Book Discussion Guides - Charles Mandrake Books

A note from Anna

If you’ve finished Charles Mandrake and the Resonance Array, you already know this isn’t a book that ends when the last page does. It keeps running in your head while you wash dishes, while you drive, while you look at a dark window and wonder what you’d do if the glass suddenly became a portal.

That’s why we made these discussion guides.

They aren’t meant to tell you what to think. They’re meant to give you a starting point when you’re sitting with other people who read the same pages and felt different things.

Some groups want to talk about what the characters did and whether they were right. Some groups want to talk about belief, and how belief changes when it stops being an idea and becomes a choice you have to live with.

The questions in these guides stay close to two themes that show up again and again in the book: choices and morality, and faith and belief.

In East Bay, those themes look like caution, procedure, and the slow work of trust. In Skelderheim, they look like visibility, fear, protection, and the cost of being named by strangers.

The guides assume you’ve read the book, so spoilers are allowed. That lets you talk openly about consequences instead of circling them.

Use these however you want. Pick a question and let it run. Skip any that don’t fit your group. If you find yourself talking about your own life instead of ours, that’s fine.

The point isn’t to perform a perfect discussion. The point is to be honest with each other and leave with a clearer sense of what you believe, what you’d choose, and what you’d protect.

The Fireside Discussion Guide

Charles Mandrake and the Resonance Array – A Complete Fireside Discussion Guide Download

The Fireside guide is for the kind of conversations that happen when there’s no agenda and no clock. It’s for families, close friends, and people who don’t need a facilitator so much as they need a reason to start talking. It’s for a kitchen table after dinner, a living room when the weather turns, or a night outside when the air is cold enough that everyone sits closer to the fire.

That’s the kind of talk I know best.

Before Skelderheim, those talks were small and ordinary. Charles would get stuck in his own head, trying to line up facts until they clicked. Todd would push back with something practical, the kind of thing you learn by living inside work that has consequences. I’d end up between them, asking the question neither of them wanted to say out loud yet: “What are we actually doing?” Not in a philosophical way. In the way you ask when you can feel a line coming up and you don’t want to cross it by accident.

In East Bay, it’s easy to think morality is a big dramatic thing. It isn’t. It’s the steady choice to do the work the right way when nobody is watching. It’s writing down the dial positions again, even when your hands are tired. It’s telling the truth to the person who trusts you, even when the truth makes your life harder. It’s deciding to stop after three tries, even when you want to push harder because you finally feel close to an answer.

Those are fireside questions. They don’t require a lecture. They require honesty.

After Skelderheim, the conversations changed because the stakes changed. In Skelderheim, people don’t always have the luxury of debating what the “best” choice is. Sometimes the choice is the one that keeps you alive long enough to make a better one later. Sometimes protection looks like control, and you don’t know which it is until the moment has passed and you’re counting the cost.

I think about the quiet talks in Emera’s tavern, where the warmth wasn’t only from the hearth. It was from routine and competence. Emera didn’t ask us to prove ourselves with speeches. She watched what we did. She listened to what we avoided saying. She decided what she believed based on actions, and then she acted on that belief with risk attached. If you’ve ever sat with someone like that—someone who is kind without being naive—you already understand what faith can look like when it isn’t performance.

And I think about conversations with Izrah, too. She doesn’t waste words. She also doesn’t pretend the world is safer than it is. When she speaks, it’s usually because someone needs to understand a rule fast, or because danger is close enough that politeness becomes a liability. That kind of presence changes how you talk. You stop theorizing. You start asking what you’ll do if the next thing goes wrong.

That’s why the Fireside guide stays flexible. It’s built for groups that want to follow the conversation where it naturally goes. You can start in East Bay and end up in Skelderheim, or start in Skelderheim and end up talking about your own home. You can spend ten minutes on one question because it opened something real, and then stop there. You can choose questions that stay comfortable, or choose the ones that make you pause and look at your own choices a little longer than you expected.

If you want a simple way to begin, pick one opener and let each person answer once before anyone debates. Then see what keeps coming back. That recurring thread is usually the real subject, even when nobody planned it.

