Hello, and welcome to the NataCast 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 Beefish, is taking a couple of months off the podcast for work.

Soon as he's back, we'll jump right back into Song of Ice and Fire with Sansa's third chapter in the Storm of Swords. In the meantime, I've picked up where I left

off last time with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Last week, we covered Book 5,

Chapter 3, The Muster of Rohan. And this week we're going to start, Book 5, chapter 4, The Siege of Gondor. I say start because this is a big chapter in

every respect, a lot like the first chapter of book 5 that we also spent in Minas Terith, so to do it

properly, I got a split in half. So let's not waste any time and jump right into book 5, chapter 4

of the Lord of the Rings, the Siege of Gondor. It was dark and dim all day. From the sunless dawn until

evening the heavy shadow had deepened, and all hearts in the city were oppressed. Far above,

a great cloud streamed slowly westward from the black land, devouring light, born upon a wind

of war. But below, the air was still and breathless,

as if all the Vale of Anduin waited for the onset of a ruinous storm.

The first three chapters of Book 5 built up to the apocalypse. At the end of each one,

the characters descend into the shadow, reaching out from the east to swallow

up Gondor and Rohan alike. Now the storm breaks, paying off everything that's been put in

place. The siege of Gondor is a colossal chapter, Tolkien painting a heavy metal fantasy battle

on his largest canvas to date. It's everything that both characters and readers have feared

since Gandalf first told Frodo that the Lord of the Rings had returned to make his war on the

world. Here, Sauron's wrath and malice are unleashed on Gondor, and with them Tolkien's literary

ambitions, trying to convey nothing less than the end of the world.

Yet the author never loses sight of the individuals caught up in the large-scale carnage and

...