A Chapter a Day: Day 3 "The Red Deaths" by Casey Eanes and Seth Ervin

                    A Chapter a Day: Day 3

 Reviewing "The Red Deaths" book 1 in the Keys of Candor series written by Seth Ervin and Casey Eanes.

Today at Ani-Maze-Me's Facebook page we got a special treat.
You remember the list of questions I had? The authors saw that and had the brilliant idea to record them answering them and sending it to us via FB!!!! If you want to see it for yourself I am going to leave it pinned to the top of the feed for a while so go check it out.

Casey answered both of my questions that I had listed in the previous post. First was "How do you pronounce Kull's name?".
It is pronounced as if it is spelled Kuhl so you put a little extra pronunciation in the "ull" sound. Something he said in the video got me thinking "What does Kull mean?" so I turned to google!
This is what Google-Sensei came back with.

Cull

kəl

verb

gerund or present participle: culling

1. select from a large quantity; obtain from a variety of sources.

   "anecdotes culled from Greek and Roman history"

   synonyms:

   select, choose, pick, take, obtain, glean "anecdotes culled from Greek history"

   • reduce the population of (a wild animal) by selective slaughter.

     "he sees culling deer as a necessity"

     synonyms:

     kill, slaughter, destroy, harvest "he sees culling deer as a necessity"

   • send (an inferior or surplus animal on a farm) to be slaughtered.
   • literary

     pick (flowers or fruit).

     "fresh culled daffodils"

 

Pretty interesting right? Now if you read the book along with me then you will sort of see how this word, the characters name, reflects his situation. The Grogan (The enemies) came to Kull's home and thinned out, "reduced the population", of his people.
I don't know, that could be completely irrelevant but I thought it was worth pointing out to any of the readers. Authors put a lot of work into picking names. :P
The second question I had was "How do you write from the opposite genders point of view?" and he had some really neat advice on that. I found it very comforting to know that it gives other authors anxiety as well.
In return, at the end of the video Casey had a question for me. 
"Are you the one creating the art?"
Sadly, no I do not make the base pictures. I do play with lighting and coloring, possibly a morph effect or a negative effect and I add the words but I do not make the pictures entirely from scratch. My entire blogging/admining experience actually started from my love of editing pictures. I started doing it "professionally" on pages like Anime Feels OVERLOAD  and later became a stand alone administrator on my own page. I make quotes and beautiful images to express things that sometimes words alone cannot do. A lot of the fans that I reach have some form of sadness in their life (because we all do, its part of being human.) and if I can make just one person smile because of a picture I will keep posting for them forever.  I hope that is a satisfying answer ^_^

Alright, now that all that excitement is out of the way LETS GET READING!!!!!!! 

~~~~20-ish minutes later~~~~~
Chapter 3: Willyns POV
Alright, I am going to get this out of the way because I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
I am a terrible person. I am reading Hagan's (The Grogan leader) speech and my first thought when I read "...to advance medical treatment..." was "Yeah buddy! I bet you really wish you had done that now!"......
Hagan is dying in a hospital bed. I am terrible but at least I am honest.
Willyn is the MC in this chapter and so far I am very impressed with her. She is fierce and mission oriented. The respect that she holds for her brother is refreshing.
This girl, no wait, this woman is a power house. If I had to go to war I would want her on my side.
She seems to be a little... unstable but not in a bad way. Some people might view it as her acting recklessly but I see her doing the things that no one else is willing to do. I just really hope she thinks before she acts, I want to respect her as a character.
She has a lot going on. Hagan is her brother, the Sar and the dying man that I mentioned above. He doesn't seem to be dying of natural causes either... It appears that he has been poisoned. (That is sort of a spoiler but there aren't many other ways to slowly kill someone so it was a little obvious. I had to do it. I'm sowwy!)

My usual editing tool was being weird tonight so I did something different.

Willyn thinks that Grift, Kulls father, did it.
I think that this creepy man who goes by Hosp did it. Hosp is one of the council members that I guess help organize the Groganlands.
He is described to be a very slimy and undesirable person. I picture him something like Voldermort. The pale skin and dead eyes with the sneer of a rat.
Willyn doesn't like him either which pleases me. I am glad that he just seems to be after the Sar's position. When he first approached, or rather when he first ambushed Willyn in the elevator I was thinking that he seemed like the more... perverted type. Like the whole, "Marry me so I can take over the kingdom with you!!! -insert creepy smile-" type of thing. I am totally fine if he just wants to take over the kingdom and nothing weird is going on.
Ah, I am a little late on the name recognition.
Willyn. That is the most beautiful female form of Will that I have ever seen. I am sure it has some other orgin that I have yet to discover but that does not change the poetic nature of the name. It also helps that her personality reminds me of a willow tree. A strong, well rooted life form that might bend with the wind but never bows to it. Wait..... did I just quote Mulan?

Overall, this is a very relatable character that I cannot wait to read more about. I also ship her with Kull, even though she kidnapped his dad. That would make for a weird Thanksgiving dinner....
"Can you pass the potatoes?" Grift asks politely. Willyn glares at him across the table.
"Can you apologize for breathing?" She says with a snarky attitude. I want to read that now XD
I feel like I am forgetting to mention something.....
Oh yeah! This chapter started talking about machines. I don't know why but I was under the impression that this world was set in some far away mythical place that was without electricity and machinery so this surprised me. I know that they had some kind of war contraption that was mentioned in Chap. 1 but it didn't really click that it might have been like an airplane or war tank until this chapter. That's pretty cool, I have never read a book where people were at war and had access to technology so I am interested to see how this effects the usual war path.
That is all for today! Sorry if it is a little scattered, I was very excited while writing this so my radical brainwaves might be a little too obvious in the flow of things. I hope you not only come back to read with me tomorrow but also buy your own copy and read with me!! I want to fangirl/man with someone!! Where is the fandom?!

~Aki Ame Okami