The Group Discussion Guide (Facilitator Edition)

Charles Mandrake and the Resonance Array – A Complete Group Discussion Guide Download

The Facilitator guide is for structured groups: libraries, classrooms, book clubs with rotating hosts, meetups, and any session where the room may include people who don’t know each other well. It’s also for discussions where time is limited and you want to leave with a complete arc, not a half-finished conversation.

This version is designed to reduce prep and reduce friction. It includes an at-a-glance overview, a short primer for Skelderheim concepts, and question sets that can support a 45-, 60-, or 90-minute session. It also includes follow-up prompts that help a facilitator deepen the discussion or reset it if the conversation stalls.

The structure is there to serve the group, not to control it. In a mixed room, people will arrive with different interests. Some will want character and relationship. Some will want ethics. Some will want world rules and consequences. The Facilitator guide makes it easier to accommodate that range without losing the thread.

If you’re leading a formal session, you don’t need to cover everything. Pick a track—East Bay, Skelderheim, or a bridge that compares both—and use the questions as tools. If the room is quiet, lean on specific scenes and what the characters knew at the time. If the room gets heated, shift from judgment to options: what were the constraints, what alternatives existed, and what did each choice cost.

The goal isn’t consensus. The goal is clarity. When people walk out, they should have a sharper sense of what the book argues about belief, what it asks about moral responsibility, and why those questions still apply even when the setting changes from a Maine coastline to a ringed city under a dim sun.

One last thing

If you read all the way down here, you’re probably not the kind of reader who closes the cover and moves on. You’re the kind of reader who wants to sit with what happened and ask what it means, once the plot is done and the noise is gone.

That means something.

A lot of stories are built to be consumed and forgotten. This one stays with you because the questions in it don’t stay on the page. If you’ve ever had to choose with incomplete information, you know the feeling. If you’ve ever realized you believed something because you inherited it, not because you tested it, you know the feeling. If you’ve ever watched caution slide into fear, or protection slide into control, you know the terrain.

East Bay and Skelderheim are different worlds, and the pressure points are the same. In East Bay, moral choices hide inside routine. You can tell yourself you’re only fixing a building, only cleaning a panel, only writing down numbers. The book keeps showing the same truth: procedure isn’t neutral when it leads somewhere. If you keep doing the work, you’re choosing the consequences that come with it. The honest part is naming that and deciding if you’re still willing.

Skelderheim makes that truth louder. In a place where people get named by strangers and punished by rumor, belief doesn’t stay private. It turns into action. It turns into rules. It turns into a crowd that can move faster than you can think. The questions there aren’t only “What do I believe?” They’re “What will my belief do to someone else?” and “What do I do when other people’s belief becomes my problem?”

These guides will not hand you answers. The point is to give you a way into the conversation, and enough structure—if you want it—to help people talk honestly without feeling cornered.

If you’re using the Fireside guide, let the conversation wander. Let it turn into stories about your own lives. That isn’t the discussion failing. That’s the discussion doing its job. Sometimes a book gives you words for something you’ve been carrying for a long time.

If you’re using the Facilitator guide, don’t measure success by how many questions you covered. Measure it by whether people spoke, whether they listened, and whether anyone left with a thought they didn’t walk in with. A clean outline isn’t the goal. A real conversation is.

If you want to keep reading in this world, we’ve been writing Chapters Between Chapters. They’re stand-alone pieces that sit alongside the books. You don’t need them to follow the main story. They let you stay with the characters, the culture, and the questions a little longer.

Free Chapters: https://charlesmandrake.com/category/free-chapters/
Members Only Chapters: https://charlesmandrake.com/category/member-chapters/
The members section exists for readers who want to support the work directly and help keep the project sustainable. It’s also where we can release early access chapters first, before some of them become free later.
Make Your Own Book: https://charlesmandrake.com/create-your-book/
If you want a personalized copy—your selections, your order, your extras—that page walks you through it.

And if you’re reading this alone and deciding whether to bring the book to your group, here’s what I’ll tell you. The right people don’t need a perfect pitch. They need an honest invitation. “This book made me think about choices.” “This book made me think about belief.” “I want to talk about it.”

That’s enough.

Whatever you choose—fireside, formal, or something in between—thank you for reading. Thank you for taking our story seriously. And thank you for taking each other seriously when you talk about it.

That’s how we keep the flame.

With all my love,
Anna