A Ritual of Bone & Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder

Episode 20

Release Date: Oct 27 2021

A Ritual of Bone by Lee C. Conley

Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder” by William Hope Hodgson

In this Spooky Finale Sara has to deal with Lilly ranting about Zombies for about 45 minutes (most of which was cut) in their conversation about “A Ritual of Bone” by Lee C. Conley. They also discuss “Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder” by William Hope Hodgson and to what degree it is Sherlock Holmes fanfiction (more than zero).They also attempt to pronounce all of the weird, weird words Hodgson made up for his supernatural investigator. ‘Raaaee’ needs more consonants.

Other Weird Words in this episode: "Aeiirii" and "Saiitii," the "Saaamaaa Ritual," the "Incantation of Raaaee"

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs: - Darkest Child by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly 00:05

Hello, and welcome to this last spooky episode of fiction fans, a podcast where we read spooky books and other books too.

Sara 00:15

I'm Billy. And I'm Sarah.

Lilly 00:19

I'm a little sad that we don't have any more spooky books on the docket. I I know you're so done with me.

Sara 00:28

I'm sad for you. I'm not gonna offer to put more spooky books on the docket. We have we have spooky month next year.

Lilly 00:37

Well, I'm on a roll. And we'll probably be continuing this on my own time I about about some short stories. I'm pretty excited to dive into them. I was hoping I would be able to in time for this episode for my read anything good lately. But that's a whole thing that I'll get into later. Well, we'll talk about that, which you've also already heard me talk about enough for Sarah. But before we dive into our should a tear, or last scary episode of the year, but something good that happened this week. Is it the last episode of spooky month?

Sara 01:16

It's not but you're right. That should be it's been raining. It's gray and rainy. Well, it's not actually currently writing but I think it's supposed to start raining again at some point today, this evening. And I am just so thrilled. I've had like extended periods of rain and not just like rain, like you know, it's kind of missing outside. If you stay your glasses will get wet. But only only after

Lilly 01:41

you run it. Gather some condensation. Yeah,

Sara 01:44

like only after you've been outside for about five minutes. No, this is like proper, proper coming down rain. Not granted. didn't last very long. But there has been there has been multiple minutes of it. I'm happy.

Lilly 02:01

Rain is best experienced from indoors. That's my opinion.

Sara 02:06

Yeah. No, I don't disagree with you.

Lilly 02:08

Except warm rain. I do love running around in warm rain.

Sara 02:11

But that's what we're getting actually because it's it's quite humid and warm right now.

Lilly 02:17

It's been pretty nice up here too. But I think my idea of warm has been skewed that's not my good thing, though.

Sara 02:26

What is your good thing?

Lilly 02:28

Ah, you know, this week has had a lot of ups and downs. But then today I had the most delightful shower thought, you know, just like weird questions that you're like, Huh? I wonder. And that's, it's so good. It's my new favorite thing of the week. Do you think that when I give my cats big smooches on their tiny foreheads, they think that I'm just really bad at grooming them.

Sara 02:59

I don't know,

Lilly 03:00

they clean each other's foreheads all the time. And you know, like how actual cats do it with, you know, actual grooming and cleaning. And then big like hairless mom comes in and gives them a smooch. And they're like, You're not helping at all. What are you doing? Doing? Nice try, but no.

Sara 03:23

That's a good question.

Lilly 03:24

That thought came into my head today. And I just assumed that's truth now.

Sara 03:31

It's gospel. It is. I mean,

Lilly 03:34

they clearly understand that it's affection, but so as grooming, right? Like, I think that they think I'm just getting halfway there.

Sara 03:41

You're just bad at it. I'm bad at it.

Lilly 03:46

So what are you drinking on this fine, rainy evening?

Sara 03:50

Well, I was going to make hot buttered rum. And then I tried it. Or I made myself a cup yesterday and decided it was way too sweet to have for the entirety of recording. So I decided that I would make myself some nice apple cider. Alcoholic apple cider I should specify.

Lilly 04:13

I did the same warm. Yeah, mold cider. Yeah, well, cider. We didn't make hard cider. That's Ben's job. Yeah,

Sara 04:21

we don't have that talent. We just have friends with that talent.

Lilly 04:25

We are trying to make bucket wine. Yeah, it hasn't finished yet. That was going to be my good thing when I ever actually get to taste it.

Sara 04:34

That's exciting. You your boiler alert. You planted a grapevine? Yeah.

Lilly 04:39

No, my neighbors have a grapevine that has grown up over our maple tree. So we have a great tree.

Sara 04:47

That's super cool.

Lilly 04:49

It is we got over 50 pounds of grapes.

Sara 04:51

Holy shit. Yeah. I want some of that wine.

Lilly 04:55

i You're gonna get some I just hope it's good.

Sara 04:58

I mean, if it's not good I'll use it in cooking. Here you go. We're all oral make mulled wine. Like it'll find a use. I'll drink it.

Lilly 05:06

I also made mulled cider for tonight. Looping back to the topic at hand.

Sara 05:12

It's just that kind of night.

Lilly 05:14

I did some wild turkey and mine. How did you spike yours?

Sara 05:18

I'm using the rum that I bought for my hot buttered rum, and a little bit of Mezcal.

Lilly 05:26

That sounds lovely. It's, it's quite good.

Sara 05:29

I did have to go out to the corner store to buy apple juice today. And I discovered that the nice Korean family who used to own the corner store had sold the corner store, which is understood. I mean, they probably wanted to retire like they've owned it for decades. How? Now, where will I get my wonderful home made Kim Chi

Lilly 05:53

gonna have to learn how to make kimchi? I guess.

Sara 05:55

It was seriously it was the best kimchi I've ever had. It was so good. So I'm sad about that. That's like the the anti good thing.

Lilly 06:04

Guy. No, I did consider when we were talking about our intro. We could do you know, a high and a low or a rose and Thorn or something. But then I decided we should just do good things except when we get distracted.

Sara 06:20

Well, moving moving on from bad things.

Lilly 06:24

Yes, we are here to talk about books. Have you read anything good lately,

Sara 06:29

I mentioned that I was reading red bark in our last episode, which is the sequel to the Charlotte Smith book that we read for our interview with her. And oh my god, that book is so good. Read bark. I mean, fledglings was good to fledglings is good, but red bark is like, I just I have no words, it's so good to have to read it like I, it's twice as long, four times as good. It's just it's so fantastic. I finished it literally half an hour before we started recording, or before we got on the Zoom call to record. But those are two kinds of different things.

Lilly 07:09

I have so many questions, and I can't ask any of them. You

Sara 07:13

can't. And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say anything. But like, we get answers to some of the questions that we had. There is only one bed at one point.

Lilly 07:26

Well, that was a spoiler straight from the author herself.

Sara 07:29

I mean, sure. Would you still with that? It's true. I'm glad it was

Lilly 07:32

in this book, and not like in book seven or something.

Sara 07:36

I mean, it's possible that it happens in every book from now on out. True, but you know what I mean? I do know what you mean. But like, oh, oh, it's it's so good. Like, I I cannot wait for the next book to come out. I think it comes out in January. And I'm so excited.

Lilly 07:55

That sounds incredible. And I cannot wait. I don't think I'll have time to read it for a little while.

Sara 08:00

Probably not.

Lilly 08:02

Our schedule is pretty packed. It might be my Christmas present to myself.

