Come Read With Me
or, a community readathon readalong
Well, the people have voted and so Emrys the Fool is no longer going to be serialized on substack. That does not mean that I’m done writing this novel, however. I’ll just no longer be publishing it weekly here.
I’ll be finishing the rest of the novel in private and then releasing it as a paperback when it’s finished.
This is a long series and so it will eventually be somewhere between five and ten books and possibly more than a million words long.
We’ll see.
But I like this world and I like this story and these characters, but I’ll be rewriting some things and then finishing this first book. It may come out this year. Who knows! But I’ll be sure to keep everyone up to date here.
For now, the Table of Contents will remain here and you can read the first thirty three chapters here at substack. It’s about 85,000 words, which would be, like, 300ish pages if published right now.
Table of Contents
And so what will replace these weekly posts?
Well, I have a few ideas. So this is as good a time as any to announce a few new reading projects that you all can hop along into, and even shape by voting below.
And despite explaining how these projects don’t get many readers—relatively—I can’t really stop doing them. So, I have two ideas. One is happening for sure and one is sort of up to all of you.
The first:
BERSERK
I’m going to read the manga Berserk by Kentaro Miura, who died in 2021 before finishing his dark epic fantasy. Even so, Berserk is one of the most influential, bestselling, and critically acclaimed manga ever written.
I’ve talked before, somewhere, about how I generally struggle with comics/manga and don’t often read them. In fact, I have spent most of my life not reading manga or comics. But I’ve heard so much about this from so many places that I figure 2024 may as well be the year.
My goal is to read through the whole series this year and write about each narrative Arc as I finish them. The first essay, which will serve as introduction and discussion of The Black Swordsman Arc, which is the shortest, comprising the first 3 (of 42) volumes, will be coming around the end of January.
If you don’t want to invest in the manga, you can find a fan translation by clicking on these words. It’s what I’ll be using.
I’ll also probably watch the anime from 1997 and write about it. Not sure if I’ll take a look at the other anime.
And then, the second:
Close Read/Watch
I have a few ideas here, but I’ll put them up for a vote after detailing what I have in mind.
The first option is Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. This doesn’t really require an introduction, I imagine. But I’ve been wanting to reread it again, ever since I was gifted a real fancy version, and this is a good excuse to do just that. But my goal will be to lead you through the entire trilogy, all 62 chapters, plus Appendices, with a new discussion happening each week. Once we’re through the novels, we’ll head onto the movies by Peter Jackson. Probably even a comparison between the theatrical and extended editions. Once that’s done, I’ll drag you all through the 28 chapters of The Silmarillion, which is my favorite of his books. Now, the math literate among you have done the mental calculations but for those of us counting on our fingers and toes, there are only 52 weeks in the year and I have about 100 weeks planned for this project, which means this won’t be confined to 2024. And, who knows, we may even go into the other books edited by Christopher Tolkien. Assuming this goes well, anyway.
The next option is The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. While this may require an introduction, I’ll leave that to Ursula K Le Guin who described Wolfe as “our Melville.” Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun is one of the most influential science fantasy novels and it seems to be rising in popularity in the wake of Wolfe’s death in 2019. The Book of the New Sun is a defining work in the Dying Earth genre, which was first popularized by Jack Vance. This is a slippery and deceptive and strange novel but also endlessly fascinating. Again, the goal here would be to do a chapter by chapter read through the series. Maybe even moving on to The Book of the Long Sun and the Book of the Short Sun, which I haven’t read before, making it a bit of a journey of discovery.
Next, we have Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is, perhaps, the most influential anime of the 1990s (take that, Dragonball Z!). It’s a kaiju, giant mech series about teenagers who must save the world from an unstoppable apocalypse. Along the way, things get very brutal and weird and extremely dark. The goal will be to do one episode per week. We’ll also be diving into the sequel/remake movie series that finished up a few years ago, and turn this already dark and strange tale even stranger. Maybe, even, we’ll discuss the manga. I haven’t decided yet.
I have read a lot of King Arthur stuff over the last year and I think it’s time to revisit Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. We all know who King Arthur was so I don’t think this needs an introduction, but we’ll be taking it chapter by chapter, week by week. And I’ll be your faithful and loyal guide! If this goes well, it may become a permanent feature here, since there is an inexhaustible well of Arthuria. Some written a thousand years ago and some written as recently as this year, probably. Along the way, we’d also make time for many movies and maybe even a few TV shows.
And, finally, there’s Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea series, which is one of my all time favorites. It’s beautiful and strange and wondrous and obsessed with some of my favorite themes. Along the way, we’ll probably have to read Le Guin’s version of the Tao te Ching, since I think it’s crucial to understanding the novels. Again, this would be a chapter by chapter close reading of the series and would stretch beyond this year.
Well, with all that out of the way, here’s where you can vote:
Voting will be up for one week. Once the votes are all in, I’ll make an announcement and then we’ll get started.
I’ve never done a slowread of a novel before, so I expect this to be quite interesting for all of us. I’m very excited to do a much closer read of one of these big epics.
That’s all for now! Please vote and help pick our direction for the foreseeable future!
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers
Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.
Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants
Some free books for your trouble:
Agh, why did you have to make it so hard to choose?
Seriously, though, I'd always be down for The Silmarillion.
These are all such great possibilities. It was very close, for me, between Earthsea and Book of the New Sun. But since I’m pretty sure I’ve reread Earthsea (well, the trilogy — are you going beyond that?) in the past decade, I went with Wolfe.