Hello and welcome to the podcast, the one true chapter by chapter podcast going through us on the Vicer Pire, one chapter week.

I'm your host, Jeff, better knows for Debbie Fish.

And I'm your other host, Emmett, better known as Poor Quentin.

And welcome to the 72nd, wow, 72nd episodes of the Nauticast entitled Bride of Fire.

An analysis of a Game of Thrones, DeNaris 10, in which an exiled widow teenager stranded

in a wasteland is reborn as the mother of dragons. Now, that's how you end a book. And wow,

I can't believe we are ending our first book on this Nauticast

journey, just a hair short of 20 months after we started our little journey together.

It's been a great year and a half. I was so looking forward to doing this podcast with you

when you first approached me with the idea and I've had even more fun doing it than I expected to.

And yeah, this really is how you end a book. As we said last week, when we did Caton 11 with Stephen Atwell,

one of the many reasons this book did so well and spawned such a successful series

is just the knockout punch it leaves you with at the end.

Even more than Rob becoming king in the north,

or Tyrion becoming the new hand of the king or John going beyond the wall. This is the chapter that leaves you going, wow, where is the next book?

Shut up and take my money.

I need it in my hands immediately.

You need to see where this goes because this chapter, it just completely changes our understanding

of what the story is about and where it's going.

As we've gotten close to this chapter, I've seen a lot of people say online, and this is a sentiment I've heard before, that this is the chapter where a song

of ice and fire really started feeling like fantasy to people, and where it felt more than,

you know, kind of medieval historical fiction pastiche with magic sprinkled around the edges,

...