You know what this place reminds me of?

General Discussion
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This reminds me of when I was waiting for the Harry Potter series to come out.

There was a few forums where I’d go haunt, it was a lot like this, and I was there trying to get into her first trial of Pottermore just like everybody else.

… But this place seems better, because unlike hp, we know she reads what we say, and she admits that she wants to use some of our ideas. We are asked for feedback and stuff.

… Also the book series is better because this world and it’s magic is so much more thought out.

Where hp seems to treat the world like it’s still under empiral English rule, at least under the wizard side, and sure, if you read between the lines or go crawling all over Pottermore you can find that there are other forms of magic and addresses some issues … The book is very much you see the world from a young man’s point of view, and nobody around him is questioning that much or fighting to fix stuff for the better.

… This world, there is flaws, yes, but it really seems like every single flaw in the book is almost deliberately done because that is just how humanity works. There is several ways to do magic, okay, okay, this school CLEARLY has a preference, but they are willing to teach some of the others, and at least hold information about as much as they can about the rest.

The flaws of the local government are not ment to be stupid and or evil just to push the plot along, but because, unfortunately, that is how a lot of leaders seem to act. It’s almost seems to be a satire, because how much of these issues were a problem in the past if they aren’t still a problem now?

All of the characters, even unnamed ones have depth, while you have to read between the lines, you can see that everybody has at least one thing that they care about and push to. Witches doing mock battles that looked like a dance, a student working towards their grand mastery visiting the plane of radiance? You understand how many hours went into those two sentences, how much they had to care. And there is drops of that everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely the type of person who is curious about what the NPCs are doing in the background. Not many series give this level of depth to their world, and I absolutely love it.

So while this forum reminds me of waiting for the next HP book, it is so much freaking better.

I hope she gets as large of a following because I honestly believe she deserves more

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It’s better because Azalea actually wants an inclusive, caring fandom. She definitely does try to read as much of the forum as she can, and Tyler and I make sure to send anything on to her that needs to be seen - whether it’s something positive, or an issue that needs handling.

I will let her reply to this in regards to the fandom itself, but I can tell you for sure that she cares what people think, and has edited details due to excellent and thoughtful input from fans.

As far as the world goes. . . I have to agree. It’s the perfect fantasy. It’s everything I ever wanted from fantasy/magical books. The magical system makes sense, we aren’t dealing with many overt “isms,” and the depth and weave of the plotlines is fantastic. They remind me more than a little bit of Tamora Pierce’s books, both the Circle series and the Tortall series.

And. . . we get chapters weekly.

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Patreons get chapters weekly
… Which is something I’m prob going to start doing in the next week or two.

But I love how much she cares, about everything. And that she has help who seem to care just as much is absolutely wonderful.

:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Hmm… I think non-patreon chapters are at 208, currently, which is pretty spicy. I will admit, I cut down on my subscriptions, and no longer have audible or hulu, but I couldn’t get rid of patreon. It’s not an addiction, right?

She does, and we do! I know I’ve been very absent lately, but I’ve been going through some stuff. It’s full speed ahead from here!

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There is thing thing called 休 that beings supposedly need. If they don’t get it their bodies can quite literally and dramatically start to fall apart.

So please, use it when needed. Id rather have long periods of silence and y’all be happy and health, providing the bestest stuff ever

Then pushing yourself so hard you break.

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I agree.

It’ refreshing to read a story that takes the underlying societal structure and assumes most people are, in fact, motivated by something other than a desire for money and influence.

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I’m pretty sure that emperor palpatine is motivated by power and influence.

However, he doesn’t seem to be the only thing pushing the plot. And being raised knowing he is the first of the family prob gave him the huge ego.

But, it is still him having an understandable, semi relatable flaw.

And our girl’s story doesn’t seem driven only because of that jerk.

Though she is tugged, if only a bit, by someone who eventually wants to replace him.

I love that this story is driven by so many things, like the wheel of time, though there doesn’t seem to be a world ending big bad that everybody is gonna have to play a part against in the end.

All the :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I love complex worlds with a huge diversity in almost everything.

I hope she happily keeps writing

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This is the story that I had to get a Patreon account for.

When I visit an imaginary world, I have to choose how much I’m going to explicitly suspend disbelief for, and what I am going to engage in for this world. I happen to know a lot of non-obvious things about how people work “under the hood” as it were. A lot of it disagrees with common wisdom. As a result, I usually don’t worry about the characterization much, because it is just easier to suspend disbelief and not worry that the fictional people don’t behave like real people. Most wind up effectively picking a point of view, and all people are described as they would look from that point of view.

Azalea is one of the few authors where I can engage with who the characters can feel more real. She is able to write from different people’s points of view, and they come off to me as different people. With different ideas, goals, and beliefs.

Others have commented on how the side characters feel real. They do. I don’t know how Azalea does it. She has admitted to having a Lore document to help herself stay straight. I know that authors like Rowling also did something similar. But I like how Azalea makes it come off.

