I really see her as being perfectly fine with murdering a few thousand people. If so, that meant she might have just taken a few into the hill to sleep and cut the others loose–or killed them, maybe to fuel her spell, maybe just to tidy up and not leave any loose ends lying around. Still, she may have had a larger population to work with.

She also had centuries to play with, so maybe she was OK with a building project that might have taken human lifetimes to complete. Although, the Pale Queen was a (literal) slave driver. 300 near immortals? How many millennia would that be?īut, however they did it, it seemed like it would take more than a few dozen people to build that wall and those towers, even with shapeshifter strength. I mean, Egypt is supposed to have had less than 200 pharaohs in 2500 years, and those guys only had a human lifetime to play with. I was thinking there could have been 299/303 queens before her in the tribe, but it seemed unlikely. I know it said she’d taken over the locals, then gone back and dealt with her tribe. It seemed like I had to be misunderstanding something, even if a lot of the workers were had shifters’ superhuman strength. I spent a lot of that part of the story trying to reconcile the apparent size and the population of workers. The Pale Queen spared a few because she wasn’t going into this new world without servants, but the rest were dead. I’d guess there’s a reason why tribes of horned shifters aren’t a big part of North American folklore. So, why were so few left by the time Kate and Curran went after her? Well, the spell she cast probably required a lot of power, and the Pale Queen isn’t above killing her people to fuel her spells. My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that, back in the Ice Age, she had a lot more people, enough to build her fortress and to make something that big practical. It seems like it would have taken a lot of people to build this, but the Pale Queen only had a handful of followers. The one thing this brings home is how big it is compared to the number of people. Is it an imperfect square because the geography made that shape better or because close enough was good/effective enough or was it deliberate? If deliberate, why? Or maybe it’s one tower per god, or something else entirely. Do the towers line up with certain phases of the sun and moon like some other examples of ancient architecture? Maybe 299 (or 303) queens preceded the Pale Queen and there’s one tower for each of them. But, that still doesn’t necessarily mean anything. That would also be 12 x 25, with 12 being significant as the number of moons/months in a normal year and 25 being five (the number of fingers on a human hand) five times. If it’s 76 towers per wall with a corner tower that gets counted twice, that’s 300 total towers, which makes a bit more sense from a human POV. I am now not only unashamedly a milk-chocolate lover, but there are some semi-sweet and even darkish chocolates here in Europe that I have learned to love. Because, y’know, REAL chocolate lovers all like almost pure cacao.

It was the first time any Chocolatier (and the store did make its own) had ever told me that it was ok to prefer milk chocolate. She said “so you’re a milk person?” And I said yes, and she said “that’s ok!” And showed me some milk chocolate that I bought. I had dealt with Chocolate People before, and very apologetically said that it was “a bit strong” for me. They might be Me now.Īnyway, I was checking out the chocolate when the lovely lady who worked there offered me a piece of something dark, which I tried out of politeness. Or weren’t Me when I worked in Baltimore. It is, to date, my favorite store, even if their shoes weren’t Me. There is a small store on The Avenue in Baltimore called Mon Petit Shoe.

You can listen to samples here.Īnd now, as a thank you for your patience, the promised suprise treat House Andrews generously wrote for us, because we all wanted to follow Kate and Luther as they went through the treasures of the Pale Queen at the end of Magic Claims. Hilary Huber will be reading Kate’s chapters (and Conlan in Magic Tides- her Conlan is actually my favourite), and those of you who are Graphic Audio fans might recognise Michael Glenn reprising his role as Curran. The overal duration of the audiobook is 12 hours and 21 minutes- plenty to devour! There will be 2 narrators, for Kate and Curran’s POVs respectively. Fingers crossed you nab a spot at the front of the loan queue! The Wilmington Years bundle is also available to libraries, so get on the Libby app and recommend away. Please check your favourite audio retailer catalogue, whether in the US or internationally, even if we haven’t included them above. Dreamscape is now the distribution partner for House Andrews’ self-published audiobooks- this means that their audiobooks have a wider availability than ever.

Jenn im audible