The Book of Briars “narrative release” has started. Chapter one is available for everyone. Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming events and clues to how the rest of the book will be released.
If you pre-ordered The Book of Briars, you’ll receive future installments exclusively via email.
In the meantime, discuss all of your thoughts and theories here! If you DO have theories about where the story is going, please use the Spoiler brackets which can be accessed from the icon in the reply menu!
You know. I’ve been here, 3 years? And there’s one question I could never figure out the answer to. What was going to actually be IN the Book of Briars? Like…was it a history? A documentary of things that happened ‘off screen’? Was it the adventures of Deeds and Cole? I honestly couldn’t even make a basic guess that wasn’t pure speculation.
But now that it’s starting, I’ve never been so happy to read a book in my life. So far it’s beautiful and I can’t thank you enough for letting us tag along to see this come out.
Finally. After… what, four years with me, over five with the rest of us, we finally did it. Lets be damn proud of ourselves, basecamp. Its been a long time, but we finally have the first trickles of the end.
I was thinking this too. Super far fetched, but a necklace hanging from a tree sounds pretty familiar from today…they could be from a lot of different time periods of things that Mountaineers have casted with.
This made me think that, physically-speaking, she may have found her way to Neithernor in a similar fashion to Woolie, and that she’s living somewhere in the wreckage from one of the battles from his time there.
I’m still reeling about “spice, dew and memories she once knew” - how many other hints have been dropped along the way that flew completely over our heads, and are about to circle back and bonk us.
I’m also very curious that Ilya has a name if/when “names didn’t matter here.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t know if the place actually is Neithernor. Or if so, I have a lot of questions about how. For one thing, it seemed pretty established that the Storm (at least our Storm) even at it’s strongest couldn’t actually get into Neithernor without being let in; it was always attracted to Neithernor, but with the Silver banished, I can’t imagine who would have invited it. To my recollection, the '98 Mounties didn’t even know about Neithernor. On the other hand…what is this place that was wrecked by a/the Storm, but where the inhabitants weren’t consumed by it? I mean, Ilya seems to be missing a lot of memories, but she and the caretaker both seem to know and accept that a) they’re here tending to the production of the Book of Briars, and b) they’re desined/fated/whatever to do the things the Book says they’ll do.
So…my head hurts and I need to lie down from this train of thought, but let me share first.
"The Book of Briars’ was a challenge/spell/sentient tome that was given to our world every so often by the Council of 18 Gates in order to test us and challenge us to open it. At least twice before (Augie’s grandfather’s mountaineers, and the 94’s) the Storm showed up to wipe them out. A copy of “The Book of Briars” existed in each of these timelines, only to be taken back and reused by the council when the mounties were wiped out.
In 2018 our ‘Book of Brairs’ was burned and “destroyed” by the Silver, when the Council was talked into doing something different this time by Sullivan Green. Instead of saving the Book as they usually do, they saved us, trusting we’d figure it out.
Our answer was to actually convince part of the Storm (The innocent child at the center of the Storm who had the power to take things from the past in exchange for things from the present.) to take the Little Red House, and switch it with the Book of Briars from 1998. So we had a ‘Book of Briars’ again.
So at some point we ‘sent’ the storm to 1998 to get the Book of Briars and bring it forward to now, so we could open it. Is it possible this is what happened to them on the island? Perhaps the Storm had to go there to recover it?
But…then how in 2018 do they still have the ‘Book of Briars’ to release? Or is the Spell the ‘Book of Briars’ different from the physical ‘Book of Brairs’ which is different from the Age the ‘Book of Briars’? Yeah, going to lay down now.
My guess from reading the chapter is that our The Storm isn’t really involved. Ilya’s memories seem to leach out into the fog/water surrounding the house. I also agree with Viv that I don’t think the island is part of our Neithernor, at least as we know it. If it were, why did the caretaker have to row somewhere to put the pages in the post, rather than just Knock from the island itself or whistle up a Neithercourier?
I think whatever is at work on Ilya’s Island is what took magiq away and created the Book of Kings to begin with, the world in which the Silver and the Storm are operating in parallel to Monarch’s Mountain and us.
Also, is telling me how to type the markdown an “ok, boomer” equivalent?
icon in the reply menu!
The timing for them is curious 