Sara 08:07

If you can take some time off of work to just read it. I mean, you have to

Lilly 08:11

Oh, funny you should mention that. Because you know what I read lately? You know, I took two days off of work to read in time recording this. No, that's not true. I didn't take time off to read the passage by Justin Cronin. But that is what I did during my time off. And I was so smug. I was like, I'm getting ahead on our podcasts reading. I'm not going to be speed reading at the last minute for once. I'm doing so good. My procrastination days are over.

Sara 08:52

And then,

Lilly 08:53

and then we changed which book we were doing this week, which is

Sara 08:57

my fault. Well, so through through no fault of my own. I wasn't able to start reading the passage until Sunday. And we record on a Wednesday. And I started reading it. And I got about 250 pages in and I was like there's there's no way that I'm going to be able to read 500 pages of this plus 125 pages of her other book by Wednesday. When I have an obligation Sunday night and I have an obligation on Tuesday night. And I have work. It's just not gonna happen. I know. I know. So I was like, Can we can we please switch? I don't think I can do that.

Lilly 09:39

I'm teasing you but I also don't feel guilty that I did end up reading two books in less than 24 hours. Because I still did end up procrastinating. Turns out nothing has changed.

Sara 09:52

Part of that was that you had to do podcast editing.

Lilly 09:56

I did send you a text that was like, Hey, we are playing Anything on releasing one this week, right? You were like, yeah. I was like, Oh, fuck.

Sara 10:08

We're so professional. Oh, we're

Lilly 10:10

really good at this. Hey, you know, got it done.

Sara 10:15

You did get it done.

Lilly 10:17

If we didn't lift back the veil, no one would ever know. We're just honest.

Sara 10:23

So that's on us. Yeah, I've

Lilly 10:28

been enjoying the passage so far. I have opinions on whether it is a vampire book or a zombie book, just not what the monsters are. But like which genre it fits into. I think it straddles them both pretty well. I think we are eventually going to have an episode about it just because we have sunk so much time into bar. I

Sara 10:50

would like to I mean, I did get 300 pages in you got 500 pages in we both bought the book for this. Like it would be a shame to not do anything with it. Yeah, I

Lilly 11:03

do intend to finish it. i It's not my favorite book. I don't think it's even my favorite book of spooky month. Evidently, yeah. Not my favorite book of spooky month. That's that was a bad comparison.

Sara 11:17

Yeah, I was gonna say we've read some really good, spooky month books. And while the passage is popular, it was turned into a TV show. It's a trilogy. Like there are two other books in the series.

Lilly 11:29

God no,

Sara 11:31

I don't think I would say that. It's a little pretentious. Yeah. It's just, um, flow.

Lilly 11:39

It definitely has some edge Lord factor. It's very slow.

Sara 11:45

I mean, I think it has value. Oh, it's not it's not a bad book. And it's not Yeah, for me. Yeah, it's not a bad book. It's just, well, it being a spooky month book is means it's probably not my taste anyway. But

Lilly 11:59

anyway, the passage I just. But that's not actually what we're talking about tonight.

Sara 12:07

Yeah, today we're talking about, or the first book that we'll be talking about is a ritual of bone by Lisi Conley, he reached out to us back in July. That's about reviewing a copy. So Lee reached out back in July. And we were not able to fit it in until now. But it fits perfectly with our theme of spooky month because it is a horror zombie book.

Lilly 12:37

It is. Oh, I loved it. Speaking of books that are actually written for me.

Sara 12:45

It was a little scary for me. But I did enjoy it.

Lilly 12:50

You're such a trooper, I can't, I cannot thank you enough for indulging in this.

Sara 12:54

I mean, you know, most of the time, I'm the one who sets the calendar. So I figure it's only fair if I give you spooky month. Okay, but But back to a ritual of Bone by Leigh Conley, which is the first book in a plan to trilogy, book to a ritual of flesh is out. And I believe that a ritual of blood he's working on currently, and it's not published,

Lilly 13:19

can I just say, thank God. Because I finished this book, and had a case of mystery blue balls. There were a lot of different things introduced at the beginning, that have slowly been brought together. Over the course of this book, different threads sort of picked up and connected, not completely interwoven. But we begin to see the connections and how these different plot lines are creating a full story. And then it stops before it's done. And I was like,

Sara 13:56

it's a great plot to get you to read the book to buy the show. It really, it really did feel like a setup novel.

Lilly 14:04

This felt like the first half of a longer book, like completely to be. Yeah, it was a great first half. I would like to read the second half. But I mean, even even with all of those different pieces, I think the pacing and the structure was really good the way it it bounces back and forth between a couple of different people. And then you begin to see sort of how this zombie curse. They're not actually called zombies. Are they ever actually called zombies? But we all know that's what they are. They're zombies. They were zombies. You start to see how how this monster infestation is spreading and affecting people. And if you start to piece the timeline together a little bit except for one thread, which is actually a pretty big one. Like I would say possibly one Have the main characters, I have no idea what it has to do with the book.

Sara 15:06

And we'll go into that more in the spoiler section. So I won't, you know, I won't further the conversation, because we will talk about it a little bit. But and

Lilly 15:14

it's extra frustrating because I know it will be brought in just because all of the other pieces have. I just think we haven't gotten there yet. And I really want to know,

Sara 15:25

something that I really enjoyed about this book is that it feels like Conley has a very clear idea of where he's going with the series. And it's not that he's just kind of, you know, making things up as he goes along. Right, like he has he has a vision.

Lilly 15:43

Oh, yeah, this book absolutely knows what it is. And you can really tell there, we have a couple of other comments on that. But the the sturdy foundation that this book is built on both plot wise and worldwise. It really shows when you're reading it.

Sara 16:02

Yeah, agreed. I did have a couple of issues with the prose. Sometimes it was a little clunky and repetitive, especially in the first half of the book. And this did get better as as the book went on. Mostly, I thought that it just needed another editing pass. But it was Connelly's debut novel. And again, I'm not a writer, so I'm not going to cast any stones. And overall, I did really enjoy it. But if I wanted to bring it up,

Lilly 16:31

yeah, I wouldn't say that. That that was the strong point of the novel. There are a couple of gems, I've actually pulled out some quotes that I would like to share once we get into more of the horror conversation, because also the zombies are really good.

Sara 16:48

As long as these are really good, like they're fantastic use. We're going to talk about it later. I won't. I won't gush about how good he is. Zombie horror.

Lilly 16:58

Trying to figure out what parts of this conversation counted as spoilers was a whole situation. But I don't think we can actually talk about the zombies yet.

Sara 17:10

We can talk a little bit about how that made us feel.

Lilly 17:13

And I think we will share some passages because there were a couple of moments that just hit so great. With the descriptions of the zombies and some of those truly scary moments.

Sara 17:25

Do you want to share one of your favorites now?

Lilly 17:28

Sure. I didn't have it pulled up. So I'm gonna have to take a minute for me to find

Sara 17:34

it just it sounded like you were, you know, moving in that direction.

Lilly 17:38

What is some classic horror gore? And I don't know if you want me to share that. Are you okay with listening to it one more time?

Sara 17:47

I mean, I'm, I'm fine with it. Yeah,

Lilly 17:49

here here. This is some, like classic horror. That's not gore. A sudden crack of a broken twigs startled him. It was much closer this time. His heart leapt into his mouth, and he scanned the swirling tendrils of mist where the sound had come from. Nothing.

