3 - The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick, 1993)

***Transmission Received***

WELCOME TO THE SPACE ARCHIVE

This episode, we're looking at Michael Swanwick's alchemical fantasy, The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993).

Featuring psychoanalysis, tiny fascists, and a whole lotta allegory.

Emma is tetchy this episode because she hated it, and let Nicky know constantly for about a week. Nicky is tetchy because of this. Sorry about the bickering - we're like this irl too. 

**

Shoutout to the Digital Jung podcast we mention!

Follow us on Instagram @spacearchivepodcast

Music by SCIVIAS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You don't see this because I do all this editing stuff, but I always end up having to make your voice like much louder, and that's why the sound quality in your recording is always much worse than the ones on mine. Which is not saying much because the sound quality is sick as a recording is on it.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Um that's I think it's a strength.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yeah, you have a voice for radio, but like and not a voice for podcasting into a phone. Anyway. I have a voice for radio with good mics. Sure. Which we are guessing. Welcome to the last badly recorded episode of Space Archive.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

But not the last episode of Space Archive. We will have many more episodes to come, hopefully, touch with.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

That is if this book hasn't completely put Emma off because she fucking hated it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Oh, this book is bad. Also, Nikki, don't say we're a family podcast. We're not a family podcast, hate families. Nikki's pouring some whiskey into a glass, that's what that sound is.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Um, you hate families. Hate families. Great. Um, yes, I didn't like this book, and Nikki, I think, did like this book, so I guess that will make for a good discussion.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I did like this book, but I feel like we shared a lot of sentiments, but I saw past that.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Oh, because pure soul.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

The soul made of gold, as Plato would say. Exactly. I have achieved rubido, and if you too had undergone the magnum opus, yes, this is the book of um well, I think it describes itself as a work of alchemical fantasy on the cover.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, so before reading this book, my only familiarity with the word of world of alchemy was a couple of jokes in Blackadder about turning. Do you not remember?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Nikki looked very confused there. The luggage of purest green.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

The luggage of purest green into gold. Um so I very much thought that alchemy was just about turning stuff into gold. Uh, now I've listened to two hours of a podcast, which Nikki maybe listened to. Um, I understand more about alchemy, and I think it's kind of a bit um.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

So this this this podcast is called Digital Young. Um, it's about uh the The podcast was good. Yeah, it's about psychanalysts, um, Gustav Jung. Is it Gustav?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

No, I don't think so. I don't know what his name is. Carl Carl Carl Jung, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

It's Carl.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I should know that I am literally a psychologist.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, but you're like one of those evidence-based science psychologists. I know rather than scientist practitioner. Arson Mantis, um, yeah, psychoanalyst Borte.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

I've never read any Young.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Well, um, now you've heard other people talk about it. But we yeah, we read the digital young, we listened to the um episodes, the digital young podcast on Alchemy. So shout out to that. I don't think it's still running, but they're a pretty good episode.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Yeah, they were very good. I enjoyed it. But should we introduce the book that we're actually talking about? Yeah, of course. Um, so we are talking about a book called The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swannick or Swanwick. I don't know how you pronounce that. How would you say? I've been saying I've been saying Swannick. I think I've been saying Swanwick, but then as I read it out loud, I was like, no, that's definitely Swannick. If it was a British place name.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

If it was a British place name, it'd be Swannick.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah, so probably Swannick. Um, I don't know if Michael Swannick has written anything else. I think he has.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I think he's written another book in this world, which I thought is superfluous, but have you read it? No, I just heard of it. Oh, okay. Um short stories as well, which actually I think really comes out of the structure of the book. Yeah, yeah. It's like a set of vignettes, basically.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Um, but we should describe the cover because that's why we read these books. I actually don't really like this cover very much, which kind of plays into me not liking this book very much.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

What a great start. Well, would you like to describe this cover then, Amway?

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Um, yes, I mean I think it's just a bit unimaginative because it's called the Iron Dragon's Daughter, and what you've got is a big iron dragon um just flying over a kind of cliff that has a river of like molten lava pouring over the side. I think it's a regular river. But it's yellow. I think that's sunset.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

That you've got the the rising sun in the background, the dawning of light, and the entering of albidate.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Of course. No, the the third stage was called yellow, wasn't it? Oh, yeah, citron citronella, not citronella. Citronella. Citronitis? No, that sounds like a disease.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Uh Harold, I've got it written down. Man, we are good at our research here on Space Archive. Yeah, citronitis.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Citronitis, okay, fine. That's all painful. Um, so yes, the Iron Dragon's Daughter. Shall we read the blurb of the Iron Dragon's Daughter?

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah, so actually, we should just say, like, this dragon that's on the front is like kind of mechanical looking and kind of like natural looking. I thought it was quite a cool dragon. And I think it's unusual for a fantasy world in that it looks like it's flying over like an industrial landscape on a kind of estuary, which is notuary.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

That's not how you do it. Estuary.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Estuary, fine. What else? Oh my gosh. Estuary. You hate the book, but remember, you don't hate me. Sorry, Nikki. And it's the kind of industrial landscape which um like reflects the kind of setting of the book. But yeah, do you want do you want to read the blurb, which I think is actually on the inside flap?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, sorry, I was just trying to remember other words that you pronounce funny.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Anyway, yeah. I used to when I was up until I was a teenager, I used to pronounce albeit as albeit. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it's what happened for any of Dutch speaking parents.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

I'm gonna sneeze, so we'll have to edit this out. Hang on. Clap. I don't think Nikki's going to edit that out. I say clap because she edits based on claps, so just in case she does want to edit.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

This is like, this is like, I wouldn't say it's top-tier content, but it's only content. Everyone heard me sneeze.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Um, okay, yes, the blurb. Uh just let me take a little sip of my horrible drink that Nikki made me.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

It's not so mean to me tonight. My goodness. I made you a drink with my own fair hands. I cooked you dinner. What more do you want?

