Galaxies and Goddesses: A Sci-Fi & Fantasy Bookcast

Ep. 5 Daughter of the Moon Goddess
[00:00:00]
Andrea: I'm Andrea.

Elizabeth: And I'm Elizabeth.

Andrea: Join us as we chat about sci-fi and fantasy books and beyond.

Elizabeth: Looking for a little escape from reality? So are we.

Andrea: The galaxies and goddesses

Elizabeth: In this week's episode, we'll be chatting about the Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan.

Andrea: And a bit about Chinese mythology and meditation. Let's get started!

Andrea: So this time I think the Goodreads description was a little more accurate than, our first book where we had the issue with the horoscopes. I've heard that some people were a little misled in that they thought it was gonna be more about the Moon Goddess. The title, being Daughter of the Moon Goddess, it was mostly about this fictional character, who is the daughter of the moon goddess. And the moon goddess isn't really main character at all.

Elizabeth: Wait, sorry, say that again. So a lot of people thought it was gonna be [00:01:00] more about the Moon Goddess, but the title is Daughter of the Moon Goddess, and oh, by the way, it's actually about the daughter of the Moon Goddess. I think that's perhaps not really quite understanding the title.

Andrea: Well, in the first little description on Goodreads, they say it's a "captivating, romantic debut, epic fantasy, inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e, in which a young woman's quest to free her mother, pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm." So they do mention the mood goddess as being the inspiration, but she's the mother figure, she's not the main character.

Elizabeth: She is important to the theme of the book and motivations of the main character . So she's always there, but she's not the main character at all.

Elizabeth: Okay, so it's inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess. So that doesn't mean that it's about her, it's inspired by it. Right? So like, come on, people.

Elizabeth: So

Andrea: Xingyin is the main character and she's the daughter, and she's been kept a secret, which is why she's not part of mythology that we know about in the mortal [00:02:00] realm.

Andrea: So I thought that was interesting. It's a way for the author to, I think, be a little bit more creative with the story and she can take a little bit more liberty.

Andrea: We can start by talking about the setting of the book. It was unique in that it took place in this immortal land in the clouds. I liked how the book had a map at the beginning . Sometimes maps are very intricate in fantasy books, but this was much more fluid and airy and just very generalized.

Elizabeth: I do have to admit that I am a big fan of a map in the beginning, of a book. But I wish when there is a map that it is a little more useful. Sometimes there are maps, like, I'd have to say with the Fourth Wing series the,

Andrea: Empryean Series

Elizabeth: does it have more?

Elizabeth: Oh, thank you. Does anyone call it that? I don't know. Anyway, Fourth Wing.

Elizabeth: The map of that at the beginning is kind of vague and I wish it had more to it. I guess over time as you get to know the world, you do get to know more of the map.

Elizabeth: And so this map, you look at the beginning, but I don't ever go back to [00:03:00] it. Maybe once just for a second, it doesn't necessarily really, tie your reading to the book as much.

Andrea: Right,

Elizabeth: as other maps can.

Andrea: travel between the different areas of this world in clouds, so it doesn't matter if there's mountains or forests, you just take the cloud, fly away.

Elizabeth: Yeah, yeah, the mortal realm is down at the very bottom of the map. And so here we are living in the mortal realm, but maybe, we know that our world is round and so it only just kind of like vaguely references mortal realm so it could just be of any size.

Elizabeth: It's almost these limitless thought spaces in the map. I didn't necessarily go back to it a lot, but yeah, it is , lots of clouds drawn in the map. It's very airy . Yeah. It's.

Andrea: To see as much of this world as the main character sees. And her experience is very limited in the beginning of what she's exposed to in terms of the great houses. And she is learning as Prince's companion for a long time.

Andrea: It's also really unclear [00:04:00] how old she is.

Elizabeth: At any point. Yeah.

Andrea: Yeah. Well,

Elizabeth: the, the time.

Andrea: sort of explained that, oh, they're immortal, so a week for them is like a year for

Elizabeth: there's no, there's no definite timeline at all because they're immortals, so who knows what amount of time.

Elizabeth: When she leaves the moon and comes down to the Celestial Kingdom . You take her to be sort of young, teenage maybe, but what does that mean in terms of Immortals?

Elizabeth: Does that mean hundreds of thousands of years, or, five years or 50? Who knows? So, there's no definite timeline for anything.

