 All right, do y'all do y'all see this? This is six books all these tabs about 2,000 ish pages I read through all of that and Believe me. I started off giving it a fair shake. Okay. I didn't go into this saying. Okay. This is gonna be shit Let's hate on it. I went into it thinking you know what this might be fun. Let's let's see what it does and Even though it didn't start off all that awful Boy, it got bad. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long Maybe it's a little harsh to say that it was Awful or bad or something like that because it's um It's really not the worst thing ever, but it is horribly horribly disappointing up until the end because Man the ending of this there's kind of two endings So the core series of the of this is four books long it's fallen which is the first one and then torment passion and rapture and You can't just read that. That's the main core Story and the ending of rapture is terrible. It feels like a giant middle finger like we'll get to it in time Don't worry, but it feels like a giant middle finger to the readers And then there's fallen in love, which is just a side story which takes place More or less simultaneously with the main story And then there is unforgiven which is It's kind of a spin-off and kind of a sequel because it focuses on a side character cam Who's like the bad boy in the love triangle, I guess I I don't know how you would describe him really But yeah, it focuses on him going on his own adventure and at first I thought yeah it's just gonna be this quick self-contained story with him wrapping up his character arc and all that but No, that's not what happens at all. It actually Kind of changes the world a lot at the end of it But that's a much worse ending than even rapture had that If rapture's ending was a giant middle finger Unforgivens ending is a giant steaming pile of cow shit left on my front porch But like I said, I was kind of excited to read these books because I saw the movie months ago And it was fucking terrible. I mean I think I think it's on net or not Netflix It's still in Hulu if you're in the US at least and you should watch it. It's it's terrible and funny But most of the terrible stuff about it is Stuff that's terrible for film-making reasons, you know bad acting bad dialogue dubbing bad special effects that sort of thing And that's what makes it fun whereas the books I Started off thinking you know what this is interesting because Christian mythology I think is Highly underutilized in popular fiction because I mean it's just cool to me You know the idea of like angels fallen angels a never-ending war between the forces of good and evil like there's some cool imagery in there there's some cool stuff in there and You can obviously change it around because you know this is fiction and do some fun stuff with it Like the Darksiders video games for example that focuses on the four horsemen of the apocalypse But it's years after the earth has already been destroyed and Angels are not really the good guys. It's it's kind of complicated But you know that's fun, and I know that this is very much a twilight Clone type thing. It's I don't want to call it a rip-off, but yeah, it is kind of a rip-off You know, it's just twilight, but they change Enough about it so that it's not exactly the same thing it's just a teenage girl runs into an old supernatural being who is also a hot guy and not the Eldritch abominations that angels usually are in the Bible for for some reason I don't know exactly when we stopped viewing them as those eldritch beings, but You know we did romance of that sort can still be sweet if you do it, right? you know obviously it's not done right a lot of the time, but it can be and You know I still had hope and throughout the first book I thought it was just kind of fine, and then at the ending I was like, okay So things are gonna start getting good and then the second book was kind of the same and at the end I was like, okay, things are getting good and the third book is pretty good Actually, I enjoyed that one and basically it just kept my hope alive because there were always little morsels that I could get into that I could enjoy but It never amounted to much of anything else. So that's enough rambling. Let's get started If you're unfamiliar with this there will be massive spoilers because I'm basically gonna go through the whole plot line So if you want to read these I Don't know if I can really recommend them unless you're like, you know exactly what you're getting into you know Yes, that's a twilight clone. That's what I want to read the fallen angels imagery sounds cool to me Something like that, but if that's what you're into I guess go ahead So the prologue of this book is 1854 in England there are two lovers who Their names are not given for whatever reason and they're just conversing and it's pretty clear that he's hiding things from her and Then it's over and there's not a whole lot going on here Except that he's also drugging her apparently Worn milk with a spoonful of treacle he murmured his back still to her then he added sadly it helps you sleep How did you know why that's exactly what my mother used to I know he said turning to face her the Astonishment in her voice did not surprise him yet He could not explain to her how he knew or tell her how many times he administered this very drink to her in The past when the shadows came how he had held her until she fell asleep. So Yeah, this dude is drugging his girlfriend but I Guess it's for her own good Now when I first read that I was thinking holy fuck we are in for a ride because This this is gonna be a horribly abusive relationship It winds up not being that awful at least not compared to a lot of other young adult stuff in this vein but still nonetheless that that starts off like oh dear here we go and It's a bad intro because there's no information that we don't wind up learning later It takes longer to get to the actual story where we're meeting characters and stuff and this is a fairly long book anyway, so You know not wasting time is great and it just Kind of spoils that there is going to be some sort of immortal thing going on or there's going to be some sort of reincarnation or Shadows magic something like that. It doesn't give specifics, but it does spoil things and so for that reason It's kind of pointless as a prologue, but also Bad so then we get into like the real intro of the story and this part I'm I'm gonna have to I Don't know if I'm gonna say gloss over it but I will lump everything together rather than going over it chronologically because Going over it chronologically kind of feels like checking off a list like she meets this person then she meets this person Then she kind of gets acquainted with the area and all that so I'm just lumping it together basically the main character is named loose which is short for Lucinda and she is going to Sword and cross school Which is a boarding school for like troubled kids kids with mental problems and stuff and we don't know exactly why she's there at First all we know is that oh, okay something bad happened and now she's here She doesn't want to be there She feels like almost like it's a prison because they take away her cell phone And she's not allowed to leave except for certain times and you know everything strictly controlled She only gets a ten minute call to her parents every week And so it feels pretty awful, but you also understand. Okay. Yeah, this is um This is a school for troubled kids We know she's had some bad stuff in her past. Okay. I'm kind of intrigued so that's fine the main issue with this is actually similar to an issue that I had with house of night, which is that Yes, it's a boarding school and she feels like she's being Taken away from home and she's being cut off and losing all her old friends and everything But it's also a 20 minute drive from her house like Okay, it mentions that she used to go to school in New Hampshire before this and that Sorting Cross is in Georgia So at first I thought oh, okay Her family lives in New Hampshire and so they're very far away from her now and okay that sucks But no it turns out she was just going to school far away in New Hampshire But her parents live in Georgia a 20 minute drive from Sorting Cross and if you're not American I'll like put up a map or something here Georgia is in the southeast of the country right next to Florida and New Hampshire is up in the northeast near New York and stuff so they're they're very far apart, but Basically it feels like she was farther from home and more isolated before the story even starts and now She's actually closer by so she can actually visit her parents and stuff more often and it just It takes away from the sense of isolation that this was trying to go for when you know that like oh, okay If if she somehow like jumped the fence she could literally walk home So she meets a couple of important characters She meets this girl named Ariane who shows her around and Ariane is kind of a weirdo. She actually asks her to cut her hair which is Kind of odd, but the book also treats it as odd like Ariane just like hey loose Will you cut my hair for me and loosen is like are you sure and Ariane's like? Yeah, just do it and loose like okay, and then she does it so I guess I can't harp on that too much and then she meets this girl named Penny or Penn for short who You just immediately know as soon as she sees her. Oh, okay. This is gonna be the best friend character Yeah, that like they're they're stuck together in this place. So they become friends. They start hanging out and stuff okay, cool and You know again, I can't say there's anything particularly wrong with it But it's kind of like just checking off a list and then she meets some other guys She meets this dude named cam who she thinks is cute. She meets this guy named Roland She meets a couple other characters who are just unimportant You know how it is. They just they're just checking off a list all these people most of whom don't have that much personality and Well, that's all we can say about it. We also learned that Lucinda is apparently schizophrenic Like she sees these shadows all around her and they apparently move and she feels like they're watching her and No matter what medication she takes it doesn't seem to work So she eventually just decided to pretend that the medication is working so that they'll leave her alone And she can just say yeah, I don't see any shadows anymore. So We know right away. Okay. That probably has something to do with um Why she's here and we know that okay. Those are probably Not hallucinations. They're probably something supernatural going on just because of the type of story it is And so at this point I was also thinking okay, that could be That could be interesting. You know, it's standard. It's generic if I were to be a little bit less charitable, but It's not that bad so far. There's nothing phenomenally awful about this story But then we get to the point where we introduce Daniel the main love interest and Just just no he wore a bright