SPEAKER_02 6:27

It's elder flower cordial, but she's put tonic water in it, and I hate tonic water because it's so bitter. I thought it was soda water.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah, and every time she comes to my parents' house for Christmas, um, my dad makes everyone gin and tonics, but he also knows that Emma doesn't drink, so he just makes her glass of tonic water.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, and it's like horrendous, and I have to drink it, and it's so bitter. And maybe he's listening to this podcast every year. I hope he's not. Sorry, Frank. Um, anyway, yes, the blurb of this book. A dragon is sent through Dreamgate to raid the lower world and harvest mortal children. The child is claimed for the good of the state. Thus, the life of Jane, Changeling Child, is shaped. Enslaved in a workhouse that manufactures iron dragons, terrorizing engines of war. Terrorizing engines of war? That's a weird phrase. One day Jane finds a grimoire holding the secrets of the dragon's sentience. So she escapes with an iron beast, unaware that this is her fate. Perpetually bound to the dragon, Jane's adventures as thief and outsider are set in a world of rich wild magic. One where spells, hexes, and all manner of fairy sorceries interweave with the sharpest edges of technology. And as Jane's life unfolds, the Iron Dragon's daughter reveals itself to be a rattle bag of glittering tales, layer upon layer of fables, nightmares, advice columns, passions, and loves lies and deceits. There weren't any advice columns, that's a lie.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Maybe it's like because of her relationships with people. I would say that's not a very that blurb does not really give you any sense of what this book is like, though.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

No, this book is not.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

When I picked this up, I thought, oh, like cool, like industrial fantasy. That would be really interesting, with like changing stuff. And oh my goodness, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

This book is like weird. It's one of the weirdest things I've ever read. It's also, I found, intensely disturbing, but I think Nikki probably didn't find it quite as disturbing.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

I found it super disturbing, but like I don't mind that so much, I guess. It's like our taste in art. You accuse the art that I like of making you feel itchy.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

It does make me feel itchy. This book made me feel itchy. I didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

It's understandable.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

But do you want to briefly describe the plot? And I say briefly because it has so many weird twists and turns, but I don't think you can cover them all.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

So broad strokes plot. So I like the last episode where I looked at how long after I finished editing it, I actually spent explaining the plot of like Harpy's Plight, and it was like six minutes of constant talking, which is another instance of us not being good podcasters.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Yeah, I did think when you were explaining Harpy's Flight that you had talked for a while. Which is why I said broad strokes. Yeah, sorry. Actually, there's another podcast that I listen to sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Um it's called Shout Out. Let's do shout-outs.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

This is a shout-out to the Delta Flyers, a podcast about Star Trek Voyager.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

That'd be great if they could give us a shout out.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

I mean, that would be amazing. Um, but they talk about it's two of the actors who are in the show and they talk about Comparison Harry Kim. Exactly. Um you listen to this? Um, but they talk about particular episodes of Voyager. So it's like an episode of the podcast per episode of the show, and they explain the episode of the show that they're talking about through the medium of haiku. And I was wondering if we should do that for these books. We should write a little haiku to explain the plot.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Let's try this. Girl is a Changeling, also philosopher stone. Really weird book.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

That was actually quite good for on the fly. I don't know. I think you've pronounced it's weird have two sort of bit. Yeah, I think you went a bit wrong on weird book. Really quite weird book. There we go. Um so I guess this book is about the life of Jane, this uh girl who is enslaved in a factory which makes iron dragons. And I'd say the book has a four-part structure. So Jane is in the factory, and then she leaves the factory, and she goes to school, which is odd.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Then she leaves the factory by stealing the dragon.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah, she's still stealing the dragon between factory. Um, and then she just goes to high school, but a weird high school where there are like fay creatures and no one uses their true name. But it's it was very strange to me that she went-Jane is a changeling like child.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

She's been stolen as a child and she's in fairyland, which is why there are all these weird creatures in the high school. It's also a weird factory.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Yeah, I should really caveat this by saying that I hate fairies, and I think this was maybe at the heart of why I didn't like this book, but I hate fairies to the extent that at my hen party, when we played the Mr. and Mrs. game, if I got a question wrong, the forfeit was that I had to stick a fairy sticker onto myself because I hate them so much.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

You didn't do very well at that game either. Emma doesn't know me very well despite being married.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, I mean Nikki just lied in a lot of hearts.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

I didn't lie at all. I didn't lie at all. I did have fun with her. She trolled me. I did.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Anyway, so Jane the Changing Child um goes to high school, which was very jarring after this kind of industrial fantasy setting of the factory. And then section three, she goes to university, and then section four, she uh destroys the world. I was confused by that.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Okay, so like this world is like ruled over by a goddess who you're never quite sure if she exists or not. She lives in a place called Spiral Castle, which is implied to be some sort of like extra-dimensional kind of castle. Um yeah, and like Jane, when when Jane steals the dragon, she forms a link with it, and the dragon's been like left rusting in the uh like dragon factory and it's gonna be like broken down parts or something like that. And the dragon like was designed for fighting wars and stealing children from like the human world, and he hates the goddess. And um eventually as Jane grows in maturity, eventually she re-encounters the dragon, and the dragon's like, I want you to help me kill the goddess, and then that later turns into I want you to help me destroy the world, and Jane kind of goes along with it.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

So I think we should talk about the four different kinds of alchemical stages because the four sections in the narrative quite clearly represent the four different alchemical stages. So, Nikki, you're a philosopher, explain.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Okay, well, so um obviously there are lots of different accounts of like the alchemical process, which you find in loads of different alchemical texts from like medieval period to like early early modern period and stuff. But um, probably the most famous person who talks about alchemy in our contemporary age is the psychologist Um Jung, whatever his first name was. Carl. Carl Jung. And he interprets the alchemical process um as having like a kind of psychological kind of inner meaning. Um when you think about alchemy, often you think about it as like the nugget of the purest thing. Exactly, like crank philosophers trying to turn lead into gold. But what Jung argues is that actually this is the external component of what's actually a spiritual process. And what you're really trying to do is like transmute your inner life to attain a new kind of like psychic wholeness, uh kind of philosophical enlightenment, that sort of thing. And this process takes um four like four parts. So you start off in what he what's called Negredo, represented by the colour black. Um, and this is supposed to be like dark, chaotic, unlike nauseating, undifferentiated matter, um, which then has to progressively be refined in order to ultimately form the substance which is the philosopher's stone.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

And I guess like in the the first stage of this book, they're in the dragon factory, and it is portrayed as being kind of a chaotic mess. So the factory is staffed by children who don't really have much control over their desires, I guess. So they represent this very early form of like the psyche. Yeah um, and everything is chaotic, and they try lots of different things that don't really work, which I think from the podcast I listen to seems to be a hallmark of this particular stage of the process. So the children at the beginning of the book are kind of obsessed with killing their supervisor.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, because they're they're very they're like it's like almost like a Victorian kind of factory, and they're really like oppressed and exploited, and there's this constant underlying threat of like violence and sexual violence and death.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