Elizabeth: And then she does spend time with Prince Liwei and they're companions in their training and education.

Elizabeth: So much of the book is really plot driven.

Elizabeth: Like, there's a lot that happens, but not as much explanation of the world or how everybody sort of fits together or time.

Andrea: I liked a lot of aspects of this world and the concepts in it, but I just wanted something a little bit deeper.

Andrea: I think if I read this when I was in high [00:05:00] school, this would totally have been my jam.
Elizabeth: Yeah,

Andrea: There's like very little spice and lots of tension.

Andrea: I don't wanna be too much of a spoiler, but if you're looking for spice , and sexual chemistry, this is not the book for you.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It was very PG 13, I'd say.

Andrea: Yes.

Elizabeth: And not necessarily R rated as some of the more modern Romantasy is these days.

Elizabeth: And, it's supposed to be a duology. Right. So there's a second book.

Andrea: The next book is called Heart of the Sun Warrior.

Andrea: I assumed that the Sun Warrior was Prince Liwei, but it doesn't say specifically in the description. It just talks that it's more of Xingyin's adventures.

Andrea: There was some part of this that reminded me of like the Witcher series because she goes out hunting these monsters and I was like, oh, it's just gonna

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: monster killing sprees.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that was one thing that I was not as thrilled by. It's like 500 pages long and it is too [00:06:00] long. Maybe some of those adventures didn't necessarily need to be there. They didn't necessarily do a lot to propel the plot of the book.

Andrea: I mean

Elizabeth: yeah.

Andrea: she went on a bunch . of these military campaigns And the only one they spent a lot of time, describing was the first big monster that she helps take down. And that's where she gets,

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: So I think the treasure was

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: for her to find that and that's continued throughout.

Elizabeth: at some point it almost felt like you get to the montage part of the episode, you know, or then they pack in a bunch of action really quickly. It kind of like that for a minute . It's definitely something that you could see turned into a TV series.

Andrea: Did this feel more young adult or adult to you?

Elizabeth: I didn't necessarily think that to myself at the time, but now thinking about it, it does actually feel more young adult . It was not categorized or shelved in the young adult part of the library. It was in the adult fiction. But I could see it actually more in the young adult.

Elizabeth: I might bring [00:07:00] that up to the librarians.

Andrea: I feel like there's a lot of teenage angst that the main character deals with. Although she's

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: still feels like a teenager to me through a lot of

Elizabeth: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Definitely

Andrea: appreciated sort of the second half or even maybe the last third of the book where she seemed a little bit more mature, but she still deals with her, anger issues .

Elizabeth: And these torn emotions that she has between the two main male characters, love interests. It does kind of feel sort of teenage young adult sort of emotions.

Elizabeth: I'm actually definitely gonna bring that up to the librarians.

Elizabeth: What's funny is that as I was at the library recently, I wanted to check out To Kill a Mockingbird, because I had a copy of To Go Set a Watchman. So I just assumed that it would be in the adult fiction. So I went into the adult fiction section and saw To Go Set a Watchman, but no To Kill a Mockingbird.

Elizabeth: So I asked the librarians and they told me it was in the young adult section. So then I went, took it from the shelf, and on my way back, I said to them, it seems like Go Set a Watchman should be shelved next to, To Kill a Mockingbird, [00:08:00] wherever that is.

Elizabeth: Right? They're the two Harper Lee books about the same character, they should be next to each other. And funny enough, they were getting close to maybe closing, so all the librarians were all gathered together at the front desk. one of them happened to be the young adult librarian.

Elizabeth: And so she was like, well that's interesting. I'll take that into account. ' cause I'm thinking to myself maybe that would mean that they would shelve To Kill a Mockingbird in the adult section. And she was like, "No", she always apparently tries to pull more books into the young adult section.

Elizabeth: always looking for things. Yeah. Like, oh, I think maybe they might actually be really into that idea that, " hey, this actually may might be better in the young adult section". Anyway, bring that up for my local librarian.

Andrea: of some series getting categorized as young adult when they should not be young

Elizabeth: Definitely, like the ACOTAR series has got a lot of kinda graphic sex. That should maybe be in the adult section, but I don't know if they can get away with it. The adult. Okay. I mean, you know, like teenagers are always going to be exposed to sex in whatever way. So maybe the best way to be [00:09:00] exposed to it is in a book.

Elizabeth: maybe that's what the librarians would argue.

