CoW Ep. 218: Dinovember! Saurs (& Ep. 233 Staff Pick)

[danooli]

Episode 218: Dinovember! Saurs by Craig DeLancey




(edit: This is also Episode 233, as Editor Marguerite Kenner’s Staff Pick for 2016!)

• Narrated by Marguerite Kenner
• Audio production by Jeremy Carter
• Photo by Emma Thompson
• A Cast of Wonders original!

Craig Delancey’s YA novel Gods of Earth is available from 47 North Press. He lives in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York. Stop by his web site, or follow him on Twitter.

The fossil mages gathered in the shadow of the gully.  Four of them:  three old men and a young woman.  Old Jim lifted and replaced his wreck of a straw hat and then spat at a scorpion.  John Bloodeye and Harry watched the dark spot in the sand evaporate in the heat, until finally, as they’d all been hoping, the young one spoke.
“I found it near here,” Karyn Thomson said.   She put her hand into her pocket, fingering the bone there, but not drawing it out yet.

Click here to listen to Episode 218
Click here to read the text of  the story

Special thanks to Emma Thompson for the use of her photograph in this week’s episode art, featuring her three adorable dinosaur lovers.

And if you’ve a hankerin’ for a weird western that lets you fight an undead T-Rex, check out Deadlands! And tell Shane, Clint and Jodi I sent you.

Tags: Cast of Wonders, choice, Craig Delancey, curiousity, dinosaurs, Dinovember, Fantasy, fossils, healing, Jeremy Carter, life, magic, Marguerite Kenner, paleontology, science, Young Adult fiction

[Unblinking]

Cool story.  I like when a magical system has some logic to it that makes sense--it made some sense that the fossils stewing in their own lifeforces would become more powerful with time (it would have to, otherwise it's much easier to produce fresh corpses than fossils!), and that this expendable resource is burning up crazy fast once this becomes public knowledge. 

The ending was very fitting for the desires of the rest of the story and I'm glad that she finally got her wish to see a dinosaur face to face.

[Fenrix]