But they're also bullying each other, and and then I guess what they're doing is because they're literally working on a factory assembly line. So dealing with like base metals, dealing with base metals, so they're kind of taking in their day-to-day, they take this chaos of these base metals and they literally refine them into the parts that form these dragons.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

But these dragons themselves, like for young, like the dragon embodies like chaos and death and destruction. So even then, this refining process is not one that actually leads them to like any sort of enlightenment, it's just like continually reproducing like this state of negrito.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

And there's a really weird section in it where Jane, the main character, who at this point is well, we'll get onto Jane's sexuality, I think, but we know that she starts her periods in this section, which is a detail that we maybe didn't need to know. Um, but I guess if she's probably like 10 or 11, and there's a very weird section where she's forced to play with toys for the overseer of the factory, which made me feel very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

But I like it's like that I I think or the owner of the I don't I don't know. So, like you kind of get a glimpse of the kind of fairyland society, and it's like strictly hierarchical. And at the very top is this um like upper crust of elven nobility. And she's she's recruited to go and play for who uh someone who seems like a decrepit, kind of senile old man elf called um the Baldwin. Yeah. Baldwin Greenleaf. Yeah and um she's recruited to literally sit in front of him in his living room and like play with toys while he sits kind of catatonic in a chair next to her and at one point transforms into a strange glowing orb.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah, it's a weird book. Um, but while she's doing this, she's dressed up to look younger than she is, and I think I do wonder if that kind of play sequence is meant to really drive home the fact that this is the first stage of the process. This is like a chaotic childhood, um, where she's still sort of working through, I guess, the idea of like emotions and enlightenment in the same way that children do when they play.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, and in in Jung's our chemical process, this is like the time when everything is still chaotic. You're surrounded by this like undifferentiated base matter um from which the talks about like the philosopher's stain, which the end goal of the process, um, it's like sewn into this ground, but it has to be extracted through this process of purification, it has to be kind of lifted out or rescued from Negrado. Yeah. And then do you want to go on to stage? Oh, yeah, sure. So anyway, she kind of takes this, she she allies herself with this dragon, um, partly kind of by like tricking him or like coercing him into taking her with him. He needs her to fly around um and escape, but um, she also doesn't let him dominate her as uh he otherwise would. Um, so the dragon ends up flying her out of the factory. Um, they escape the dragons that are chasing them, because he's he's a really good dragon. He's good at like dragon fighting or something. They're kind of like fighter jets, actually, more than dragons, I thought. But do you want to explain what the second alchemical stage is? Yeah, sure. Okay, so the second alchemical stage is called albedo, and this is a process of purification or like washing or cleansing. Uh cleansing, washing or cleansing. Where you take you take the noxious undifferentiated matter of migraido and you dissolve it, creating its separate elements, um, which is reflected psychologically in a process of like actual like reflection and learning and coming to the kind of basis for insight which you acquire in a later in a later process.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

And I guess that's represented at its most basic level in the second part of this book by her going to school. So she, I guess, takes this undifferentiated knowledge that she has and she learns to kind of refine that knowledge and apply it and learn the processes that she needs to be able to work on her dragon.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah, so she escapes by learning how the dragons work. She still is a scramar, like you said. So she's got the beginnings of knowledge there, and then when she goes to school, her main aim is to gain more knowledge about dragons so she can fully repair him. Because at the moment, his like only his basic functions are working, and he just like lies around in the woods being broken while waiting for her to go to school and learn how to fix him.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Yeah, absolutely. And then okay, I think we should actually come back to the sexuality. So maybe if we talk through the next two stages and then go back to the icky style. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So the next the next stage is citronitis. Um that really sounds like a disease.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Like poisoning from lemons.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

But citronitis is the point where um like the the um the kind of clarity that you get from reflection in albedo um is elevated to insight and illumination. And this is where people recognize like the insights of um the truth of the world, that kind of thing. Um, so it's where the intellect really comes to be formed. Uh the podcast we're listening to described as where like a kind of faculty of inner perception or understanding kind of forms, and the um the kind of potentials which were always latent in the undifferentiated matter of Negrido and then became kind of separated out as things which could be turned into stuff um in albedo, they become possibilities which then might be actualized in like the life of the alchemist.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah, so I guess in this stage, she goes to university, which has a really clear kind of intellectual function of helping her with the clarity of her thought.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

She also learns about the relationship between like the inner world and the external world because she's studying alchemy.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

And I think what's kind of key in this stage for her is she does a lot of drugs, and when she's doing the drugs, she starts to have visions of her mother, her real mother, and I guess the world that she was taken from because she is a changeling. So she starts to see glimpses of the truth of her life, and I guess that was when I started to realize that this whole thing was happening in her unconscious. Um, so you start to see glimpses of the truth in stage three of this book.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, and there are occasional moments actually where like the human world, the external world, the esoteric world kind of breaks through. Like there's this strange force which seizes characters throughout the story where they start saying things that are basically like almost like snippets of like radio and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Well, I hated that. I hated it so much. Like, why put that in your book? It makes no narrative sense. I think maybe I'm just too like pedestrian for this novel.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I'm just too boring. I think I think you read fairies on like the first page and just like nah screen. Yeah, I just checked out at that point.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Um, no, I think it's part of there's this subgenre of fantasy that I like to refer to as kind of trippy fantasy that I just don't like. It's like um Patricia McKillop is the example that springs to mind. A lot of fairies in Patricia McKillop. And I think I don't know, because I I like to think of myself as a writer, even though I'm a very unsuccessful writer, but it just feels like everything in your novel should kind of be contributing towards your overall plot.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And this is.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Kind of.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Everything this book is densely symbolic and all the weird stuff is for its symbolic value. But you don't want a book to just be a symbol. You want it to actually be enjoyable to read. I thought it was enjoyable to read. Oh, sure. Get you, Nikki the philosopher. Well, shall we continue on to the last date and then you complain about this book as much as you like? Okay, thanks. So the final stage is rubido, which is where the kind of possibilities of citronitis are then actualized. That sounds so bad.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

