 hob fanfic. That was nice. I like the Gilmore Girls Reunion, which I did not watch because I don't watch Gilmore Girls Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercroughby. This is now a contender. You can't even see that this is a farce of your shirt because it's way down here. Ugh, whatever. So no, I didn't post a review for Fool's Arendt, which I did read two months ago. And I am here today to talk about Golden Fool, but I'm also here to talk about Fool's Arendt, and why I didn't film a review for this, and why I want to talk about it now together. Fool's Arendt and Golden Fool are the first two books in the Tawny Man trilogy, and the Tawny Man trilogy is the third trilogy in the realm of the Elderlings, first being the Farsier trilogy, then the Lifetime Traders trilogy, and now the Tawny Man trilogy. So I'm a huge huge huge fan of the Farsier trilogy and of the Lifetime Traders trilogy. Between the two, I think my favorite is still Farsier. I think Mara, who I'm buddy reading all these books with, I think her favorite of those two was Liveship, but we both love both. We're just fans of Hob. So everyone has, and their mother has hyped Tawny Man to us, or had hyped Tawny Man to us. So I mean, I did go into Fool's Arendt with like enormously high expectations, both because I am a huge fan of Hob and I'm like, I expect you to deliver, woman. Your books are amazing, but I expect them to continue to be amazing. But then especially with the way people talk about Tawny Man, they're like, you love Farsier, you love Liveship, wait till you read Tawny Man. So I was like, all right, let's do it. And that's like never, that almost never works out. Once in a while, a book can have sky high expectations, and it can surpass them. Wisdom of Crows by Joe Abercroughby. But so I went into Fool's Arendt with sky high expectations, and I was let down. I was let down. It's not a bad book, but I was let down, both by my own expectations from Hob and also the way everyone hypes it. Like, even without all the hype, I would have been still a bit let down, but I was even more let down. Thanks to all the hype. So I went into Golden Fool with much lower expectations, but I think it's also a better book. So this is a less good book that had way bigger hype going in for me. And this I think is a better book that also had the benefit of slightly lower expectations. So the reading experience was just like kind of hugely different. This I was just like, and this I was like, okay, okay, we're back, we're back. This, this is more like it. That's very difficult to talk about series in non spoiler reviews. And it's even more difficult to talk about a series of series in a non spoiler review. I'm going to do my best. Geez, is it I guess it's technically a spoiler to even tell you what these books are about, like who they are about, because they may or may not be characters from previous books. And then if they are in these books, that means they did not die in those previous series. So if that if that's how little spoiling you want that you literally don't want to know that, then then probably don't watch this. It's impossible to talk about this book. For these books, maybe, maybe not impossible, but pretty hard. And I just want to warn you, I may say who these books are about. And if you regard that as a spoiler, again, for the aforementioned reasons, I guess all I can tell you is not so good. Excellent. So anyway, getting into it a little deeper now, still non spoiler, but you know, you know, so fools Aaron, like I said, sky high expectations, I went into this, I have come to expect from Hob books that are pretty epic and scope that span a few years oftentimes, maybe not maybe not absolutely for sure a few years, but span a larger period of time, have a lot of different characters have just sort of a lot going on. There isn't just like one one problem with that we're solving. And there's like a small group of us solving it. There's a lot of really, really great books that have exactly that structure. That doesn't mean it's a bad book. But my expectation with Hob, having read Farsier and Live Ship, and especially because Live Ship did even more than Farsier. So like that seemed to be the direction we're going like with with Farsier, we just had the one perspective, but we still had a ton going on in a lot of years passing with that one perspective. Live Ship had just as many things going on, but for multiple different characters and you're following all of them and they all have about as much going on for them as Fitz Farsier did in the original trilogy. So this is what I'm expecting. Come to read Fool's errand. And it's this very, very now narrowed in scope small story relative. It's not it's not tiny. Like there are pretty big stakes for what's happening in it. But it's it's a much tighter smaller story that takes place over a much shorter period of time. It feels more like Adventure of the Week. And again, Adventure