Sara 18:09

very atmospheric.

Lilly 18:10

Yeah, there's just like some A plus five star horror moments. There's definitely some Gore's Oh, book.

Sara 18:20

Oh, boy. This This book was a gory book. Yeah, it was a gory book.

Lilly 18:24

Well, it is about zombies. I don't think it's a spoiler to say there's there are some people eaten things going on?

Sara 18:31

Yeah, I don't think that's a spoiler.

Lilly 18:33

Wouldn't that list zombies, but they don't eat people. That's just not zombies anymore. Twilight zombies,

Sara 18:41

vegetarian zombies. One of the things that I really enjoyed about the zombie descriptions. Again, I'm not much of a zombie person. I'm not the horror or core person. I'm not a suspense person. But calmly was so good about ratcheting up the tension where you as the reader know, like, what's going to go wrong, but the characters don't know what's going to go wrong. And that disconnect between watching them barrel head first into the situation? And you're like, No, that is

Lilly 19:19

a little bit. That was a zombie thing. Yeah. I mean, so there is some really fun dramatic irony when we as readers, or viewers, or whatever. We know what this monster is not necessarily right, because every author does something a little different with it.

Sara 19:36

But we know the basics. Yeah. And okay, this

Lilly 19:40

is a this is not a spoiler, because this is so foundational to zombie stories, but there's always someone who tries to hide a bite. Like, there has to be every time you do something,

Sara 19:54

you do get that in this book. Right? And so

Lilly 19:57

I don't think they even know yet, what bytes mean? But we do. And so you're just screaming at the page?

Sara 20:06

No, and it wasn't even. I mean, I wasn't even talking about the points where the characters are actively trying to hide the bytes. But just when you know, a character has been bitten, but they know what it means. Yeah.

Lilly 20:17

Yeah. Yes. Biting? Yes. Biting. There was no reply. The figure just kept walking slowly forward, one jerky footstep at a time with its arms stretched out towards him. That is some 100% genuine, almost Vampire Zombie action.

Sara 20:43

It's, it's pretty. I don't want to say stereotypically a zombie, because that implies that this book is stereotypical. And it's not.

Lilly 20:50

No, but we can talk about the ways that it's not yet we can't. I love that though. It establishes itself as being part of the zombie sort of larger storytelling thing. Genre. Yeah. before it begins adding to it. And I mean, I like zombies. So I really liked having that, you know, the, like, is it the foundational parts, the setup, and like really, truly established before? Commonly started running away with it and making it his own? Once you got to have both? I think,

Sara 21:31

well, if you if you don't have your own unique spin to it, it just starts to feel tired, right? Yeah. And this didn't feel because calmly was putting his own touches to it. Like there was nothing tired about it. No, zombies were great.

Lilly 21:47

But there also are some times where creators get so invested in inventing a new monster. Like, that's just not a zombies anymore. It's good.

Sara 21:58

Like they they lose sight of the base monster. Yeah.

Lilly 22:02

Although I also have opinions, I think zombies a genre, not necessarily a monster. But

Sara 22:10

that might be beyond the scope of this conversation.

Lilly 22:13

Yeah, I won't bring that up right now. But beyond just the zombies, the entire setting felt extremely well developed. It does take place in sort of that vaguely medieval fantasy world, right,

Sara 22:30

as we all know, and love kind of Viking ish.

Lilly 22:33

Yeah, there's some Viking vibes.

Sara 22:35

There were there was talk of like a shield wall, for example, and things like that.

Lilly 22:41

It's, I don't think that's super Viking. But

Sara 22:45

okay. It's been heavily prevalent in all of the Viking based books that I've read, which is like two. Okay, so I'm counting it.

Lilly 22:57

I associate shield walls with phalanxes, which is a Greek thing.

Sara 23:04

But see that you you associate with phalanx? Not the term shield wall.

Lilly 23:10

That's just a different language for shield wall.

Sara 23:12

No, but I think that Viking books specifically call it a shield wall.

Lilly 23:17

Okay, sure. I'm sure everyone who uses a shield has made a shield wall at some point. Otherwise, why? Shield.

Sara 23:27

I'm mostly arguing for the sake of arguing, you know.

Lilly 23:33

But this world is very well developed. And I'm not a big map person. I know, I'm not supposed to confess that on a recorded line. There was a map at the beginning of the book, I didn't even zoom in. I'm sorry, it's not my thing. But it's obvious that Conley knows every detail of this world. And I was able to just sort of coast. And he gave enough context clues that I didn't need to be constantly flipping back to the map to figure out what was going on. He held my hand through it, and it was great.

Sara 24:13

Right, like you could tell that he had a developed idea of the setting. And so you didn't need to be like, so where's this taking place again, because you can trust him. And you could trust that he had an idea of where it was in relation to all of the other action.

Lilly 24:31

There were a lot of place names, and I completely just blanked out every time they came.

Sara 24:39

I mean, yeah,

Lilly 24:41

I kept track of the characters. And that was enough,

Sara 24:44

right? That's the important bit. Yeah, I didn't have to have encyclopedic

Lilly 24:47

knowledge of the world in order to follow along with the action, but it's

Sara 24:51

also nice that you know that that knowledge is out there. Right.

Lilly 24:56

Right. I trust the author. Like with the plotline. means I trust that the author has a plan, because he's clearly shown that he is working towards something. And just because we haven't gotten there yet, doesn't mean we never will. Mm hmm. Same thing with the, with the setting, I think.

Sara 25:15

Yeah, one little other quibbles that I did have is that I would, while I, I really liked that, there were some women who were able to kick ass, I would have liked to see more of them. And I would have liked to see their characters be more well developed, it felt like we focused primarily on the male main characters and less so on any of the female characters.

Lilly 25:39

Yeah, I mean, the main characters were all men, there was this little troupe of Lady knights or whatever.

Sara 25:48

Well, there also is one female character who I believe she got some point of view chapters. And I think that she gets she plays a more prevalent part in the second book.

Lilly 26:01

That's good. I was going to say, well, there are a handful of women characters, well, I guess two with names. Plus some dead ones that we won't talk about. They don't really get much screen time. And so I feel like they were sort of cut cut short.

Sara 26:20

I would have I would have liked to see them be more developed. Right. And maybe that'll happen. But

Lilly 26:27

we get a lot of conversation between male characters about how hot those women are. And also they can fight really good. But then we never actually see them fight. We just see them be hot. So I mean, that's great. It can be both, but I would like to see both. Yeah. I mean, if you like zombies, you should read this book.

Sara 26:50

Yeah. Like cars, and gore. And Vikings. Horror Vikings.

Lilly 26:56

There's no boats. I'm sorry. I feel like all boats. There's one boat. There's a boat on one boat.

Sara 27:06

It counts highlight I

Lilly 27:07

did glance at the map. Most of these cities that we're seeing are completely landlocked. That's not Vikings.

Sara 27:14

I mean, Vikings did stuff on land, too.

Lilly 27:17

Yeah. But that's not like, I'm doing jazz hands. You can't do.

Sara 27:21

Okay, but this is fantasy Vikings? Who's to say that they didn't have you know, more land based stuff in fantasy land?

Lilly 27:30

Oh, well, I'm sure in fantasy land. They did. You're right. But it's also some fun occult shenanigans associated with the zombies. I really love that we see how the keep trying to say vampires.

Sara 27:47

Because we were supposed to read a vampire book.

