 Hey guys, it's Liana and I'm here today to talk about all the series that I finished this year. So being a fantasy reader, the starting and finishing of series is a frequent occurrence in my life. The finishing part less frequent, the starting part unfortunately more frequent. There's always a new series to start and then that just you have no time to finish the ones you've already started. That said, I did polish off quite a few series because a few series that I was in the middle of had their concluding book come out this year and I read it when it came out. Yep, so I have made a list and I have eight, yes, eight series that I finished this year. So we're just going to go through them one by one and I'm going to tell you what the series is and how I felt about it in general and how I felt about its conclusion. This will be spoiler free though. So other than I mean if you think my opinion good or bad is spoilery then this is spoilery. But I feel like most of these you already know how I feel about it because I've already talked about it. At some point on this channel there's two on here that I very recently finished as in like within the last week. So you don't know anything about how I feel about those because I barely just finished them. So we're just going to go in chronological order because I made this list by looking at my Goodreads like reading challenge for this year. So the first one is Mistborn. Oh yeah, so for a couple of these, yeah for a couple. I say I finished the series in so far as like the trilogy. So in the case of Mistborn I finished the original Mistborn trilogy. That doesn't necessarily mean that I finished every book there is within the universe or expanded universe or saga or whatever. So for example Red Rising which is not on this list. If I was to have read just the trilogy but not the saga I did finish that. Anyway so yeah back to Mistborn I finished the trilogy. I think that was like the first book that I finished this year is Hero of Ages and I have a video on my channel which was the beginning the precursor the sort of the taste the teaser the trailer for Sanderson Gate because right after reading Hero of Ages I read The Way of Kings and we all know how that went. I don't want to say too much about Mistborn because I kind of already talked about how I felt about the conclusion of Mistborn. That was kind of the whole point of that video that I thought the series was really good up until the end then the end killed it for me and I had kind of trouble talking about in that video because for some reason I decided to make it spoiler free plus it was just that even if it had been spoilery I would have had to explain so many pieces of the trilogy that would have been a monstrously long video all to the point of just saying I didn't like it. Now that I didn't like the trilogy I would still say that I like the trilogy and when people ask for reading recommendations or specifically say oh I've heard Mistborn's good is it. I'll usually tell them that in general I think it's well written and for the first two books I really really enjoyed it I really really liked it. The third book for me personally killed it because I didn't like the sort of concluding message wrap up the way things wrapped up and the way things were explained I didn't like it. I thought it was heavy-handed and a little bit preachy so I didn't like that. I do want to mention this because it's relevant to another series that I'm going to talk about at the very end one in eight one in eight on my list. Mistborn people I mean people just hate me for dislunking anything Sanderson does because of reasons but specifically accused me of being a staunch atheist or that I'm seeing too much into it or if I hadn't known that Sanderson was Mormon that I wouldn't have decided to see this message in it and I don't think any of that is true especially the fact that people have said well you just don't like any religion in books whatsoever which is not true. I don't like when religion is preached to me in a book. I don't care if the characters themselves are going through something religious or are themselves extremely religious or something like that but I don't like if the whole point of a book has been to convince me of a particular brand or idea or way of thinking. That's propaganda. So spoilers the last series that I want to talk about in this video is another series where I didn't like the messaging and it's the exact opposite of Mistborn because the messaging is anti-religious and I didn't like that any better so for those who accused me of just being anti-religious and that's why I didn't like Mistborn I don't like it any better when a book's message is anti-religious. I don't like there to be a preachy shoved in my face message of any description so yeah that's Mistborn. Well if you don't know what Mistborn is uh I don't okay I don't know how to explain Mistborn. The premise is what if the bad guy won and then the magic system and it is based on eating metals and then the people who can use this magic are able to consume those metals and use those metals to power different types of magic and it's like really complicated and really filled with rules it's a very hard magic system which is kind of what Brandon Sanderson is known for so that's Mistborn. Okay much lighter and fluffier number two is the Winner's Trilogy which is the Winner's Curse the Winner's what's the second I always write what the second one is called the Winner's the Winner's Crime holy moly man that took me way too long yeah