he heard the old beggar saying
be true you need not fail
(01:24:57):
that's it that's it oh yeah
it's over here not not later on yeah
right so that's the end of
chapter two uh right and then
my goodness uh i mean to me it it it's
like it's a near-death experience right
(01:25:19):
so he's crossing the
road and uh the police car is coming
towards him and he like knows
or whatever that's you know he
doesn't try to escape he even feels he's
falling before he's even
been hit so it's not made clear
(01:25:41):
whether he is hit right it's not made
clear no so to all intents and purposes
as far as we know he
could be dead and he's now in the
afterlife when he he comes to uh right
and there's there's that
theme of the red police car light which
(01:26:05):
you know comes and fades
back and you know morphs into
something else uh so that that was what
kind of to me suggested also
that you know the near-death
experience so i mean for me yeah uh i
thought it was somewhere in
and i didn't think he was dead
but i thought it was it was yeah this is
(01:26:26):
this is the kind of shift
to a different dimension
it's like the trope of going into the
light as being death uh right
and also i mean you know all
all the there are so many accounts of
near-death experiences um
and and they all are similar in
(01:26:48):
in certain senses to do what he seems to
be going through at least in in some ways
so the light metaphor or
motif continues into chapter three
three until the two flaming spots become
eyes the next instant he
(01:27:10):
heard laughter high shrill
glee full of triumph and old spite
this is excellent writing man the voice
crowed like some malevolent rooster
heralding the dawn of hell
and governance pulse trembled at the
sound i've done it the voice cackled i
(01:27:30):
mine it shrilled away
into laughter again so here we have a new
character drool rockworm yeah um
pleasant kind of character um i always
imagine drool rockworm as
a wee hunchback but he's
(01:27:51):
described as being quite tall and gangly
uh interesting no i
didn't i didn't understand
too much of what was going on except that
he he'd found a staff uh
which he was wanting to claim
for himself uh and it seemed as if he was
was gonna um uh kill
(01:28:14):
thomas covenant or at least
do something to him um and then there was
the big intervention from
yeah so he's got the staff
and he says mine my staff you saw i
called him you saw so why
is drool rockworm calling
(01:28:35):
thomas covenant so he was calling thomas
covenant yeah and that's why
he said at the beginning he
says i did it i did it okay i see so he's
used the staff as a tool i
see he's used it he didn't
find the stuff okay well that's not made
(01:28:55):
clear or is it uh well
that's that's the impression i had
but i mean uh yeah i've only read up to
chapter three so we're yeah
we're told we're told at the
end of chapter three that the staff had
been lost right yeah during
the ritual of desecration by uh
(01:29:16):
kevin kevin landwester oh he's found that
an interesting name for
a fantasy book character
kevin uh right so uh about why he might
have called thomas
covenant well i mean uh we get to
(01:29:37):
know that he's got some kind of wild
powers or wild magic and
that this is what uh prevents
which this is what protects him against
the the big dark guy um uh
and that is the energy that
(01:29:59):
the big dark guy covets as well yes uh so
so there is something
about him but i mean yeah
so is drill rockworm acting on the orders
of lord foul do you think so
(01:30:19):
lord foul is the big dark guy
right yeah okay okay he has multiple
names which he gives us yes right he
introduces himself as lord
foul right it's a tommor's covenant right
right right okay right so
uh yeah i i i don't know
(01:30:39):
i don't know um clearly uh um what's his
name who found the stuff
drool drool yeah clearly drool
uh thought he was on to a big thing for
which he was going to get a
lot of credit yeah uh and then
he was he was miffed about it being taken
(01:31:03):
about thomas covenant
being taken off him until
uh he was told that he could do something
or the other and that seemed
to placate him i didn't quite
he gets to keep the staff is that what it
is right yeah uh and then
doesn't the story come back
to that slightly later on in a chapter
(01:31:23):
saying how dangerous that would be
doesn't uh lord bane
himself say how dangerous that would be
and how all the worlds were
kind of going to be destroyed
and that's what i got i got this is why i
got a bit confused to be honest um yeah
(01:31:44):
i'm just looking at his names here so he
introduces himself as
lord foul the despiser
to the giants of sea reach satan's heart
and soul crusher the
ramen name me fang thane
in the dreams of the blood guard i am
corruption but the people of the land
call me the grace layer
(01:32:05):
so we've just had a lot of different
people introduced there
the blood guard you've no idea who they
are yet no the giants
well i mean you know they're
giants but we don't know anything about
them the ramen who are they
don't know yeah uh kevin only
(01:32:26):
have a notion that uh he's got something
to do with the staff
that he's lord bane's big uh
adversary and that he i don't know i got
the sense that he's got
some connection with thomas
covenant some kind of protective thing
maybe i don't know interesting
so this is good i like to get
(01:32:48):
ideas and predictions from you this early
stage is really fun for me
so yeah and it talks of kevin landwaster