red scarf around his neck It was far from cold outside, but he had on a black leather motorcycle jacket over his black sweater too Maybe it was because his was the only spot of color on the quad But he was all that loose could look at in fact everything else so paled in comparison that for one long moment Loose forgot where she was she took in his deep golden hair and matching tan His high cheekbones the dark sunglasses that covered his eyes the soft shape of his lips in all the movies Loose had seen and in all the books she read the love interest was mind-blowing and good-looking Except for that one middle flaw the chip's tooth the charming cow lick the beauty mark on his left cheek She knew why if the hero was too unblemished He'd risk being unapproachable but approachable or not loose had always had a weakness for the sublimely gorgeous like this guy So loose just sees daniel and immediately is like wow i am so Just attracted to him. He's great and like i get that. He's you know pretty i get that He's cute or handsome whatever words you want to use but She's like too obsessed with him from this moment like she's staring at him from uh across the room and stuff after this And he basically wants nothing to do with her He actually flips her off and walks away at this point without saying anything. So she's like oh, he's rude but Even though he's being rude to her and even though he doesn't seem to want to associate with her She keeps pursuing him and going after him and i'll get into more specifics about that later, but It's just odd and the fact that it's so um insta-lovy It just takes away from the romance immediately at least for me like I don't know if there's any people that enjoy the love at first sight or the insta-love trope, but i hate it, okay when you When you have them fall in love immediately Without knowing anything about each other you don't get to see that uh slow build up where they get to know each other And they get to work off of each other's personalities and they find out. Oh, okay I like this person because x and they like me because y and So we don't get any of that and that's A big appeal of the romance at least for me and We also don't uh get any feeling like oh, maybe they're not right for each other because when you have insta-love like that You just immediately know that yep, they're they're right for each other. That's what the author's telling us This is gonna go on longer than I wanted it to But again the insta-love is the biggest problem at this point like we're getting introduced to the mystery We're getting introduced to some of the characters Uh surprisingly enough loose does have a little bit of personality at this point Like it's not a lot, but she does have a couple of legitimately funny lines in her narration Because it's told in third person, but you know, we do get some of her thoughts and stuff and Well, yeah, I just I can't bring myself to be too angry at this beginning part, but As time goes on there are more and more little problems that just stack up like There are just weird things about the school like how they all have individual rooms. They don't have to share with anybody They have stilettos as part of their uniform Looses loose is an obsession with daniel that I mentioned before which is Just kind of pathetic really And the fact that her friend penn apparently does not belong there Like she doesn't have any actual mental problems or anything. She just Is there because her dad used to work there and I feel like there's better boarding schools you could go to but All right, I guess I'll just overlook that And at some point loose is saved from a falling statue by daniel like like it almost falls on her He pushes her out of the way and Really saves her life really And but beyond that there's just not a whole lot that happens in this book like There's a couple of bigger events that happen near the end, but up until that point it's just loose thinking that daniel is mysterious and occasionally doing some research on him And just living in school life But there's no like intriguing drama or romance or anything So I could never really get into it and it's not phenomenally bad. I guess but it's just so dull which is Worse in a way because at least I remember phenomenally bad stuff in fact There is a teacher the one teacher that loose actually likes is her name is miss sophia And the instant she's introduced you can just tell that she's a villain or she's going to be a villain Hello, the woman smiled. She actually smiled at loose Her hair was not gray but silver with the kind of brilliance that sparkled even in the soft library light Her face looked old and young at the same time She had a pale almost incadescent skin bright black eyes and a tiny pointed nose When she spoke to loose she pushed up the sleeves of her white cashmere sweater Exposing stacks and stacks of pearl bracelets decorating both of her wrists Can I help you find something she asked in a happy whisper so Someone that not only has that much attention called to their appearance But also is just that nice right off the bat You can just tell okay. Yeah, that's going to be a villain The problem is that sophia has so little presence in this story that Even though she was in the movie and she was a villain in that I forgot about her before I went to go read the book and when I got to that point I was like, oh, yeah, so sophia Yeah, I guess she was a thing But then after reading this one, I forgot about her again Partially because she doesn't show up for a long time and then when she shows up in like the third book I was like, oh, right. Yeah, she's a thing and then she disappears for a while again And then she appears in the final book rapture and I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. She's a thing I kept forgetting about her and then when I was going back over these to prepare for this video I forgot about her again And then I got to that point and said, oh Yeah, miss sophia. She's kind of important. I guess She has so little presence. She has no personality whatsoever as a villain. It's kind of sad Miss sophia also teaches religion and during her classes she talks a whole bunch about like lucifer and fallen angels and stuff, which Makes it pretty clear that yeah, that's that's what's going on and I guess that's not a huge problem because like Yeah, you know that there's some sort of supernatural thing and hinting that there's going to be angels and stuff Is fine, but the thing is the end of the book treats that as though it's some sort of big revelation And you can't be that obvious about it and then treat it like it's a big Third act twist. It just it doesn't work that way And as I said loose continues to have some interactions with daniel where he's just kind of an ass to her but she continues to be Lovey-dovey towards him like at one point she Comes across him in the library while he's sleeping and she just watches him for a little bit And then he gets up and leaves and he's kind of upset which is fair, but he's still kind of a dick about it But daniel picked up his sketchbook and got to his feet. I came here to get away He said cutting her off if you're not going to leave I will oh, okay. Yeah, I can't Fault him too much for that, but still I don't think lucinda should be that into him if he's gonna act that way She also just has a few other conversations with him. They swim together, which is romantic, I guess and It's just uh, it's pretty much all the interaction. They have which I don't really feel the love coming from it, you know, they don't actually get to know each other in any significant way It's mostly just her thinking wow. He's so pretty and he has a sketchbook. So she's like, oh, he's artistic but She doesn't learn anything about Him really him personally what kind of person he's like what kind of things he likes to do other than sketch But she's she learns none of that so you can't really feel the love and I guess that like I said earlier there is insta love. It's love at first sight, but nonetheless the fact that They're spending this much time just dancing around it Like if you're gonna do insta love just show them be a couple right away You know show them be together show them like have hot make-out sashes and support each other love each other all that Don't dance around the subject. So while all this is going on uh, lucinda also has kind of a cute relationship with cam Who is just another student at the school? He's kind of a bad boy, I guess And well, I mean everyone at the school was kind of a bad boy or bad girl, but Whatever whatever um and the thing is she does have some real chemistry with him because he's actually nice to her And she does find him attractive. Yes, but they also enjoy spending time together and doing things and This is something that was in the movie too Like cam and loose have genuine chemistry, but the author decided from the beginning No loose and daniel are in love and you just think well, why are they in love because the author said so so That's just that's just kind of sad and upsetting but you know This whole book is mostly just various romantic happening romantic happenings um In between bouts of loose doing research on things But then we get to one of the interesting bits and that's when we find out that Why loose is here because it turns out um back in new hampshire She Was kind of sort of in a relationship with this dude named trevor and they went off to this house to like make out Or possibly have sex. It's not like Super explicit what was going on but either way they go there and she starts seeing the shadows moving around and They start like whispering to her and stuff and she freaks out a little bit and winds up causing a fire and the house catches fire and loose is actually hurt in the fire but trevor is killed And so that's why she sent to the school because she has severe mental problems And I was like, oh, I I kind of like that, you know, it's it gives dimension to the character. She's like I I know i'm crazy and I know I hurt people. She has guilt over that sort of thing But she she's not an animal, you know, she doesn't want to be locked up for it So when I got to that point, I was like, wow, yeah, I I feel for lucinda They kind of forget about it after this first book, but you know for for a little while there I was I was into it So then loose and penn tried doing some research on daniel because she's basically a stalker at this point I guess it's a gender swapped version of what it normally is which is Originality I I guess I I don't know if I want to give credit for that But sure it's different from what I normally see But yeah, she basically just finds out that He came from a different school in Los Angeles and they don't find out much other than that So then she starts going into like his family history and stuff And while they're doing research in the library, she sees More shadows and then a fire starts and they're like, oh, shit. Let's get out of here But during that fire another kid dies And so lucinda is kind of blamed for it, but people