Shané Oosthuizen

I definitely agree and I think by the time I get to the end of a fantasy book, you can sort of tell whether the magic and its place within the world building has been successful.

If you almost kind of...

Like it's almost become like mundane to you that they're using magic because it's like almost like a tool like any other tool within this world.

And the spellograph definitely felt that way.

And I think like the whole coding aspect of it as well sort of made it feel like, oh, yes, this is like a mathematical thing.

And, yeah, it's magic, but it has rules.

Yeah.

First of all, diabolical.

Second, I...

thought it was such a clever spin on like the fantasy blight um so for context when I got this book um back when it was released I think I had like read the description and then completely forgotten about it by the time it had arrived and I opened the book up and in that first chapter it said blight and I almost threw it across the room because I was like I'm over the blight yeah

It's such a common fantasy trope.

And I think anyone that's been reading the genre for at least a little while would, from day one, first page, be like, so Tyrande's causing this blight, obviously.

And so that doesn't feel like such a reveal.

But just the absolute gore and closeness of the killing related to the blight and the mechanism of it, I think is just really...

this sounds weird to say with it being such a terrible thing, but like fresh in like a fantasy setting.

And so I really enjoyed that.

And I think it just really drove home how terrible this like machine that Tehran is and how uncaring it is towards just anything else besides what it deems as progress.

And like that Toml sort of says at some point, like that,

this is a city that takes, it takes and it takes and it takes.

Yes.