The possibilities of citronitis, that's when you turn yellow like a lemon and all of your limbs like drop off.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Um possibilities of citronitis are actualized. Um, it you come to a state of um like psychic wholeness and kind of plenitude and tranquility, and this state of unity and totality is represented with the figure of the philosopher's stone, which is not necessarily an object. Um, some alchemical texts describe it as being um, you know, you can't hold it, you can't see it, you can only like taste it. It's um, yeah, kind of almost it's like very kind of spiritual. It's also associated with like actualizing in the esoteric world. So the colour associated with bribido is red, there's the colour of blood, the colour of bodies, um, and it's about like embodying the vision and insight that is gained through the whole kind of process. And I think that this is represented when she eventually assaults the spiral castle and um she meets the goddess, and you realize that the spiral castle is this kind of like strange fractal zone which encompasses the entirety of the world, both the human world and the fairy world, and Jane herself, and you find in it like the basis for everything which she's kind of seen. So she goes through this like what horrifying sequence where she sees this the strange, undifferentiated matter of um Negredo producing like forests of arms and things like that. Um, but she goes through this and she meets the goddess, and they have this kind of therapeutic moment where the goddess asks her what she wants, and you get to the end point of her insight where she finds herself compulsorily saying that she wants the goddess to she just said the gods asks her, What do you want from me? And then Jane goes, I want to be punished, and realizes that she can't take it back. And like that's the insight where she's kind of come to understand all of these kind of psychic forces that she's encountered in the previous settings. And then the goddess sends her to live in the human world and she's able to function in it, and she like recovers from her like mental health issues.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Yeah, and I think the podcast that we listened to earlier told me that a lot of the kind of Jungian philosophy is about conceiving of consciousness as something that enables you to be in the real world. So the point of consciousness isn't that you get caught up in thinking about consciousness or thinking about the unconscious, it's that you're able to kind of take that, accept it as part of yourself, and then live in the moment, which I guess is what Jane does, because she comes back to her body and she comes back to the real world that she was taken from and she goes and has a normal life at the end of the book. Yeah. Which is which I personally I think I think this is a good kind of allegory for that Jungian idea, but it does read a bit like, oh, and then it was all a dream.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Oh, I I mean, I feel I feel like my problem with that, and then it's all the dream trope, is that it's like a lazy conclusion to a story that like disavows it. Whereas I feel like that final move is kind of integral to the plot as a whole, so I actually found it quite satisfying. Okay. I found the moment where she encounters the goddess like really moving, actually.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Okay, can we talk about so okay? We had very different reactions to very different reactions. So I think we should talk about sex and violence now.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Okay, this is like a bit which I did find kind of troubling, and I know that you share with me.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Yeah, especially in the context of the I want to be punished, um, that she says to the goddess at the end. So, my essential problem with this book is that in the very first section, about like 20 pages in, it's very close to the beginning of the book, Jane gets her first period, and that's described in quite a horrifying way. She kind of gets it in public, it's really humiliating. And then as Jane moves through this alchemical process, she uh it's all to do with her sexuality.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So she you find out that one of the reasons that they when they take children, um, when they come of age, like the male children sometimes end up being trained to fly dragons and steal more children. And then the um, like oh no, sorry, um the no the female children are taken away and made to breed with elves to produce like half human, half-elves, who then trained because they have like the an element of iron about them, so they can bear to be in the dragons. The elves can't do that because they have no base metals in them. Um, and then they fly the dragons and they steal more children. So Jane is basically going to be taken away now that she's reached puberty and like basically like raped and forced to like breed half-breed humans.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Yeah, which she knows. She goes through the book with that knowledge. Um, and the dragon, when the dragon rescues her, it's really important that she is a virgin at that point. Um, and when she loses her virginity later in the novel, the dragon kind of punishes her immediately by removing himself and finding a new kind of person or whole civilization actually to help repair him because this is a weird book. Um, and then Jane, when she's exploring alchemy, there's a lot of stuff about how she can only come to alchemical insights when she is having sex with people, and it becomes really weird and kind of voyeuristic, and it just made me profoundly uncomfortable that this is a book written by a man and it was incredibly focused on a very young woman's sexual adventures, and I really did not like that. It sat incredibly badly with me, and it made me feel really itchy. It was it was icky, it was an icky book.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

It does read as like kind of sex rotation in a certain sense. And like it also, even if you read it as like a psych like an allegory of this like psychoanalytic process, it also like reproduces really kind of worrying, like worrying aspects of like psychoanalytic practice that like feminists have um drawn attention to, where you have this again, like quite like voyeuristic, often like traditionally male figure who like looks into women's sexuality and interprets it for them, and like if that can be seen as like quite sexually invasive and like exploitative and like another kind of dynamic of control. And I think he includes this stuff in the story because he wants sexuality to be part of the chaos that people go through, and he he really also foregrounds the kind of injustices that are in society and associates them with the state of Negrade. Um and he wants to incorporate that into it, and and and and to an extent, there's an element of the story where he's also like pushing back against that because like Jane comes to survive in the society first by kind of gaining control over these things, so she takes ownership of her sexuality and comes to sort of sexually exploit someone else in this alchemical process, and then I I felt like her her relationship with her familiar was a bit exploitative. Kind of, but I think but in the end, she goes on to try and destroy everything, and it's like he's almost saying you have to leave this stuff, you have to actually like destroy the system which includes economic exploitation, um, slavery, um sexual violence, that kind of thing. But equally, again, in integrating that into this like story of um like a psychoanalytic process that he's telling, um, he then becomes just this other like kind of male figure who's kind of exploiting these stories of like female sexuality in order to like make a general point. And it almost like brought to mind like you know, Freud's theory of um was it like infant seduction or something, where he had um all these young girls come to him and basically said, you know, my father's been raping me. And he didn't believe that anything so horrific could be so prevalent in society. So he completely renarrated the whole stories as like an expression of a kind of deeper psychoanalytic process, which ended up moving on from the realities of the sexual violence itself. And this is something that like Freudian psychanalysis was then called out about by feminists like many years on.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Maybe, but I think for me, the author of this book kind of reduces this young protagonist to her sexuality because her sexuality is so integral to this storyline in a way that's incre extremely uncomfortable. And I think he takes it far too far. So there are there's a scene where Jane and all of her female friends like name their genitals, which is not something that anyone ever does, I think, in the real world. Nikki's smirking at me, like maybe that is a thing people would think.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