don't really spend that much time on it Okay, I guess that callback is kind of pointless But you know if if she had actually been like arrested or something and charged with arson Then maybe that would actually change the direction the story was going in as it stands now It's just kind of oh that thing happened and a character died that I didn't really know And then arianne who remember is One of the other characters they met She actually kind of teases penn about it after the guy dies because she was she kind of liked him One of our classmates died last night penn carefully annunciated and luce could have been really hurt She shook her head. How can you two play around a time at a time like this? She sniffed. Is that alcohol? Oh arianne said looking at penn her face serious You liked him didn't you like girl Someone just died Okay, there's a time and a place for that sort of thing. This is neither You're an asshole Uh and then at one point cam and daniel are fighting over luce because she's just that special and that Good and that pretty and all that I guess that just needs to happen Uh for some reason and while all this is going on luce is continuing to have like weird dreams and stuff but they don't actually tell us much of anything and All right, and eventually she go she just goes up to daniel and she demands answer She's like, you know, tell me what the hell's going on, dude And he explains the situation Pretty clearly he says Okay, look You get reincarnated And then you run into me no matter where I run no matter what I do You always find me and then we fall in love And then before we can have the chance to be together you die and she's kind of like, uh, are you Are you serious dude? Are you are you actually serious? That's that's not that's not true. And so She she leaves which you know, that's fair, but The thing is at this point We're 350 pages into the book and she doesn't actually know What what he is for certain like there's she knows there's something going on. Sorry. I'm adjusting a lot She knows there's something going on, but she doesn't know exactly what it is Whereas in something like twilight she found out relatively early on that. Oh, yeah Edwards of empire and then he immediately proved it to her Like just Even if you're going to follow a formula You have to follow the formula correctly if you want it to work, but eventually loose decides. Oh, you know what he is He is an angel. I'm going to Confess my love to him Again, they don't really know each other and the story takes place over the course of like a month actually or Maybe slightly over a month, but still not very much time and throughout that whole time they barely Well, they barely spend any time together So it's it's not that I don't care about their relationship it's that I can't care because I know nothing about it and They jump into it so quick That uh, I barely know anything about the characters either like loose has a little bit of personality sure, but Daniel doesn't have much and so It's not that I don't care. It's that I I just can't So then uh, as she's confessing her love, um, they're kind of off away from the school and like a cemetery Which is nearby because this has a cemetery near their school for some reason But anyways cam and Sophia show up and cam is basically like, oh, well done You got her to fall in love with you. Ha ha. I am revealing that I'm a villain now and then um, him and Daniel start to fight and You know, it's during this that they reveal their wings and loose is like wow They were telling the truth and It's kind of a cool fight actually like loose leaves pretty early on so we don't get to see the whole thing But it is kind of a cool fight like cam summons swarms of locusts and stuff that look like shadows It's it's kind of cool. And then uh, she runs off with miss Sophia Uh, and then they run into pen while they're running away and miss Sophia Just fucking kills pen out of nowhere and it's like, oh, she's a villain I'm so surprised right now Although I will give credit that pen never actually comes back after this like she she's dead Deader than dead like when I got to this point both in the book and the movie I assumed that in the sequels pen would come back as like an angel or something But no, she she never shows up again It's just that was loose's friend and she died in the conflict and so You know some small measure of credit there, but yeah, anyways miss Sophia holds loose up at knife point and marches her off to this altar and ties her up to it And is basically talking evil and she's like, hey, I need to quote free Daniel And in order to do that you have to die But normally you would just reincarnate this time things are different and They give an explanation why it's different I still don't know if it's a good one or if it's really stupid Well, my dear the reason you come back again and again is because all the other times you've been born You were ushered into religious belief this time when your parents opted out of baptizing you They effectively left your little soul up for grabs. She shrugged dramatically No ritual to welcome you into religion equals no reincarnation for loose a small but essential loophole in your cycle I can't decide if that's a clever idea or not. I just I don't know but then um Yeah, she's about to tire to an altar and kill her which is stupid because she didn't actually need to do a ritual or anything She just needed loose dead But then the other angels show up and save her and miss Sophia's like curse you I'll be back and then she runs off And apparently she's part of this extremist sect of angels, which is Um, totally unpronounceable. I'm just going to put the name up on screen. It's a Zays Zays maelam Zays maelam I don't care Yeah, she's part of that and we don't know exactly what their plans are But we do know she wants to free Daniel because I guess he's just too attached to lucinda and stuff And they refuse to tell loose everything but they do say like, okay, things are dangerous and things are different now I guess but we're gonna have to send you away somewhere And so she gets on a plane and leaves and that's how the book ends now as bad as the movie is And believe me it is hilariously bad But as bad as it is It's better at explaining what the hell is going on than the book is You see the movie in the first two minutes has an opening narration Which kind of gives everything away a little too quickly, but at least it does give things away Like it says that uh long ago there was a war between lucifer and the rest of the other fallen angels and god and the angels that stayed loyal to god And it was an imperfect balance But there was one angel who refused to take a side and Instead he was just in love with a mortal girl Okay, you know what that's pretty That's pretty simple and easy to explain like if they had explained that at the end of this book That would have been fine and The thing is I'll just tell you now. They don't fully explain that until the fourth book until rapture They don't fully explain what's going on there which is Even worse than giving it away In the first two minutes like You can't spend the better part of 2000 pages doing that But overall like I said the book is kind of intriguing and it could be a whole lot worse Uh although I will say that It just felt kind of unfinished when I first read it and I didn't have a perfect analogy for it until the other day When I saw another youtube video Can't remember who it was, but I will link it so that you can See it for yourself after you're done watching this But he basically said imagine if twilight ended with the baseball scene Like you learn that edwards of empire. They start a relationship and then you learn Oh, there's these other vampires. They're trying to kill us and then it just ends And that that's basically how fallen ends and yeah, that's a good way of putting it But anyways on to book two torment now I thought this one was the worst up until I read unforgiven and believe me We'll we'll get into unforgiven But it's mostly just very pointless Like there's nothing but exposition and some Drama with new characters up until the very end Where it admittedly does have a pretty good cliffhanger ending But that's only like the last 40 50 pages out of a 450 page book So it's this much of it and Well, I'm just gonna try and go over this one as quickly as I can so basically Loose goes to a school called shoreline which is over in california And it's a school for nephilim because apparently angels occasionally will have children with humans And those humans will also have children and sometimes generations later like weird powers and stuff will pop up and Okay, that's fine. They're trying to keep it a secret but also um Why why though like isn't aren't angels well known among humans like they might not believe in them necessarily But like the bible and stuff talks about angels Why would you want to keep this a secret shouldn't you show them off so that humans know like oh, yes god is real I guess i'll I guess i'll worship him and not like ganesh or whatever like that. It's It's just odd and another thing being that um humans And nephilim both go to the school, but the nephilim are kind of off in their own section So that they're separated from the humans that the humans don't find out and I just Why would you let humans into your school at all if that's how you're gonna do it? That's just threatening the secrecy of everybody Which is apparently very important But like I said before this is kind of an interesting idea And I was thinking okay, the nephilim are gonna be important to the story later on they're not you know, there's like two nephilim characters that Well, even then they aren't that important, but they do show up in this one and that's it You know, the whole thing is just exposition and loose getting into some drama and pining after daniel because he sent her far away because it's safer, which is Not really abusive. I don't think but still like Dude, she needs to be able to have some autonomy So the important bits of exposition are that the shadows that loose was seeing for all these years are called announcers And they basically just record everything, you know every moment that's happened in history. They have recorded it and Not only that but you can actually Look into them and see like the memories of the past and you can step into them and experience the memories or just Use it as a way to Transport yourself really far At least I thought that at first you were just viewing the memories, but it turns out later that No, you're actually just time traveling and Okay, I hate time travel because no one can do it right Okay, michael creighton couldn't do it right. No one can that I I will keep that to my to my grave. Okay, if I ever find a time travel story that does it properly I will admit I was wrong, but I haven't to this day and Well, the thing is that as soon as you Put in time travel and you make it so that pretty much everyone Can use it without that much trouble But why don't people use it more often? It just