The Third Force: A Novel Of Gadget by Marc Laidlaw *Patron's Choice* - Episode 234

Thank you to our Patron One In A Thousand who requested this week's book! They wrote in to us earlier this year, saying:

"...At some point in your lives, you've probably experienced media that you felt was ALMOST really good, but for whatever reason it just wasn't, and media that was almost really good can be just as frustrating as outright bad media because you can see that it just needed a little bit of fixing. That's how I felt about The Third Force. It's a tie-in novel to an obscure Japanese multimedia franchise from the 90's called Gadget...Marc Laidlaw was given a lot of creative freedom to write his own interpretation of the story, including more worldbuilding and character development, to mixed results...Laidlaw has confirmed that several characters and plot points from this book went on to inspire elements of the Half-Life series, which he became the lead writer for a couple years after writing this...In a way, The Third Force is almost like a rough first draft for ideas that Laidlaw would execute in a better way later."

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of brainwashing, torture, murder, and general high mind loss.