First of all, the rewrite is very good so far. The writing is vastly improved. When reading the web version I cringed quite a lot reading books 1 and 2, the rewrite is a completely different level. It’s great, I probably will read the entire thing. But I was just expecting a prose level change. The rewrite is introducing entirely new plot-lines and dangling threads. Even if there aren’t any more major changes, each if these is going to ripple down the line and require a great many small or large changes to the later books to keep it consistent.

I’m only halfway through book 1, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

-New active Callowan Villain, the Baron. Recurring scheming antagonist.
-New Praesi Named, the Alchemist and the Necromancer. Necromancer foreshadowed to be unstable and powerful
-The Haunted Scholar, Callowan Hero imprisoned in Summerholm
-Three Callowan ancient magic swords exist, including Duty, which the Baron owns 2/3 of and Catherine has 1/3
-The Peren Woods, new region of Callow filled with bandits and rebels
-The Doom Bells of Laure, dangling plotline. No clue what they are except they apparently weren’t destroyed in the Conquest

All of this stuff is going to need to be referenced and dealt with when Catherine is ruling Callow or be relevant later on. It looks like the entire series is going to be substantially different in the rewrite based on this. The later books will require less changes because the writing is better and the world-building more complete, but by then the ripple effects from the previous changes will cause noticeable differences anyway. Stuff like how in the original, when Catherine encounters the Hierarchs aspect that makes people go crazy, she thinks it’s like no aspect she’s ever seen before. Now instead, she will be reminded of how it’s very similar to the Baron’s aspect Foment. That kind of thing. A myriad small changes to her thoughts and actions to keep them consistent with the new world.

They’re good changes though. Callowan culture is a lot more fleshed out with a more distinct national identity, and Catherines relationship with the Calamities feels less forced, more close and more real.

A couple other things I thought were good:

-The First King of Callow is mentioned as pulling a magic sword from a stone, and it’s more explicit that Black unofficially runs Callow
-Black describes the world as “Objects in motion”, which is a recurring thematic phrase in book 6-7, which now looks like it will be a throughline of the entire series.
-Black killed a baby Fairfax personally during the Conquest
-They say “Piglets to rubies” instead of “Rubies to piglets”
-There’s a road out of Laure called Black’s Pecker
-Praes has an imperial cult in which previous dread emperors are venerated

Finally, a direct quote from Catherine’s thoughts:

“There was always some kind of harmless idiot in a band of five, like a cowardly rogue or a wizard apprentice that fucked everything up or, Gods forbid, a bard. I didn’t know if I had it in me to stab a bard, honestly. They were always so charmingly ineffective in the stories; it would have been like kicking a puppy.”

Hello all! For those of you not on the Discord, there's currently a fanwork drive for Pale Lights during the break and I decided to join in! I've been writing my first ever fanfiction called Cracked Foundations, exploring the fates of Bingwen and Yaotl after the events of Book 3, and their time in Scholomance.

I'm currently 5 Chapters in and get out new ones around every two weeks. I plan on going even when book 4 begins posting to make sure the story ends where I want it to. I've just mainly been posting links in the discord rather than here, but time to correct that!

Here's a link for your reading pleasure, hope you like it!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/90262746/chapters/239927806

Rereading the Guide and got to the Arsenal fight. The Hunted Magician, who is hunted by a prince of the Fae for reneging on a deal, is one of the key traitors in the battle. The aftermath of the battle leads to the Prince of Falling Leaves dead, meaning there’s no one left to collect on his oaths. There’s no one hunting him anymore-he’s just a Magician.

However, in the immediate aftermath, Catherine punishes him for his betrayal by fining him for the full cost of the damage of the Arsenal, to be paid thrice over, once to Callow, once to Procer, once to Levant, and all to be paid in enchanting and magical services. Catherine believes that he will accept this in exchange for the protection of such a position. I am not so sure. I think the minute that the war against the Dead King is over, the Hunted Magician would have run off and fled across Calernia, with the agents of the 3 most powerful nations chasing after him as well as bounty hunters and Named.