seems like The whole world would be caught in a bunch of time travel wars. It's it's odd We also learned that uh loose loses parents from her old lives are still alive Like because you know, she's reincarnated every 17 years So, you know, sometimes she'll die at the age of 17 and her parents will still be around for a while. So You know, that's a thing and it's not that important until the end we'll get to that We also learned that the quote evil angels, uh, who sided with lucifer during You know, all that stuff way back in the day, uh, were cast down to earth and those were fallen angels But then there's also, uh, neutral angels who refused to take a side and they were cast down as well and over the years, um Uh over the years some of them have uh the neutral angels I mean have wound up taking one side or the other and at this point the scales are perfectly balanced and Like okay at this point it seems like this would be where they bring up Yeah, daniel's the only major angel who hasn't taken a side but No, they still don't bring it up until two books later like you had a perfect opportunity here you know, that could have been interesting but Okay, whatever and this is also where we learned that a couple of the Angels who luc has been hanging out with like a roland who I haven't mentioned him, but he's really He's not a very important character, but he is the only one with any real personality Like he's just kind of a friendly guy, you know when luc needs help with something. He's like, yeah, sure I'll help you with that. You you know, you you don't owe me anything. Just come on over We can hang out with some friends and stuff. You know, he's just a friendly guy He doesn't have that much to him, but he's the only character I liked And we also learned that cam was a fallen angel who sided with lucifer not that surprising and They bring up the idea that Maybe The fight between god and lucifer is not just clear cut good versus evil Now, uh, they don't go into any sort of detail about it, but they do um Have one angel guy who refers to god as the great tyrant And so as soon as I heard that I was like, oh, okay, that that's interesting We can learn That that um, maybe god was super controlling and satan just wanted freedom But he went a little too far with it or something like that and it's not explained at all in this book but it does bring up that idea and Just like a lot of other ideas in these in these books It's really good and then they do nothing with it Like it's not even that it's executed poorly. They just do nothing with it You know, it's almost like it was written by jj abrams. You know, you bring up the mystery box And then you never open it like you you got to do something with it if you're going to introduce those sorts of ideas and The thing is that those sorts of ideas were just little Kernels that I kept grabbing on to and thinking. Oh, okay, the books will get good soon, right? Right, they'll get they'll get good soon, right? And then they never did and then loose makes friends with these two nephilim called shelby and miles who I don't know they they aren't that important, but miles is like in love with her for some reason Again, they know each other for like two weeks, but And then anyways the climax I will say this one is pretty good You know loose goes home for thanksgiving And a bunch of the other angels and shelby and miles come along with her And then this other group of angels called the outcasts attack and the outcasts are They don't make any sense because they're angels that Didn't pick a side During the war or no, I'm sorry. They they did pick a side. They picked the side of lucifer during the war But then they decided okay. We want to go back to heaven. We're gonna pick the side of god But he like won't let them back in And I'm just like dude the scales are perfectly balanced right now Like they're considered a neutral party And wouldn't you want them on your side? Why not? I'm god They attacked and there's a pretty cool fight between the two groups of angels. It's it's pretty good Um, but loose by this point is just very angry with people because they're not telling her everything They're not explaining everything. They're not explaining that like Yes, we need uh, daniel to pick a side in order to tip the balance one way or the other They haven't explained that to her and like I said, they don't Confirm it until the fourth book, uh, they haven't really explained to her Why she was cursed with this uh reincarnation cycle They just haven't told her anything and so she's just angry with it and during the battle She opens up an announcer and just steps inside. She's gonna go back in time and find out for herself and That that's a good that's a good cliffhanger. I'll I'll give it that So yeah torment is just 10 good and the other 90 percent is pointless filler and By this point, I started to realize that These books have a structural problem, which is kind of a common theme among these uh long young adult book reviews that I've been doing but Basically every book needs to end with some sort of big revelation or uh big twist That's why the first book ends in such a weird place and it feels like not much has really been done That's why the second book ends with Well a pretty good cliffhanger. Like I said, she's just going into the announcers to find out what's going on Uh, and then the third book also ends with a cliffhanger and the fourth one has a big twist at the end too, but The thing is that there's so much filler in between those moments It feels like those moments could have happened like one after another And you wouldn't have needed to put all that much in between them, which means that This isn't really a story. It's just a series of moments that sound cool on paper and The thing is all stories should have moments like that all stories should have like those those big high high high high points or low points um But you need to have a story between them, you know, there needs to be something that uh Leads between them. There needs to be uh other things that happen in the plot You know, that's what a plot is. It's a series of events that lead into one another It's not just things that happened and um after reading all four books. I think you could have gotten two Good books with just the material we have um Had you gone into a lot of detail about some of the ideas that um have been brought up so far Like god being evil and some more that I'll bring up uh in later books Had you gone into more detail about those then I think you could have had uh four good books or maybe only three I don't know but as it stands these books are just very long stretches of nothing followed by Intense periods of stuff that is pretty good So then we go to book three passion and this one I will say this one is the best like it's it's not a very high bar to clear But it is pretty good. The premise is very simple loose goes back in time and views a bunch of her past Lives and is trying to look for information because she's trying to go back To the point where she can find where the curse was first put on her and for whatever reason announcers don't work in a way where you can just go all the way back all at once you have to Go back a little bit at a time, which is you know, that's fine Otherwise we could just have her go back to the curse and find out about it in like 20 pages so I get that we need to spread out the story a little and Actually passion could have been really good. I think I think we have about 200 pages worth of story in here the problem is that it's spread out over 450 pages and It winds up just getting really repetitive and there are some filler bits and so Overall, I just can't say that it's that good So this one also has a prologue and it's just miss Sophia Which again, I forgot about her up until this point. I was like, oh, okay And she runs into this guy who is they never specifically call him as such, but it's very clearly Satan and he finds out. Oh loose is going back in time. Well, that plays into my plan Which is kind of vague I'm gonna go after her now and then miss Sophia is scared and she doesn't appear in the rest of the book but It does give a date at the beginning of it It takes place in 2009 apparently, which is good. You know, it's specifically says louisville, kentucky november 27 2009 And as loose goes back to all her past lives It does give a location and dates like that, which I thought was pretty cool You know, I I can look at that at the beginning of the chapter and immediately know Oh, okay. We've gone back a little bit or oh, we've gone back really far although I will say that Once it gets past the year zero and it starts writing the date as bce that feels kind of weird because Like c e and bce are common era and before common era And we started using those recently because Not everyone in the world is christian and so that's just a secular way of doing it. But like In this book god and satan and angels and all that are Real they're very clearly real So why would you bother with that? Why didn't wouldn't you just do ad and bc? That's that's kind of weird actually for that matter is is jesus in these do they confirm that jesus is there? I mean I don't know they I don't think they say anything about jesus. Maybe the jews were right So the first life that luce goes to is uh when she was lucika and she lived in Moscow and it takes place in 1941 which is Not a good time to be in Moscow because that's when the Access army is moving closer and closer and she's getting bombed and it's not good And then basically she watches her past self meet daniel in a church And then they like embrace and she bursts into flames and that's how she dies And it doesn't give us that much information But then she jumps back again and then immediately after she leaves daniel shows up there too And this continuously happens throughout the book like luce will go somewhere and then daniel will go there right after And he'll just see the same things And We won't even really get any exposition out of it. It's just the same thing happening again Like I said a lot of filler in this book. It's twice as long as it needs to be Uh, but we also do get this gem when daniel first goes back to moscow Wordlessly they settled on a third story legend near patriarch's pond on the roof across from luce's window where they used to Watch her sleep There's the creepy I was hoping for Yeah, there there you go daniel you you have you have entered the realm of edward cullen So then she goes back further and she lands in italy during world war one and she meets her past self again And it turns out that daniel met it during that lifetime daniel met her when she was 13 or 14 years old and they apparently had several years together before um Daniel what the shit Like I know that you're immortal and she's much younger than you anyways, but Like that that makes it so much creepier So it's around this point that we learned that yes, this is like legit time travel. She's not just looking at memories Um, and she can't actually change things But the way