Andrea: I remember reading Clan of the Cave Bear when I was in high school.

Elizabeth: Oh, you've read that? Oh, does that include Plains of Passage? Ah, that's another random one that I have just the one book of the series, and it's not the first one and just this to sit on my shelf. And I've thought to myself, someday I'm actually gonna read Clan of the Cave Bear and eventually get to that book.

Andrea: yeah,

Elizabeth: man.

Andrea: some graphic scenes in that book and I was in high school and I was like, oh, wow. Eye opening read.

Elizabeth: Well, oh my God, my mom always tells the story of when I read Pillars of the Earth. I think I was like 16. There's a lot of graphic sex in that. Apparently I said to my mom that my feedback about it was that there was a lot of sex.

Elizabeth: And I'm sure I said other things about the book 'cause it's a good book. Especially if you've traveled to Europe. This really good fictionalized account of how a cathedral is built to then give it some historical context as you travel through Europe and see all these amazing cathedrals.

Elizabeth: So I definitely said more than that, but that's all she ever says anymore to this [00:10:00] day. It comes up a lot every time. I'm like, mom, I definitely said more about that book, but whatever.

Elizabeth: But this does not have that.

Andrea: no, this would

Elizabeth: It does not have that.

Andrea: And,

Elizabeth: Totally, totally.

Andrea: the one on the one hand, part of me kept thinking, oh, well, both of the men are interested because they want what they can't have. She hasn't that line with any of 'em, so they both really wanna be with her. But that might be reading too much into it.

Elizabeth: I mean, also she's described as very moral and kind of innocent, naive in a lot of ways. A goody two shoes type, I guess. But in all of the good ways, there's no bad, negative aspects to that.

Andrea: Honor is mentioned

Elizabeth: yeah.

Andrea: several times.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And very tenacious and sort of the arc of the story is a long arc of the story to the very end, you know?

Elizabeth: Okay, so it's two books , and when you think there's gonna be the two books, you'd think that the end of the first book would [00:11:00] have quite a lot to draw you to read the second book, like cliffhanger, right? And there was no cliffhanger. There was no cliffhanger at all, except for spoiler alert, they don't end up together.

Elizabeth: So if you wanted to see them and ending up together, presumably, I mean, that seems to be where it's going. That's where I kind of expected to get to that at the end. But then they just end up together and they're tied it all up nicely. That was sort of the only thing left hanging.

Andrea: Sometimes I feel like the final page of a book the author has to feel good about ending it on that note, and sometimes it's them reflecting their own thoughts on the page. And last sentence of the book, I'm gonna read now. It says. " On a night as this, my heart was content awaiting the promise of tomorrow". Okay, so you're happy. You're happy and content and the story concluded.

Elizabeth: The end.

Andrea: The next day, something else will happen and the next book, but there's nothing that carries over.[00:12:00]

Andrea: There's no drama carrying over into another book. It would just be the same characters in this world, and you wanna see more of them. Pretty much everything's resolved, right?

Elizabeth: Yeah, except for they don't end up together. So I presume their story would go into the next one, and then they'd end up together? Do I feel compelled to read the next one? I guess maybe not so much unless someone else read it and they were like, oh, but it's so good. And I'm like, okay.

Elizabeth: It was just like this close from being all tied up that, it just doesn't feel like a second one is necessary. You could have just ended it there.

Andrea: I might be more likely to read something else from the same author rather than the next book in this series, because this was her debut novel. This was her first big book and I think it was written well. There were a lot of concepts I liked. Like I said, it just felt a little bit too young adult. So if she wrote a book that's more clearly Adult, maybe I would appreciate that more.

Elizabeth: It was a pleasant read. There wasn't much depth to it. It did feel kind of [00:13:00] superficial.

Elizabeth: I wish I'd counted the number of times that the word brocade was used to describe their fabric. It was many, many, actually.

Elizabeth: I have been known to count things in books sometimes. There was this ridiculous book that I read with my sister's book club, I can't even remember what it's called now.

Elizabeth: Oh, The Getaway Girls. That's what it was. It was ridiculous. And it used in exclamation marks unnecessarily. I pretty quickly was like, I'm gonna count these. And there were like over 800 or something. It was, and it wasn't that long of a book, like they was so outrageous use of exclamation marks.

Elizabeth: But yeah, take it back on it now if I'd counted the number of times. The brocade fabric there were a lot.

