A Song for Two Voices - Book 7 [the rest of it]

[swimmer963]

Finally done!

I'm linking the entire "book" here, since it's really a single unit and the previous draft was incomplete, but obviously you can skim or skip the first half if you read the previous draft. (There are a few relatively minor changes to existing scenes, and some number of bonus new scenes). 

The new material contains:
*Most of all, MOAR STEF!!! 
*Also more Jisa!!!
*Stef and Jisa being friends and getting up to shenanigans. 
*Some badly needed followup between Van and 'Fandes
*More Lissa content
*An extremely awkward Ashkevron family reunion dinner 
*Drama. All the drama. Book 7 is literally just 150K words of straight social drama over about a week. 

Book 7 full version epub
Book 7 full version mobi

Comments

[kaza999]

eeeeeek!! i'm so excited!

it's ethics class with professor vanyel, and i love it :D

i still feel really bad for yfandes; i was really glad for the scene between her and melody, and i liked when her and van talked about the companion programming issues.

i'm so happy van and tran made up!

stef and jisa! a more menacing pair valdemar has never seen. i love stef's instacrush on van because, of course (that's always been one of my favorite things about stef tbh; he's pragmatic and reasonable and then van shows up and he just goes to pieces immediately lmao)

i like how jisa and stef have similar gifts. i hadn't made the connection before, but it makes sense. i'm fascinated by your interpretation of stef's gift, as well! it's very interesting, and much closer to jisa's mind-healing than i would have guessed.

i loved the descriptions of everyone's mind-garden! i'd been waiting for a more in-depth description of what jisa sees, and i really liked this, especially details like savil being more 'thorny' and van's mind being less stable.

"Damn it, if he weren’t a terrifying immortal mage who had arranged two attempts on Vanyel’s life and was right now preparing an army to march on his kingdom, Leareth would have been…very attractive." pffff this is one of my favorite lines, and i'm so very here for weird van/leareth foe yay

i'm so glad for van and liss' drunken bonding! i'm glad we get to see more of liss than we did in canon. liss and van make an amazing gruesome twosome and when they're not angsting over the fate of the world they are hilarious

awkward ashkevron family times are the absolute best :D lissa's already drunk, withen's blood pressure is going up by the second, jisa's giving everyone a treatise on animal rights and van is hanging on by teeth and nails. this is awesome

i'm fuckign dying that medren warns stef to not flirt with van in front of his parents of course medren has to warn stef not to chase older men i love thisss

i really enjoyed this! can't wait for more, i'm especially interested in van and stef's relationship. i like how they've started to have a bond much earlier than in canon, and how that might complicate things (or perhaps make them easier? hard to be sure)

can't wait for the next one!

[swimmer963]

Squee, it was really lovely to see this comment like 3h after I posted 60K words! I feel so spoiled.

I'm writing a pretty unusual take on Bardic Gift, but that is partly bc Stef is using it in a really weird way that no one else does – I had the constraint of "figure out how the hell Bardic is useful for eavesdropping on a conversation through a rock wall". I'm really excited to have Stef explore various creative ways of using his Gift, because he totally would. (One of my favourite aspects of Snowblind is Stef using Bardic as a weapon, so I may steal that as well).

I love Van & Liss too! Lissa completely steals the show in her (few) scenes in canon, so I've been excited from the beginning for her to be around more. I've really enjoying building up their sibling relationship, complete with teasing.

The dinner party was soooo much fun to write, and is also something I would have had a really hard time writing a year ago. I think I may have learned from some of you guys (thene in particular) about how to write juicy social awkwardness.

Re: Van & Stef's relationship, the awkwardness here is in preventing them from realizing it until Stef is old enough that it's not going to squick people a bunch. (At this point, Stef is still young enough that Van isn't attracted to him in that way, more just drawn to him in general.)

[gildaurel]

So I couldn’t read everything today and mostly just skipped to the awkward dinner party, which was great. You did the weird family dynamic very, very well, with Treesa’s over emotional behavior and Withen not knowing how to handle his son. When I have a chance to look at this more closely I will comment more!!

[swimmer963]

Awwww, I'm really glad it worked out well! I still find it pretty hard to write that kind of character-based awkward scene. (But also more and more fun with practice!)

[(Anonymous)]

Read it, loved it, cried in frustration at the end! So wonderful and beautiful and still I more!

[swimmer963]

Awwww <3 Don't worry, there will be more! (Maybe not for 2 months though, that's about my estimate for book 8.)

[fossore]

I've been reading through this entire series over the past few days (AO3 says I finished reading the first one on the 10th which...) and I absolutely love it. The changes you've made are believable, and mesh so well with canon, and the way you've change Ma'ar into something with justification is incredible. The whole framework of the conversations is also brilliant to add depth to everything.

I'm not actually finished with this one, it's just that I got to Melody's comment about talking to gods doing Bad things to the inside of one's head and all I could thing of was "This is your brain on gods" like those old PSAs. I'm really liking all of this fallout though and I'm really excited to read what happens next!

[swimmer963]

Glad you're enjoying it! Oh man, yeah, that is hilarious and I'm now imagining Melody doing recorded PSAs of all the things she's needed to tell Vanyel off for doing over the years...

FYI that the stuff posted on this forum is first drafts, and I have second drafts done now for 7 and 8. (7 in particular had a fairly serious rewrite). If you want the newer versions, feel free to pm me your email address and I can send over :)