the Winner's Crime and the Winner's Kiss. I've talked about the series before the covers don't do it justice and or if not don't do it justice they just don't reflect what kind of story it is so you can like the covers if you want I mean I don't but if you like the covers that's fine but they do not reflect the type of story that it is neither cover version that series needs a new cover it's a YA slightly old school style fantasy that has quite like romance is quite prominently featured but not nearly as much as the covers would make you think it's a lot more if you wanted only romance out of it you would be disappointed because it's a lot more politics and intrigue and conspiracy and war and battle a lot more of that just more romance than a book that's purely political battle fantasy would have I really like the main character and there's something about Mary Koski's writing that is just so bingeable and unputdownable to me I I didn't want to pick those books up for the longest just because the covers made me think that they were exactly the kind of book that I would not want to read once I learned that they are not that kind of book and I did buy them it took me a while to pick it up and then when I finally did I I read the first one in all in one day and then I didn't move on to the next book for months and months not really because I didn't like it I just didn't and then when I picked up the second book finally then I read the second and third books back to back within like three days I think because Mary Koski's writing I just I just gobble it up like I can't stop reading it I don't know what it is about it it's not especially lyrical it's not especially cliffhanger II I don't I honestly I've I've tried so hard to pinpoint what it is about her writing that I just insatiable when I'm reading her writing I can't I wouldn't even see these books are my favorite or the shoes my favorite author or this writing style is my favorite but when I'm in the middle of it it's like MSG I can't stop so yeah I mean there are good books and that's not to say they're not they are definitely YA definitely fantasy definitely romance definitely I don't know they're fun there's like a lot to them the will there won't they and the romance was dragged out a bit too long for my taste but overall I really really enjoyed the series and Mary Koski has a new book coming out next year so I'm really it takes place in the same universe I think as the winter trilogy and so I'm excited about that and I don't love the cover for the new book oh my god it's so much better than the winners covers um next up I why I don't know okay why did I list it so early in my list so much for being chronological number three on my list is the ravens mark trilogy by ed mcdonnell which is black wing raven cry and crowfall actually read the whole series this year because I reread black wing and raven cry and then red crowfall I guess that's why it's so early in my list because I reread black wing pretty early in the year and that must have been when I wrote it down and then I reread raven cry and somewhat recently finally got to reading crowfall this is an extremely grim dark fantasy very industrial very political very filled with conspiracy and great and it's very great morally great characters and a morally great world it's dark it's dark af um one of the grimest darkest grim dark fantasies I've read I really enjoy it I have to be honest though the end left me scratching my head a little bit I am not entirely sure I know what happened because it got very magical at the end and something happened but I am not sure I know what the something is I'm gonna have to reread it because the third book I was really really loving it and there was some really excellent reveals and excellent political stuff going on the grit was grittier and the gore was gorier and I was into it and then we got to this real magical bit at the end where it's kind of like the climactic epic culmination of all three books and it got so wonky and bizarre with the magic that I kind of lost track of what the f was going on so I'm gonna need to reread that because I was like wait who who what but how did you overall I still recommend the series um I just I don't I don't know what happened okay number four in my list is Air Awakens and I have a whole video on my channel um that's about how to write a terrible book based on my experience with the air awaken series which I didn't like really any part of but I had an audio book that was all of the series in one long audio book so I just kind of plowed on through it and then made a video about wine's garbage so I don't want to say again too much about it because I talked if that video is like god be like 40 minutes I think where I just kind of went through all the ways like it chose to do a thing it shouldn't have chosen to do and then the things that it did choose to do that might have been fine it did lend badly and it's just like how not what to write like master class oh man that series is yikes yeah it's it's like elemental magic um but it's mainly a romance and a bad romance because okay if you're just gonna be an unapologetically heavy on the romance kind of series fine but the romance wasn't even written well so it really just failed on every level next is something that failed the the failure of this series isn't far more criminal than air wakens because air wakens never promised to be good and that is the never night chronicle by j christoff again I have a pretty lengthy video complaining about dark