time travel works in this universe. Sorry my nose is itchy But the way time travel works in this universe is that When you change the past people will remember it as having always been that way, you know You don't create diverging timelines or anything you just This is how things are and that's how people always remember it as so It's entirely possible that people have been changing the past forever and They just don't know about it. Like even they themselves wouldn't know that they had changed it uh, so I guess that covers up for a lot of potential plot holes so A plus So then she goes back through announcers some more and while she's inside of one It's all dark and shadowy. She meets this little gargoyle demon guy named bill and bill Is friendly and offers to help her. He's like, you know what? You want your curse gone? Yeah, sure I'll give you a hand. I'll I'll guide you through the announcers and help you out and stuff and it's very obvious From the beginning that bill is lucifer or at least he's working for lucifer and It turns out I was right the it there's a twist of sorts at the end But I'm okay with knowing this one in advance because well one it did uh build a little bit of attention for me Like oh, when's he gonna be tray or when's he gonna be tray or not? It's not if it's when But also it makes satan seem smart and conniving and very good at disguising himself and You know just lots of stuff that satan should be because I like this series's depiction of satan He does seem smart and devious and stuff. It's it's just a good way of doing it And from here it gets repetitive, you know, she goes back to victorian england where she sees her past self She meets roland who by the way roland is black and so she meets him in The fucking 1800s and she's like, oh, I'm so sorry and he's like, yeah, like life sucks But I've been through so much worse. Don't worry and it's it's like another moment where roland has actual personality And I'm happy about that But from here it just gets repetitive, you know, she she goes back. She sees some stuff She goes back further And it's not like she's in any real danger because she can grab the announcers from any shadow whatsoever And then just escape through that And even setting that aside, she can actually merge with her past selves and get their memories and stuff and pretend to be them For a little bit and then when she goes through the announcers next She just automatically separates from them. So there's no danger. There's no tension It's It's like you could have had something here, but you lost it. However, uh, they do Kind of bring up another really interesting idea. They bring up the idea that, um, Maybe loose and daniel are just falling in love over and over again because of the curse Like maybe that's magic being cast on them and they don't actually have that much In common, they don't actually love each other. They just think they do and when they brought that idea up I was like, wow, that's fascinating. That's That could really be something that, uh, goes against the grain of this genre of the supernatural young adult romance or paranormal romance Whatever you want to call it genre, uh, because it could be that. Oh, yes That insta love we had was fake and kind of stupid. And so when they break the curse or when they Go on their way to break the curse or something they fall out of love. They realize their love was fake And you could do several different things with that You could have them, uh, over the course of the adventure fall in love for real Which would be great And or you could have it where, uh, loose and daniel are like, you know what? We're friends and we like each other and all that but we just We don't love each other and then loose could go off with one of the other boys like, uh, cam is probably the most prominent example there, but you know, you could make a decent love triangle that way and I think, yeah, you could do something with that, but Uh, she, they don't do that. She goes back and she sees herself in tahiti in the 1700s somewhere And her and daniel fall in love and he like actually Does things for her to be nice and she realizes, no, he really does love me and then Later, uh, she sees him in tebet in an earlier life and he apparently Just just read He'll slam right into that ground a couple of thousand feet down. Yes bill said he'll break every bone in his body But don't worry. He can't kill himself. He only wishes he could he turned to her inside Now do you believe his love so in addition to romanticizing suicide? It just throws away that really good idea they had like that's what I mean. It's not executed poorly They just do nothing with it. It's not executed at all. It's so disappointing So she keeps going apparently when she burst into flame and died one time she burned down the globe theater, which is kind of funny, I guess and In some of these lives, she's not, uh Well, she's not what you know, like she was tebetten at one point. She was mayan at one point she's chinese at one point and She always recognizes herself even if she doesn't look exactly the same because She has the same soul and daniel's appearance also changes apparently, but That does raise a question of like Does he do that consciously like does he say okay? I'm gonna go live in china for a while So i'm gonna change my appearance or does it happen gradually on its own? Or does it happen all at once? You know, does he just wake up one day and go? Hey, I'm I'm korean so uh during daniel's Side quest, I guess He runs into miles and shelby who apparently followed them through the announcers and he's like hey Guys, you shouldn't be here go back and then they go back We really needed that subplot. I guess and uh bill brings up a solution To break the curse for uh to loose. He brings out this uh This kind of arrow called a star shot, which they have been used before this point It's not like they came out of nowhere. I just haven't mentioned them yet But they bring out this arrow called the star shot and it's an arrow with a blunted tip So it won't really hurt a human, but it's magic. So it'll instantly kill an angel that it hits Okay. Yeah, that's a cool idea and basically bill says that in order to uh break the curse she has to um Merge with her past self so that like her Soul is Immortal and mortal at the same time or something like that and then um as they go through the announcer and the Bond is broken. She's briefly has her uh mortal soul and the immortal part of her soul Which is causing her to reincarnate uh those are briefly separate And so if she stabs herself with the star shot then it'll kill the immortal part of her soul And she'll stop reincarnating and the curse will be broken Okay, yeah, that's fine It's not actually how it works because like I said bill is pretty obviously satan and I think that's cool that he Would come up with that plan to try and get someone to actually kill themselves in order to do his thing You know, that's that's a cool way of handling satan and anyway, she almost does it But she decides not to go through with it and then when that happens bill is like well Damn Damn, damn, damn. I guess I have to Reveal that I'm satan now and she's like what you're satan. How could you do this? And then he brings up his backup plan, which is to quote wipe the slate clean start over I can skip the millennia that led up to you and your loophole of a life Lucinda price he snorted and begin again and this time I will play more wisely this time I will win And it's over the course of a couple of pages that he explains that but basically he's going to go back to The fall, you know the moment where all the angels were cast out of heaven And he's going to create a big announcer like net sort of to catch them when they hit the ground And then it's going to send them Forward in time Which will erase all the time that has happened between the fall and the present in 2009 it'll like it'll reset time basically and Lucifer will then have a second chance to convince other angels to come onto his side And he'll know more this time. So he'll be able to convince more of them and Yeah, okay. That's a that's a cool villain plan. I think the only issue is that Like why didn't he do this earlier? You know if this story had been set up in a way where lucinda was the only one that could go through Announcers and so he needed her in order to get there and he tricked her into into doing this that could be one thing but Also, like what why didn't he just do this earlier? You know, it seems like it'd be easier almost so then we get to Well, I don't know if I'd call it the climax, but We get to daniel going back to heaven right before the fall and he basically witnesses God and all the angels taking sides in the conflict and then God officially curses Him he says yes, you will never be able to have your love blah blah blah all that stuff And then he throws them out and like I said before the evil and the neutral angels were thrown out And this scene is kind of cool because we're seeing like, you know, the creation of all things Well, not the creation of all things, but we're seeing like the beginning of time You know, this is before humans really got to do anything at all So it is really cool that they had this but We don't actually get that much information. We don't actually learn Why they started fighting like lucifer just talks a little bit about free will but we don't know Precisely what that means in this context and we don't know precisely why he started that but Okay, it's something I guess so then daniel starts going back he runs into loose and he Captures her and is like hey, it's fine. You're safe now and they go back to the present And it turns out that they have nine days to save the world because satan was able to you know, cast his net And he's gonna catch the falling angels, but it takes them nine days to fall from heaven to the earth So they have that much time in order to find out how to stop him and Yeah, that's another good cliffhanger. So overall passion is It's the best book, but it's still not that great You know, there's a lot you could do with some of this ideas Like the idea that they're just cursed to fall in love and it's not real love every time You could go in several different directions with that and it would be really interesting The idea that god is not totally good and satan is not totally evil You could go in several different directions with that and it would be really interesting A lot of this exposition is kind of cool, but it's just so spread out And it's delivered to us in such a repetitive way where loose just goes back see something goes back further see something It's just Man, it's too long. That's the biggest issue with this series Not by far not the only issue but the biggest issue is that all of the interesting stuff is just way too spread out and so we Barely barely get to see it and Hell we don't even get to see how the curse started or how they're going to break it and That was literally the whole point of loose's journey back through time in this book That