Lilly 27:49

Yeah, I got vampires on the brain. I really love that we see the creation of the zombies. Like the beginning of the outbreak. That's one of my favorite things about horror, supernatural, any of that kind of thing. Part of it is always a mystery. What is happening here? Just because it's scary. I like I love the explanations. That's part of why a lot of haunting, or possession stories have no appeal to me. Because the answer is always no as the devil, whatever is just the devil doing devil stuff. There's no like there's nothing there. Whereas in this, we actually, and I don't think it's a spoiler to say that because it's like the first chapter. We see it quite early on. I won't say anything about the process. But we do see how it happens. That's how the zombies are introduced as we see their creation. And I loved that. And then we got to watch the characters. The other characters discover what is going on, and then learn the rules of this particular zombie outbreak with them.

Sara 29:03

But there are also there's also bits about the outbreak that aren't explained by what we know of how it came about. Right. So

Lilly 29:14

we're also discovering along with the characters. Yeah.

Sara 29:16

So I'm really interested in seeing how that plays out. Right? Yeah, like I want those answers.

Lilly 29:23

Well, and the rules are always different. We are going to get into a very obnoxiously in depth detailed conversation about the concept of zombie hood, in the spoiler section, so we don't spoil anything

Sara 29:35

by we we meet Lily because Sara does not watch or read zombie stories.

Lilly 29:42

But for example, you know, I'm not gonna say anything about this book in particular, but sometimes zombies can come out during the day. Sometimes they only come out at night. Sometimes zombies need to be burned to die. Sometimes zombies need to be shot through the head. You know, there's Just because we are familiar with the concept doesn't mean we know how these particular zombies function in this world. And so discovering how our expectations have been subverted is always really fun that I got we got to go there, we got to get to that part. This guy.

Sara 30:23

Well, do you want to end with a favorite quote of yours before we move on? Because we've kind of already covered the question of why you should read this book.

30:31

Yeah. Motherfucking zombies

Lilly 30:35

and cool ones. Not Yeah, I rewatched the Romero movies lately, which probably means nothing to you know, yet. But

30:46

sabe

Lilly 30:50

that was, Oh, we did not bring it up. I'm bringing it up. Now. In ritual of bone. The dog does not die. I was really worried about the dog. And it doesn't matter what I'm talking about. Just know, there was a dog who does not die and I loved it.

Sara 31:10

I was very glad that the dog did not die.

Lilly 31:14

So I'm going to start with this is our this is our content warning. This is a very gory book. The quote I'm about to read is very gory. Maybe just start skipping now interested in our next conversation is going to have a lot of guts and stuff in it. But this quote in particular, no eyeballs, that's true. No eyeballs, mostly guts,

Sara 31:41

mostly guts.

Lilly 31:42

Lots of chomping. Fergus stopped as his eyes fell across the nightmare before him. The girl looked up at him blood dripping down her chin and staining her white shift with fresh blood. She pulled her hand from the dead centuries throat. She held the glob jewel of flesh in her hands and took a bite. She looked up at Fergus and chewed slowly. He saw her eyes roll back in her head. Blood squirted across her face and down her chin as she bit into it again. She snarled and ran towards him with her eyes blazing. He stood frozen in disbelief watching her speak towards him. She was mere paces away when one of the warriors sprang forward and buffeted her with his shields. Wasn't lots of chomping? That was just my comment to that. Was that some classic horror Gore right there?

Sara 32:40

Yeah, it's it's pretty hard and pretty gory.

Lilly 32:45

If you like that you should read this book. To avoid spoilers for a ritual of bone. Skip to 4547. But Sarah, why is Bjorn?

Sara 33:04

That's a good question, Willie. Why is Bjorn

Lilly 33:08

I should use his proper name friend of yours. Because that is how everyone refers to him. Friend of yarn. He was a cool character. I liked his sections. That was just the one arc that did not get connected back to zombies yet and I am waiting with like on the edge of my seat out.

Sara 33:30

I don't know if I would say that it's the only arc because the plague doesn't necessarily get connected back to zombies yet.

Lilly 33:36

The plague are you talking at? Yeah, no, that was that was a zombie outbreak.

Sara 33:42

No, because it's not zombies. It's it's just a plague. No, they

Lilly 33:46

were coming back to life.

Sara 33:47

They weren't coming back to life though.

Lilly 33:49

Yeah, they were nothing. All right, all right. I dropped my phone.

Sara 33:56

They were dying in horrifying ways. And they were coughing up blood and being very bloody. But they weren't coming back to life.

Lilly 34:06

While the people on the boat got tossed overboard. So they came back to

Sara 34:12

the people in the city didn't come back hadn't come back to life, at least as far as we saw.

Lilly 34:17

That's what was happening during the that last like prayer thing.

Sara 34:22

But those were people who were dying of the plague. I thought that that was different. I thought that those were people who were killed. And so they were subjected to like the zombie Mojo, whatever was going on. We're going to talk about that in a second. But I thought that was separate from the plague itself.

Lilly 34:43

Ah, that was not my impression. But maybe I don't know

Sara 34:46

who knows. We just got to read book to death. I definitely want to I would read book two for the podcast so it's a it's a little too horror for me to read by myself probably. I understand. And you could convince me to read it for the podcast. So I enjoyed it enough to do that.

Lilly 35:06

This also definitely magical in origin. Yeah, there's no, there's no scientific explanation.

Sara 35:13

It was a fantasy novel. I mean, it's, it's, it's for all that it's a zombie novel, it is also a fantasy novel.

Lilly 35:20

And I'm down for the fantasy zombies. It's, you know, scholars meddling in necromancy, and they bring someone back to life. And oh,

Sara 35:29

and I'm really interested to see how that plays out. Because they're part of like a college, right? And it's, we don't know whether the people who brought them back were kind of acting on their own, or if they had the college's blessing to conduct these experiments, because they were conducting experiments. And I think that that's a really interesting thread that can be picked up and hopefully will be picked up in the next books.

Lilly 35:59

The impression I got is that they misled the college with what they would be doing.

Sara 36:05

I think so. But we have one of the characters going back to college to talk about the work who is under the assumption that like, they're going to be respected as grand scholars and grand discoverers?

Lilly 36:21

Well, but that's because he's the apprentice of the scholar who's all about this.

Sara 36:25

Right. But but he also, he wouldn't have this idea if it weren't rooted in some kind of basis in reality now, how, how realistic it is, I don't know. But I feel like it has at least a chance of being true.

Lilly 36:45

I am not sure. Because there were two scholars doing these experiments. Except there wasn't there were two scholars researching these ruins. And one of them was using the ruins for necromancy. And the other one was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

Sara 37:01

what the hell no, on so so the other the other one got to a certain point. And he was like, hold on. But he didn't. He didn't object to conducting the rights initially. Which makes me think that there's a certain level of necromancy that's okay.

Lilly 37:17

Yeah. I mean, I think it would be one thing if you went and you were like, Hey, I tried, it turns out it doesn't work. Like we can prove that it's wrong. How else do you prove that it's fake? Right. But then the second they started getting results. He was like, We got to stop?

Sara 37:32

I think so. I I kind of disagree. I think that he wanted to get safe results. Like if they had been zombies, and they could be controlled. I think he would have been okay with it. Well, sure.

Lilly 37:45

And I also think if they had come back with, Hey, we have this cool pet. Let's take over the world. The college would probably be more okay with it, then, oops.