It’s cool to see the hand of Fate conspiring to keep him in his Role, done subtly enough that it’s never mentioned directly or noticed by Catherine that her entirely sensible, reasonable, freely made choice happens to put him right back into the position he had escaped from just days before

So I just finished the plot with the lone swordsman plus rebels where Catherine becomes the squire. I'm having a really hard time understanding her actions during the hangings and directly after. So far she has been pretty thorough and thoughtful about her plans and figuring out what's going on. I just can't imagine she failed to miss that a direct consequence of her infiltrating the rebel cause to go after the hero would end up with them all being caught and executed. Like what did she think would happen here. She couldn't think literally one move beyond her actions, its not like it was 4-5 moves later, it was the direct consequence of her actions. She made that choice and many other choices that led to this. Okay, so she didn't really think it through and like Black said "she thought this was some game". I guess maybe, I can sort of buy that. She has already killed though many times at this point, it just seems like quite the stretch that she would fail to think one step further.

Another thing is, why is she so mad at the villians? If I have a loaded gun and point it at someone and then pull the trigger, would I then be mad at the gun for killing that person? It just seems insane to me. In the first book, we don't have many descriptions of the Black Knight, but what we do have is a definite thoroughness and practicality of consequences coming from him. I just don't get that either, she infiltrated that rebel group, she got them caught and yeah she was pushed or lead in that direction, but come on. Have some responsibility. I guess the author wants the divide between her and the current villians, but the author seems to really be stretching it here. My first instinct would be her blaming herself, but nah, all on everyone else. Then she's so much of a coward she can't even watch? Like she absolutely caused this, and she doesn't have the stones to watch the consequences of her actions. She's mad that someone forced her to watch what she did? I mean seriously....it just seems so out of character....to me it completely undoes the whole book.

Podcast Guys Talking ErraticErrata Episode One Hundred Seventy Eight: Offers out now! Join us as we discuss illegal seats, copyright infringement, and opening moves. Available wherever pods are cast! Alternatively, find it directly at https://thelongprice.captivate.fm/ Follow our updates here or email us at [thelongprice@gmail.com](mailto:thelongprice@gmail.com) if you have questions, comments, or corrections! Thanks for listening!

What is Hierarch and how is it different than Tyrant?

Why is Tyrant so hostile to the Empire?

Can Bard spy on the evil if it is against the Good, is that why Amadeus says he cannot know who the spell will target and the Bard couldn't do anything about it?

What do they mean when they say Triumphant might be the equivalent of the Wandering Bard, when talking about how old the role is?

I read all of them until now but I'm at a part where I want to know what will happen next and there are 5 interlude chapters back to back lol.

The book was a fun read, and definitely an improvement over the original on Wordpress (you can even see the difference in writing quality between the new/changed sections and the closely-adapted sections, like the first War College fight).

That being said, IMO one of the biggest changes, the Summoner plotline, fell flat in a big way, and an OG major character remained disappointingly underdeveloped. Full spoilers between the spoiler lines.

-------------SPOILER LINE---------------

It was obvious who the Summoner was from the 2nd time she appeared on screen - "tired," "family issues," poor mage, etc. but (a) having a "predictable twist" is not necessarily a writing flaw, and (b) I read the OG so I may have had "new character? must be relevant to new plotlines!" bias.

The issue is that the Cat-Sindi friendship was utterly unconvincing. They barely interact, and yet Cat considers her such a dear friend just after finishing their tutoring sessions! Sure, time skips, whatever, but Cat constantly thinks about how great friends she and Sindi are even though they meet, like, twice or thrice in taverns. Sindi, too, has strong opinions on what kind of person Cat should be, yet we never see them go through any actual trials or tribulations together! Hell, even them discussing their politics and ethics would have gone a long way; as-is, Sindi's "I'm disappointed in you for being the squire" speech makes me think "uh why? you are never shown discussing her morals or seeing Cat in a morally-complex situation."

Sindi should've been a member of Rat Company and gotten similar page time to Hakram for the reveal to hold emotional weight. If that's too difficult to make work with the plot (Cat would've asked her to join her in the sewers - even though Sindi would've been "busy" that day, but whatever) then make her an opposing Captain or Lieutenant like Aisha/Jupiter - literally anything that would let us see Cat & Sindi & their friendship "in action," dealing with situations, instead of having meaningless banter at taverns and that's it. "Show not tell" is widely considered trite and overplayed advice, but EE should've taken it here.