was the whole point and it winds up being pointless like I guess they find out that satan is off to do his evil plan, but I mean that's all they find out of use So while that is a good cliffhanger, it's also immensely frustrating and um Anyways book 3.5 fallen in love this one. I have very little to say about it. It's just uh four short stories um that all take place in medieval england in the um 12th century, I believe I don't know not not super important the exact time But it's just four short romance stories. Uh, the first one is between shelby and myles because they're uh, you know, they're coming back up through time and just like before they have to hop hop hop to get there and uh, they Are just together for like 50 pages and We start to see oh, okay. They're starting to fall more in love with each other than Myles with uh loose. Okay. That's that's fine Uh, and then we had a story with roland where he was a knight and he had to He fell in love with a mortal woman, but he knew he couldn't ever be with her So he had to give her up and it's it's sad, but it's actually pretty good You know, I like I said roland is the one character in this whole series Well, the one character besides satan actually I will say satan Does have some personality. He's not an amazing villain or anything, but he he's got some uh He's got a few moments and uh, but yes roland and him are both Good characters and I like that we got to see roland actually do something a little bit Even if it's not in the main story And then we had one with arianne where she's like in love with another angel But that angel sided with satan so they can never really be together and then we have one with Loose it's uh her present self viewing her past self with daniel and You know, it's kind of the same as it always is they're just together for a little bit and then they die And overall perfectly cute story. It's not needed for the main Uh main series main plot whatever you want to say, but I don't regret reading it so then we get book four rapture and Man this one starts Really really good. It starts really solidly because like passion ends with a crazy cliffhanger and Actually, I was originally going to read passion and then fallen in love and then go to Excuse me and then go to rapture because that's the order that I think you're supposed to read them in but Man, oh man, I just could not wait to get into this one. I was like, yes, finally Shit's starting to get real. We're finally starting to get into things. The story's really getting moving. Let's let's do this And it starts off pretty good. It loses steam after a while I'm sorry my throat's acting up but then when you get to like the last 90 pages it has One of the dumbest twists I've ever read in any book And it has like I said earlier a giant middle finger of an ending So I'm gonna try and blow through this as quickly as I can Basically, they need to find the exact spot where the angels fell if they want to um Stop satan. I The book kind of refers to him as satan and lucifer interchangeably I'm trying to use satan mostly because lucinda and lucifer is just a little too close together but anyways, they need to find the exact spot where they hit and none of them remember because Well, they hit the ground so hard that they were Dazed for like days or months or something afterwards and Okay, that's fine. So in order to find it they need to find these three relics and Basically, they split into three groups to go and find it. Uh group one is lucinda and daniel They go off to venice to find this crown that's like on a statue somewhere And they find out it's the statue is now in a sunken church And daniel cannot enter a church because he's a fallen angel and if he goes in the church will burst into flames So luce has to do it herself. She they like take a boat out into the lagoon And then she has to dive down and go and get it now I was really into this moment for a little bit because one it's brought up that luce is a pretty strong swimmer Before this like as early back as the first book. It's brought up that she really likes swimming and she's pretty good at it So Okay, this makes sense. It's not coming out of nowhere And two it's actually letting her be useful for once Because you know, it's all these angels fighting each other. She doesn't have any powers or anything So she can't really be useful with that. She's just sitting around getting protected But this is something that only she can do and she needs to Well, she needs to go off and do it and at first it works pretty well. She dives down gets the crown and it is kind of intense Uh, and then but then as she's swimming up She gets stuck in something and is about to pass out and daniel has to rush down and rescue her and I just You were so close You you had something and then you lost it You like you had just this one Brief moment of the main character being useful and doing something well and you lost it So then as they're going up, uh, they get surrounded by these outcasts who remember they were the angels From before that want to get back into heaven. So they think okay killing daniel and or maybe not killing daniel But killing moose and bringing daniel over to god's side will he'll allow us back in Uh, anyways, they're surrounded them and they fight for a little bit loose passes out Uh, and then she wakes up later in the outcast home base and they're all just Sitting around talking amicably and the outcasts just decide Okay, you know what? We're gonna be on your side like Well, that's convenient. I guess we have new allies against the villains But then at the same time they introduce this other group of angels called the scale and they're They work for heaven, but they're very zealous in enforcing its laws and all that so they're coming after the main characters. So You just with no fanfare Get rid of this old group of angels who were a threat and make them good guys And at the same time you immediately bring up this new group who we've never mentioned before And make them the new bad guys the new force that they have to fight like How do you think that up and think? Yeah, that's a good idea. So at this moment, this is when uh loose realizes Oh The scales are in perfect balance and we just need one powerful angel to tip them and that powerful angel is daniel And it took three and a half Fucking books to explain this Okay, like I said earlier the movie explained it in two minutes and you should not do that in two minutes You should have some mystery and give us little hints, but you should not take this long to do it Okay, ideally that would have happened at the end of the first book That that would have been part of the revelations that oh daniels and angel and all that But the fact that it took this long This much plus this much To get to this point is just fucking sad So anyways, they uh go off to vienna because they hear that their friends are there looking for another relic and they might be in trouble and so They run off to help them and they meet this woman named d who Loose tries to attack her at first because she looks exactly like miss sofia and she thinks that that's her But it turns out. Oh no, they're all just trans eternals who all look alike and I was thinking what the fuck is a trans eternal? Is that Is that like you were assigned mortal at birth, but you identify as immortal? How does that how does that work? It's explained a little bit later that trans eternals are different from immortals because you see immortals are like angels Who just live forever and can only die under certain circumstances trans eternals are were born human But then they became immortal later through whatever reason Uh, but they only just live forever if you actually kill them They die like if you stab them or something you die So there's functionally no difference between them and angels But you know they they introduce this new character named d who I mean she turns out to actually be the relic like I don't know exactly how that works But okay, she's the relic But you know, she's a new character and I guess they're trying to get you attached to her by bringing up like Oh, she's so quirky and stuff like this Ariane flung out a hand to help loose up pulling her so hard her feet shot off the ground D's an old friend and a first-class party animal might I add got the metabolism of a donkey She almost brought the crusades to a grinding halt the night she seduced saladin You know, that's uh, that's interesting because right here I have a copy of the rare and excellent history of saladin It's obviously translated because I don't speak arabic But I don't remember it ever mentioning that saladin almost brought the fighting to an end Because he was too busy fucking. Let's see. Let's see if it mentions that in here anywhere. Nope. It's not in there In other words, they had like no trouble getting the second relic and then d comes with them And they go off to find miss sofia who has kidnapped the last couple of their friends um and has the last relic and they Save their friends a couple of them die in the process They kill miss s and they get the final relic But the thing is when they kill miss s it's done in a weirdly brutal way But miss sofia's struggle was ugly gargles and grunts bubbled from her throat cams fingers tightened Slammed her heads with brutal thumps against the floor again and again and again Blood began to trickle from the old woman's mouth darker than her lipstick Yeah, it goes on a little bit longer But basically cam just strangles her very violently and I'm like I'm not anti-violence But it is weird that in a series like this that has been pretty free of blood and stuff It goes to that length like Geez, dude And also sofia just goes out very pathetically You know she's she's like I said a very pathetic villain with no presence at all And the only time she does anything even Kind of that shows she might be powerful is when she kills penn but penn was literally a teenage girl Who had her back turned and then she got stabbed so it doesn't say much about her So they go to this temple or this like buried abandoned ruin temple on mount sinai And this is where they're supposed to bring the relics together so they get prepared for a ritual And then they have to wind up killing d in order to do it because her blood is supposed to awaken Looses Old memories and stuff which as an aside that really should have been the third book You know the whole point of the third book is her going back in time to try and find out about her past like You should have shown us this shit back then but whatever whatever and uh, so d Says hey, you got to kill me and loose is really sad about it because I mean I get that killing someone is hard But this is a character that we've known for Like a hundred pages and she hasn't really done that much in that time so I don't know how the audience is supposed to be super sad about this so they kill d and Complete the ritual and it turns out that the landing spot was in troi or where troi used to be So like the city from you know the trojomore and all that