Ban Rona Book Club

The Hollows at Night

This week in the Ban Rona Book Club we read chapters 12-16 of The Monster in the Hollows, and saw more of the beautiful countryside I'm proud to call home. Professor Sidler and I are in one of those other houses with a lamp still burning—reading, of course. :-)

Janner didn’t realize how tired he was until his head hit the pillow. He and Kalmar had wrestled before dinner, after dinner, and after their baths, so by the time Nia finally ordered them to bed, they were both sweaty and out of breath. Janner opened one of the windows to let the cool air in, then blew out the lamp.“Kal, come look at this!” he whispered.Kalmar knelt beside Janner at the window. The stars seemed close enough to touch, and their beauty was a song in the dark silence of the sky. A night owl hooted from its perch in the tree outside the window. Somewhere in a distant pasture a donkey brayed. The window faced the field behind Chimney Hill, and beyond the fence, Janner could see a road rising and falling and twisting across the countryside, with lanes branching off and winding toward other homesteads and barns. Golden light glowed in the windows where people were still awake, reading or visiting or eating fruity desserts. The brothers knelt for a while in the quiet and looked out on the beauty of the Hollows.“It smells good here,” Kalmar said. “I can smell everything—the owl in the tree over there, the goats in the next pasture—they don’t smell so good, I guess. I can smell apple butter on the hot bread in that house across the way. I don’t know how I’m going to get to sleep.”—From chapter 16, "Podo Helmer Falls in Love."
What was your favorite Wingfeather passage this week, from these chapters or elsewhere? Share it in the comments! And check out what's happening in the forum. There are many great discussions to join, and we've saved you a seat. 

Unafraid

It is with great joy that I welcome you today to my home city, Ban Rona. We'll visit the Great Library in a few weeks—the very best place in Aerwiar! I can't wait!—but first, glory in the great peace of the city itself.

It took Janner a while to realize what was so strange about Ban Rona.As they walked the clean streets of the city, they passed wagons and clusters of people walking in conversation. Many of the houses boasted gardens in the front so that one had to pass between bright flowers and totatoes on the vine to reach the front steps. Men and women sat outside on benches, puffing pipes or munching on grapes, laughing in the cool of the night.And every house, Janner noticed, had a dog. Not just a dog, but a big dog. He could see their tails waving like flags in the windows. He saw them curled up on the landings and chasing sticks, dogs of different colors and breeds, but all of them at least twice as big as Nugget had been— before the water from the First Well, anyway. More than once, one of the dogs padded out to greet Leeli as she passed, as if they sensed in her a great store of affection with nowhere else to go.“The people aren’t afraid,” Janner said, finally realizing what was so different. “It’s after dark, the streets are full, and there are no Fangs slithering about. Everyone’s happy. I’ve never seen that before.”“It’s the way it was and the way it should be,” Artham said. “All the work has been done, dinner is on the table, and the children are alight with a final burst of energy before bed. That’s when stories get told. Look.”They passed a lawn where a fire crackled in a stone ring. A grandmother sat on a bench with a book in her lap, reading to a circle of children gathered at her feet. Whistleharp music drifted to their ears, and with it the sound of singing. Janner caught the scent of something delicious as they passed a window where a family sat around a table. It reminded Janner of the Dragon Day festival in Glipwood, where he’d seen Armulyn the Bard singing by the fire. But here, no one was afraid.—From chapter 8, "The Orchard Inn and Cookery."
What was your favorite snippet from this week's reading? Or, if you're currently reading elsewhere in the books, from whatever you read this week? Share it in the comments!This week's forum discussion includes Kalmar and the Hollowsfolk, homesickness, favorite characters, and movie casting. Come on in and enjoy the conversation. :-)

Janner and The Dark Sea of Darkness

Monster in the HollowsWelcome to the Great Library of Ban Rona! I'm Madame Sidler, the librarian, and I'm so glad to have you join us. We're just starting the third book in The Wingfeather Saga. We read chapters 1-6 this week, and it took me all of four pages to decide on an excerpt. :-)

Janner took his old friend’s arm and eased his way up the steps into the sunlight. When his eyes had adjusted, he saw the open sea for the first time since they’d set sail. He had seen the ocean from the cliffs back home, stretching out forever east, and he had seen it when they escaped the Ice Prairies, with the frozen crags at his back. But now it surrounded him. The effect was dizzying. The Dark Sea of Darkness was vast and terrible to behold; it quickened his pulse and took his breath— and he knew in an instant that he loved it.—From chapter 1, "A Smoldering Silence."
What was the best little bit of your Wingfeather reading this week? Post it in the comments!If you're new to the Ban Rona Book Club, here's an introduction to how this works—and we're happy to meet you! Please join us in the forum for hot tea, biscuits and ermentine jam, and some great discussions.

