Author Topic: EP008: Lachrymose and the Golden Egg  (Read 5829 times)

Russell Nash

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on: September 15, 2009, 08:37:41 AM
EP008: Lachrymose and the Golden Egg

By Tim Pratt.
Read by Stephen Eley.

"Foul temptress?” I said, stepping back, clanking in my armor. A suit of plate mail often appears when I’m startled. I wished the armor away and replaced it with soft green leggings and a deerskin shirt. “Wily seductress?”

“Damsel in distress.” She leaned against a tree, hands clasped before her.

I clutched my stick and looked around. “Immediate distress, or general distress?” I worried about ogres, or killbots. They often menace damsels, and when the wind’s wrong, you can’t smell them coming, neither rotten meat nor engine oil. It’s hard to hurt an ogre or a killbot with a staff, but I’m useless with a sword. I used a blade on my first few outings, but after chopping off my feet six times, I switched to a stick.


Rated PG. Contains slight profanity, drug use, and violence against were-ape ninjas.



Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!



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Reply #1 on: January 22, 2010, 03:07:57 PM
Loved it!  Another hit out of the part by Tim Pratt!  I love the alternate reality, the silly name of the character, the parallels between this world and the other.  And the ambiguity at the end is delicious about what the egg really is, whether it'll actually cure them, etc... 

More Pratt please!



Talia

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Reply #2 on: January 22, 2010, 03:45:43 PM
You're in for a treat, between EP and Podcastle there's tons of Pratt stories. Also, Drabblecast has run some (reallly really excellent pieces) of his work too.

Hmm, I must have heard this but I dont remember it at all, will have to give it a relisten




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Reply #3 on: January 22, 2010, 03:52:28 PM
You're in for a treat, between EP and Podcastle there's tons of Pratt stories. Also, Drabblecast has run some (reallly really excellent pieces) of his work too.

Hmm, I must have heard this but I dont remember it at all, will have to give it a relisten

Yeah, Pratt held 3 positions of the top 10 in my Best of Podcastle list, so I knew I liked him before I picked up EP.  :)

I haven't listened to Drabblecast yet, but I think I'll pick them up when I'm caught up on all the Escape Artists 'casts.



Malapropos de Rien

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Reply #4 on: May 30, 2010, 12:59:36 AM
This was a good one.  I gave it 4 out of 5 stars in my podcast rating for my future reference.  A similar concept as Feng Burger, but with a much better execution in my opinion.

Small nitpicks which kept it from being 5 stars: Why did they just assume that breaking the egg, cooking it, and eating it was the right way to use it? 

The "potato" joke was hard to swallow.  I would have expected her to be a little more wowed at seeing direct evidence that their vision was true, not make a "joke" that fooled L and almost got the egg broken.  Besides, why would the doctor be keeping a potato in his lab fridge?  That's hard to believe as well.

What was the purpose of the staff's appearance in L's house?  The vision was real, and yet the memory lapses from the drug were real as well?  He just bought one and forgot about it?  When he started practising with the staff, it seemed like it was setting up an actual fight to come.  I expected to see Dr Montresor bursting through the door when they were about to cook the egg.  He knows the address, after all, having given it to the lady.  Dr Montresor seemed strangely unsuspicious about everything as well, aside from strongly advising them to stop taking the drug.



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Reply #5 on: January 05, 2016, 11:09:25 AM
I really enjoyed this one. I don't think I've ever read/heard/seen a story which so perfectly mixed the science fiction and fantasy genre. I found it had undertones of "A Scanner Darkly" in some ways, I'm not sure why though, perhaps the "vision" drug which results in memory loss and ultimately madness. Perhaps that was what was happening, the protagonist was simply loosing his mind. The ending was perfect. One of those stories which you find yourself thinking about from time to time, which, for me at least, is the marking of a really good story.