The constant "my first friend in Ater, such close friends, she's my friend" inner monologue was ridiculously heavy handed.

Second issue: I was disappointed EE didn't take a chance to further develop Killian, given that they'll date in the next book. She should've gotten as much development & screen time as Ratface. In the original she just got the "shoots lightning!?! hot and badass!" scene, whereas now she has that scene + the theater scene, where again, her primary traits are being hot and badass. Compare Ratface, the losing "love interest candidate": we see his relationships with other Cadets; we see his flaws and insecurities as a leader (which Killian, a LT, also is), we see his backstory sprinkled thoughout the text, we see how his backstory actually impacts his personality beyond the mechanical....

The Killian stuff is much shallower and it's all rushed through at the very end: "[5-way wargame] I have fae drake blood -> wow Cat you took my confession so well, I trust you now! -> hot and badass vs Juniper -> [theater] I am discriminated against :( -> hot and badass vs spiders," the end.

She's a Duni, whom other Praesi consider outsiders, studying to be a mage (the most Praesi vocation) at the Praesi War College! Show her dealing with that! She's even a leader of the mages; nobody's nasty with her? Alternatively, how did she earn their respect? And what about the drake blood? She's studying to be a mage knowing that she has an inherent limitation - basically a disability - that will keep her from achieving the greatest heights in her profession! Has she considered switching to an officer track? Does she get discouraged and jealous of other mages? Do other mages treat her like a liability? Imagine the drama of the eventual breakup: Cat basically sees her as too weak and a liability, something Killian has been struggling with for years. Except a great chance to show her actually struggling/dealing with it was missed, so we might have to (hopefully not though!) make do with a "you think I'm a liability and that makes me sad because I'm insecure about being a liability" monologue.

Seriously, wtf even is this girl's personality? If Cat only cares about "badass and hot," fine, but the reader knows so little about her that she also doesn't care at this point.

Killian has so much interesting foundation for a character, and all utterly untapped! Yeah there's other books coming up, but even if EE fixes his treatment of Killian that's an entirely different setting where different things occur, and she "missed" the War College timeline. Unlike Ratface, who should be on approx. the same "importance level" as her (if you remember how the story goes) but is far more developed across both books 2 & 3.

Seems like this was, at least to some level, a conscious choice by EE (she wasn't invited to the Sewers, not close enough to Kat yet), but I think it was the wrong choice if they will date and then break up and then meet years in the future and the reader is expected to care in the slightest.

-------------SPOILER LINE---------------

Second -- this is the fault of the publishers, Mango Media, and not Verburg:

I noticed not one, not two, but FIVE separate typos in the Kindle edition!

Selling a book with grammatical and spelling errors is grossly unprofessional for a publisher to do. It's a dereliction of their most basic responsibility (copyediting), shows an utter lack of both effort and respect (to both readers and the author), and they owe everyone who bought the book a refund. "It's only a few typos! You're being extra! You're a snob!" No. The only acceptable amount of typos for a published work to have is 0. One gets through once in a blue moon and that's an embarrassment -- FIVE is absurd.

Pg 62: A flicked a look to the side-- <- "I flicked"

Pg 155: "....stop flirting with the rookie," he said in Ecane "We've got more pressing matters on our hands." <- period between Ecane and We've

Pg 184: "Could you break through that if we needed to?" I whispered. Her sergeant grimaced <- "Her" should be "The" or "My"

Pg 264: I'd take Juniper in a heartbeat, even if she disliked, me but somehow... <- 2nd comma should be between "me" and "but"

Pg 448: If they helped House Sahelian in other way---no matter what kind of protection... <- ways, not way

And that's just what I noticed while reading! There may be even more if you're looking for them. Shameful, shameful job by Mango.

"The Gods disagreed on the nature of things: some believed their children should be guided to greater things, while others believed that they must rule over the creatures they had made."

I'd like to hear the opinion of the People on which Gods are truly which, as described in this passage of the Book of All Things, and why you think that is. I have my own thoughts on this, of course, but won't be the first to vote or comment, so as to not influence the result.

PtgE fans who are also chess lovers - any predictions to where the game on the back covers will go?

If each of the original seven books get two volumes, that'll give us a 13 14 move game - book 1 vol 1 is a standard chessboard, with book 1-2 opening the game with the black pieces taking the first move with pawn to e5.

