Between Two Fires

Yes, I would love to.

Next episode we will be reading Between Two Fires by Christopher BuhLman, a 2012 kinda fantasy, horror, historical fiction-

Yeah

... that I've heard good things about, so I'm looking forward to it.

I started this-

Is that what we're reading?

Yep, Between Two Fires.

I've been binge-watching Between Two Ferns on YouTube.

We are zooming all the way in on personal isolation, disease, and visceral horror.

Let's talk about a book that just sounds absolutely grueling, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.

This is a devastating, brilliant piece of literature from 2012.

It masterfully merges medieval historical fiction with supernatural horror.

So I have to ask, looking at these two very different books, what does this all mean for the genre?

Okay, let's synthesize it.

We have the physical rot and demonic horror of the Black Death in Between Two Fires, and the invisible, agonizing psychological rot of absolute loneliness in Addie LaRue.

Two very different kinds of pain.

Peter S. Beagle's fable-like The Last Unicorn, Bernard Cornwell's historical Warlord Chronicles, Umberto Eco's dense mystery The Name of the Rose.

Christopher Buehlman's genuinely terrifying plague-era book Between Two Fires.

And Samantha Shannon's modern epic The Priory of the Orange Tree.

All incredible.

Yeah, dude.

Uh, Between Two Fires, uh, An Epic Tale of Medieval Horror by Christopher Buehlman.

Uh, this came highly recommended from our friend Jake, who has been on the show before.

He's a friend of both of ours.

I mean, I shouldn't even be looking at this right now, 'cause I don't want it to spoil anything, but, uh, yeah.

We, I- likely, hopefully will get into this in October.

Um, the big ones for me are gonna be finishing Empire of Silence, Training Ground, Between Two Fires, and then maybe this, um, and maybe one of those other horror ones, maybe a shorter one that you mentioned.

Um, you have been reading more than me, so you'll probably get in a book or two more than I will this month.

So let's look at books that abandon the localized hauntings and deal with bizarre realities and cosmic stakes.

"Between Two Fires" by Christopher Buehlman is a perfect example of this.

Oh, this one is wild.

First of all, the setting is incredibly grounded in visceral historical horror.

The Gothic tradition loves to do this.

It loves to strip power from those who traditionally hold it, like knights, lords, patriarchs, and grant strange, terrible, burdensome knowledge to the vulnerable and the marginalized.

So if Between Two Fires uses the unimaginable horror of the plague to ground its cosmic war, our next book uses something entirely different to ground its reality breaking stakes.

Which is?

This is where we see the boundaries of the genre stretching into historical horror.

The Collider article points to Christopher Buehlman's twenty twelve novel, Between Two Fires.

Oh man, this one is bleak.

It really is.

It's basically like, I'm pretty sure it's about like, I don't know, it's about like some goblin wars or something, and this is like a prequel to that where the only reason why I picked this one up, 'cause I picked it up based on Tyler's recommendation, but he does say The Black Tongue Thief is better, but The Daughter's War is a prequel and this is what Libby had available.

So I was like, "Okay, I will try to read this and if I really like it, then I'll go into The Black Tongue Thief because there's also like Thrice Bound Fool, Fool that's supposed to be coming out next month." So I was like, "Oh, this would be the perfect time for me to really see if Buehlman's writing is for me," because I read Between Two Fires last year and I freaking hated that book.

Sorry.

Unpopular opinion here, but I did not like that book.

Um- And reading this book honestly makes me wish I DNF'd "Between Two Fires" and DNFing this.

I cannot stand Christopher Buehlman's writing.

Like, I'm sorry, it feels like it was written for, like, teenage boys in, like, freshman year of high school.

Um, so my brain has been off since I got home from work.

Um, and then he agreed to read Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.

Yeah.

But he had to wait a couple of days to borrow it off of a friend, and he's like, "Well, I wanna read a book now." And then he just kind of like got up and disappeared and I was like, "Where the fuck did he go?" And then he comes back in, and he has picked up and is reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

... ecstatic.

Yeah.

And he's got Between Two Fires, um, queued up as well, so he's gonna read that.

Um, 'cause-

So for me, one of my favorites, I'm going to talk about two of them.

And the first one would be Between Two Fires by Christopher Buhlman.

I've talked about it before, so I won't go into super depth about this book, but it's considered a horror novel, but I do believe it is more fantasy than it is horror.

Aaron, would you agree or disagree with that? I would agree.

that's it

and then we'll go together we'll hold hands

hold hands um so i definitely want to continue the faithful and the fallen but my eye keeps going back to the black tongue thief by christopher buleman because i loved between two fires so i just have a feeling i hear that this one's really funny it's enjoyable obviously i just want to start it like it keeps looking at me and it's a standalone no it's it's there's actually yeah No, there's three.

There's a new one coming out in October.

Yeah, like I said, I've read a number of his books.

Lesser Dead, Suicide Motorcycle Club, and, of course, Between Two Fires, which, if you haven't read, highly recommend.

And he said this was going to be part of a trilogy, and since this was released, The Daughters War, which is a prequel, has come out, and that's Galva's story.

And checking Amazon yesterday, I found out that the sequel to this, The Thrice-Bound Fool, is going to be released in October.

Yeah, excellent.

So, Robert, on your second time around and listening to it on the audio book, did you have the same takeaway as when you read it for, you know, hot off the presses?

well I feel like I'm there with Dan on my first read and I want to preface that by saying I came I first tried to get this at the library they didn't have it yet but they did have Between Two Fires so I read that and I think that was my favorite and it was a little bit older by then but I think that was my favorite book that I read that year Between Two Fires I was just blown away And so then I finally got my hands on this.

And I was like, oh, this is not that.