it talks of the ritual of
desecration so it's bringing in
a lot just in these few pages it mentions
kevin's lore it mentions
(01:33:09):
the lords of revelstone
it mentions the earth friends it gives
you the names of keral
threndor which is where the cave
is that the staff is found right and it
discusses how lord kevin had
(01:33:33):
so much lore that has been lost
so i haven't underlined that section but
there is a section where it talks about
the levels of lore or the wards i don't
think it calls them wards
but there are different levels
of lore and the current lords of
(01:33:54):
revelstone don't have it so when the the
ritual of desecration
occurred which is why kevin is called
kevin landwaster because he
destroyed the land he was tricked
into doing that by lord foul so all this
is discussed in the
section and it also talks of
(01:34:16):
some of the the older generations of
lords so it gives you
some of the the family tree
high lord prothel son of dwillion
he's the current lord of the council of
revelstone covenants given a
a task to deliver a message
(01:34:38):
that's right that's right that's right to
take this message to the
lords and of course he's no
idea who these lords of revelstone are
right yeah interesting i
think you know kams that
one of the reasons i wouldn't have been
into fantasy as a
(01:34:59):
youngster is i suppose i'd have
resisted the creations of alternative
worlds when i hadn't yet
explored this one i think that's
fundamentally what it would have been
because i i feel vestiges of that coming
up just now you know
all these introductions of you know names
(01:35:20):
and places and rituals
and things and and and whole
kind of worlds being being kind of
created but but i'm much
more open and into into it
i'll understand you know it's it's it's
just a question of uh a
terminology which one gets used
to as we go along yeah but i do remember
(01:35:43):
that these books are
written by people who
live in our world and so there's going to
be a lot of allegory and
yeah right no no things that
we can learn about our own world through
reading about these other
worlds that's what makes it
interesting for me now where where i can
(01:36:04):
uh uh make those
expanded connections whereas
um i wouldn't have been in the state to
to do so in my in my teens
or 20s i think yeah that makes
sense and i think this particularly
chapter three i think is is very very
(01:36:25):
dense with information
i think you did well just to get through
it and take from it what you
did because there's one who's
coming back to this with the knowledge
that i have i'm just i'm quite
blown away with how much is in
this chapter it's it's quite it's very
(01:36:45):
very dense so let's look at
this sentence here when lord foul
when lord foul says to thomas covenant
reject the doom that my
enemy has created for you
you will not have many chances to repent
and my enemy is capitalized
(01:37:05):
so who's lord foul's
enemy um kevin kevin's going
huh oh well it could be because it talks
in the past tens that my
enemy has created for you
it says but kevin's gone uh it's i i i'm
(01:37:29):
not clear that kevin's
did is that what you think
hmm together we uttered the ritual of
desecration uh the fool he
was already enslaved to me and
he knew it not proud of his lore he did
not know that the very law
which he served preserved me
through that cataclysm though all but a
few of his own people and
(01:37:50):
works were stricken into death
right yeah this is where you know uh i
got a sense of you know uh multiple
layers being built into
um the situation uh and you know i didn't
i didn't try and because there's no point
you know intellectually uh following i
(01:38:12):
just just made a point
that here there's you know
an observation that you know there's
there's a lot going on uh
yeah and i mean it's it's
just too simplistic to um equate what's
his name uh lord bane with
(01:38:33):
the devil and um i don't know
his enemy with you know uh the force of
good i think it's it's far
too simplistic and even when
he's his one of his titles was what
something satan stamper outer or
something like that it
wasn't satan's heart satan's heart and
(01:38:53):
soul crusher right
exactly uh yeah yeah so
is he is he uh heart and soul crusher for
satan or is just that's the
name that the giants have him
right i see i see but you know you see it
could work both ways right
(01:39:14):
or he could be the one that crushes
satan's heart and soul
right um but yeah but i mean but no no i
mean you know there is
darkness and later on he talks about
stamping out hope yeah yeah so towards
the end it mentions the ill earth stone
(01:39:37):
stone on the last page this is another
bane which drool seeks he
searches for the ill earth stone
if he becomes its master there will be
woe for low and high
alike until time itself falls
(01:39:59):
uh if who becomes its master drool drool
right right yeah exactly exactly right
so drool has the staff and he's looking
for the ill earth stone
and uh bane considers it
worth swapping thomas covenant for that
(01:40:22):
possibility lord foul lord
foul yeah oh yeah lord foul
yeah right it's lord foul's bane so he he
he considers that uh a
worthwhile swap so that
wild energy must be like really wild i
mean because it's uh
being compared with you know
(01:40:44):
the magnitude of all worlds being
destroyed like yeah and time time itself
so that's an interesting little nugget
there do not fail with my message
groveler you have met