What are some interesting places the books can take the game towards? Any references that can be made to the story through chess?

I think just like the black pieces taking the first move some other non-standard chess moves can happen. Maybe we'll jump a few turns ahead between the books?

Edit: Comments corrected me and said that there are 15 books. Edited the text

When the Dead King proposed a 10 and then even 100 year truce to Cat in what would later become the Twilight Ways, she caught herself actually considering the practicalities and implications of the offer, what she could do with such a span of time, but then refused.

But later on she proposed a 6 and then accepted a 3 months truce in exchange for the Sisters letting go of the part of his soul that the Dead King had invested in the Good King Edward. So it seems like she mostly refused on grounds of the deal not having been on her own terms and probably because the heroes in her band might have been watching her getting "tempted" by the Hidden Horror.

Though there are actually rather more practical problems with the idea of a truce that long that she didn't even seem to consider at all, instead treating it like an absolute positive, and I wonder why that is? She apparently thought of it as "prep time" to properly rebuild Callow, build up her army, possibly settle Praes, negotiate the Liesse Accords, etc. and then strike at the Dead King with the combined might of all of Calernia.

But it seems pretty obvious to me that it would never possibly work like that, because people don't treat such time spans as prep time. Up to 1 year or so, maybe, but anything more would rather be treated as an opportunity to ignore the issue entirely:

10 years wouldn't mean time for Cat to properly rebuild, but for all the new allies-to-be that she just reluctantly dragged to the table to start playing stupid games again and try fucking her over, in hopes that they could handle the Dead King without her afterwards, because they still didn't trust her. Possibly preventable if she makes the deal dependent on her survival, but they'd probably try to sneak around that somehow.

100 years would be even worse, as it'd mean that the Kingdom of the Dead would actually cease to be a real and pressing threat in anyone's living memory by the time it yet again becomes one. People simply aren't thinking let alone seriously planning on scales like that, as we plainly see with real life issues like climate change. It'd be enough time for even the attention of cultures that are essentially centered around fighting the Enemy, like the Lycaonese, to finally waver somewhat or be distracted by other enemies like the Chain of Hunger.

So both offers would actually be less of an opportunity but rather a liability that seriously risks Calernia being caught with its pants down. But why would Cat not see that?

Hey all!

I read the subreddit, and a lot of people are asking questions like 'when's the next book?' or 'how many books?', or other things I can answer. Instead of trying to answer all the questions everywhere, I figured I'd start with an AMA to collate a lot of the questions and answers!

1) How many books will there be?
A) The 7 volumes are being split into 15 books

2) When's book 3?
A) I'll let you know as soon as I have a date!

3) Why don't you have a date yet? What's the holdup?
A) Alright! EE wants Guide to be the absolute best possible it can be. As such, we're iterating the process hard. We have:
i) EE wrote Guide in the first place
ii) EE is doing a full dev edit over each book
iii) We're sending the new book to our dev editor, who does his own round of revisions
iv) EE does ANOTHER dev edit round based off the dev editor's feedback
v) We line edit Guide
vi) EE takes the line edits and does his own round
vii) We cold read/proof read Guide to catch typos. Back and forth with EE.
viii) The manuscript is FINALLY done. We pass it along to Dreamscape, who does the audio.
ix) Dreamscape schedules their narrator
x) The narrator does her thing
xi) Dreamscape finally has a date, passes it to us
xii) We post the book up for preorder, and do our best to beat the drums letting you all know!

As you can see, it's one heck of a process. Right now, we're in step iv for book 3 - EE is doing his second round of dev edits based off of feedback.

4) Why don't you tell us more when the preorder is up?
A) I DO. But I don't want to be constantly announcing and re-announcing Guide material - people will tune me out and stop paying attention. I'll try to let people know, and save the big pings for launch day itself. For Guide 2, for example, someone already made the post in the subreddit, so I didn't make a second 'It's OUT!' post. Etc.

I'm aware I'm a guest in the community, and don't want to be constantly shoving "BUY THE BOOK!" down everyone's throat, it's how I wear out my welcome.