Leeli and the dragon

Oy, readers. We have made it, together, through some very hard experiences, and now we stand, together, at the end of book two. Some of the chapters we've read recently have broken my heart. I know from some forum discussion that it's not been easy on you, either. But we've made it. Next week: The Monster in the Hollows!The excerpt I picked for this week gives me glad shivers. I can see it and feel it all as it happens. Find a quiet spot, read this slowly, and then close your eyes and breathe in.

Stop!” Leeli said, and the dragon did.It froze, so close to Leeli that she could have reached out and touched the tip of its nose.And she did.For the first time in an age, someone touched a living dragon.Seawater washed down the sides of the dragon’s slick face and puddled on the deck. Its mouth, full of teeth longer than Leeli was tall, was stretched open to eat Podo whole. The old pirate knelt with his eyes closed.Janner sensed the dragon in his mind, who was speechless with surprise that this wavy-haired little creature would have such courage. The tips of her delicate fingers rested on the dragon’s nose. She looked calmly into its eyes, though they were as big as wagon wheels and deep as the sea. A little burst of air from its nose blew back her hair.It was your song that fell from the cliffs.—From chapter 63, "Hulwen's Trophy."
Which scene did you love best? Post it below! And join us in the forum for further discussion. :-) This week, we've been talking about Zibzy and other local games, and gloaning together on how to read hard stories. Look for a brand-new B-sides thread, too. (I give up. I must post spoilery excerpts somewhere!)

"Shh."

First, a bit of news: The Warden and the Wolf King is one of twelve semifinalists in this year's Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction! If you've read at least two titles on the list, you're eligible to vote, and Andrew would be honored if you chose to support his book. Semifinals close on Monday. We'll keep you updated!This week, we read chapters 53-58 of North! Or Be Eaten. There is a chapter in this section—55—which I love because it hurts. Next week (can you believe we have only one week left in this book?) begins with another chapter which I love for the same reason. While picking an excerpt this week, though, I couldn't get away from the beauty of the language in Andrew's description of the boggan ride.But if the Phoobs chapters hurt your heart, too, and you want to talk about them, meet me in the forum.

Janner and Maraly sheathed their blades and looked out at the Ice Prairies for the first time. Mog-Balgrik’s western slope was formidable, a steep sentinel warning travelers weak of spirit to keep their distance, but if the traveler braved her icy face, the reward was sweet. A long, smooth descent to the frozen desert of the Ice Prairies lay at her back, and to those like Gammon who knew where to find them, boggans hid in the snow to bear them home.Janner’s eyes watered, and the wind of their passage deafened him, but he smiled so wide that the muscles in his cheeks throbbed. The moon cooled to white as it climbed, and it lit the ice fields so that Janner could see as clearly as if it were day. For hours the three of them glided down from the mountains, faster than the fastest horse, with a plume of snow arcing behind them like a spray of water. Moonlight caught the flying snow, flashing prisms of color on the prairie surface as they passed. White mice and snow foxes, burrowed beneath the snow for the night, twitched their ears when the boggan zoomed by, thinking that perhaps the Maker had bent low to the earth and whispered, “Shh.”—From chapter 54, "The Ice Prairies."
Andrew's birthday was yesterday! We've eaten most of the cake already, but you can still sign his card. :-)And there's a brand-new feature in the forum: The "Community conversations" subforum, where you can go to talk to other Wingfeather readers about non-Wingfeather topics. Let's be friends. :-)

Beauty and rest

In the midst of exhaustion, fear, danger, and loneliness, beauty can be a refuge. Difficult things are happening to the Wingibys. The last few weeks' excerpts have been hard, and next week's is likely to be hard as well. But for now, just rest here a minute.

The hollow seemed safe enough. It was the first peaceful spot they had found in the Stony Mountains, and he hated to leave. They gathered enough sticks and scrub for a fire and settled in to cook a meal.The setting sun broke through the clouds and shot a golden beam at Mog-Balgrik. The light transformed the hideous semblance of a face and showed the peak for the ancient beauty that it was.“Look!” Maraly said.Janner pulled his gaze from the bright mountain and saw what appeared to be a cloud of yellow flower petals floating down from the slopes to the lake. Then they heard the flutter of wings and the twitter of birdsong. Thousands of yellow birds alighted on the surface of the lake, so many that it looked like the water itself had turned to gold. They sang and groomed their wings in the twilight and were visible long after night fell.“Hmph,” was all Maraly said, but Janner noticed that she wiped her eyes.The children fell asleep to the pleasant play of the birds on the water. Janner woke more than once that night to see the starlit creatures still floating on the lake, and he went back to sleep with wonder in his heart.—From chapter 52, "The Bomnubble and the Lake of Gold."
Do you have a favorite recipe from the books? Any questions burning? Visit the forum! We'd love to hang out with you.And for some great news from Andrew, here's this. :-) 

The Hag in the Burrow

Greetings from Madame Sidler! This week I read chapters 42-47 of North! Or Be Eaten. By now I suppose my fellow readers have picked up on my appreciation for creepy passages. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I enjoy creeping in secret passages. Perhaps that's why people call me creepy? Hmm. Let's not dwell on that. At any rate, here is an excellent creepy passage.