drool do you relish dying in his hands
one word more fell said a final caution do not forget whom
(01:41:08):
to fear at the last
so that says at the end of chapter three
are you excited to continue
uh yeah i mean i don't know about excited
(01:41:30):
but i'm intrigued i mean
you know and yeah yeah um
uh yeah looking forward to uh this
unfolding um it's been it's been all
right this exercise and
and this format and and this way of kind
of bouncing it off and
um that'll only get more
polished i suppose as the episodes carry
(01:41:53):
on and and the
understanding of of the the format
of presentation and the content kind of
you know yeah i'll come
more into sync i guess yeah
i think we could have done a whole
episode on just chapter three really
there's so much in it
it's it's challenging for me to rein in
(01:42:15):
my knowledge uh right right i mean i'm i
think i'm doing okay
um yeah well i don't know that's for
people who've read the whole thing to
know um yeah uh and i'm
just firing in with just i don't know
whatever connections i'm
making you know without uh any
(01:42:36):
sense so um yeah that's the way it is so
for the next one we'll look
at chapter four kevin's watch
and we've got chapter
five mithyl stone down
and if that's where a certain thing
(01:42:56):
happens that's definitely a place to stop
right yo yeah okay chapters four and five
it is then excellent so we'll be
recording once a week
publishing probably on a friday i've just
set up the domain and the
hosting etc so if you want to
(01:43:18):
feed back to us that would be amazing we
will be publishing at the
unbelievers.co that's our domain
and we're going to be setting up a
patreon so if you want
to go to patreon.com slash
the unbelievers that would be a good way
of supporting us it's
not set up yet as i record
this but it will be by the time you hear
(01:43:39):
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oh and just a wee add-on here i would
like to just let you know that if you
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we've set up a read along page using the
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(01:45:24):
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hopefully cheers bye
Hi folks, welcome back to our podcast
which has a name. It's
called The Unbelievers,
taken of course from Thomas Covenant who
is the Prime Unbeliever. So these are the
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The
Unbeliever, the first book
of which is Lord Foul's Bane.
(01:00:21):
I'm Cams, a constant reader
and I'm here with my pal Barge.
Hey folks.
So we've had a look through the first
three chapters of Lord Foul's Bane.
This is my, might even be my fifth read.
Not sure, I don't keep
count but there's been a few
(01:00:42):
and of course this is Barge's first read.
It's my first read and
I've only read the first three
chapters and I came, as I mentioned in
the intro, completely clean
to this so with no background
knowledge. So I got into it and I was
carried along through the
(01:01:04):
first two chapters kind of
wondering how deep it's going to go and
whether I'm even going
to be able to take it.
Right, yeah because I mean I'm going
along just first of all
wondering why is he being treated
(01:01:24):
like that and then finding out at the end
of the first chapter
and then, you okay with me
carrying on like that or am I jumping
ahead? No, no but I'll
just put out there is anyone
listening to this who's not read the
first three chapters you
might want to do that first
because obviously we're going to be
(01:01:45):
discussing the details of what happens.
So I think then we just assume that
people have read it right? So
yeah, so I came into this and
then I find that he's getting these
reactions from people and
then that he's a leper, alright.
And then the experience of leprosy itself
(01:02:06):
in the second chapter
which I mean is brilliantly
delivered you know and yeah like I said I
was wondering like how
much more of this can I take?
Yeah what's interesting is that the first
chapter is eight pages
(01:02:29):
and it doesn't mention that he's a leper
until the very last line or the
penultimate line in the
chapter. "Don't touch me covenant
murmured to the grip on his arm, I'm a
leper." Right, right.
So you're aware of some health issues
he's going through but you're not
entirely sure what's going on?
(01:02:50):
What's going on? The very first scene is
of the mother who gets a
child away from him because
of something about him, right? And that
just carries on and gets
(01:03:11):
added to from various angles
and you get a sense of not only that he's
an outcast but that he's
really detested in some way.
So what has he done? And I think there's
mention of Joan, his wife and his child
(01:03:34):
you know and that too with you know them
looking at or actually her
looking at him with revulsion.
So it really builds up and as a reader
you're wondering why? What
has he done? What is this?
And then it's revealed at
the end of the first chapter.
Yeah it's really well done. It describes
(01:03:56):
him in the very first
paragraph as a "great gaunt man
who strode down the centre of the walk
like a mechanical derelict."
So that's when the the woman pulls her
child out of his way
and we get that famous line "Beware
outcast unclean" which
(01:04:16):
becomes his kind of mantra.
Oh I see, to get people out of the way.
It's how he thinks of himself as
an outcast unclean and he uses that when
he goes to pay his bill
at the telephone company.