It's not a hack, it's like it's like a laugh. You said that it felt like he was getting off on some of this.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Yeah, it felt like he was absolutely getting off on some of it. There's a scene where Jane like has an orgasm and butterflies appear. Like it's weird, it's weird and uncomfortable. I think if it had been written by a woman, then maybe I would have thought it was making a feminist point, but it's not written by a woman. Um, and it just, yeah, it made me feel really odd. And there's this kind of I think there's an equivalence between like sex and violence, which was very uncomfortable to read as well, because this is an incredibly violent world that she's in, as well as an incredibly sexualized world.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

And those two things are usually sustained by abducting children, slavery, periodic like ritual sacrifices and other kind of murderous purgative processes.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Yeah, and that whole thing was very uncomfortable. And for the book to culminate in her saying to the goddess, I want to be punished, I want to be punished, that has a weird sexual dimension to it that you really can't get away from.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Yeah, so this is also one of my other other parts of the book, is that again, yeah, like so there's a kind of an inattention to it in that on the one hand, he's representing all of these social injustices, including like gendered violence and stuff like that, in terms of this like alchemical process, and there's this message that we have to like overcome these social injustices, perhaps as part of the the like psychological process, or like the two things are integrated. But equally, um, they become part of this like psychological process, and it's ultimately something that she ends up doing to herself. So, you know, there's also the you've got like the esoteric reading where it's talking about the need to overcome injustice in order to attain psychological wholeness and things like that, but then there's like an esoteric reading where it's kind of saying that the injustice is kind of internal to yourself and you're the source of your own suffering and all the shit that happens to you. Yeah. Which when you then start translating into like more concrete things like slavery and sexual violence and things like that, can become quite kind of troubling. And I think that that's like an unresolved tension in the book.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

I think it's more than a tension, I think it's a huge problem.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

I mean, yeah, you've got this really quite problematic reading that extremely problematic. That sits along and perhaps kind of obscures the less problematic reading, and he just doesn't like it, it needs renegotiating.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

I think the author is unreflective about it. I don't think he makes it explicit enough that he has a problem with this. Um I think the other element of this is the violence. Um, so I've actually forgotten the term for it, but when I was listening to the podcast about alchemy, it did talk about um one of the alchemical processes being a process of what did they call it, punishment or yeah, so um I can't remember like the the process of purifying, purification from Negredo is representing alchemical text in very violent terms like torture and like beating and um other kind of like violent imageries.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

There's purgative processes like associated with pain and suffering.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Yeah, and I think he represents that very graphically in the book because in the school section, um, I think at each at each stage of the book, there's almost like a culling of influences on Jane. So there's a cull of the people around her who might kind of cloud her judgment or her reason. So when she leaves the dragon factory, I think some people die then, um, some of her friends. And then again, when she leaves school, she makes friends with a a girl called Gwen who is burnt at the stake.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

She's she's like a kind of like a goddess.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

She's like a yeah, like a virgin of the body. She's like a virgin because this is a creepy book.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Which they burn alive every year in order. She's like the May Queen or something. They burn those every every year in order to like as a sacrifice to goddess or something.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah. Um, but Gwen, this girl, knows for the whole year that she is going to be sacrificed, and it's also portrayed as this huge honour to be the sacrifice. So she looks forward to being sacrificed. But she doesn't though. She doesn't, but she like she does and she doesn't. But again, it's this weird like fetishization of virgins, or it's the idea that I don't know, women should be virginal because if they're not virginal, then they're in these horrifically sexually violent situations and those aren't good either. It's just very uncomfortable. I mean, Jane isn't virginal though, right? No, but then she ends up in all these awful situations.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Oh, not for Jane. I mean, sorry, um Gwen. Gwen isn't virginal. I thought she was. I thought she had sex with Peter of the Forest or Peter of the Hills.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

No, because he loses his virginity when Jane has sex with.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Oh, you're right. He's just like her sin eater and takes on board himself all the pains that come with her fast living in the last year of her life or something.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

So you've got that punishment there with Gwen, which is pretty horrific because Jane is friends with her. Um, and then in the third section, when she goes to university, it's even more horrible because they have this kind of the purge. It's like literally the purge. Like they just kill like a tenth of all the people.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yeah, they have they have they have this like lawless night where everyone just runs around doing what they want, and there's this big like mob, and they spring open the prison, and all the gargoyles on the university buildings come and eat all the people in the streets, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

And again, it's really, really sexualized because she meets during the purge, she meets another girl who's in her class, and that girl immediately like strips naked and has this kind of bizarre orgy with a load of fairies, and then they all die.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Yeah, and she comes back to her um apartment to find her um uh her roommate has like had sex with an old nemesis of hers, and then they both died as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Yeah, of like a drug overdose.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

It's it's horrible, it's really horrible. So I think I think actually it's worth talking about these figures of um like so there's a a constant a theme throughout this book is the idea of like reincarnation.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

So like everything comes from the undifferentiated matter of Negredo and is slowly like individualized or individuated into different people, but it's the same kind of common matter, and it underpins this like cycle of reincarnation. And her story keeps being bound up in these two particular figures, um, who you get to know by their true names. So everyone in this book has a true name which gives you kind of power over them, and um people share their true names to be intimate and things like that. What's Jane's true name? Jane's true name is um uh uh is Lapis, isn't it? Oh, is it? Okay. I think so. That's why I mean maybe I'm just making this up, but Lapis is the word for the philosopher's sterility.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

I did scan read the end of the book because I was on a train, so I might have missed it.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Yeah, so um it's I think she mentions it at the beginning because she shares it with Rooster.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Um yeah, so um Oh, okay, if it's lapis, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

I think it is anywhere. I can't find it now. Maybe I'm just making this up. Um, but so she meets these two people. Um, the first time she meets them, it's a well, so one of them is his true name is Testa Tetad Test test Tetagistus? Tetagistus, which is um another name for Hermes Trismagius, who is a figure who Jung associates with the entirety of the alchemical process. He serves as a kind of psychopomp figure that leads you to awakening, but like because he embodies the entire alchemical process, he also has this like shadow side who um you can bring you to illumination, but he also brings the unwise to like foolishness and ruin. And you see this ambiguity come out in this figure, this character who Jane is constantly attached to and seems to be leading her in good directions, but her attachment to him also ends up being an obstacle to her own kind of evolution. Um, and this is someone who's reincarnated first as um Rooster, who's her friend in the um the factory, who ends up getting burnt during uh attempting to cause distraction to get the item for a magic spell to assassinate their um to assassinate their supervisor. And then later he's Pete of the Hills, who um is a dwarf. Is he a dwarf?