Andrea: Word that really stuck out to me was vermilion, which I like that

Elizabeth: all

Andrea: Vermilion is a very rich type of red. It's

Elizabeth: It is.

Andrea: specific red. It sounds sort of exotic, but then

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: it more than five times, it feels diluted. It's like, okay, you

Elizabeth: Oh yeah.

Andrea: a vermilion silk.

Elizabeth: Vermilion Brocade.

Andrea: [00:14:00] Yes. It's such a unique

Elizabeth: yeah,

Andrea: word too, that it stands out more.

Elizabeth: Speaking of vermilion, one of my favorite medical terms is the vermilion border. It's the border between the skin and the lip. Yeah, yeah,

Elizabeth: More random medical facts if you are stitching up a lip that is split open, one most important things is to make sure that the vermilion borderer lines up, 'cause that's how you would be able to notice the most easily. That's like a very noticeable thing when you're looking at somebody if their vermilion border didn't match up.

Andrea: Well, now it'll be okay if I read a book and they mention a vermilion border, I'll like, oh, that's on their face.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah, there was just a lot of, it was like kind of flowery, like kind of fluffy prose descriptions that did kind of lack sort of substance and depth.

Andrea: I thought to myself, okay, if all of this clothing is so special, does it do something? There was enchanted clothing. So if someone had a particularly strong aura or strong life force, that would make magical things happen, which was [00:15:00] kind of neat.

Andrea: She said when she wore certain outfits, the birds would fly or that things would happen when they wore certain clothing items.

Elizabeth: yeah. No, actually, and that was one thing about this book is that I feel like there was a lot that was just kind of forgettable about it. I didn't necessarily retain all of the details every time. Which that was fine though.

Elizabeth: That didn't detract from the book, and you could kind of just keep skimming along and turning the pages .

Elizabeth: I do have to say that it is fun to read a book where the pages turned quickly, and this is definitely a book where pages turned quickly.

Elizabeth: Some of that is the quality of the writing. If there's something that's more dense or more thought provoking that maybe takes just a little bit longer to read. And this was not that, you could just read it quickly. But then also there was just a lot of white space on the pages.

Elizabeth: The font was large, so then there were fewer words per page also.

Andrea: It felt a little bit fluffy, but maybe if you're a younger reader, like if I were in high school and I read a 500 page book, I would've been really proud of myself. So

Andrea: There's a sense of accomplishment when you [00:16:00] finish a thick book that feels nice and this wasn't that hard to read. It was a quick read even though long.

Elizabeth: One thing I've learned about myself as a reader over time is that some of my favorite books are long books. Like, if it's a really good long book, then, it has a higher chance of becoming one of my favorite books.

Elizabeth: Thinking about my top five books of all time, they're actually all pretty long books. It is fun to read a long book, but I appreciate the long good book. So if it's a long really good book, then I'm really gonna like it.

Andrea: If this book had been written by George R.R. Martin, we would've only gotten to the point where she joins the army. I think that's

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: it would've stopped. And then that's only like the first third of the book. The second two thirds would've been two more books.

Andrea: But I think I would've maybe enjoyed that more if there was more that actually happened, or if you got another character's perspective. I think it would've been really interesting [00:17:00] to read something from Wenzhi' s perspective. I would've liked to see what his real thoughts were. Because you kind of don't know what he's thinking throughout. You don't know if he's being honest or if he's being deceptive, and if we had gotten a little bit of his perspective instead of just her perspective, that would've been interesting and Liwei as well, the Prince. So I think

Elizabeth: that,

Andrea: to the story and the

Elizabeth: yeah. Once again, where it felt superficial, that there's a lot that happens and for a 500 page book, there kind of has to be a lot that happens, right? But then for it to be so superficial at 500 pages that you're basically saying if it were George RR Martin, it would be, five times longer. But it would be more enjoyable because there would be potentially different perspectives from the different characters. So then each of the characters is flushed out more.

Elizabeth: There's a lot that happens that like a lot

Andrea: a lot and

Elizabeth: could have.

Andrea: interesting. And I

Elizabeth: They could, they like, there could have been more descriptions.

Andrea: last, you know, 150 pages or something. And I like the dragons. I like the dragons in the book,
Elizabeth: Yeah. I have to admit that in the making of this podcast, I only just learned if there are dragons in a book, then that instantly makes it go up in Andrea's preference list she really fancies the dragons,

Andrea: Yes.