Sara 37:58

Yeah, I'm just saying, but I'm interested to see how all of that plays out.

Lilly 38:03

Well, we do see another scholar, unrelated, like, unrelated to those experiments, near the very end of the book. And he completely dismisses it entirely. And we aren't sure at the beginning, or at the beginning of that conversation, if he's genuinely appalled at the concept, or if he's just hiding something, but then we get his point of view later. And he does seem to, like, have truly no idea about it. So I don't think it's a huge college conspiracy.

Sara 38:35

No, I don't think it's a college conspiracy. I think that these scholars who essentially brought about the zombie apocalypse did so like on their own right. But that doesn't mean that the college wouldn't have welcomed their results, had the results been more controllable. And that feels

Lilly 38:55

like a false question. Like, of course, the college is going to take credit for it, if it's a success. That's just how colleges work.

Sara 39:05

But I'm interested in seeing how they deal with it now that it's, you know, not a success or a success, but in very different terms. Right, because we have the apprentice who's going back to the college, but no one else survives. I assume that

Lilly 39:21

the apprentice gets on the boat and he is what causes the outbreak. No, I don't. I don't think that's what happens. All right, because the timelines are a little fuzzy.

Sara 39:31

So I read a review of Book Two, that implies that the apprentice goes back to the college. Okay. And is not the one who causes the outbreak on the boat. Well, that's cheating.

Lilly 39:43

That's extra information. But to

Sara 39:47

be fair, I didn't think that he was the one on the boat after reading the book anyway. So

Lilly 39:52

yeah. Okay, one thing that this book does differently from classic zombies, classic zombies or even pop culture Sure zombies is that there's two different flavors. I loved that.

Sara 40:04

I loved that aisle eight also took a while to show up. And so when we first saw it, I wasn't sure if what we were seeing were really two different varieties or just like an evolved version.

Lilly 40:17

I was also very confused, but I feel like that was because we were discovering it at the same time as the characters.

Sara 40:23

I mean, I agree. Like, I don't think that you're wrong there. But I did have that initial moment of confusion. I think it works well. And I loved that there were two different versions. Also, the version that is like, Cursed is kind of very horrifying, because these are the people who are bitten, and who are slowly evolving into these undead creatures. And you see, you have a couple of times where you see their inner struggle, and you can tell that they are aware that they're losing their personality. But they don't really know what they've lost. Like they they know that they've lost something right? But they don't know exactly what. And that's just horrifying.

Lilly 41:12

I'm going to turn you into a horror lover yet. Guess the struggle of identity. Exactly. I'm going to quibble with you a little bit. They aren't turning into undead creatures. They're turning into these cannibal monsters.

Sara 41:27

Okay, whatever. I won't argue they're only because

Lilly 41:29

when they die, is when they become the brain dead shuffling zombies.

Sara 41:36

We haven't seen these characters die and turn into zombies though.

Lilly 41:39

We've seen the cursed die.

Sara 41:41

But they didn't come back. Did they?

Lilly 41:44

Did they? There? Were there were a couple of times when someone got gets infected and freaks out and starts eating people. So they kill them.

Sara 41:53

Yeah, okay. They don't kill. Yeah, I guess you're right about that. Okay.

Lilly 41:57

So I assumed that was like stage two

Sara 42:02

people who die and then come back as the stage two zombies. They just skipped stage one. Completely.

Lilly 42:10

Oh, well, so I think it's death is the thing. If you get bitten but don't die, you turn into this monster. Yeah, but if you die, whether you were you just go to the zombie stage? Yeah, it's the undead. That's why That's why I quibbled over the word undead because I feel like that's the defining. Okay.

Sara 42:26

Yeah. So so the so the people who are bitten, they're not technically undead, they haven't died. Right? You're right.

Lilly 42:33

Not necessarily they might die from the bites, right? They might get half written or whatever.

Sara 42:38

But they haven't. They haven't died yet. Yes.

Lilly 42:42

The bites might not kill you, but it will turn you and they don't get along. I loved that. I have so many questions. The will say the cursed and the undead, as they're sort of differentiators. But they fight whenever they interact, which also confuses the humans quite a bit.

Sara 43:04

There were just all of these really neat, like world building details that I really enjoyed.

Lilly 43:11

I guess I don't have to say spoiler alert, because we're in the spoiler section. The ritual of bone is what makes the zombies that's why I didn't feel like it was a spoiler.

Sara 43:24

I liked the book. I do like that connection to the title. Yeah,

Lilly 43:28

that's what it's about. It tells you right there.

Sara 43:30

And I'm really interested to see how a ritual of flesh, which is, as I said, I believe the second book, and a ritual of blood, like, Are there new? Are there new rituals, those that play a part in books two, and three, I guess we have to read to find out.

Lilly 43:51

I'm guessing we're going to get that I cut the part where I went on a zombie rant, where I will cut it. I know that already. But there is the classic military versus science, tension in zombie stories. And I feel like it's going to go there because there are going to be people in the college who wants to study the zombies so that they can reverse it or undo it or stop them somehow. Whereas the military is like, No, we should just kill all of them, which would be fine, if it was possible, but usually they don't actually manage to kill all of them, which is why the scientists want to study them, because how else are they going to get rid of them? And I think there is going to be a faction of the college that wants to do that. And I'm, I think that some of these other rituals will be their attempts at reversing it. Interesting. That's my theory for the rest of the series. But I don't even have to wait that long. I can find out right now.

Sara 44:47

You can find out I'd love to stop the recording to

Lilly 44:50

reboot to but

Sara 44:53

yeah, I was gonna say Book Two is out. Book Three is a work in progress, I believe. So it hopefully will be out soon and you won't have much long to wait. I look forward to seeing whether or not you're right. And maybe we'll, we'll see. We'll see if I read book two. I did enjoy it. It was just this was this was very horror and gore for me. This was a little outside of my wheelhouse.

Lilly 45:19

It's not your jam. I get that. But it's not that you can still enjoy it despite that says something about the book, doesn't it?

Sara 45:26

Yeah, it's it's not that I didn't like it. It's just that I had to take a couple of breaks in between reading it.

Lilly 45:34

I think that's been my summary for every book. So far for spooky month has been. I know it's not your thing. You can acknowledge. So that just means the book is that good.

Sara 45:47

You're not wrong.

Lilly 45:52

Despite spooky month being my idea, you did contribute some of these books suggestions.

Sara 45:58

I contributed half of the book suggestions.

Lilly 46:03

It was a collaboration. So there was,

Sara 46:07

I mean, I feel like I did my share.

Lilly 46:09

It also means you have no one to blame but yourself. And also me.

Sara 46:15

I mean, I mostly blame you. I mostly blame you. But so our second book for this episode was car nakki. The ghost finder by William hope Hodgson. And this book was written in 1910, or published in 1910. I guess that doesn't mean it was written then. And I think that I found it because for me, Mohammed talks about it for me, or possibly pre me. She was on the SF attics podcast recently. And I think that Adrienne called her preemie. So maybe I've been mispronouncing her name this entire time, in which case, I know very, very sorry. Yeah, I'm Yeah. I don't have anything to say for myself there. But she tweeted about it. And it sounded interesting. So I was like, we should read this for spooky month. And we did.