Because what's happening is that the
(01:04:38):
local community are
ostracising and trying to keep
him out of the town basically. So
somebody anonymously pays
his phone bill so that he
doesn't have to go in and
pay it and that pisses him off.
Something awful because he's then this
(01:04:58):
this growing realization that
nothing is left open for him.
Yeah he mentions his rage a lot
and yeah I find that comes comes up in in
(01:05:23):
the next chapter though
when he's when he's in in the
lepitharium. But he uses his anger as a
tool, a tool for survival.
And the the doctor who teaches him how to
live as a leper gives him all the
instructions about his
VSEs, visual surveillance of extremities,
(01:05:47):
which becomes another ritual for him.
Yes and he's very very disciplined about
it. Yeah he is and also
with the shaving discipline
where he's he's obviously vulnerable to
cuts and scrapes,
anything that can get infected.
I mean not only could be fatal but
probably would be fatal.
(01:06:07):
And so as a ritual he
found his old straight razor.
Its long stainless steel blade gleamed
like a layer in the
fluorescent light of his bathroom
but he stropped it deliberately, lathered
his face, braced his
timorous bones against the sink
(01:06:27):
and set the edge to his throat. How's
that for descriptive writing?
He also takes a pen knife with him huh
and when he feels his
concentration or attention
wavering then he takes it out and and
touches the tip to his wrist just to
remind himself and bring
himself back. So I mean what I was struck
(01:06:49):
by is is the the will power. So I mean
what he does develop
and maybe he uses his anger as a tool to
as the engine for the
development of this world power
but the strength to discipline. I mean in
following the VSEs and
(01:07:09):
also in and going to all these
lectures and seminars where you know
they're spouting the same old
stuff that he's having to live
and then and then his dreams you know. So
you know the messages in the dreams
which are also the instructions and then
(01:07:33):
his anger drives him on but
somehow because you see in in the Indian
tradition right going
back it's the tapasya
it's the disciplines that open up the
magic of the universe and provide
answers. So I mean there
was there was there was something of that
(01:07:55):
going on for me. Interesting
because yeah Stephen Donaldson's
father was a doctor and he worked in
India and he was involved with leprosy
that's how the author
came to to know about this. So yeah
covenant lived in India not
(01:08:17):
covenant. Stephen Donaldson
lived in India as a young man or a young
teenager I guess with
his father. Interesting.
Interesting I mean because I did the same
I lived in India until I was
a teenager and I do remember
seeing lepers and I do remember seeing
(01:08:38):
people who would get to the
stage where the leprosy is
manageable but they're scarred you know
either blind or limbs and
things like that and I do have
I do have memories of that. Yeah. So
let's talk about the stranger,
(01:08:59):
the beggar and the ocher robe.
What are your thoughts on that? What do
you remember? Right so the beggar comes
after he's related his six or seven
months spent as it were in preparing
(01:09:21):
himself for the world
right. So then he's done his discipline,
he's done his
self-study, he's built up his
attention and skills and awareness so
he's perhaps ready for
the next phase and then
(01:09:42):
the beggar seems to then be the one that
carries this message of
magic that has been triggered
by his disciplinary efforts and certainly
the message from the
(01:10:02):
beggar when he finally gets to
read it in the bank. Yeah. It's a pretty
mystical kind of one huh. It
is, it's cryptic. And I mean
yeah so he's a representative of this
world who has to take on a
(01:10:26):
representative of another world
in a fight to the death and should he be
defeated not only he but
this his world will disappear
and it takes place in as
it were a different realm.
(01:10:48):
So it's the first time you've had an
indication of possible worlds?
Right and also for me this was the point
at which I realized
right okay so it's not going
to be like in ten volumes of you know the
agony of a guide going through the
(01:11:08):
experience of leprosy.
No, no. It poses a moral question at the
end of this cryptic
letter that he gets handed.
Which uh or ethics as covenant snorted to
himself who the hell
(01:11:29):
makes these things up?
It's a question of morality or ethics. I
won't read the whole
thing out but it's...
I read an excerpt just um. Yeah well the
bit where it talks about
other worlds it says the man
refuses to believe that what he is told
is true so we've got
the word believe there.
(01:11:51):
I'm talking about the unbeliever. Right
and the implication is that
if you don't believe it then
when the adversary comes you will be ill
prepared because you don't
believe that it's going to
happen or worthy or that it's real and so
(01:12:13):
you will be defeated
and um yeah which is more
courageous to actually um take it on or
to pretend that it's not.
Something along those lines?
