King's Warrior Read-Along: Chapter 19
Good afternoon, dear Reader! I’m glad to hear that y’all have been having fun with this little read-along of mine. I’m enjoying it rather immensely. A while back, my dad and sister called me to ask a question about one of my books, assuming I would know the answer off the top of my head - they were trying to remember the name of a race of creatures that appears in book 4. I could not help them without looking it up! They found this to be rather hilarious, and truthfully, it was pretty hilarious. I did have to tell them, “You’ve read the story more times than I have!”
It’s so true. As authors we write, we edit, we polish, we re-write, we edit and polish some more... but we never get to just sit down and READ what we’ve written.
Today we get to the true climax of the story - and a lot of our lingering questions about Brant get answered. A few other loose ends get tied up, as well.
“Um… well, I mean, it would make a great ballad, but it wants an ending.” Ah, Kiernan. Is he manipulating our princess a bit to keep her out of harm’s way?
“I knocked someone out with my mandolin once...” Hmmm, Kiernan, Kiernan. A teaser about Yorien’s Hand here... but you will get to see in that book that Kiernan was blatantly lying about his combat skills. Which begs the question, why does he want to stay out of this battle? Perhaps because he knows it is one Brant must fight on his own?
Brant’s diversion. I had so much fun writing this bit. I don’t even care if it doesn’t really further the plot... it was too fun to cut.
“I suppose we’ll have to thank him when this is all over,” Dylanna sighed. “Bother.” Yole’s transformation takes everyone by surprise, including Yole. And it annoys Dylanna... which makes me laugh. And with his transformation, the myth-folk enter the fray! Huzzah!
Rena. I really meant to have Kamarie be the one for whom the pipes were meant. That was my intention all along. And then I got to this bit of the story, and suddenly Rena was there, and I finally understood why she was important.
The Duel. Another one of my favorite parts of the whole book, besides Kiernan, and the Oraeyn-throwing-Kamarie-in-the-river, of course. Here we get to finally see King Seamas’ motivation, Brant’s identity revealed, and some hints about the backstory that gets far more fleshed out in Second Son.
Seamas’ death. In the original draft, before I had written Second Son, I had Seamas die without the scene of repentance in his final breaths. He was just supposed to be a villain, plain and simple. However, after writing Second Son, and growing rather unintentionally attached to my villain, I realized that there would be true Villains in this world, but Seamas wasn’t one of them. His was a far more tragic story - one that, with just a few tweaks, could have ended up being told so differently - making it all the more tragic. And so, I re-wrote this sequence and changed his final breaths to include this moment of clarity, this moment of realization of what he had done, and gave him the chance to repent. I think it made the story stronger. And, as we exit this chapter with Brant’s triumph being overshadowed by his tears, it also makes Brant’s character stronger.
Q&A
Abbey wants to know: As you are reading King’s Warrior are you able to do so without critical eye, or are you catching parts of the plot, sentences, or grammar that you wish were different?
I’ll confess, I’m not able to do that. I started reading, got about 10 pages in, and had to grab a red pen. As we’ve been reading, I’ve been noting punctuation errors, fixing places where I had missing paragraph tabs, and crossing out every extraneous “that” in the book. One of the joys of being self-published, and one of the few up-sides to not having sold a million copies... I can go “fix” things. Nothing huge, but I even found a typo a chapter back. Sigh.
Discussion Questions:
- Okay, I am DYING to know... how many of you figured out who Brant was before this chapter?
- Did Rena’s acquisition of the Dragon Pipes surprise you?
- Favorite moment in this chapter?
Have a lovely Saturday!