Elizabeth: which I only learned recently.

Elizabeth: Yeah. When do you first learn about the dragons?

Elizabeth: I mean, maybe kind of early on you learn about them.

Andrea: Don't

Elizabeth: anyway,

Andrea: or they're dead, or you don't know really what

Elizabeth: that just the dragons aren't there. Yeah.

Andrea: they're not

Elizabeth: so they're mentioned,

Andrea: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: it takes a while you to finally get to the dragons. And then there's not a lot of the dragons just sort of dragons light.

Elizabeth: And sometimes it's funny to compare how these different mythical creatures are described in different fantasy worlds. So the dragons in Fourth Wing, talk to people telepathically? Well, it's only the main dragons if you've bonded or mated it I forget what the word is now. Whatever verb.

Andrea: bonded

Elizabeth: bonded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With your dragon.

Andrea: other,

Elizabeth: not mate it. Oh, the dragons mate each other. Yeah. Whatever. [00:19:00] Right? Yeah. That you bonded with your dragons, then you speak with your dragon telepathically, but only your dragon.

Elizabeth: It seems like these dragons. Talk to everyone telepathically, but at the same time, or they would sometimes do it to individual people.

Andrea: She doesn't know whether the dragons talking to everybody or just her, and then later one of the other

Elizabeth: Does

Andrea: something.

Elizabeth: Doesn't?

Andrea: they were talking to everyone. They were talking to everyone at the same time.

Elizabeth: Oh yeah.

Elizabeth: So funny how the different fantastical worlds treat the different mythical creatures . Right. 'cause in Game of Thrones, there's no telepathic communication. There's no mind,

Andrea: Game

Elizabeth: there's no talking to the dragons.

Elizabeth: No, no talking to the dragons.

Andrea: yeah, and the book we read prior to this The Girl Who Drank the Moon, that dragon talks, but just like a human talks.

Elizabeth: Speak out loud. Sort of like in the dragon in Mulan

Andrea: Yeah. That's

Elizabeth: The tiny little Eddie Murphy dragon. Little dragon.

Andrea: So to be honest, I thought this book might be a little bit Mulan-esque, but she doesn't

Elizabeth: Oh, totally.

Andrea: that she's a woman, which I appreciate. I appreciate that she can join the army as a

Elizabeth: There were a lot of [00:20:00] women in the army actually, and they were treated as equals to the men. I did enjoy that. I know, also noticed that. I also enjoyed that. I liked that. Mm-hmm.

Andrea: Going back to the dragons, they are also part of Chinese mythology . As in all mythology, there's several different stories of how things were created or how things were made. So the main rivers in China were created by these dragons trying to provide water to the people. There's four main rivers represented by the dragons.

Elizabeth: Oh, cool. I didn't know that.

Andrea: learn anything about mythology while you were reading the book?

Elizabeth: Well I have to admit that I didn't know what the mythology was, so I didn't know what parts of it were from the mythology versus the fictionalized aspects of the book.

Elizabeth: So in our discussion about this book, before we started recording we were going over the, the actual Chinese mythology, which is the Hou Yi and Chang’e are two famous, tragic [00:21:00] lovers of Chinese mythology. And so their stories is where the mid autumn festival comes from, also known as the Moon Festival. And it's on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

Elizabeth: So really it's just the daughter of the moon goddess Shing Yin, the, the whole story is her story, and so in that you learn where she comes from, you learn about her parents and like sort of her origin story.

Elizabeth: Her whole mission throughout the entire book is to free her mother. 'cause her mother is basically imprisoned on the moon. She's the moon goddess. She's immortal. Her life started out as a mortal until she drank the elixir of life and became immortal. In her drinking the elixir of Life, it was, deceiving, the Celestial Emperor, who was the one who gave the elixir of life originally to Hou Yi. As her punishment for the deception to the celestial emperor she's entrapped in the moon. That's essentially what then leads up to the start of the story and as the book unfolds, you learn this history.

Elizabeth: But the book itself is all fictionalized. The whole story from page one is, the author's imagination. [00:22:00] But I didn't know any of that as I'm reading it. It all could have been Chinese mythology to me. I suppose.

Andrea: I think this would've been a fun book to read around the time of the mid-autumn festival. If you're reading this and eating moon cakes. That could have been a fun time to read this if we had known a little bit

Elizabeth: Well, that's true. Yeah. Yeah

Andrea: who are fans of Chinese mythology and do you celebrate that festival on a regular basis, I think this would be a fun book to read.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Have you ever had a moon cake?

