Chasing the Bard
Philippa Ballantine's second novel, published in 2005 by Dragon Moon Press and released as a full-cast Podiobook in 2008. The podcast edition won the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Fan Production and featured the voices of the author and fellow authors such as Tee Morris, PG Holyfield, and Chris Lester.
The Fey world is dying, and Sive will do anything to save her people. Her brother Auberon, their king, prefers to spend his days in idle pleasure. When she discovers a powerful human child, destined to wield the magic of both worlds, she sets her cousin Puck to watch over him, intending the young Will Shakespeare will grow up to be the weapon she needs. Will thinks he has his own life to lead, but the dark powers that are behind the decay of the Fey world also have designs on him and circumstances force him to care about the fate of the Fey.
Digital Magic is the Darker and Edgier sequel.
Tropes used in Chasing the Bard include:
- Action Girl: Sive, who is specifically a Lady of War (she's even described as the goddess of battle).
- Adaptation Expansion: the Podcast version has a Hotter and Sexier extra chapter that was not included in the original print book.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Inverted at first because she used to have feelings for Mordant but his new Badassery completely turns Sive off. Then he uses his new powers on her to induce unwanted sexual desires for him, but just the desires: she still hates him.
- Changing of the Guard: Puck is the main character in Digital Magic, and none of the other characters appear. Or do they?
- The Chosen One: Sive maintains that Will is the destined savior of the Fey; she turns out to be right.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Sive tends to use humans to her own ends, particularly Will, but he eventually changes her mind.
- Eldritch Abomination: the boogarts and the Unmaker's spawn.
- Evil Feels Good: Mordant enjoys torturing Sive and anyone else he can get his hands on.
- Face Heel Turn: Mordant used to not be such a bad guy.
- The Fair Folk: many of the Fey are not very concerned about the welfare of humans except when it serves their ends, but Mordant is downright nasty.
- Hey, It's That Voice!: most of the voice actors in the Podcast are well-known from other Podiobooks and/or their own projects. Some of the promos lampshaded this.
- Historical Domain Character: Will and his family, some of his business partners, Elizabeth I.
- Magical Land: the Fey (which is the name both for the place and the creatures who live there).
- Narnia Time: how much time passes in the Fey compared to the human world varies to allow Will to grow from an infant to an adult without too much time passing for the Fey (except Puck, who takes The Slow Path to keep watch over Will).
- Nightmare Fuel: Many examples, like Mordant magically inducing unwanted lust for him in Sive, who is aware of her hatred of him the entire time; Mordant's body unraveling when Brigit defeats him.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Sive's raven friend Macha, and Will's long-time quasi-pet White Cat who is actually a shapeshifted Puck..
- Our Fairies Are Different
- Powers That Be: the Mother of All.
- Powers Via Possession: Puck, when his aunt Brigit dies, takes her essence into himself and gets a power-up as a result.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Sive, the daughter of the old queen, is the only person who seems to believe or care that her world is in danger. Her brother Auberon becomes this later in the book with a Heroic Sacrifice, after spending most of it as the darling of the Deadly Decadent Court.
- Rule 34: the first Christmas Special of the author's short story Podcast Erotica A La Carte, "Puck's Christmas."
- Shakespeare in Fiction: he's the bard being chased.
- Tall, Dark and Bishoujo: Sive, described often as "the dark goddess."
- Tall, Dark and Handsome: Mordant.
- Took a Level In Badass: Mordant used to be an ordinary Fey but acquired great powers on a long journey taken before the start of the novel; turns out he was Touched by Vorlons. Will, when he finally embraces his powers. Puck starts the book as a somewhat foolish, relatively low-powered Fey exiled to the Evening Realm for playing tricks; over the course of the novel he gets a power up when he receives Brigit's last breath and shows quite a lot of character growth.
- Ultimate Evil: the Unmaker.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Puck does this a lot, spending the book alternately as a cat of various sizes, an adult human man, or a childlike Fey, as well as many other forms that helps him make a joke or play a trick.
- The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: Sive.