it's in modern-day turkey So they're like, okay, we're gonna go there and as this is happening as this is happening D begins to have visions of some of her past lives again and This is just the dumbest twist. I've read in a long time Luce didn't know the answer didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there The lucinda of her memory didn't even recognize daniel, but she did Suddenly she realized that this was the very first time she and daniel had met on earth This was the moment she'd been begging for the moment daniel would never talk about neither recognized the other They were already instantly in love How could this be the place of their first meeting this plagued dark Landscape reaped of filth and death her past self looked beaten Bloody like she had been shattered into a thousand pieces Like she had fallen from an unfathomable height Lucinda was an angel the entire time and just didn't remember it I honestly can't even see how this twist would work Like at all like there's a lot of times where plot twists happen and i'm like Oh, I can see how if you altered a few things you could make that be a really good effective twist, but this one It's just kind of stupid From the get-go like maybe if you brought it up early in the series Then you could do something with it like she's an angel. She has to learn to Find out how to live with that and also fight evil maybe But at that point it's a pretty different story But when you make that like the crux of your entire book series It's not a good twist So after this we go into like a whole long flashback and basically loose up in heaven was actually The second most powerful angel in heaven or the second most important angel in heaven because you know There's god at the top But then the number one angel was lucifer who became satan and then lucinda was right below that and apparently while they uh lived there satan and lucinda fell in love and that was a big deal because At that point no one had ever loved anything other than god Like I believe this was before humans or something But I don't know but none of the angels had ever loved anything other than god and God was kind of pissed about that. He's like no you you can only love me and then lucifer is like Oh free will I want to be able to choose and all that but it's also made clear that he's only doing this as an excuse for him to gain power and it's Like again you had something and you lost it like God was being kind of a dick here and you could have had him be like more of a dick And so you could see like okay like satan has a real reason to rebel and Instead they just made it so like yeah satan is just using this as an excuse. He was evil all along so despite all its talk of Oh God isn't totally good and satan isn't totally evil. That's exactly what this book series wound up doing guys Onision did more with this idea than lauren kate did for those unfamiliar Onision he's like an internet personality. He's written some terrible books There's plenty of reviews of it on youtube, but the one i'm talking about is reapers creek, which is Okay, i'm not gonna try and explain the whole plot of that one because that's just its insanity but basically near the end of that book it's revealed that god and Satan lucifer the devil whatever you want to call him. Uh, they were actually the same person So like all that evil stuff that god did or all that evil stuff that the devil did was actually god and I'm making it sound more interesting than it is because in the book. It's basically just onision like Ranting about christianity for the millions time But at least he took that idea that like maybe god isn't totally good. Maybe the devil isn't totally evil And he took that idea and did something with it. It's something stupid, but it's something This has that same idea and it does nothing with it like I'm not trying to say that Onision's book is better than these because it's not by any stretch of the imagination, but At least he kind of he had an idea He had an idea for it and he did something with it to give it an identity So, yeah, basically, uh, lucinda falls out of love with lucifer because you know, he's acting evil and stuff And that's when daniel shows up and daniel is also a high-ranking angel. I believe he's number, uh, six they call him and That that's when they fall in love and when the um Time comes to pick sides and they're like, hey, you can side with lucifer and rebel against god Or you can side with god and keep things as they are daniel and luce basically refuse to take sides because they're like No, if we if we take sides we're basically admitting that we love God or lucifer more than we love each other and we don't we love each other more than anything And so that's why they're cursed what? What the butt fuck that's really stupid guys like I get that a pretty big theme of this story is that true love is super important and Maybe it won't get you through anything, but it's very important and Well, no, no, that's it. The true love is very important, but To say that it's like More important than the fate of the universe is That just seems narcissistic at that point And in fact they mentioned at another point during one of their past lives, uh, there was a war going on in china And daniel was supposed to lead an army But he just went away from it and went to find luce because Their love was more important than some silly war and i'm like Literally thousands of people are going to die if you don't do this properly dude like Get your head out of your fucking navel So luce gets her wings she gets her memories back and they all go off to troi to confront satan And uh for whatever reason only luce can go up there and she starts talking to him. She's like, hey, come on. You don't have to do this I Okay, sure like let's assume that satan is so powerful. They can't just bite him. Let's just go with that Okay, I can buy that. Uh, but she starts talking to him. She's like, hey We you shouldn't do this. Okay, you should stop being evil and he's like, well, no I'm gonna continue being evil and they argue about it for a while and then God shows up Enough The voice brought everything to a halt the rotation of the sun the inner consciousness of 318 million angels even the velocity of the plummeting fall itself Simply stopped It was the voice that had created the universe layered and rich as if millions of versions of its spoken unison Enough the throne's command ripped through luce It consumed her the light flooded her vision obscuring lucifer her falling self the whole world with brightness Her soul buzzed with unspeakable electricity as a weight fell from her zipped into the distance the fall It was gone lucifer been thrust out of it with a single word and a jolt that made her feel inside out She was moving across a great void toward an unknown destination faster than the speed of light multiplied by the speed of sound She was moving at god speed so basically She shows up, uh, she tries to stop the bad guy and then god just comes out of nowhere and stops the bad guy for them like What was the point of all that? If they could have just clapped their hands together and said dear lord, please stop satan from destroying the world Why didn't he just do that? Why didn't? All of their struggles Up until this point were pointless. They were worthless. There was no point to any of this God could have stopped it at any point. He could have just saved the world. Okay Okay Okay Okay, yeah Okay, like you just completely invalidated all of the struggles before this point You made the main characters look like a bunch of dumbasses You made the villain look like a chump who can't actually threaten anything All at once i'm kind of impressed So then it god just takes them all to this area and starts talking to them God takes on the form of a woman to talk to them because why not and basically he says all right now It's time for daniel and lucinda to choose. You're the last two powerful angels that haven't chosen anything. You got are you gonna Be with lucifer with me and they say again. No, we choose love. We choose each other. We're not going to take sides here. And so Basically God says, okay, i'll remove the curse, but i also have to get rid of your angel immortality Like you're gonna be reborn one last time And then you can meet each other and you can be together and all that But you're just you're gonna die like regular mortals and lucin daniel are like, okay Yeah, there's no point in being immortal if we can't be together and just that that's the epilogue, you know, they They're reborn and then it cuts to 17 years later. They meet at college And their friends the angels are watching them from afar and they're like, oh, we're so happy for them They're finally gonna get their happy ever after happily ever after even though they won't live forever. It's still fine, which Okay, that's all right. And apparently shelby and miles are married and expecting a child now All right that i mean that happened off-screen even in the fallen in love we didn't get that much of them and during this whole thing like it's cute sure and it might have been a good ending had they um Really had to work for it, but they wound up not having to do that in this one So it's kind of stupid, but had they had to work for it would have been good ending But also what about luc's parents? Like we saw before that when she dies in her past lives her parents have to continue living without them But in these last couple chapters, they don't even mention her parents once So like what happened? Did she just die or disappear one day? Like did she just vanish into thin air and her parents spent the rest of their lives wondering what happened to her? Because that's pretty fucked up I'm just saying like i'm glad that luc and daniel have their happy ending, but Those two people just lost their daughter So I can't really be unequivocally happy for them in this instance Now in my mind, there's basically three good ways to do romance You can just show a standard happy love story You know, you can show people meet slowly fall in love and then happily ever after that's fine It's not really my thing, but you know romance novels are a huge thing and Even though there's no real doubt about how it's going to end you still enjoy the journey So that's fine. Number two is you can bring the success of the relationship into doubt Like you can put some sort of obstacles in there where it's like Oh, I don't know if these two people are really right for each other like a good example being that movie always be my maybe The main struggle of the last part of the movie is not do these characters love each other because they clearly do But it's will the main character dude Be willing to get out of the comfortable rut that he's in in his life And actually go out of his comfort zone and be willing to be with his love interest I don't remember their names, but you know, so in that regard Yeah, even though we're pretty sure it's going to have a happy ending The conflict is an internal one and it does throw some doubt into