Andrea: yeah. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Oh, really? I don't think I ever have

Andrea: The mid Autumn festival until I moved to Seattle. I used to live in Arizona and I was not exposed to
as much

Elizabeth: Asian immigrant culture.

Andrea: Yes.

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

Andrea: The international district has a lot of fun festivals and bakeries that have moon cakes that you can buy around that time.

Elizabeth: Cool.

Andrea: Yeah.

Elizabeth: I don't think I did that when I lived there. I remember going to the Lunar New Year Festival where they had a parade and I don't know if it's like a seasonal thing, the little red bean paste [00:23:00] fish cakes, the waffle or whatever I think I saw all the time.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Or getting one of those off the street. That was good.

Elizabeth: So I don't think I've ever had a moon cake. I, and now I'm disappointed. Can you buy them?

Andrea: cake

Elizabeth: May. Well, that's true. That's very fair. Who knows? I've eaten a lot of things in my life. I wonder you could probably get 'em at Uwajimaya in Seattle,

Andrea: Yeah,

Elizabeth: maybe only around that time of year.

Andrea: I've heard that sometimes they have the image of a rabbit on it, because that's supposedly the moon goddesses, pet rabbit, a white rabbit.

Elizabeth: The packaging will have a white rabbit on it?

Andrea: No, they'll make an imprint on the cake itself.

Elizabeth: Oh, definitely. I have not eaten one of those.

Andrea: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Oh man. Now I really want one, but they're good.

Andrea: One of the other books we might read is called Mooncakes, but that one I did pick around the time of the Mid Autumn festival, so we could read that around the same time. So maybe

Elizabeth: All right. Cool.

Andrea: good places to buy moon cakes. Maybe I can ship you some moon cakes.

Elizabeth: I could get 'em in the mail. I [00:24:00] definitely could get those in the mail. Yeah, that sounds great.

Andrea: So one of the other things I wanted to talk about that I did appreciate in the book, is they mentioned meditation.

Andrea: As she is learning different skills with Prince Liwei, she has to meditate with one of her teachers. She says she liked archery better because the results were clear and instantaneous, she knew how to improve and what the goal was. With meditation, goal is not to focus on anything. It's to sort of exist, clear your mind. I could have used more chapters on meditation. I thought that was great. I wanted more of that.
Andrea: Have you ever tried to meditate?

Elizabeth: No, actually. I have not.

Elizabeth: But I feel like the idea of meditation in terms of the sort of sense of mindfulness where you are connecting what is going on in your body with what's going on in your mind happens in lots of different ways. And I think that I probably get something similar by playing the piano.

Elizabeth: As I play the piano, there are times where depending on how well I know the [00:25:00] song and I have to admit that there's not very much that I can play without music. I have a handful of songs and it's always growing, but very slowly of songs that I can just play just by sitting down.

Elizabeth: So over 30 years of playing the piano, I have become very good at reading music. Most of the time when I play the piano, I'm reading music. But there are moments where as I know a song really well that you can get into this state of flow where I'm not really paying attention to what I'm doing. It's just kind of coming out of me. And it's very fun to get to that point. When I was learning how to play the piano, I never really got to that point. So it's kind of been more in the last five or six years that I've gone back to the piano as an adult.

Elizabeth: And it's really, really fun to get to that point. 'cause then it just happens. And it, and I think that's probably kind of a similar state in a way. It usually doesn't happen for very long. Depending on how well I know the song. Sometimes the flow is kind of brief, but other times where it's maybe it's, it lasts minutes.

Andrea: I've heard running, sometimes people get into that kind of flow state.

Elizabeth: Totally.

Andrea: And, and there's different [00:26:00] types of meditation too.

Andrea: I went to a 10 day course once for meditation. I went with some friends and it was like, "we'll do a road trip and then we'll go to this meditation course for 10 days".

Andrea: I thought " oh, I'll learn something and it'll be fun". Fun is not a word I would've used to describe it. It was intense.

Elizabeth: Huh,

Andrea: You were not allowed to speak to other people. The only person you were supposed to talk to or even make eye contact was the teacher. It was to try to

Elizabeth: huh.