Lilly 47:14

Can I just say, when you pitch this book, I wasn't sure if it was fiction or nonfiction? No, I don't think ghosts are real. But when you say, oh, it's about a ghost hunter in the early 1900s. I was like, Oh, I'm sure they had Ghost Hunters back then it would be really interesting to read like, the journals from someone like looking for ghosts in such a different time era.

Sara 47:41

No, that's not what this is. That's not what this is. Oh,

Lilly 47:46

this is fine. It's just funny that I was like, I This could be anything.

Sara 47:50

I didn't really I didn't realize that. That was how you would take in my pitch.

Lilly 47:54

It was. That's not what this is. It's more like if Sherlock Holmes was a supernatural investigator.

Sara 48:02

Yes, this is very inspired by Sherlock Holmes, I would say.

Lilly 48:07

Yeah, I mean, it's almost Sherlock Holmes fan fiction,

Sara 48:11

except that sometimes it actually is a supernatural entity.

Lilly 48:15

Right. But I like that. And, actually, I'm skipping way ahead. But I love that some of these mysteries are supernatural, and some of them are human. Because then when you're reading it, trying to guess, because of course you're trying to guess what what the deal is, while you're reading it. It could really go either way. It's a cool reading experience.

Sara 48:40

I love that about the series. And so before we actually start talking about the book, in general, I should say karnofsky Lagos finder is a series of I don't know if they're really considered short stories. Yeah. short episodes, short stories.

Lilly 48:59

They're short stories. Yeah, the shorter thing than that is flash fiction. And this is definitely not flash fiction. It's

Sara 49:05

not flash fiction. I just wasn't sure if it was considered short stories, because I'm not sure if it was published if each short story was published independently. I don't think it has to be. It feels like a cereal, though. It does. It does feel like a cereal, because these are independent stories that are just collected together. Right? Like they they happen to be the the framework is that carnacki invites his guests over to hear about his latest job. You doing, you know figuring out a supernatural like what is haunting, some kind of place.

Lilly 49:44

He's an investigator, he's there to find out if it's supernatural or not. And I really liked his approach. We're going to talk about that in a second. I realized I have not given my disclaimer like how I said at the beginning that I read Two books in 24 hours. No, I didn't. I read one and a half books and 24 hours. I did not finish this, but it's a collection of short stories. So I can talk about, you know, all the books you read, or the stories you read. But I guess I yeah, I had made the assumption that they are completely independent. It's possible that at the end, the last couple of ones draw it all together and some grand conspiracy they don't. Yeah, okay.

Sara 50:29

I can tell you. I read all of them. They don't. They stay fairly independent.

Lilly 50:35

Yeah. So

Sara 50:37

I think I think what they do have in common is they all reference earlier stories, which I don't think are written, but they referenced earlier adventures that carnacki had.

Lilly 50:48

That's a Sherlock Holmes thing to. Watson is constantly referring to other like adventures they've been on Not, not all of which are actual written stories.

Sara 51:00

Well, this was basically superstitious Sherlock Holmes. It is.

Lilly 51:04

I love it. I love it.

Sara 51:07

It was fun. I was glad to have read it. Yeah, I

Lilly 51:09

guess love it is a little strong. There's a lot of animal death, which is very hard.

Sara 51:16

That was rough. Like, I think there's a cat that dies in the very first story. And the animal death doesn't get better from there.

Lilly 51:25

And it's not even like, oh, no, it was a horrible accident. Like he bought the cat to basically be a canary in the coal mine. He intended for it to get killed by a ghost. And that's horrifying. And I know that this is spooky month, but not

Sara 51:41

like that. It's it's horrible. I do think that that's kind of just emblematic of the time was like, they didn't care as much about that sort of thing. In 1910 as we do now,

Lilly 51:58

I don't think there were animal abuse laws. I don't think there were child abuse laws.

Sara 52:05

And then also readers just didn't like it. Readers expected. Not that they expected it. But it wasn't horrifying. Socially.

Lilly 52:13

Yeah. Yeah. to, like, animals were more more like objects. They were not parts of the family. Right. I'm sure there. Everyone was different. But I think the overall emotions towards them was not nearly as personal. Give my kittens smooches on their forehead, and they think I'm grooming them bad. I did have to stop after the first story and give my cat some big hugs because Oh,

Sara 52:44

yeah. That the animal death was a little

Lilly 52:48

rough. It's also like not off screen at all.

Sara 52:53

It's not. It's it's pretty blatant.

Lilly 52:56

That was Oh, we did not bring it up. I'm bringing it up now. In ritual of bone. The dog does not die. I was really worried about the dog. And it doesn't matter what I'm talking about. Just know, there was a dog who does not die. And I loved it.

Sara 53:15

I was very glad that the dog did not die. I almost feel like you should cut this in completely without context without any kind

Lilly 53:24

of transition. non spoiler section, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, anyway. Well, the other like, truly chilling thing about this series is that it's in double first person.

Sara 53:43

So you must have loved it. It's not

Lilly 53:45

even one first purse. There's two first person narrators your favorite. The IV all jokes aside, you don't even really notice. The first narrator is the friend being invited to the dinner to hear karnovski tell the stories. And then the second narrator is carnacki actually telling the story. So the first narrator is not in it at all. It doesn't even have an like, daughter gun. Oh, it's Dobson. Okay, maybe

Sara 54:15

he does have a name, but his name has no importance. It has no bearing on the story whatsoever.

Lilly 54:21

He literally exists just so that Carnac he has someone to tell the story to

Sara 54:26

Yeah, he is the framing story.

Lilly 54:29

Yes. It's as if Watson just sat there hearing about all of Sherlock Holmes stories from Sherlock instead of being the one writing it down. But then yeah, all of these stories are told from Carnegie's perspective. But that doesn't bother me. Because the whole point is like, he's telling a story. There's a reason for it. And I mean, yeah, there are some things where it's like, maybe someone wouldn't narrate it this way. But I actually think his character is pretty, like well established. I think he's pretty

Sara 55:01

consistent throughout the series. I also like the idea that he's narrating it, because it means that we know at the end of the story, he's going to come out. Okay. And there, there are times in the stories that he's telling where, if you didn't have that kind of framing, you would be like, Well, is he going to survive? Some of these situations that he's in? Are are quite scary.

Lilly 55:30

Yeah, I mean, he's, you know, toe to toe with the horrific specters who, like rules don't apply to them, and they want him very dead. But we know he makes it,

Sara 55:42

which is a relief for me. It does,

Lilly 55:45

it definitely changes the tone of reading it, right. There's, there's a lot less stress, there's a lot less tension, which can be good or bad, depending on what you're looking for. But it makes these a lot more like fun detective stories instead of stressful horror stories.

Sara 56:02

I still have stress and horror. Even if I knew that he

Lilly 56:06

lives, other people die.

Sara 56:08

Other people do, although I think that that's mostly alluded to, and not actually shown. He does talk about a haunting, but he went to where someone didn't step within, you know, his electric pentacle, or whatever.

Lilly 56:25

They didn't believe in the like supernatural, like assault circles. And so they were like, That's dumb. That's superstition. And then they get killed by the Yeah,

Sara 56:35

but we we don't actually see that story. So we just hear that secondhand.

Lilly 56:39

I'm referring to the horse. First of all, horse haunting what. But also that one character dies in it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm not gonna call that a spoiler. It's fine. But not him. And he's really the only main or recurring character. So it is a really

Sara 56:59

interesting mix of modern and superstitious though. Oh, yeah.