Yeah so we've got belief he refuses to
(01:12:34):
believe that what he's told
is true he asserts that he
is either dreaming or hallucinating and
declines to be put in the
false position of fighting to
the death where no real danger exists. He
is implacable in his
determination to disbelieve
the apparent situation and does not
defend himself when he is attacked by the
(01:12:55):
champion of the other
world. Question is the man's behavior
courageous or cowardly. This is the
fundamental question of
ethics. So it's a bit Nietzschean in a
sense it's like the
philosophical idea of the Ubermensch that
if you can act in a way immorally because
(01:13:17):
you don't believe that
there are consequences
or if you act in a way
if you're in a world that you don't
believe in and you
act in a particular way
is that unethical because there are no
consequences because it's not real?
(01:13:38):
I think there's also another interesting
angle where we can zoom in
on the word belief itself.
So I mean I don't believe that I have two
legs. Right. I know it.
Yes it's a fact. Well I mean
it's within my living experience it is an
(01:14:00):
unassailable fact. Nobody can convince me
that it's not the case
unless I abdicate my own whatever
yeah sense of judgment about myself
right. But if I have a belief then surely
I'm kind of uncertain.
(01:14:22):
I don't actually really know. I choose to
put my chips there but do I really know?
Well the unavoidable question that we're
going to get to we might
as well get to it now is the
(01:14:43):
idea of the simulation and the matrix
idea that if we're living in
a simulation then is anything
actually real? I think yeah well maybe we
(01:15:03):
can ask ourselves how do we
know that anything is real.
I mean what is what is it that tells us
that anything could even be real? It's
our experience right?
It's our experience but it's also a
biological makeup that our
(01:15:26):
like our retinas are able to
perceive light frequencies and translate
it into objects.
Right and then that forms
the subject matter of our experience. Yes
so if you experience
a situation in a dream
(01:15:48):
and that's recorded into your memory
is that any less real than something that
happens when you're awake?
Maybe this is getting to the root of what
keeps me coming back to
these books. It's going to be
difficult to talk about these books much
(01:16:09):
further without going into
alcoholism which for me some
of you might know has been part of my
life including blackouts
and this is something I
always used to ponder back in those days
when I'm in blackout but
I'm still up and about and
functioning. Where am I is what's
(01:16:33):
happening. Am I responsible for my
actions first of all and
secondly are they actually real? Maybe
that's what keeps me
coming back to these books.
Yeah well um that's that's a very
fundamental uh thing about life right um
(01:16:55):
how do we know what we
think we know? Yeah I mean without that
then we only say that
this is real or that is real.
What actually tells us I mean uh is this
because everyone accepts that
it's real? You see it's it's
(01:17:16):
not such an obvious statement that one
can compare one set of inverted commas
reality with another
I think um but I do think that uh
experience because that's
(01:17:37):
that's that's fundamental that's
primary. Everything is experienced. But
if you experience something in a dream?
That's experience. I mean uh uh the
building blocks of experience
are kind of the same. I mean uh
(01:17:58):
if I have an experience of fear in a
dream then the details may be different
but I mean the quality
of that experience is still recognizably
fear which I would
experience in waking right.
Right yeah um so I think I don't know it
(01:18:21):
seems to me anyway that
experience is a way of ascertaining um
something of reality. So is
that why covenant has these
rituals with the pen knife and the
shaving to experience
(01:18:43):
the cold bosom of reality?
Yeah like again uh for him what is what
is reality? It's I think uh the doctor
said to him right you're
gonna have to live with leprosy being the
(01:19:07):
primary reality of
your life yeah 24 7 3 6 5
basically um so I guess in this case
right. How do you accept it?
Uh he does um remember when he's asked
(01:19:30):
well why don't you end it?
Yeah that would be too easy.