of the Week, there's nothing wrong with that. But when your expectation going into a book is, I mean, it's like going into a Marvel movie, and then actually getting just like a slice of a slice of life comedy. And a slice of life comedy can be your favorite movie of all time. But if you were expecting Marvel, if you were expecting something bigger and more epic, then you will be let down by that. So that is certainly a big part of why Fool's errand was a big let down for me, because I was just like, I mean, this is fine. This is good. Like it's not a bad book, like it's hot. It's really well done. But it's just it's so it's so small. You know, I just I expect bigger things. I came into this prepared for like, you know, world ending stakes, or if not world ending, I mean, still, you know, that, you know, cities and nations are are in question. And many, many lives are at stake, etc, etc. And again, that's, that's just not what this book is. And that doesn't mean that every book has to be that. I think I'm repeating myself. But I think you get what I mean, like, expectation is a huge piece of how a book will affect you and how you will experience it. That said, even if I was to like rewind time and be fully briefed on the fact that this book would be much smaller in scope and smaller and in a shorter timeline, etc, etc. I still I think would find a disappointing partly because of the smaller scope. But it's just, it feels like a prologue, which is which brings me to why I'm talking about them together today. Because thinking of fool's errand, not as a book, but as a prologue to the golden fool. And honestly, I think me and Mara are reading these every other month. And that's just, you know, a pace that works for us. But I sincerely would recommend reading these back to back, because that's what fool's errand reads like. So it's not just the smallest of scope, but it's sort of a, I mean, there is payoff to what is set up as the problem resolution to that. But it just feels like, feels like, okay, the previous series, we were over in Bingtown, we were over there with the live ship traders, we were doing all of that. So now we need to reorient you to buckkeep, we need to reorient you to the six Dutchies, we need to reorient you to Fitzchivalry Farsier and the fool. That's who this is about. And it feels like the fool's errand is just doing the work of that. It's being like, meanwhile, in the six Dutchies, here's what Fitz has been up to. Here's sort of where he's at in life. Here's his mental state, his emotional state. Here's how the, how the crew that you remember from Farsier, here's how they're all doing let's check in. And then here is our, a problem that brings us all back together again, that we're gonna have to solve. And it feels, feels like the reunion, you know, these reunions that we're seeing, you know, like on Netflix and on other network television, you know, like the Gilmore Girls reunion, which I did not watch because I don't watch Gilmore Girls. Friends reunion didn't watch, don't watch friends. I'm realizing that there are a bunch of these reunions and I haven't actually seen any of them, so I don't actually know that this is what this feels like, but this is what I imagine that would feel like. It's like time has moved on and now we're gonna do like a montage of like finding the crew again, you know, being like, go to the scene where, you know, the old team, here's this guy, here's guy A from the team. What have you been doing? Oh, you know, he's got a wife and kids now. Well, we, the crew needs you again for whatever. And then you go to guy B, what he's up to his new job, desk job, you hate your job, come join us. We've got another adventure we need to go on and every, we slowly gather everybody together. We catch up on what everybody's done in the interim and we're like, okay, the team has reassembled and now we're gonna do another adventure. I was really wrong with that. It just, it kind of felt fan fiction-y to me or fan service-y. I don't know how else to explain it and it's hob so it's still executed brilliantly well but it still felt like hob fanfic where we're like, oh, but what if there was more stories about Fitz and the Fool and we're like, you know, trying to, trying to capture the same feeling that we had for the original. I momentarily was distracted because I actually read the back of Wilden Fool and please don't ever read the back of Wilden Fool. I think actually someone did tell me this. I think someone told me before me and Mara started Tawny Man to never read the back of these books because I spoiled the whole book and Jesus Christ, it really truly does. I was like, you're making this sound like this is the setup for the book when in fact, like the last thing that it says on the back of the book is kind of where this book leaves off. It's like a reveal that happens in the book and is left hanging in the book and it's just on the back of the book. Oh my