Lilly 57:04

I love it. I love his methods.

Sara 57:07

Because he goes from being completely modern and scientific base, he uses the scientific method.

Lilly 57:16

Yes, he goes into every situation, trying to prove that there are no ghosts. Yeah. And the second that fails, he's like, Alright, let's get the holy water. Even Even when

Sara 57:28

he knows that fails, he still uses these superstitious methods in kind of a scientific matter, if that makes sense. He's very methodical about what he does and how he does it. And it was a really interesting dichotomy, to read about, to see how he marries these two very disparate elements.

Lilly 57:50

It felt very part of the phrase realistic. I mean, it's, that is the true spirit of scientific discovery, right?

Sara 58:01

There's a spirit

Lilly 58:03

there. But you're supposed to go into every situation with no assumptions. And like, he honestly does that, right. Like he's not assuming whether or not there's a ghost here. He's trying to disprove that there was a ghost. But then he also, you know, has tested different protection methods like the pentagram pen.

Sara 58:25

It's if he if he can't disprove that it's a ghost, then he's willing to believe it's a ghost, which is more than a lot of characters in this kind of story are willing to do. But he's also seen proof of ghosts. Yes, the supernatural is a thing he knows it's a thing. He knows it's not always a thing. Like, it's not always the case that there is a supernatural reason for whatever event is occurring. But like is not it is. Or

Lilly 58:58

in the ones we see anyway. I'm sure she goes on missions that we don't see.

Sara 59:03

Well, those aren't fun to talk.

Lilly 59:06

I'm splitting hairs. I love, love, love, love, love that you don't know, as the reader. If the answer is supernatural, or mundane. That is the like, the mystery is the best part of any like horror situation. And these really are mystery stories. What is causing this phenomenon? It could literally be anything, which is such a fun space to play in.

Sara 59:37

And when it is supernatural. It's horrifying. Oh, yeah. And super scary.

Lilly 59:45

And there are some where he doesn't actually really come up with a

Sara 59:48

great answer. Yeah, yeah. There are a couple where there's a human culprit, but there's a supernatural element to and he finds the human culprit, but the supernatural bit is still kind of unsolved, and he's like, yep, there was there was this thing, and I don't have an answer for that.

Lilly 1:00:07

Usually that kind of thing would bother me. But I feel like the Carnegie as a detective has, like, genuinely investigated all of the sides. It doesn't feel like a cop out when that is the answer. You mentioned how he mixes the superstitious with the modern. And I think the best example of that is the electrical pentane Pentangle pentacle. Hmm, sorry, it's not a pentagram. It's a pentacle.

Sara 1:00:38

Specific. I think I might have called it a pentagram earlier,

Lilly 1:00:42

because that's the word that we know. He differentiates between them at some point and out. I don't care. It's not real, whatever. Doesn't matter. Yeah. I like that. He cares, though. But there's some he references some paper that I mean, is is completely made up, of course, about how electrical currents stopped a medium from being able to see into the other world. So he creates a pentacle, which is the usually he would do a pentacle out of salt, or chalk or hard water, fully water. Yeah. Another substance you can make a pentacle out of is electricity. And he uses what I assume are like tubes of neon, although I'm sure that's the wrong era.

Sara 1:01:32

But the way No, but yeah, that's how I understood it.

Lilly 1:01:37

It's a vacuum with electricity in it, that creates a very like, that glows but doesn't actually illuminate a room very well. That's neon. And he creates tentacles out of this and the electricity is the barrier. And that is very fun. And very cool. And I am here for it.

Sara 1:02:01

I think I think this would make a really interesting TV show. If it was modernized.

Lilly 1:02:08

I think if you crossed Dirk Gently with carnacki The best thing in the world? Yes.

Sara 1:02:16

I would watch Samuel Barnett as Carl Anakee. That's really but

Lilly 1:02:21

then also you need Elijah Elijah would call him Frodo. But I was like, That's not his actual name.

Sara 1:02:29

Sam is Lorna as carnacki. Elijah, what is Dodgson?

Lilly 1:02:34

Oh my god,

Sara 1:02:35

I would watch the shit out of that.

Lilly 1:02:39

Adoption would have to be more of a Watson. I think, like Yes. He would need a buddy. That would make the whole thing better anyway.

Sara 1:02:48

I mean, I think that if you were to adapt this for TV, you would meet that anyway. So you just make Dodgson, that character.

Lilly 1:02:56

It's right there.

Sara 1:02:57

You cast Elijah Wood as Dodgson and you have Samuel Barnett. I was kind of wacky.

Lilly 1:03:01

Right to the BBC. We have a million dollar idea. They owe us money. Holy shit.

Sara 1:03:08

I would watch that. Man. It'd be so good. I should rewatch Dirk Gently. That was a good show.

Lilly 1:03:16

Yeah, I'm just distracted. Now. We were talking about carnacki The Ghost Ghost finder.

Sara 1:03:22

No, but now I want to watch Dirk Gently and talk about Dirk Gently.

Lilly 1:03:26

Okay, I have a question. That's actually on topic. Where does carnacki Get all of the hair?

Sara 1:03:33

It's a good question. One of the main substances

Lilly 1:03:35

he uses to seal off a room or make protection barriers is human hair. And when it's just like a windowsill or something, that's fine. I can hand wave that away. But in one of the stories, he makes a 30 foot circle out of several substances, one of which being like one, one layer of the circle being human hair. That's a lot of hair. Where's he getting all of this hair? I need to know. I love that story of cardiac e sourcing all of his weird shit.

Sara 1:04:14

Maybe he has a sister who has very long hair, that would be really long hair. And he goes to her. Well, he only needs one strand, you know, for each thing. So maybe he goes to her and says, Hey, I need you know, 10 strands of hair, all of the

Lilly 1:04:34

all of the stuff like that I was okay with it was just the 30 foot circle that really stressed me out.

Sara 1:04:43

Well, because you can you can, you know, kind of hand wave away everything else. But 30 feet is a lot of hair.

Lilly 1:04:52

And it was unclear if that was diameter or circumference. Eight to 10 grown men sit in it with their legs outstretched so it's got to be pretty big. It is a lot. He just like had that much hair in his pocket. That's fine,

Sara 1:05:06

I guess. I want to carnacki Supernatural crossover episode, where they talk about where they get all of their supplies. Right. Like, I

Lilly 1:05:15

think that's interesting. Obviously, this doesn't go into it at all. But I think that's a really fun aspect of of the job of the gig.

Sara 1:05:24

He does say at one point, he hit that he plugs his ears loosely with garlic. And that's just gross.

Lilly 1:05:31

That was, that was the whistling one, right?

Sara 1:05:34

I think that's the same with language, evil whistle. And that was a creepy episode, all

Lilly 1:05:39

the description of the end that we're not going to talk about, because I'm not even going to bother with spoilers section for this conversation. Yeah. The some of the hauntings. Actually not even all of the hauntings. Some of the descriptions, just the descriptions of these events that may or may not be supernatural, are so disturbing, and vivid. Yeah, they're vivid, and uncomfortable. And not, like, explicit or gross, necessarily. But just so fundamentally wrong. You get shivers your brain is like unacceptable.

Sara 1:06:21

Yeah, the image left after this particular story was unpleasant. I'm just gonna say it was unpleasant.