And that's the message he gets from the
leper in the leprosarium
who's got a more advanced
stage and he says to him end it now. Oh
yeah right right exactly
exactly exactly exactly
(01:19:52):
and I mean he's he's got that kind of
thing of defiance right
when someone tells him to do
something he kind of says well f you man
I'm not gonna because even
even when um the big the big
dark figure at the end of chapter three
is kind of trying to get him
to pray to me pray to me right
and when he belittles him too much that
(01:20:16):
Thomas Covens has had
enough and tells him effectively
to fuck off and then the guy realizes
that he's he's gone too far
yeah so I mean he's got that
that yeah I don't know that obstinacy and
and that that uh defiance
which which oh with with the anger
(01:20:38):
kind of yeah good words good words to
describe him obstinacy and
defiance yeah he's definitely got
those in spades so we're still we're
looking at chapter two
here when he's he's having the
conversation with the beggar and he puts
(01:20:58):
he doesn't put change
into the beggar's bowl
he puts his wedding
ring into the beggar's bowl
which symbolizes the anger he feels at
his wife and son having left him
and it's also quite a magnanimous gesture
(01:21:18):
in a sense because it's a valuable item
but the beggar returns the ring to him
and I think that's a very interesting
scene he says that's worth
more than a few coins and he
stamped away and the beggar shouts wait
(01:21:39):
the word carried such authority that
covenant stopped again
he stood still husbanding his rage until
he felt the man's hand on
his arm and then he turned and
looked into pale blue eyes as blank as if
they were still studying
the secret fire of the sun
the old man was tall with power a sudden
(01:22:01):
insecurity a sense of
proximity to matters he did not
understand disturbed covenant but he
pushed it away don't touch me I'm a leper
what a line yeah right so the old man was
tall with power so we've
no idea who this guy is
he's just described as a beggar and an
(01:22:24):
ochre robe but um you see uh I think another clue that he's
some kind of uh as it were uh cosmic
level messenger right um
so uh once he's delivered
his message once he's the interaction is
(01:22:46):
finished uh his
countenance becomes weaker
so the description of the beggar then he
he it changes he's like begins to look old and feeble
and you see it kind of uh his energy is
kind of dissipated as if
he's kind of uh whatever
blossomed in his in his deliverance of
(01:23:08):
the message and now
now can kind of disappear
at least that's what I so
he's done the job he came to do
and he says to covenant why not destroy yourself
covenant why not destroy yourself
zen covenant says that's too easy yeah um
yeah and then he also gives him the
(01:23:34):
the thing of uh you will not fail yeah he
says take back the ring
be true you need not fail
that's right you need not fail right that
is the line on fail that's
the line that was italicized
later on right yeah so that line repeated
(01:23:54):
yeah and it comes back
to him at a crucial moment
towards the end of um chapter three
sometime when he's uh he's in
a state and or it might be a
nightmare or something and this line
comes back to him aye sorry
the beggar says that I was
incorrect there that's the first time we
(01:24:16):
read the line it's then
italicized on the next page
when he's as he's lying in bed his
self-protection is dying like this he
became aware of a huge
blackness which stood behind the sunlight
and the gleaming store
windows and the shriek of
tires so this is the scene where it's
yeah things are about to
change there's the light and the
(01:24:37):
asphalt against his head seemed to be
nothing more than
paintings on a black background
and now the background asserted itself
reached in and bore him
down blackness radiated through
the sunlight like a cold beam of night he
thought that he was having a nightmare
absurdly he heard the old beggar saying
be true you need not fail
(01:24:57):
that's it that's it oh yeah
it's over here not not later on yeah
right so that's the end of
chapter two uh right and then
my goodness uh i mean to me it it it's
like it's a near-death experience right
(01:25:19):
so he's crossing the
road and uh the police car is coming
towards him and he like knows
or whatever that's you know he
doesn't try to escape he even feels he's
falling before he's even
been hit so it's not made clear
(01:25:41):
whether he is hit right it's not made
clear no so to all intents and purposes
as far as we know he
could be dead and he's now in the
afterlife when he he comes to uh right
and there's there's that
theme of the red police car light which
(01:26:05):
you know comes and fades
back and you know morphs into
something else uh so that that was what
kind of to me suggested also
that you know the near-death
experience so i mean for me yeah uh i
thought it was somewhere in
and i didn't think he was dead
but i thought it was it was yeah this is
(01:26:26):
this is the kind of shift
to a different dimension
it's like the trope of going into the
light as being death uh right
and also i mean you know all
all the there are so many accounts of
near-death experiences um
and and they all are similar in
(01:26:48):
in certain senses to do what he seems to
be going through at least in in some ways
so the light metaphor or
motif continues into chapter three
three until the two flaming spots become
eyes the next instant he
(01:27:10):
heard laughter high shrill
glee full of triumph and old spite
this is excellent writing man the voice
crowed like some malevolent rooster
heralding the dawn of hell
and governance pulse trembled at the
sound i've done it the voice cackled i
(01:27:30):
mine it shrilled away
into laughter again so here we have a new
character drool rockworm yeah um
pleasant kind of character um i always
imagine drool rockworm as
a wee hunchback but he's
(01:27:51):
described as being quite tall and gangly
uh interesting no i
didn't i didn't understand