john the conclusion to the never night chronicle this one hurt the most this year because I really loved never night until this year and I have since gotten rid of almost all of my never night books that's how much dark dawn ruined it for me I loved never night and I really loved god's graves the second book dark dawn not only was it bad but it retroactively made me dislike the first two books because what the first part of what I loved about the first two books was what they seemed to be leading to it kept teasing where this is all headed leading clues for you to wonder about where this is going and dark dawn is the reveal is the thing you've been working towards and to find out that you haven't been working towards anything that's all just been a big joke then I can't enjoy never night or dark gods grave anymore either because they just feel like tricks no pun intended that it's just a big lie it's a big con to get you to read this and then the dark dawn was pulling the curtain back and seeing that Oz is just a failure of an old carpet bagger dark dawn is oh god it pissed me off so much I don't want to again be spoilery and I do my video on dark dawn specifically I talked I did a non-spoiler section in the beginning um and then also did spoilers so if you want to know anything about dark dawn I have a whole video but no no uh next up is a book series that yeah these last three I haven't really talked about at all on my channel at least not this year and this is the half drowned king series I keep thinking there's a name for the series because that's also the name of the first book it's the half drowned king the sea queen and the golden wolf I pretty much read these back to back I might have read something in between but I pretty much read them back to back this is a viking historical fiction series that is based on the sagas of king herald it's clear that the author has really studied the Norwegian history and has really studied the sagas I believe the author herself is either from actually I think she might have been born in the US but she's clearly of sort of Nordic descent her name is Linnea um harzöker I think that's how you say it the series is very very viking if you want that if you want a very very viking book then the series is fantastic I really really really enjoyed it if what you want is sort of viking light but mainly like a romance or mainly an adventure story that kind of has a viking aesthetic you probably won't like this because it's very very very much the sagas basically what she's done is taken the sagas of king herald she's had some artistic license with sort of combining some characters into one adding a couple events that didn't happen in the sagas messed around with a little bit but mainly she's because the sagas don't really delve into human emotion or motivation it's just sort of events so she's taken the saga of king herald and started to sort of apply her more modern storytelling to sort of try to figure out what would have made these characters do this what would what would the characters have been feeling when they made these choices and so novelized it in a way that really fleshes out these characters that are featured in the sagas so that they are sort of flesh and blood three-dimensional people but it is it is expansive it it covers many many years in multiple generations it follows multiple perspectives of these vikings who are killing and fucking and having children and fighting with each other and betraying each other and loving each other and swearing oaths to each other and it's a lot of that so if you have no interest in a bunch of vikings doing viking-y things for three books don't read it but if you that sounds great to you then i highly highly recommend this series i loved it and then the last two um are the ones that i finished in this last week and so number seven on my list is the folk of air trilogy by holly black so i just ran queen of nothing and i still like the series but queen of nothing i'd hesitate to compare to never night because i did end up liking i gave queen of nothing four stars but the it's sort of this kind of similar situation to never night where the first two books led me to think this story was going somewhere else i from the cruel prince and the wicked king what i really liked about them and set them apart for me was how cruel and how gray and how unlikeable the characters were which to me is unique in y a y a tends to have if you do have a morally gray character they still have a redemption arc or a tragic backstory that explains why they are the way they are heart of gold that they're trying to hide reasons for what they're doing as opposed to just being evil and the cruel prince and wicked king seemed to me to be a story about some selfish ambitious and wicked people who you know have sort of toxic feelings for each other and why not why not write a story about wicked cruel selfish people being into each other queen of nothing kind of pulls back and is more like all those other y a books that i was talking about where oh no there's reasons there's explanation and redemption and all this kind of thing and not completely but it did kind of soften things a lot and make everyone a lot more likable and as i grimace is i like reading about likable characters and i start to say that i don't but that's what was unique about the series and then ended up not being the case so i feel a little bit tricked a little bit betrayed by that ultimately the queen of nothing was a really fun story and i enjoyed it and it