One of the oddest conversations that I have had in my life was with Brad Dourif. He’s best known as the voice of Chucky. But he also played Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings. We wound up talking about Tolkien. One of Tolkien’s merits as a writer is that his side characters truly feel real. However Tolkien did it by not knowing when you met the character whether they would prove to be significant or not. So he just let you meet them, then would discover later whether or not they came up. He also often got stuck on the plot, then would start over the whole book rather than finding a way to fix it. (Don’t forget, editing a typewriter is harder.) This caused the side characters to come at the expense of plot and cohesion. (And for all problems, he went to the eagles for his deus ex machina.)

I think Azalea could go farther in that direction. One of the themes of the story is the spread of the Raven Queen’s influence, and the ongoing changes in the city. I would be interested to see a random POV chapter from a side character’s point of view. For the purpose of bringing home how the city is changing. Very much on a principle of show, not tell.

The character doesn’t have to be relevant or recurring. Just a side encounter a chapter or two later to create a sense of sonder. I don’t know how others would react. But I’d like it. I guess we’re getting something similar with side stories like the one about Percy. But I think that the main series could do with having them interwoven in.

Moving on, I love the magic system. And I love speculating on it. Like I did with my Plane of Darkness speculation. It is clear that a lot of thought went into it. However Azalea got there, do more of that. :slight_smile:

Separately from all that, how we fail to think is a big interest of mine. And I’ve enjoyed reading a series where that comes up explicitly. This is not so much a comment on the writing - just a happy coincidence that I’m encountering a topic of personal interest. I appreciate it deeply. I also suspect that it must be a topic of interest for Azalea. And it likely helps her write from different perspectives. If she ever wants to express an opinion on that, I’m all ears.

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In the wheel of time series, this happens, I think there is at least 70 POV who really have no big connection going on other than the fact that they happen to witness, or are suppose to kill one of the main.

You get to see how the main is effecting the world.

I think she could pull that off just as well, of not better, than R. Jordan.

Though I would never wish the complexity level of government, social classes, clothing, just about everything, except for a female expressing anything (I don’t think I know any female who crosses their arms over their chest as much as he has the females as Jordan, his biggest flaw to me, he couldn’t make people, women mostly, emote, and relationships, he didn’t know how to show romantic relationships very well)

I am extremely happy with how real everything feels… It’s complex and messy in a way that is actually easy to track, because it’s real and makes sense.

If you read this, your one of my heros!

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I always just thought that he must like thinking about women’s breasts. But yes, authors do tend to slip into customary phrases and gestures that just show up everywhere. And it shows up a lot in books that try to build complex worlds. They go everywhere, and say how different each is. And then aside from the planned details, are remarkably the same.

Malazan Book of the Fallen really suffered from this. Yes, yes, it had all of these complex places with immense history. And somehow all of the descriptions felt like we were being told, not being shown. What we were shown, didn’t feel different from all the other places we had been.

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Guys, why are you so nice to me!?

Thank you very much for your kind words. You’ve made me smile with your praise. It definitely feels worthwhile putting in the effort I do, and it makes me happy that you appreciate it.

As you know, I do put a lot of care and effort into this story. It is complex, and trying to make sure I get it right takes a lot of time. Sometimes, a lot of frustration and beating my head against the wall. I often lament about not being able to write faster, but really, I care more about quality than quantity/speed.

I do consider you guys’ feedback, questions, and your general thoughts about the story. I have things planned out vaguely a couple of books in advance (so that I can build up to things in a way that feels natural), and many of the bigger mysteries have been brewing since the very beginning, but your contributions do end up affecting the story, often in small, subtle ways.

For instance, I wasn’t going to have Siobhan teach Gera the esoteric humming/calming spell until Jim A (is that right?) mentioned how nice it would be for Gera if she did. I’d never considered that, but as soon as I saw it I knew it needed to happen.

Or, I wasn’t going to focus as much time on Bear, who ended up getting basically 2 extra chapters. I was just going to skim over it in a couple of paragraphs, except that people were so interested in what happened to this giant, ancient dog. Even my editor was like, “Why are we spending so much time on this dog?” and I was like, “It needs to happen. They care.”

Small changes like that really add up, and over time make a big difference to improving quality and the emotional impact of the story.

So really, in many ways I feel that PGTS is a collaborative effort.

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I figured bear would pop in again every now and then. But Yayy two chapters!

But I want to know what did they do with all the stray dogs? Did they get adopted, rereleased? Did miles decide he has to keep one because it’s fur was the same color as our girl’s hair?

Oh man, even if Bear and the stray dogs become Easter eggs and or inside jokes that appear, like having Percy accidentally distracting the copper while Miles is trying to get her away.

Having whoever pov notice a dog doing something silly, or maybe if the strays got adopted stories about just how protective and loyal they are to new families and of course the Raven Queen did that on purpose… Snort

I’m not a paid reader, so I’m behind.

But throwing us bones like that cause you know we care, yes yes! That is why we are so nice to you. Because you clearly care!

I would rather wait a year or 5 for a book that you are absolutely confident in, than you rushing a story :confused: I hate it when you can tell someone is just pushing a deadline.

the American idea of fast everything is… Sigh time, quality, and quantity, you have to give one up…

Give up time, take the breaks you need

Be happy and healthy, the longer you live, the more you can write, the more you write, the happier you make us