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Yeah, I think he's I think he's a dwarf. He goes to school with her.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Yeah, he goes to school there and is in love with this girl called Gwen, who we learn is called uh Lacoma. Oh shit, I looked this up when walking to the shops today and forgot to write it down. But um it's the name of a nymph who um in one version of this story helps um Jupiter hide from Saturn um and then by transforming herself into a bear. And then Jupiter rewards her by um putting her in the sky as Ursula Minor. Um so she's this figure Callisto. Yeah, exactly. We have a cat called Callisto, yeah. But it's a different name. It's a different name and it's a different myth, not tied to Artemis, tied to Jupiter. Okay. So um, and and this has in and so like uh one of the things so there's loads of different symbols associated with different stages of the alchemical work, and like each stage, for example, have its own planet. And the planet for Negredo is Saturn, and it's associated with like Saturnine feelings, so like depression and anger and confusion and things like that. And in this myth, um, you have this nymph figure who um saves a person from um, like saves a person from the Saturnine, but through this transformative process that leads her to become something like cosmic rather than individual. Oh, which is why she's burnt. Which is why she's continuously this kind of sacrificial figure, and she always dies in the course of a sacrifice, which keeps society or keeps the world going. So she's first she's burnt as a sacrifice to the goddess, later she dies as part of this huge like per purgative um kind of event, and then she kind of falls out. No, is she one is she won the elves? Is she born as an elves?

SPEAKER_02 41:07

I think so, yeah. I think so.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

I can't remember, yeah. But but she's so she's she's constantly that kind of process. So you have these two figures and they have this like clear allegorical meaning, but they keep coming back and it gives this kind of like cyclical, which is again disturbing that the female one of those figures is a constant sacrifice in every stage.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

She's just killed horribly. Um but the other one, Rooster, is quite interesting because he starts as Rooster and then he becomes Peter, and then he becomes a character called Puck. And there's also um his shadow. Well, there's a shadow boy who I think Jane actually reflects might be part of her unconsciousness.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

But it's her shadow that's taken from her to keep her trapped in the um in the fairy world. But it's called a boy, it's a shadow boy. Yeah, so okay, so the reason for this is because again in young like your shadow self is like the disavowed part of yourself, which you need to integrate yourself, and it's seen as and like this this um the kind of uh relationship is a relationship of opposites. So you have like a masculine fig a masculine self and like a feminine self and things like that. So it makes sense for the shadow to be a boy when she's feminine. And she eventually she's saved by the shadow during this like purse. Yeah. I'm not sure what the significance of that is. I never got around to looking that up, but after that, she kind of integrates it into herself by um just like sucking them up. Yeah, she's like and it's a really weird scene, and I hadn't figured out the significance of that when it first happened. I was like, wait, what this makes no sense coming out of nowhere, which is a feature of the plot. But like the allegory sometimes is so the allegory is the thing which kind of holds the elements together in a way that makes not very good. Yeah, in a way that just makes reading it as a story like really bloody confusing. It's like the closing becomes insanely odd.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

But what I was gonna say about Rooster who becomes Peter, who becomes Puck, is I think there's some layer of him being like a Peter Pan allegory because so Peter Pan, I'm pretty sure in the Peter Pan book, like crows like a rooster at certain points. Then obviously, Rooster is literally reincarnated into someone called Peter. Um, and then he becomes Puck. And Peter Pan, I guess, is this kind of puckish figure? Yeah, like puckish figure, like say a child who's travelling around really fast.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Um psychobump as well, who carries people between the world of like boring Victorian English and Neverland. Neverland, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

Yeah, like a hundred percent. Um, and I think there's this reoccurring theme of this character kind of trying and failing to grow up. So Rooster in the factory is this eternal child who's killed before he can become anything other than a child. Then you have Peter, who Jane has sex with. Um, and as soon as Peter loses his virginity, he commits suicide because he can't grow up.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

There's a really dark book. He also he also loses the woman that he loves, who's Gwen. So, like Like again, there's like the end of the future because he wants to have a future with the thing. Right, like yeah, but like what I mean is he also he wants to have a future with her, and then that future is taken away from him as well. Yeah. So again, his like growing up is like cut short.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

And then I forget actually what happens to the Puck figure, but I think Puck Elsha, he dies in the in the purge after saving Jane.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Yes, and again doesn't grow up. Um and Jane, actually, the name Jane is the name of Wendy's daughter in Peter Pan. What do you make of that?

SPEAKER_00 44:30

That's pretty interesting. I guess like Peter Pan is like this sort of figure in that he he's he and and Puck as well, and that they're both like liminal figures who like negotiate a transition between so like Peter Pan is like the dream world of Neverland and Victorian England, and then Puck is quite Jungian. Yeah, exactly. Then Puck is literally someone who carries someone between dream and waking.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

Yeah. Um and there's some weird sexual stuff going on in Peter Pan as well, potentially.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Yeah, like I think Wendy and Peter are sort of weirdly into each other, or Wendy becomes into Peter and that's why she has to go home.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

I have to admit, I've only ever watched a Disney movie and not sexy at all.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

It's also not in the pantomime, but I think it is in the Victorian novel.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

What do you mean it's not in the pantomime?

