Hello, and welcome to the Nauticast, podcast, the podcast that usually goes through a song of ice and fire, one chapter a week, but not here.

I'm one of your hosts Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin. My co-host, Jeff, also known as Brendan Befish, is taking a couple of months off the podcast for work.

As soon as he's back, we'll jump right back in with a song of Ice and Fire with Sansa's third chapter in a storm of swords.

In the meantime, I'm picking up where I left off going through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Last week, I finished up Book 4, Chapter 8 of the Lord of the Rings, the Stairs of Kirithungle. And today I'm wrapping up book four as a whole with chapter nine, Sheelab's Lair and chapter 10,

The Choices of Master Samwise.

And I'm so glad to be having a guest on for this episode as we wrap up book four.

Everyone say hi to Benjamin Nielsen.

Thanks so much for coming on,

Don.

Thank you so much.

I'm very excited to be here.

I'm a long time fan of the podcast and I'm excited to talk about two of my absolute favorite chapters.

I couldn't agree more. This is definitely my favorite part of book four. It's so creepy and so scary, but it's also really rousing, especially when you get to some of the stuff with Sam.

And the scale narrows down to this fine point, but the writing really opens up, plunging us

into some of the most effectively atmospheric

writing in all of fantasy, before hitting us with multiple gut punches in terms of the plot twists.

It's so cathartic because all the character work Tolkien has been doing with Frodo and

Ghalem and especially Sam pays off in the middle of these tense, suspenseful scenes.

All through Book 4, the quest has rested on the edge of a knife,

and now it cuts and starts to bleed.

It is the dawning of March 13th, but there is no daylight to be seen.

...