Episode Title: Empire of Storms & Tower of Dawn Tandem Read – Part 2 (The Wiggle Your Big Toe & Inverted AeroPress Edition) Description: The Romantasy Roundtable is back, and this time it's Amanda carrying the entire episode on her back while Kim nurses her second spring cold in a month and Rick spends a meaningful portion of the runtime giving a live AeroPress tutorial on camera. (Three subscribers were lost. Rick does not feel responsible.) Between the coffee demo, a deep dive into the Jewish numerology hidden in the Tory library's architecture, fan-casting debates where Thor appears twice in the same universe, and the breaking news that a real-life friend just got engaged mid-recording, it's a miracle we got through any chapters at all. And yet somehow we did. In the books, Tower of Dawn is giving us slow-burn healing, ancient demon energy, tapeworms, and Chaol (Kale) quietly wiggling his toes in what is objectively the most earned moment in the series so far. Meanwhile, Empire of Storms is out here delivering witch queens, pirate lords, long-lost cadre members, and Manon Blackbeak leaping off a balcony to freedom in a scene that Kim completely forgot and was absolutely devastated to re-experience for the first time all over again. Key Topics Discussed: Yrene vs. the Shadow in Chaol's Spine: Miss Towers (as she's nasty) spends multiple brutal healing sessions going war with an ancient Valg entity camping out in Kale's vertebrae. She doesn't just fight the darkness — she follows the sound of his screaming directly into it, emerges bleeding from her nose and mouth, and then immediately asks him to open up about his feelings. Rick has never related to a fictional character less. The Wiggle Your Big Toe Moment: Kale's toes curl and uncurl on their own for the first time. Rick accidentally spoiled this to himself days earlier by randomly getting the urge to watch Kill Bill mid-read and mentioning it out loud. Amanda clocked it immediately. He maintains it wasn't a spoiler. It was absolutely a spoiler. Manon Blackbeak Becomes the Witch Queen: Asterin shows up to her own execution beaten, blood-soaked, and smiling. The Thirteen stand behind Manon and raise two fingers in the salute of a witch queen, not a wing leader. Manon brings Wind Cleaver down on her grandmother instead, buys just enough time for the Thirteen to escape, and then gets the nuclear bomb dropped on her — her father was a Crochan prince, and the Crochan spy she killed in the Fian Gap was her half-sister. She processes this entirely reasonable information by yeeting herself off a balcony onto Abraxos and blazing out of Morath. Queen behavior. No notes. Head Librarian Nousha's Silent Flex: Before Yrene can even finish explaining what she needs, Nousha has already pulled every relevant ancient text, organized every scroll, and armed a group of fourteen-year-old acolytes who close ranks around Yrene in a crisis without flinching — all while having never once smiled in recorded history. The unsung girl boss of the entire Tory sequence. Fenrys & Gavriel Crash the Party: Two golden-haired Fae males walk through a door in Skull's Bay and Rowan greets them with a dagger in the wall. Fenrys is chaotic and gorgeous. Gavriel is exhausted by literally everyone in a room at all times. Rick is Fenrys. Kim is Gavriel. Amanda is somehow Lorcan. Elide vs. The Bridge Checkpoint: Elide Lochan, armed with a borrowed persona, a traveling carnival, and Asterin Blackbeak's memory like a talisman, social-engineers herself and a five-hundred-year-old Fae warrior through a Darlinian checkpoint without breaking a sweat. Lorcan is scandalized. Elide does not care. She is simply built different. Princess Hasar's Tapeworm Alliance: Yrene and Princess Hasar's entire political friendship began because Yrene once magically extracted a spectacular tapeworm from the princess. Hasar liked her bar fight stories enough to keep her around. She then pulled out a military map and casually threatened Yrene's ability to cross the Narrow Sea. Friendship! The Jewish Easter Eggs in the Maasverse: Amanda drops the fact that 36 appears throughout the Tory library because multiples of 18 carry deep significance in Jewish tradition — double life, double holy. The Maasverse is, as Amanda puts it, hella Jewish. Rick's mind is blown. This is canon now. Join us for toes wiggling, grandmothers getting what they deserve, and Amanda reading fifteen chapters while Rick makes coffee! Next up is Tower of Dawn chapters 19 through Empire of Storms chapter 31 — stop when you hit chapter 32 and you should be sitting right at 50% through the book. Drop your Asterin fan casts in the comments (Amanda suggests Dove Cameron and we are not taking questions). Subscribe, like, and we'll see you in Part 3!