SPEAKER_02 45:19

It's not in the pantomime, we're that. Um, and I think the children.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

So I'm just imagining someone whose only literary references now are like pantomime adaptations and Disney movies. Well, Nicki, you like to say that you're very poorly read. I'm not I'm not as poorly read as that person. I can imagine what would the world even look like if that was your primary cultural reference.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

I guess this is you'd just shout things at crowds and expect them to shout back. I guess this is this is like he's behind. I guess that is like the cultural world of like the medieval peasant, isn't it? Yeah where like your exposure to literature is like folk tales, the Bibles, and like the Bible, and occasionally some like travelling player will come around and do a morality play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Um but no, going back to this book though, I did feel like the children in the factory at the beginning, I thought were representations of the lost boys. Um because I guess you've got the shadow, which obviously we know is Jane's shadow, but in Peter Pan, Peter Pan loses his shadow.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

And he can't go back to Neverland because the shadow is like pinned down somewhere. Exactly. No, he nails the shadow down to keep it still, and then he catches.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

Wendy throws it back on. That's it. That's why he takes Wendy, which is obviously again, if Jane is like this Wendy figure, that kind of plays into that. Um, and then the names of the other children, they're all called things like Toot. Um, and the Lost Boys, I think, all have names like Tootles. So I think they are the Lost Boys because they're the Lost Boys in Peter Pan are children who've like fallen out of their prams, and then Peter takes them to Neverland. And obviously, a lot of the children in the factory are children who've been stolen from our world and taken.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

Is Jane the only changeling? Is she the only changeling? The rest are all like native to the stuff. Oh, yeah, maybe they are native. And I think that makes sense, right? Because Jane is also the so Jane is like necessarily native to that one. Yeah, so like I think Jane is meant to represent the philosopher's stone who's like rescued from Negrito and brought to purification, and that's why then she makes the translation to embodied life to in like this integrative moment where she meets the goddess, and then the goddess sends her to live in her human body again. So like she's the only changeling in the factory because otherwise there'd be another philosopher's stone that wouldn't necessarily make sense. Like I don't think she meets another changeling in the entire book.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

No, maybe oh no, she does at the end, she meets like an unconscious changeling.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Oh yeah, what's his name? Rocket, who's Rooster's latest incarnation.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

His mother No, yeah, his mother. His mother, Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Yeah. But she's like someone who never I think she's someone who like never really escaped. Yeah. Because she's just been like sucked into the system and eventually kind of gave up on life. Yeah. Well, in fact, was it? Is it changelings eventually they all if they're in the fairy world for too long, they just become like catatonic.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

Because they say that that's how Jane will end up, but then she obviously doesn't because she destroys No, they say that's how Jane will end up if she goes back to her body too soon.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, um that but that I assume would be because she'd go back to her body without doing the integrative work and therefore wouldn't heal.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Yeah. But yeah, so I think there's like a Peter Pan thing going on as well, which um is kind of a fun layer to the story.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah, it is like a mishmash of like um a lot of different like legends and fables and things. And one of the things that I did really enjoy about this book is this like crazy collision of imagery, which you also get in young. I hated it. Emma likes a consistent aesthetic. I do, I do. I thought the world building in this was actually really cool.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

I thought the world building was terrible, but what I do want to say though is there was something quite refreshing about it. As much as I sort of hated this book, um, I think obviously publishing at the moment is quite homogenous. Uh, there's no way that this would be published now. And that is maybe a bit sad because it's quite nice that when was this written? This is written in oh, let me see. Oh, 1993. That's kind of newer than I thought it was gonna be. Um, but it's nice that in 1993 this man could write this insane alchemical fantasy and it would be published. Like there's something refreshing about that.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Yeah, I mean, I genuinely liked I genuinely liked it. It's well written, actually. Yeah, this prose was good. This book made me uncomfortable and didn't always provide good feelings in general. But I think like in a much more ambiguous and tortured way, I think I really enjoyed it because it is it's incredibly creative. I love the It is creative, I love the allegory side of it and like delving into the allegory and stuff like that, and this idea that's very symbolically led worlds. I like the kind of wildly experimental aspect to it. I also really liked it, it's just like a variation on the like dragon and his boy story. Because there's reading that book, reading that book, I thought it would be a standard dragon and his boy story. So Charlie's No One Special gets a dragon, goes to something special. Um, but like in this weird like industrial world, so child gets a fighter jet, goes and does something special, um, presumably bombing a load of people, which I guess Jane kind of does. Um, but but like because this dragon represents chaos and is horrible, yeah, um, and orchestrates the whole thing as well. Like you you find out that he's just been influencing her entire life through mysterious dragon, dragonish means, um, which is the way that you know, like chaos influences her. Um, the dragon represents chaos, chaos influences her entire like subconscious life. And in the end, she's kind of purged up that chaos. The dragon is destroyed while they assault the spiral castle. Um, and he falls apart around her until she's just like flying on her own through the air into the castle. Um, so it's like final purgation, leaving this pure fluster stain. But like I like the fact that it's just a version of those sorts of tropes. I read I read a review as well saying it's like the anti-pern.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Anti-pern. Kind of is the anti-pern. I preferred pen. I would also recommend Dragon Boy by Dick King Smith.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

That's a great book. Maybe we can read that next. We're not going to read that next.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Oh, please. We actually have a copy upstairs. There's nothing icky about Dragon Boy by Dick King Smith. I'm sure they're not. There's also no allegory. Um I think there were a couple of things in this that I liked. Oh, it is. Yeah. Would you like to tell us what these are? It was two minor things that I thought were very creative.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

So when they're working in the factory, um, there's something called the time clock. And I love this. Yeah. At first I thought the time clock was literally just the clock that told them when their shifts started. Nikki, let me explain. Um, but what the time clock is, is it's a clock that kind of stops them from aging or really slows down their aging while they're in the factory. So it changes time. And the only way that you can avoid the influence of the time clock is if you punch in and out with like a time card. So if you leave the factory without punching out, then all of the time that you've spent in the factory will suddenly catch up with you and you'll grow really old really fast. So there's a child at the beginning who grows wings because it's a weird book. Um turns into a stork. He turns into a stork.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

This weird like a stork life cycle where the stork brings the baby and then the baby turns into a stork or something.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Really weird. But when he turns into a stork, he tries to fly away, but he doesn't punch out and he immediately becomes an elderly stork and dies, which is horrible. But I thought the time clock was cool because I thought it was quite a good comment on I don't know, the idea of like your life being paused while you're at work and sort of capitalism. And there's another bit where he does something similar. Jane becomes really obsessed with going to the mall as a teenager, and when you're in the mall, again, time doesn't pass. No, time passes more. Time does pass because, but time doesn't pass outside. Yes. So she ages faster than her classmates because she spends too much time at the mall.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Which in fact both shoplifting and studying.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Yeah, which I guess is fine. But again, a comment maybe on capitalism and like.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

And just the experience, just the experience of being in a mall as well. Like there are these weird timeless spaces, they're like shopping channels too.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