Andrea: this idea of being teacher and student, like one-on-one experience. So you weren't allowed to talk, you ate all vegetarian food, and no alcohol. It was a Vipassana course and I really appreciated it.

Andrea: Your mind does these crazy things. They call it like the monkey mind when you're trying to sit and do nothing and not think about anything specific. The most random things pop into your head. By the end of the 10 days, I felt like maybe I was the hang of it, [00:27:00] but it was not easy.

Elizabeth: And would you do it again or would you recommend it to somebody? What are your sort of thoughts after? You said, I mean, it's very intense.

Andrea: I would not recommend it to someone if they're looking for something fun to do. I would go into it expecting it to be difficult . So that's why when she mentioned in the book that she thought meditation was hard, I was like, "yes, meditation is hard, and thank you for pointing that out".

Andrea: " Can you explain that to other people?" But it wasn't really mentioned again.

Elizabeth: To be honest, I didn't remember that part either. That didn't even strike me at all.

Andrea: It was very brief, but I appreciated that it was in there for at least a moment. And I think just the act of 10 or 15 minutes outta your day and not rushing from one thing to the next and sort of let your body calm down.

Andrea: There's supposed to be a lot of good health benefits as well to meditating. One of the things I appreciated at the end of the course is they said, it's sort of like making a bowl of porridge. You can add what you want to [00:28:00] it, you can add raisins or maple syrup. You know, you can add things to the porridge to suit it to your taste, but there's still this basis of breathing and being one with your body. So I really appreciated that.

Andrea: I would maybe go back at some point in my life, but it's hard to set 10 days aside

Elizabeth: That's a long time.

Andrea: You know, and you think, oh, 10 days is like vacation, but if you want a vacation, this is not fun, relaxing, time on the beach where you get to read. In your free time when you weren't meditating, you weren't supposed to read or do other things either. It was very serious.

Elizabeth: Like completely disconnecting from like all external input, basically.

Andrea: phone, no computer, no ebook

Elizabeth: No talking.

Andrea: No talking.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea: I had a roommate and you were not supposed to talk to your roommate. And there was a divider in the room so you wouldn't see your roommate. It was very

Elizabeth: That sounds really intense. For 10 days. That's, that's a lot. Yeah.

Andrea: [00:29:00] Yeah.

Elizabeth: I don't know if I'm interested in that.

Andrea: no, so my

Elizabeth: I like to read too much. I would wanna reading a book. You could read so many books in that much time. Oh my gosh.

Andrea: Yeah.

Elizabeth: could bring a stack of books and soar through them.

Andrea: I remember going to get a meal. The first meal after leaving the meditation center. I got waffles with whipped cream and strawberries, and I was just so full of thankfulness, just this

Elizabeth: was gonna say something like McDonald's or Wendy's or something.

Andrea: No waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. And I almost wanted to cry. It gave a new perspective everything, but intense not fun.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: I don't feel like that comes up often but i'd like to hear about people's experiences with meditation.

Elizabeth: And more in like fictionalized accounts as opposed to self-help books or something, or like books about how to meditate and like instructional books.

Elizabeth: I suppose, meditation, I think is very associated with [00:30:00] Asian culture. Not to say that it is purely Asian. ' When you say things like takes some time to get out of the thoughts in your own head and focus and be present in the moment that can kinda go back to this idea of mindfulness, meditation as a type of mindfulness.

Elizabeth: That, that's not necessarily just Asian, you know, but meditation itself does seem sort of very associated heavily with Asian culture. So not to say that you couldn't read it in other books, but I suppose if you are reading, sort of Asian fiction, maybe you'd have more of a chance to see, as a subject.

Andrea: As I was reading this, there was part of it that reminded me of the Deavabad Trilogy by, S.A. Chakraborty. She wrote the City of Brass, and she's one of the authors that has a little description or blurb on the back of the

Elizabeth: Oh yeah.

Andrea: I loved that series. Those were five star fantasy reads in my opinion.

Andrea: It's Middle Eastern mythology and djinn

Elizabeth: Hmm.

Andrea: Who are magic. And she goes to island with a bunch of magic [00:31:00] djinn. There's also princes and kings and queens. So that felt similar.

Andrea: So if people liked that series, they may like this book. But if you like this book, I think you definitely like the Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty.

Elizabeth: I was gonna say, it seems like a lot of different cultures, mythologies are getting more of the modern treatment. Just even Greek mythology that just brought to mind Circe and Song of Achilles, both by Madeline Miller, which are excellent books.