Lilly 1:06:30

And I mean, even the first one I think you owe you pulled out not necessarily the the imagery, but the first one, the first story in this collection had a very unsettling bent.

Sara 1:06:43

So there's, there's a line in that story about how he's wondering whether or not his impulses to you know, so he's, he's in this protective circle. And he's finding that he's doing these things. He's taking these actions that kind of inadvertently weaken that circle. And he starts to wonder, well, is this actually me doing this without influence? Or am I being influenced to do this and just not realizing, and it's, it's really

Lilly 1:07:19

insidious stuff, right? Like he gets a cramp. So he tries to straighten his leg out. Yeah. But then he kicks over the holy water. And, or, you know, he's shuffling around to try to keep them the creature in his sights, that spirit in his sights, and all of his shuffling, like, where's the chalk line away? And that, that uncertainty, that lack of Free Will

Sara 1:07:44

am am I causing this? Yes. That is horror. Yeah. No, that's, it's a, it's a great example of how you can do horror. Like,

Lilly 1:07:56

why should you read this book? I think if you like Sherlock Holmes, and if you'd like supernatural slash horror stories, you would definitely like this book. I think if you have patience for outdated, I don't want to say storytelling, the storytelling feels very good and modern, or not good and modern, but you know, familiar and modern. But there are definitely some cultural aspects that

Sara 1:08:23

it was it was published in 1910. And you notice that,

Lilly 1:08:26

like, you know yourself better than we do. If you know that you can enjoy something through that. Then this book is definitely for you. There's a lot of animal death.

Sara 1:08:39

Yeah, if you have to look up does the dog die? For every movie? This is not the series for you know, Shaman that.

Lilly 1:08:48

No, I probably won't reread it because of

Sara 1:08:50

that. Yeah. But yeah, if you like Sherlock Holmes, and wished that Sherlock Holmes had more supernatural to it, you would probably enjoy this.

Lilly 1:09:04

It's also some really nice, short reading. Right? It's a not a huge novel. And B, each story is contained.

1:09:14

So if you just want like, it's like, each story is like five pages. Yeah, it's just a little ghost story.

Lilly 1:09:19

Each one is a little ghost story. And that's really nice. Sometimes it's what you want. Just Just a little, small spook with the side of cat mutilation I'm still mad about it.

Sara 1:09:35

I mean, as you should be okay, for this episode, we have a words are weird. Dan Fitzgerald, this is dedicated to you because you were unhappy with our last episode did not have a words are weird. We did have a pet peeve that wasn't I'm sorry.

Lilly 1:10:00

But how could we not have a words or weird segment? In our episode about car nakki? The ghost finder because it has plenty of material?

Sara 1:10:11

Yes. There are a lot of weird words in here. And also words that are not weird, but just differently used from the way that we use them today. Absolutely.

Lilly 1:10:23

A large part of it is that this book was written over 100 years ago. And they used queer to mean strange, but it still makes me stop and blink every time I get to that word, and that word comes up a lot. He feels queer a lot, and not the fun way.

Sara 1:10:44

I that didn't bother me. I don't know if I'm just used to reading old things more.

Lilly 1:10:51

It didn't bother me it just stop. You notice

Sara 1:10:54

it? Right? Yeah. And I'm saying that I didn't notice it when I read it.

Lilly 1:10:58

I think if he didn't use it as much, it wouldn't have jumped out at me. But he uses queer like, twice a page.

Sara 1:11:07

Yeah, and I'm, and I'm saying that it just didn't stand out to me at all. Oh, I think

Lilly 1:11:12

I think even without the different definition of the word as used today, the sheer volume of the word would have jumped out at me. Possibly. But he also uses Well, abnormal. That's a word that we all know. But Hodgson uses ABA human.

Sara 1:11:33

I get where he's coming from with that, you know, because he's contrasting it with human and normal and abnormal. But that's not we don't we don't use human we use supernatural.

Lilly 1:11:46

Right or inhuman? It's not quite the same thing as Adam. Yeah, like, I get it that Verda prefix meaning is different. But that's just not.

Sara 1:12:02

It's not the way that we use language. But yeah, despite that use, you get where he's like what he was trying to say, when you heard him. Yeah, yeah.

Lilly 1:12:12

He also uses funk a lot. Oh, you pulled out a great quote,

Sara 1:12:17

There was a quote that I really enjoyed. For me, it's on our for my version of the book, which is not your version. I don't know if the pagination is the same.

Lilly 1:12:29

It's like one sentence, I'll be okay.

Sara 1:12:33

But he's in the situation. And it's not great. He's not feeling great. He says, I felt like a kind of human Periwinkle, encased in boilerplate, and frozen with cold and funk.

Lilly 1:12:48

Funk. is a good word. It's really satisfying to say,

Sara 1:12:54

it's funny, because that's not why I pulled out that quote, I pulled it out for a human periwinkle encased in boilerplate.

Lilly 1:13:03

I know, but we brought up funk. And so I thought you should have the opportunity to just like slip that in.

Sara 1:13:09

I appreciate it. It's a great quote. And it is a fun word to say.

Lilly 1:13:14

You know what words I'm gonna have fun attempting to pronounce all of the weird occult words that Carnegie is not the author that Hodgson invented, for Carnegie to use.

Sara 1:13:30

And there boy, are there some occult words?

Lilly 1:13:33

They are 99% vowels.

Sara 1:13:37

It's, I would love to hear them pronounced by someone other than me.

Lilly 1:13:42

Are you ready? Go for it. There are two different types of ghosts in this world, one of which is a G ri. And the other one is Seiichi. The Seiichi are more dangerous than that. Ie ri these are made up words. I'm not being shitty. I would like to just say that real quick. Why did he make affordance with so many vowels? Are you ready for the next one then? Better? They sounded funnier. Maybe I feel like this. The tone of this wasn't supposed to be funny, though.

Sara 1:14:26

No, it was but I mean, I think that car Anakee not cart Anakee. Hodgson

Lilly 1:14:35

is actually nonfiction and Hodgson is current hacky, and this is just his diary.

Sara 1:14:39

I liked that view of it. I feel like Hodgson was kind of writing satire, though, in a way. You know, he was he was satirizing Sherlock Holmes, and the the more absurd he could get the supernatural to be the better.

Lilly 1:14:58

Well, it worked. including the sa ma ritual. Now listener, you might think I'm exaggerating, but there are six A's in that word.

Sara 1:15:12

There are quite a lot of it is

Lilly 1:15:15

the last one, of course, is the incantation of Ra ye. Now there's only three A's in that one. But that's still a lot.

Sara 1:15:28

That is still a lot.

Lilly 1:15:29

I feel like we have to include pictures of these somewhere because while my interpretations are perfectly accurate, I still think seeing them add something, maybe we can throw them in the shownotes. Yeah, I

Sara 1:15:45

was gonna say we can include the spelling in the show notes. And you can see that Lily is not exaggerating any of the vowels when she pronounces them.

Lilly 1:15:56

I'm really not. I did have to stop and say them out loud every time I got to one in the book, because they were so over the array

Sara 1:16:10

thank you so much for listening to this episode of fiction fans.

Lilly 1:16:15

I'm disagree with us. We're on Twitter and Instagram at fiction fans pod. You can also email us at fiction fans pod@gmail.com

Sara 1:16:25

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Apple podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly 1:16:32

Thanks again for listening. And may Your villains always be defeated

Sara 1:16:38

by