Yeah, so I enjoyed that. I thought that was creative. And the other thing that I really liked was this weird detail that I didn't know how to make sense of at all. Um, but there's a civilization of like tiny people who the dragon observes for a really long time. And then when Jane loses her virginity, the civilization of tiny people moves inside the dragon and becomes the dragon engineers. Yes. But the civilization of tiny people have like that time moves differently for them. So Jane observes them developing their civilization from kind of a Stone Age civilization to like a technologically advanced civilization. And I've no idea why that was in the book or what it represented, but I quite like that.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Yeah, so it's when when she escapes the dragon, the dragon like crash lands in the forest somewhere, and she goes in a hut by the dragon. And then um, like the dragon is like can't move, and yeah, you've got these tiny people, and they eventually come to worship the dragon as a god. Yeah, and he drives their society to become incredibly totalitarian and militaristic, and they like develop weaponry, and at one point Jane stops getting near them because they can kill her with missiles or something, and then yeah, and then eventually they move into the dragon and they have this like horrible little dragon society. So I really enjoyed that. I thought that was like a fun detail. I guess that's that's again like a really kind of obvious way of representing how like this chaos is associated with a particular kind of like domination in society and politics.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

The dragon's a literal dragon. The dragon is a weapon that's produced out of this whole kind of situation, like he's manufactured as a weapon by a society that's represents this kind of greater state, and then he also reproduces that society in himself.

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Yeah, he's got dragonish motivations.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

Um so I like those two things. What were your favourite bits of the book?

SPEAKER_00 54:59

I actually really liked those things as well. It was so good. I love the tiny little people. Um, I think we yeah, I love the sorry, we were just looking at the time. I'm gonna just cut that out, I guess. Including what he was saying, like snapped at me when I was like, Yeah. No, it works. Yeah, like Nikki, let me explain. I'm sorry. Emma's in a bad mood because of the podcast. Um, because of the podcast. Because the book, sorry, yeah, podcast is great. We love podcasts. We love the podcast. You love the podcast. Everyone loves the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 55:28

Listen to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Um, so uh, what was it? I really like those bits. I really like the allegory. Um, I liked the gargoyles at the university.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Yeah, they were quite fun.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

Yes, they've got gargoyles sitting on the wall and um they're predators who long to eat the students, but they're not allowed to leave the walls except for in this like purge time. Um, so they go really hungry, except for occasionally they'll manage to trick a student into getting too close to the edge of the walls, and then throw the student often eat them.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

But again, there's like a really icky social dimension to the gargoyles because one of the other things they do during the purge is mate with other gargoyles.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:12

And they have to, there aren't very many female gargoyles, so all the men like chase them down. So it's it's just this thread of really horrible sexuality.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

I don't it's I I don't think the violence there is directed towards the female. I think it's more like the men all compete with one another in order to mate with the female because the females are faster fliers than the males. Yeah, that right. And they all chase the female and it like winners out the strong. So again, it's just very like, yeah, like and I guess they're made of a base matter, right? They're made of like the stain. So they're chaotic. So they're chaotic and self-destructive and all that predatory and all that kind of thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

So what would you give this book out of 10, Nikki?

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Oh, you're gonna hate me for this, but I actually really like this book. I thought it was really good for all its flaws. Maybe, maybe it's because I'm a theologian and I'm used to uh overlooking really significant flaws and things. Um I'm gonna give it the nine. I loved it.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

Nine! Oh my goodness. Um this book made me very angry and uncomfortable, but it was well written. Um, but it was also, I think it, I just don't think it works as a story, like taking the uncomfortable elements out because what it is is just layers upon layers of impenetrable allegory. And I just don't think that's a good way to write because the alchemical process is pretty obscure. Like, who is this book written for? Who's its target audience? Who's gonna enjoy this? I mean, you.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

I mean, yes, Emma, the target recipients was me. Um but how many nikkies are there in the world? Well, you went to that Dungeon Synth gate. Yeah, that was a room full of Nikki's. Yeah, probably they might all like this. But I mean, it it is weird because I also like this book made me feel deeply uncomfortable and kind of angry. And I like you, I felt like it was weirdly exploitative and like kind of yeah, and like not great in so many ways. And I don't get caught up on like demoralizing critique as important as it kind of can be. But like, yeah, I guess I also kind of enjoy stuff that makes me feel uncomfortable, so yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

We have a lot of art in our living room that Nikki's picked, and it's it makes me feel itchy. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

Well, in the words of James the Goddess, I want to be punished. What's your rating, Emma?

SPEAKER_02 58:26

So I think my rating, because he is able to write prose well, I'm gonna give it a 1.5. My god, a 1.5 Alan. 1.5 is for the tiny people because I enjoyed them.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Cool. Okay, 1.5, a tiny grade for tiny people.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Thanks for listening, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

What are we doing next week? I don't know. Maybe you should pick because you hate that not next week. Oh, I can't keep up with that.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

I think we should read Um Beauty by Sherry Tepper because that was on our list. That's a really well-known book, though.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

That's like her most famous book.

SPEAKER_02 59:03

I don't think it is, isn't it? Okay, we need to research how well known Beauty is, but Beauty has quite similar themes to this, but I think done in a non-exploitative way, so it would be quite a good counterpoint. I love that book. It's it's the only book featuring fairies that I like.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

Okay, yeah, maybe it's worth a read. All right, well, maybe Beauty next time then. Maybe Beauty next time. Or maybe not. Who knows? We should also release the episode on the ship who sang. Yeah, we should actually. So we also need to add like a bit on it because we keep promising that we're going to talk about a bit throughout the entire record death sake. Yeah, then we should. And then we just don't talk about it, and it's actually like one of the most important bits of the book.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

So But that book is less problematic than this book.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

Actually, I don't know, it's pretty problematic, the ship who sang, but no, I think the ship who sang is significantly less problematic than this because like it's much clearer that the horrible thing. It's one of those things that just because a book includes a horrible thing doesn't mean it's in favour of it. And I think the ship who sang isn't in favour of the horrible bits now.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

Yeah, whereas this, I don't think this is in favour of the horrible stuff, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 59:59

I think I don't think it's in favour of it, but it's maybe a little bit getting it. It feels it feels a bit like it's at the very least, like naive to the writer's own like inner motivation. Yeah. Which is ironic in the book about coming to consciousness through a psychological process.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

But you know, maybe maybe aren't we all in the greedy?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:20

And with that, thank you for listening to the space archive. See you guys. See you later.