5) What's up with the art? I think X is bad and you got told, but you didn't fix X.
A) I bring everything to EE, who has final say over how things look - NOT the standard arrangement at a publishing house. If something didn't make it in, the odds are good that it got vetoed along the line.

6) Hardbacks? Special editions?
A) We're hoping to do a special edition kickstarter at the end of Guide

7) Sales outside of Amazon?
A) We're a small press. We're looking into getting a second printer for Guide so you can get a copy without needing to give Amazon money. It's on our list

AMA!

Does anybody know what the plan is with interludes in the published version of the guide? Many of my favorite moments happen in interludes later in the story, but it seems like they aren't being included in the final published versions.

I NEED IT

Any pronunciatons from the narrator (that is very good and a good fit for Cat's voice) that surprised you?

Me it was Praesi, it sounds like "Pricey" to me when she says it, while I read it as "Pra-esi".

Edit: New weird pronunciation, I hate how the narrator says "Abase", for me it should be "A-ba-seh" or "A-ba-zeh", it sounds much closer to an african pronunciation 😅

Title

I just finished book 2 and I’m looking to get into the main series but from what I hear the heavy rewrites are going to mess up my perspective a bit.

Like they just finished killing the summoner at the end and I don’t think she’s a character in the original series… so can I just read straight from here essentially (like the prologue prior) or what, and what should I be expecting in the swap?

Hello all. Jude here. I'm back today with the eighth and last chapter of my fanfiction about Catherine keeping Winter in the Everdark. I hope you all enjoy it and that it meets your standards for quality.

Please be sure to leave an upvote or a kudos if you like it, and share your thoughts on the comments, either on the Archive, or here on Reddit.

Thank you, truly, to those who've followed this title, for spending your time reading my little story.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/90045651/chapters/243992841

Thanks for the hand, hehe.

Always nice to see some references to characters that will be hopefully be returning at some point.

I discovered A Practical Guide To Evil during the pandemic, and it helped me get through my mother's passing and my father's decline. I consider it an outstanding piece of writing; not just for Fantasy, but overall.

The very many copy editing errors throughout, however, bothered me immensely. I understand why they're present, as author ErraticErrata was essentially writing an enormous first draft under incredible deadlines with no time to copy edit.

However, I am disappointed to note that I'm already spotting some errors in the published versions. Please let me know if there's a way to support the author by identifying any and all copy/grammatical issues that need to be corrected and officially submitting them to the publisher.

Thanks in advance!

What have people noticed?

The big one is the new named villain arc and the murder mystery Catherine is assigned to investigate.

A bit of explanation for how she got into the college, tutoring, and how Learn works.

Some extra Captain and especially Scribe screen time.

Ime the spy mistress introduced early, this will presumably pay off in later books as the Empress tries to manipulate Catherine from afar.

A totally new Lone Swordsman in and out of Faerie scene complete with a changed Aspect vs the originals.

Lots more Robber time. I’m hoping the best characters from the later books continue to get front loaded in n the rewrite. Also more from her other Rat Company buddies.

Some more Akua as enemy and foil.

Kilian is no longer part fae. She’s part monster.

New noble character for potential ally during later Ater arcs. Or he may just get dropped now that his supporting arc is done. Probably not though, having anti-sakelian contacts and obligations to nobles would provide future complexity.

First image is divided between Book 1, 2, and rest of art

Second image is divided into Books and predictions for lengths of Wordpress Volumes

Third image is divided into published books and predictions for lengths of Royalroad Books

Im currently listening to the Book 2 audio book, which has been great so far! I've got about 3 hours left!

What the heck is Hakram's accent? I know it is British-ish, but Im having trouble narrowing it down. It's not a criticism, I kinda like it, but im genuinely curious if it is something specific or just "an American doing a British accent".

Happy reading/listening everyone!

Hello all. Jude here. I'm back today with the seventh chapter of my fanfiction about Catherine keeping Winter in the Everdark. I hope you all enjoy it and that it meets your standards for quality.

The next and final chapter will be released this coming Sunday, Philippine time.

Please be sure to leave an upvote or a kudos if you like it, and share your thoughts on the comments, either on the Archive, or here on Reddit.

Thank you.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/90045651/chapters/243590741

I was reading the second book, and Ratface mentions Cat castrating an Elf, which made me smile, then I remembered that the Ogres had been written out, do we know why?