Hello, and welcome to the Nodcast, 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 B-fish, is taking a couple of months off the podcast for work.

As soon as he's back, we'll jump right back into 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 last time with J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings. Last time, I finished

up book four of the Lord of the Rings, along with guest host Benjamin Nielsen. This week we're going to jump into Book 5 of Lord of the Rings with

the first chapter Minas Terif, and since this is a very long and dense and important chapter,

we're going to be doing it in two episodes. So this episode is going to cover the first half of the

chapter, Pippin's introduction to the city and to Denethor, and then we'll cover the rest of the chapter

next week. So after spending Book 4 with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum,

book 5 jumps back to the characters we spent Book 3 with.

And Book 5 is basically a sequel to Book 3.

It's the bigger, better version.

It's the Terminator 2 of High Fantasy.

And you can see parallels throughout.

Book 3 kicks off with Pippin being carried

off by Orks and a confrontation with Boromir. Book 5 begins with Pippin being carried off by

Gandalf and a confrontation with Boromir's father, Denethor. And I loved how book three ended. There was

that wonderful passage as Pippin and Gandalf wrote off. As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a

strange feeling. He and Gandalf were off. As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling.

He and Gandalf were still as stone,

seated upon the statue of a running horse,

while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.

...