too much of what was going on except that
he he'd found a staff uh
which he was wanting to claim
for himself uh and it seemed as if he was
was gonna um uh kill
(01:28:14):
thomas covenant or at least
do something to him um and then there was
the big intervention from
yeah so he's got the staff
and he says mine my staff you saw i
called him you saw so why
is drool rockworm calling
(01:28:35):
thomas covenant so he was calling thomas
covenant yeah and that's why
he said at the beginning he
says i did it i did it okay i see so he's
used the staff as a tool i
see he's used it he didn't
find the stuff okay well that's not made
(01:28:55):
clear or is it uh well
that's that's the impression i had
but i mean uh yeah i've only read up to
chapter three so we're yeah
we're told we're told at the
end of chapter three that the staff had
been lost right yeah during
the ritual of desecration by uh
(01:29:16):
kevin kevin landwester oh he's found that
an interesting name for
a fantasy book character
kevin uh right so uh about why he might
have called thomas
covenant well i mean uh we get to
(01:29:37):
know that he's got some kind of wild
powers or wild magic and
that this is what uh prevents
which this is what protects him against
the the big dark guy um uh
and that is the energy that
(01:29:59):
the big dark guy covets as well yes uh so
so there is something
about him but i mean yeah
so is drill rockworm acting on the orders
of lord foul do you think so
(01:30:19):
lord foul is the big dark guy
right yeah okay okay he has multiple
names which he gives us yes right he
introduces himself as lord
foul right it's a tommor's covenant right
right right okay right so
uh yeah i i i don't know
(01:30:39):
i don't know um clearly uh um what's his
name who found the stuff
drool drool yeah clearly drool
uh thought he was on to a big thing for
which he was going to get a
lot of credit yeah uh and then
he was he was miffed about it being taken
(01:31:03):
about thomas covenant
being taken off him until
uh he was told that he could do something
or the other and that seemed
to placate him i didn't quite
he gets to keep the staff is that what it
is right yeah uh and then
doesn't the story come back
to that slightly later on in a chapter
(01:31:23):
saying how dangerous that would be
doesn't uh lord bane
himself say how dangerous that would be
and how all the worlds were
kind of going to be destroyed
and that's what i got i got this is why i
got a bit confused to be honest um yeah
(01:31:44):
i'm just looking at his names here so he
introduces himself as
lord foul the despiser
to the giants of sea reach satan's heart
and soul crusher the
ramen name me fang thane
in the dreams of the blood guard i am
corruption but the people of the land
call me the grace layer
(01:32:05):
so we've just had a lot of different
people introduced there
the blood guard you've no idea who they
are yet no the giants
well i mean you know they're
giants but we don't know anything about
them the ramen who are they
don't know yeah uh kevin only
(01:32:26):
have a notion that uh he's got something
to do with the staff
that he's lord bane's big uh
adversary and that he i don't know i got
the sense that he's got
some connection with thomas
covenant some kind of protective thing
maybe i don't know interesting
so this is good i like to get
(01:32:48):
ideas and predictions from you this early
stage is really fun for me
so yeah and it talks of kevin landwaster
it talks of the ritual of
desecration so it's bringing in
a lot just in these few pages it mentions
kevin's lore it mentions
(01:33:09):
the lords of revelstone
it mentions the earth friends it gives
you the names of keral
threndor which is where the cave
is that the staff is found right and it
discusses how lord kevin had
(01:33:33):
so much lore that has been lost
so i haven't underlined that section but
there is a section where it talks about
the levels of lore or the wards i don't
think it calls them wards
but there are different levels
of lore and the current lords of
(01:33:54):
revelstone don't have it so when the the
ritual of desecration
occurred which is why kevin is called
kevin landwaster because he
destroyed the land he was tricked
into doing that by lord foul so all this
is discussed in the
section and it also talks of
(01:34:16):
some of the the older generations of
lords so it gives you
some of the the family tree
high lord prothel son of dwillion
he's the current lord of the council of
revelstone covenants given a
a task to deliver a message
(01:34:38):
that's right that's right that's right to
take this message to the
lords and of course he's no
idea who these lords of revelstone are
right yeah interesting i
think you know kams that
one of the reasons i wouldn't have been
into fantasy as a
(01:34:59):
youngster is i suppose i'd have
resisted the creations of alternative
worlds when i hadn't yet
explored this one i think that's
fundamentally what it would have been
because i i feel vestiges of that coming
up just now you know
all these introductions of you know names
(01:35:20):
and places and rituals
and things and and and whole
kind of worlds being being kind of
created but but i'm much
more open and into into it
i'll understand you know it's it's it's
just a question of uh a
terminology which one gets used
to as we go along yeah but i do remember
(01:35:43):
that these books are
written by people who
live in our world and so there's going to
be a lot of allegory and
yeah right no no things that
we can learn about our own world through
reading about these other
worlds that's what makes it
interesting for me now where where i can
(01:36:04):
uh uh make those
expanded connections whereas
um i wouldn't have been in the state to
to do so in my in my teens
or 20s i think yeah that makes
sense and i think this particularly
chapter three i think is is very very
(01:36:25):
dense with information
i think you did well just to get through
it and take from it what you
did because there's one who's
coming back to this with the knowledge