didn't really it's not so much that it didn't live up to what it was promising it's more just that i had a different impression or i had assumed made assumptions about where it was going what kind of story it was that rightly or wrongly so there's there's nothing about the cruel prince or wicked king that would suggest that you can't have a redemption arc i just didn't think that it would and i kind of loved that about the books is that it didn't seem like the kind of story that would bother with their redemption arc so you can absolutely have a redemption arc there's no reason you can't i was just kind of loving it when everyone was just kind of wicked and evil and i really liked that about it so queen of nothing is great and if you like the series you'll probably like queen of nothing and i'll probably really read all three of them but yeah it was too it was too happy it was too nice and the last series on my list is the one that i already kind of mentioned when i was talking about mistborn and that is his dark materials by philip holman once again just like with mistborn i by this i mean that i've read the original trilogy i've read the golden compass the subtle knife and the amber spyglass i have not read the expanded universe kind of books the prequel or the sequel or the novellas i haven't read any of that yet i do own the book of dust the secret commonwealth and um i'll probably get the novellas these books to me progressively got worse i gave five stars to golden compass hundred percent stand by that i really liked the golden compass and the subtle knife i gave four stars to because it started to seem a bit messy a bit preachy kind of doing too many things but it was still introducing some really interesting concepts and expanding the world a lot and there was still some interesting magics and new characters that we were meeting um and so it still seemed to have a lot of potential even if it was getting a little messagey and then the third book seemed to forget all together that there was a story and was just all about the messaging it was like a thinly veiled allegory and i gave it three stars because it was great just like with hero of ages i gave three stars to hero of ages so for people who you know act like i've done a bad thing i still gave it three stars the amber spyglass was just so preachy and so obviously drawing trying to send a message rather than tell a story that i i couldn't enjoy it it was still a creative idea there was still really creative things being done some of the character moments i i did tear up um because i had gotten attached to the characters so there were some emotional moments but it was so preachy and in an anti-religious way so honestly i feel like one of the reasons that i hate super preachy books isn't even so much that i don't like the preachiness of it it's more that i feel like i'm being insulted that my intelligence is being insulted that you think that if you tell a subtler story that i won't pick up on the message because plenty of subtler stories out there if you examine them there's an argument to be made for the fact that what you might come away from it is an impression that a certain kind of a thing might be good or a certain kind of a thing might be bad i mean honestly every book has of that to some extent because the actions of the character either lead to good things or don't lead to good things or maybe the message is that it doesn't matter what you do and it's a nihilistic message i mean every book it has its own sort of set of values guiding it because the person who wrote it has a set of values guiding them and um i can read your book and judge for myself um and just see what you're saying for myself i don't need you shoving it in my face i'm not an idiot so when something is being preachy i just feel like the author thinks i'm an idiot so i don't really care if you ultimately want me to feel like religion is good after i've read your book i don't care if you want me to think religion is bad at the end of reading your book i care that you think i'm too stupid to pick up on whatever your message is so you decide to make it so obvious and so woven in so tightly to every single bit of your story into the magic into the characters into what happens to them into the words they say into the everything about it is just all about driving home this message i'm like okay fuck off like i i'm not an idiot i could pick up on your message without all this so please put your bullhorn down i still like this series which is what i say about miss born too so like everyone who can go suck a dick who says that i'm being unreasonable i can still criticize a book i like it yeah i fully intend to read more books by philip pulman and i would have said that i fully intend to read more sanderson books but the reaction of the fans has put me off the idea just because it's left a bad taste in my mouth being attacked that way that said i originally did intend to read the rest of the miss born books the second generation or the second era or whatever it's called they're kind of all tainted by hate that i've got and continue to get so i might in secret read some more sanderson and just never talk about it on the internet because you know but i got time for that let me know the comments down below if you finish any series this year if there any series that um i mentioned here that you are currently reading or that you also finished or that you now intend to pick up um i post videos on saturdays so like and subscribe and i'll see you next saturday