god, who wrote these? Don't read the back of these books. I'm passing that along. Don't do it. Okay, so anyway, yeah. So yeah, it feels like it's trying to sort of like recapture the vibe and be like, you know, come on back into the headspace of like farce your days. Yeah, these people, I know you, you're that guy. There's Night Eyes. Yay. I felt like it was good and I like farce your and I like those characters. So I was like happy to be with them. You know, it's like in Fantastic Beasts when they go back to Hogwarts and you're like, but it's like not the same though. So any of these. So Golden Fool is actually properly, okay, now we're doing something with this. Now we're in a story. Now there's like lots of stakes, lots of stuff going on. There's more time that passes. There's more threads that are being woven into this more sort of like larger world questions being woven into the situation. It's not just like this little adventure of the week. That adventure of the week has affected what's happening here. So it was important to know it. But it's sort of the four reading Connie Mann. Again, Mara and I were both advised that we should read the Willful Princess and the Pie of Old Prince, which is a novella that takes place. What does it matter when it takes place? But the events of that novella are important context for this trilogy. So I do definitely recommend reading that first. But Full's Arendt feels a little bit like Willful Princess and the Pie of Old Prince. It is not properly a beginning to this trilogy. It feels like setup and context for what is now properly going to be the story starting with the Golden Fool. So this is really good. I gave it four stars, I think, because I was like, like it's still great because Hobb is great. But like Golden Fool, so good. We're back. This is it. Yes. I'm so excited to see where this goes. I have so many, because I didn't come away from Full's Arendt. I mean, when I think about it, I did actually have questions after, but it wasn't that same feeling of finishing a Hobb book and being like, I have so many questions about this world and about these characters and what's really going on with this and where this is going to go and what all this means and how that's going to shake out and are they going to find this out or is that secret going to be revealed? Like I have that's how I usually feel when I'm in a Hobb book and finishing Full's Arendt. Like, again, if I think about it, I mean, yeah, I did leave some questions, but it wasn't that feeling of like, I'm filled with questions. I finished Golden Fool and I immediately wanted to read one over and the third one is Full's Face. And I did not feel, even though I recommend reading these back to back, I did not feel that way of finishing Full's Arendt. I was like, and I'm guessing this is going to go somewhere in the next book. But like, right now, I'm just like, okay, that was nice. I want to be clear when I say that was nice. I mean, Full's Arendt is a Hobb. So there's definitely some sad and tragic and dark and heavy things going on. It's not like a happy book. Like, it's not. But it's still because it's so much smaller in scope that it feels more like, well, that was a nice Hobb story. I didn't feel this like, huge investment and yearning to read on. So anyway, yeah, reading Full's Arendt, I was like, okay, yeah, like, I'm excited to read more because I'm always excited to read Hobb. But like, I wasn't just like, I must read on. Whereas Golden Fool, I finished it, and I was like, we've agreed every other month, so I can't read Full's Fate until two months from now. But I would immediately start this if I could or start the next one if I could. So I do think to get satisfaction on a Full's Arendt, you need to view it as a prologue to the Golden Fool. And read them back to back. Read this as one book, basically. Functionally, it feels like one book with just a very extended prologue. So yeah, I mean, am I a fan of Hobb still? Absolutely. Am I becoming a fan of the Tawnyman trilogy? Yes, when I read Finish Golden Fool, I was like, okay, I think I mean, I'm seeing why people hype Tawnyman. I don't know if I can say that I like it better than the original trilogy yet, or even better than Live Ship yet, I get to see where this goes. But I'm like, okay, this is something now. This is now a contender. So yeah, I would I would have wanted to know that before picking this up instead of going in overhyped. So to be clear, super great, love hop, want to read on, and both great books, but Golden Fool is like where the story really starts, in my opinion. Let me know in the comments down below if you've read these books, if you want to read these books, if you plan to read these books, if you hate these books, whatever, let me know. Episode videos on Saturdays, other random times as well, but definitely Saturdays, so like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined, and I'll see you when I see you.