Week 14 Reading Diary B: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

Today, I finally finished the Twenty-Two Goblins. The last set of riddles were as entertaining as the other I suppose; I'm still trying to figure out the King's logic for each of his answers. The thing that really stood out to me about this reading was the ending. It was a pretty big plot twist to find out that the monk had been planning on killing the king this whole time (if the Goblin is to be believed) and even more surprising to just the king lop off his head without giving it a second thought. His reward for outsmarting the monk was power over all fairies and magical creatures, which seems like it would be pretty cool, but he decides to give that up just so the riddles can be spread all over the world. I guess my problem with this story was that I was expecting something with maybe more human motivations, like the epics. But this story seems to be a lot more moralizing in comparison, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just made the characters seems a bit flat I guess.

"Sadhu," an Indian Monk; source: pixbay

Week 14 Reading Diary A: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

This week I decided to continue on with the Twenty-Two Goblins from Ryder. I really enjoyed the first week's set of readings, and I'm interested in seeing how things turn out for the King. I thought that the second story from this set of readings, the one about the King and His general, was really interesting, especially because of the moral at the end. I keep thinking that the King's reasoning doesn't make too much sense, such as how he declared the King more virtuous simply because he was a king so it was harder for him to be a good person. It seems like a lot of the stories deal with Kings or love in some aspect, so these themes might be interesting to work into a story.

A "King" card; source: wikimedia