When yellow light from the strike of the match filled the chamber, Janner was so shocked by what he saw that he wouldn’t have been surprised if his heart leapt up his throat, out of his mouth, and landed with a splat on the dirt floor.Someone sat against the opposite wall, staring at him.She was dressed in rags, her skin leathery and caked with grime, and her eyes were bottomless pits set in the wrinkled landscape of her face. She looked familiar, which told Janner she must be one of the hags of Tilling Court.He dropped the match and everything went black.She laughed. It was a dry, papery laugh, a dead crackle.“Child,” she whispered.Janner was too terrified to move. He imagined her crawling toward him in jerking movements, those wide, black, spidery eyes able to see him in the dark somehow. Fangs bumped and growled in the house above. He wondered which was worse: capture by the Fangs or the wet stink of the hag in the cellar.“Child,” she whispered again, louder.Janner closed his eyes and tried to shut out the world. When he heard the woman grunt and drag herself across the floor toward him, his breaths came in short, desperate gasps. His head seemed to thicken; bright points of light danced across his eyelids.Her hand touched his foot, and Janner tried to scream, but his voice made no sound. The stars burst into fiery colors, and he had the sensation of falling slowly upward and into the dreadful, silent well of space.—From chapter 46, "The Strander Burrow."
What was your favorite passage this week—from the book club reading or anywhere else? Post it in the comments!This week in the forum, there's a new thread about songs of lament. There are also all kinds of other conversations—names, favorite characters and quotes, Andrew's sly sneakery, the First Well, and more. Feel free to strike up a conversation on any Wingfeathery topic that interests you! 

The Coffin

Dear readers, we're more than halfway through North! Or Be Eaten now, and the second half of this book contains some of my favorite passages. They're also some of the hardest passages—ones with darkness and sadness. If you're new to these books, don't lose heart. Andrew's going to put us through a lot, but he'll bring us all the way out again, too, and it will be worth it.

When Janner woke, he thought for a moment that he was dead. His eyes were open, but he could see nothing. His body ached, and his hands were so blistered that he couldn’t move his fingers. He tongued his swollen lip and tasted blood. He was in bad shape.But where was he? He lay on a hard surface, but his hands and feet weren’t bound, which was a relief. He sat up, and his forehead smashed into something hard.“Ow!” He put a hand to his forehead, forgetting the blisters on his fingers and palms. “Ow!” he said again.When the pain subsided, he found he was in a box not much wider than his shoulders and not much taller than his chest. He felt himself on the verge of panic. Janner had always been afraid of tight places, even when it was just he and Podo wrestling. Sometimes when Podo held his arms down, this same panic erupted. One moment, Janner would be laughing, and the next he lost all control and thrashed as if in a bad dream. He closed his eyes again and forced himself to breathe slowly.But he couldn’t resist the urge to push on the ceiling, just to see if it would give. He pushed, found it solid and strong, and then he lost his mind.Janner screamed and scratched at the walls and ceiling of the box, heedless of the pain in his hands or in his fingernails when they tore away. He was trapped in a dark so deep that light itself seemed never to have existed at all. He lost all sense of time. He kicked and scraped until his strength was spent and then lay there sobbing. He cried for ages, until sleep came at last, but he dreamed of a giant nothingness, an empty hole into which he tumbled and disappeared.When he woke again, he found that the box was not an awful dream but a black reality. He panicked again. He lay panting in the blackness, talking to himself, praying aloud to the Maker, accusing, pleading, screaming things that, while no one could blame poor Janner for saying them, will not be repeated here.And the Maker’s answer was a hollow silence.—From chapter 40, "The Coffin."
What did you most enjoy reading this week? The rooftop chase? The heat of the factory? The name Flavogle? Shining eyes? Or are you reading another section of the series right now? Whatever you loved best, share it in the comments!If you've got more thoughts swirling, just stop by the forum. We've got a conversation going on the Maker's silence, and there are several other great topics as well. And it's a great place to make new friends. :-) I'm glad we're reading together!  

The stories are true.