The Sad Puppies nearly broke the Hugo Awards. In fact, you could argue that they did for a time. The Sad Puppies, and the response to it, were … fraught with a lot of baggage for the sci-fi/fantasy community. It seemed no one could resist taking a side. (In fact, we couldn’t even find a good rundown to link to–every article and post we saw was biased, and usually pretty angry. You’ll have to Google it yourself.)

Craig and Kenn recently hosted Larry Correia for an Author’s Shelf episode (which was great), and they couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk to the founder of the Sad Puppies about the subject. So they invited Larry to tell his story–the how and why of the most divisive movement in recent SFF history.

The time has come! Six years ago Craig and Ryan kicked off the Legendarium podcast with a read-through of the Lord of the Rings. Now they’re back, and they’ve got Kyle and Megan in tow as well. In this episode they discuss a bit about the hobbits, the pacing, the poetry and the reasons for Gandalf’s 17-year absence. If you’re hoping to get your fix of Professor Craig, stick around, because that mostly happens toward the end. A note: If you’re looking for an in-depth discussion of the minutiae of this book, look elsewhere! But you can enjoy a discussion amongst friends loosely based around the first book of The Lord of the Rings.

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Kyle recently returned from a Disneyland trip on which he got to experience the newest Star Wars attraction: Rise of the Resistance. He, Ryan, and newcomer Mandi combine forces (haha) to try to convince Craig that Disney has gotten at least one Star Wars thing indisputably right: the theme park stuff.

Craig and Ryan welcome special guest–and Brent Weeks’s editorial and administrative assistant–Melanie Bond to discuss The Burning White, the final book in the Lightbringer series. To have even a shot at greatness, a book had better take some risks, and this one certainly did that. So, what were the risks Brent took? How did they pan out? Can an author really [redacted for spoiler reasons] and get away with it??

Giveaway rules: To enter to win a signed copy of The Burning White, simply tweet at us (@LegendariumPod) with your one-sentence, five-star review of the book. To qualify, entrant must be a U.S. resident. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 pm EST on Friday, January 24th, 2020. The winner will be selected entirely at our discretion and notified on Twitter by direct message no later than January 31st, 2020. (You must be following us on Twitter to receive a direct message.)

Craig, Ryan, and Stephanie knock out their entire Blood Mirror discussion in a single episode instead of two. Is Brent pulling too many rugs out from under our feet? Has he improved since Night Angel in his use of sex and violence? Speaking of which, let’s talk about that Author’s Note…

Here’s one of the massive solar arrays Ryan mentioned.

Blue Team is back for a quick dip back into Dresden before taking a more extended break from it for a while. But what an interesting time the Blue Team has had with it! From a “yeah I guess we’ll read this because the listeners seem to want us to” series to a “oh my word this is really really good” series, it’s been a pretty wild ride through Dresden so far. Thanks for hanging in there with us. And yes, we will finish the whole series!

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Craig, Stephanie, and Kyle are back for the final installment of our podcast series on The Hobbit. In this episode, we talk about chapters 15 through 19, including Bilbo’s theft of the Arkenstone, the Battle of the Five Armies, and the return journey home.

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Pretty much what the title says! During our latest YouTube livestream Craig, Kenn, and Megan sat down and spun the Wheel of Tangents. Megan updates the group on her progress in The Wheel of Time; Craig gives his first impressions of both N.K. Jemisin and Joe Abercrombie; and Kenn holds forth on The Mandalorian. They talked about a wide variety of subjects, obviously, but the real takeaway here, as you’ll see, is that Kenn and Megan don’t see nearly enough movies.

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Of all the authors we’ve covered on the show, whose works would we remove from existence? What takes you out of a book the quickest? How important are maps to fantasy stories? Kyle and Craig tackle these and many other burning questions on today’s Wheel of Tangents.

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The Wheel of Time is back! Craig and Kyle (and eventually Ryan) are joined by Drew and Lauren McCaffrey, Wheel of Time experts both, to spin the Wheel of Tangents–all WoT related. Together they discuss the upcoming show, tugged braids and smoothed skirts, and in-world swearing. A relaxed, wildly self-indulgent 40 minutes, but one that we hope you enjoy.

Listen to Drew on the Inking Out Loud podcast