Elizabeth: And it makes me actually ask the question does fictionalized accounts of mythology, does that count as fantasy? Does all of that count as fantasy? Would you count even Greek mythology, would you count that as fantasy?

Andrea: I think that's like the original fantasy.

Elizabeth: Totally.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Elizabeth: It's funny, as we continue on this journey of this podcast, it's making me realize how many more books out there that I have read that would count as fantasy that I didn't necessarily think of as fantasy in my mind. Like I did not think of those two books as fantasy, but now as we talk about it, it's like, oh yeah, totally.

Elizabeth: Going back to Daughter of the Moon [00:32:00] Goddess as I was reading it, there were times where the prose was interesting imagery or interesting descriptions of things that maybe in the moment very briefly, sort of would strike you. But once again, going back to just not very memorable. I couldn't even begin to tell you where those, or what they were at the time, or where they were in the book.

Andrea: She was sort of climbing this ladder and everything kept going her way, and one thing just led to the next. I think the

Andrea: yeah, she just kept.

Andrea: of the book is kind of more of the relationships and the stuff that, happens at the end that became more interesting to me.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Andrea: we were talking about that.

Elizabeth: Yeah. More dragons. The dragons should have started earlier and there should have been more about the dragons, not enough dragons.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Climbing this ladder just seems so much of the book was just obstacle was put in front of her and she overcame the obstacle and then onto the next obstacle, and then she overcome it.

Elizabeth: It didn't necessarily build her character or provide any more of a purpose other than just, all these side quests . And , maybe , the relationships are more interesting, but [00:33:00] there could have been a whole lot more about that especially for the length of the book.

Elizabeth: So I guess that kind of brings us the question of if we had to rate it at a number of stars, what would you say?

Andrea: I given this like a three and a half, but I rounded it up on Goodreads and gave it a four because of the dragons.

Elizabeth: Is that like an automatic, like half point bump minimum?

Andrea: Yeah.

Elizabeth: There's dragons,

Andrea: I think they did add a lot. I think this book could have been really good. If there had been a little bit more spice or a little bit more detail, but it didn't quite get there. But I overall liked the world that it was in. I liked the characters and I liked the ideas.

Andrea: I just didn't feel like they were well flushed out enough to be five stars. Also for me, a three star read is okay. I think this was a little better than Okay. But it wasn't great. I didn't love it. So I think a lot of the books I read end up in the four star category of "it was good", but not the five stars. What about you?

Elizabeth: Yeah, sometimes with, depending on how much [00:34:00] freedom you have with the number of stars, right? If you have 10 stars, then I feel like you can kind of give a better feel for it. If it were at a 10, I would probably say maybe a seven. But if there's only integers of stars, there's only five of them, then a lot of times they end up maybe getting rounded up perhaps to a four star. So I think, the three and a half star does kind of fit more in my mind too. But as I was reading it, I was thinking like, ah, this is a four star book. Sure. It was a pleasant read. It read right along. It was a fine book.

Andrea: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Sort of saying it's a fine book it's almost damning it with faint praise. It was an enjoyable read, but would I recommend it to somebody?

Elizabeth: I don't know that I would., And yeah, saying that I liked the world that was in, and so I feel like if there were another book, it could almost just be a different story within the same world, and I would be more inclined to read that. But if it's these same characters, I'm sort of less inclined to read that.

Andrea: The book that she came out with this year called Immortal, it's another character in that same world. Yeah, but it's a standalone.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I might be more inclined to read that and [00:35:00] I would read something else of hers, like I did enjoy the writing and I think I would read another.

Andrea: Unfortunately, that concludes this week's episode. We've reached the end of another cosmic journey on Galaxies and Goddesses.

Elizabeth: But don't worry, the adventure never really ends. There are always more stories to explore and let's be honest, more bookish tangents for us to go on.

Andrea: Hey, that's part of the fun. If you love today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share the magic with your fellow goddesses.

Elizabeth: Be sure to check out our Instagram at Galaxies and Goddesses where we'll have a book review with a quick recap of our thoughts about The Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan.

Andrea: For our next episode, we'll be gearing up for the summer and talking about some of our favorite summer reading activities.

Elizabeth: In the meantime, keep your mind fueled by the magic of stories.

Andrea: and never stop chasing the worlds waiting for you between the pages. Thanks everyone!
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