that i have i'm just i'm quite
blown away with how much is in
this chapter it's it's quite it's very
(01:36:45):
very dense so let's look at
this sentence here when lord foul
when lord foul says to thomas covenant
reject the doom that my
enemy has created for you
you will not have many chances to repent
and my enemy is capitalized
(01:37:05):
so who's lord foul's
enemy um kevin kevin's going
huh oh well it could be because it talks
in the past tens that my
enemy has created for you
it says but kevin's gone uh it's i i i'm
(01:37:29):
not clear that kevin's
did is that what you think
hmm together we uttered the ritual of
desecration uh the fool he
was already enslaved to me and
he knew it not proud of his lore he did
not know that the very law
which he served preserved me
through that cataclysm though all but a
few of his own people and
(01:37:50):
works were stricken into death
right yeah this is where you know uh i
got a sense of you know uh multiple
layers being built into
um the situation uh and you know i didn't
i didn't try and because there's no point
you know intellectually uh following i
(01:38:12):
just just made a point
that here there's you know
an observation that you know there's
there's a lot going on uh
yeah and i mean it's it's
just too simplistic to um equate what's
his name uh lord bane with
(01:38:33):
the devil and um i don't know
his enemy with you know uh the force of
good i think it's it's far
too simplistic and even when
he's his one of his titles was what
something satan stamper outer or
something like that it
wasn't satan's heart satan's heart and
(01:38:53):
soul crusher right
exactly uh yeah yeah so
is he is he uh heart and soul crusher for
satan or is just that's the
name that the giants have him
right i see i see but you know you see it
could work both ways right
(01:39:14):
or he could be the one that crushes
satan's heart and soul
right um but yeah but i mean but no no i
mean you know there is
darkness and later on he talks about
stamping out hope yeah yeah so towards
the end it mentions the ill earth stone
(01:39:37):
stone on the last page this is another
bane which drool seeks he
searches for the ill earth stone
if he becomes its master there will be
woe for low and high
alike until time itself falls
(01:39:59):
uh if who becomes its master drool drool
right right yeah exactly exactly right
so drool has the staff and he's looking
for the ill earth stone
and uh bane considers it
worth swapping thomas covenant for that
(01:40:22):
possibility lord foul lord
foul yeah oh yeah lord foul
yeah right it's lord foul's bane so he he
he considers that uh a
worthwhile swap so that
wild energy must be like really wild i
mean because it's uh
being compared with you know
(01:40:44):
the magnitude of all worlds being
destroyed like yeah and time time itself
so that's an interesting little nugget
there do not fail with my message
groveler you have met
drool do you relish dying in his hands
one word more fell said a final caution do not forget whom
(01:41:08):
to fear at the last
so that says at the end of chapter three
are you excited to continue
uh yeah i mean i don't know about excited
(01:41:30):
but i'm intrigued i mean
you know and yeah yeah um
uh yeah looking forward to uh this
unfolding um it's been it's been all
right this exercise and
and this format and and this way of kind
of bouncing it off and
um that'll only get more
polished i suppose as the episodes carry
(01:41:53):
on and and the
understanding of of the the format
of presentation and the content kind of
you know yeah i'll come
more into sync i guess yeah
i think we could have done a whole
episode on just chapter three really
there's so much in it
it's it's challenging for me to rein in
(01:42:15):
my knowledge uh right right i mean i'm i
think i'm doing okay
um yeah well i don't know that's for
people who've read the whole thing to
know um yeah uh and i'm
just firing in with just i don't know
whatever connections i'm
making you know without uh any
(01:42:36):
sense so um yeah that's the way it is so
for the next one we'll look
at chapter four kevin's watch
and we've got chapter
five mithyl stone down
and if that's where a certain thing
(01:42:56):
happens that's definitely a place to stop
right yo yeah okay chapters four and five
it is then excellent so we'll be
recording once a week
publishing probably on a friday i've just
set up the domain and the
hosting etc so if you want to
(01:43:18):
feed back to us that would be amazing we
will be publishing at the
unbelievers.co that's our domain
and we're going to be setting up a
patreon so if you want
to go to patreon.com slash
the unbelievers that would be a good way
of supporting us it's
not set up yet as i record
this but it will be by the time you hear
(01:43:39):
it now if you're not already
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(01:44:01):
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that has its own metric thing hit the
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(01:45:02):
most important ask that
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and we'll see you
again next week bye for now
oh and just a wee add-on here i would
like to just let you know that if you
want to follow along
we've set up a read along page using the
story graph app the story
(01:45:24):
graph is a retracking website
and we really like it it's it's a small
team that runs it and we
have decided that we'd like to
support that app they have a read along
feature that looks perfect
for our needs so if you want
to follow along with us they will have
discussion forums on there
so we'll be able to chat about
each chapter as we publish the episodes
(01:45:46):
and uh yeah i think it's
just a good place to do it so
you will need an account in order to
participate but it doesn't cost you
anything to set up an
account over on the story graph so go and
do that if you want to
follow and we'll see you there
hopefully cheers bye
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