Whether the relationship will be successful Number three is have them be in love, but they have to fight outside sources in order to Well in order to properly live together like if the world's going to be destroyed or something Then they won't be able to be together now because loose and daniel Had instant love at first sight in the series that throws out the first two, okay the There's no doubt that they're perfect for each other And there's no doubt that they're gonna be happy together. So the first two just gone We don't get to see the journey or anything. That's gone Uh, and the fact that they had such an easy win at the end of the books That ruins the third Like they didn't really have to struggle in order to break the curse or to save the world That is That is a gigantic fuck you of an ending and For a while, I thought that might have been the biggest fuck you of an ending that I had ever read Then unforgiven happened So this one like I said, it's a spin-off it focuses on cam But chronologically it does take place after the main series And you do see the world change a little bit. So I figure I should probably talk about this last now basically Many thousands of years ago cam had a human girlfriend who he had to leave and Never got to be with her and she goes to hell And those past couple thousand years satan has just been tormenting her, you know She has her own personal hell where she lives in this world And she has a crappy life and then she dies young and then she Awakens and she realizes. Oh, I'm in hell and she learns that she's there because cam betrayed her And then the whole thing starts over again. It's just been that for thousands of years and so cam goes into Try and be with her a little bit and He makes a deal with satan satan says he has 15 days to get her to admit that she loves him And if he can do that then they can live the rest of their lives The rest of a mortal lifespan in that little personal hell Together and they can be happy Or if cam is unable to do that then he has to go back to hell with lucifer because remember he is a servant of lucifer he is a fallen angel and um He lucifer is just saying you won't be able to gallivant around having adventures anymore. You're staying in hell and you're serving me I can sum up the story very quickly because this one is stupidly simple basically cam and Lilith his girlfriend's name is lilith. I don't know if I mentioned that but basically they Get into fights over dumb misunderstandings which are resolved in like 20 pages And then they're like, okay, we're happy and we're together again And then another 20 pages later another dumb misunderstanding happens and they have to fight about that Over and over and over again up until the end And then at the end they proclaim their love But it's like just barely too late and it looks like oh man We're about to get sucked down to hell But then some of the other angels like arianne and rollins show up and they save them and they're like Hey, what the hell's going on here and rollins like oh, we're overthrowing satan Yeah, we we don't like working for him anymore. So we're having a revolution And then that's just the book just ends like that Vasis these ferdsheissa You can't introduce a conflict like that and then just never finish it Like the idea of demons overthrowing uh lucifer overthrowing the god of hell That's that's a cool idea. You can do a lot with that, but the fact that you introduce it like this and then just Never complete it never complete that idea That's like ending your sentence in midthought How do you That's an even bigger fuck you That is a massive Flaming neon sign of two middle fingers saying fuck you Fuck you person who read this book Fuck you person who read the five books that came before this and was kind of getting into them Fuck you you suck. That is what this says. Oh my god Like I was expecting based on the movie all of the books to be on unforgivens level, but Mostly I was just disappointed by them up until that point I was thinking oh, there's some cool bits. There's some bad bits, but mostly I was just like, oh, yeah, this This is disappointing, but unforgiven is utter shit Some final thoughts, uh overall I've just never seen something that is this decent fall so hard at the end like Most of the time when I read something that bad, it's bad pretty much all the way through like the fifth sorceress or elixir or To a lesser extent thrown of glass those are those are just all bad all the way through And they might have a few little highs, but They're never decent. They're never at the point where I think okay, this might be okay. Um, I was a little bit excited Based on the concept because you know, like I said Christian mythology is very underutilized Fallen angels falling in love with humans. That's that's a cool idea, but then They do either nothing with it or they just say like yeah, they're in love And so we don't get to see any actual romance or anything The structure of this is very bad. Like I said before every book has to have a twist ending And so They all just waste time up until the twists Well, like I said, they have a couple of good moments Which I will say there some of them are pretty good or if you change some things Maybe they'd be pretty good But you don't have all the necessary events in between those moments in order to make them really stand out and really work as a Story. So it's just a bunch of filler in between cool moments It's a romance story with Basically no romance because they just fall in love right away And then we don't even really get to see them be a couple all that much we get a little bit But not all that much and the side characters romantic tangles aren't Really that important either It's a fantasy adventure story with very little adventure I mean the last two books had some of that But not nearly enough and it was just so um Spread out it was so focused on other stuff like Exposition without actually giving exposition that It wound up not really being much of an adventure The only character I liked was Roland The rest of the supporting cast were all just defined with their connection to loose and daniel Like this person Loves loose but is willing to let daniel have her because that's what she wants This person kind of likes daniel and he hates that loose is constantly causing him pain This person just wants them to pick a side so that they can finally get all this shit over with you know That sort of thing Roland is the only one that has a personality outside that and he's barely in this at all Uh and for that matter loose and daniel are Defined by their love. They don't really have individual personalities like loose has a little bit at the beginning sure but She loses it it fades away over time, which is um That that was also very disappointing. But yeah, like what do loose and daniel like about each other? They're just in love with each other. But even if you set that aside Individually, what do they like to do? You know, what are their beliefs? What are their passions? What things do they dislike? What things do they hate? What things are they unwilling to tolerate like? We don't know anything about them individually Uh, and I would like to say that This is not a rip-off at least I don't think it is because Uh brief aside, uh, when I reviewed elixir a while ago Uh, the plot of that one is also like this immortal dude has a girlfriend who keeps reincarnating and then dying horribly And a couple of people in the comments as well as my sister when I told her about it in person Told me like that's just the plot of fallen but how do you how do you do that and Looking at the dates, uh, elixir came out in november of 2010, I believe whereas fallen came out in december of 2009 However, there was another earlier series called the immortals Which came out in february of 2009 And so some people think that fallen is kind of a rip-off of that Like elixir is very clearly a rip-off of one of those but fallen I don't think it is like I haven't read the immortals so Maybe there's much more in common between the two of them. I I don't know But I don't think that the like Eight or ten months is enough time to really get the whole book written Get it properly edited uh for kate there for lauren kate to get her foot in the door at a publisher Have the publisher go through all that and then get it printed. I don't think that's enough time I could be wrong. I wasn't really able to find any articles about it If you have anything that disproves me, uh, please feel free to share I'm but I'm like 90% sure it's not a rip-off In the end, it's just a standard dull stupid twilight clone. Okay, there's nothing all that good in it There's a few good bits, but there's nothing all that good in it and other than a couple of Really really really hilariously dumb parts. There's nothing that awful in it and If I'm being honest, I'm kind of surprised it got this popular Because it is a pretty popular book series. Like I don't know that many people who have read it, but Like it sold well and all that it because I just don't get it why it became popular because it barely has any identity Like even if it was bad, that would be something because like I was saying about um Onision's book That's horrendous in every way, but I remember it. I remember reapers creek I remember all the stuff with the main character going off and killing god, you know, it's stupid, but I remember it fallen is just Girl falls in love with supernatural dude some stuff happens Which apparently is trying to keep them apart And they're able to overcome it with the power of love and then they just get handed a happy ending like It's more sad than anything. There's just Nothing much to it it has no identity whatsoever and I like I said a million times. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed So I finally finished up all of the book series that I Had on that poll at the beginning of the year Although well technically vampire academy was there But I decided to throw that one out because it was too similar house at night and I replaced it with fallen Either way, I'm finished with all that and now I can move on to some other stuff that you guys voted on And we're finally getting to The number one winner This one also has a really crappy movie adaptation which some of you might be familiar with because it's just so horrendous in every way Battlefield earth written by L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology Yeah Super big thanks to everyone who watched including my patrons apo Sabalainen alex humba ashley watson avatumer b quinn Brother santotis christopher quinton emily miller joel johnny st. Clair madison luis benet ronnie sarcas avakian taylor briggs tobacco crow tom beanie tofer wheeler vacuous silas Vavictus and all the other names on here you guys are You guys are pretty great and I appreciate all of you watching this far if you haven't subscribed to my channel already Please do that and please like the video so it gets shared around more and you know Comment on it if you have anything to say or if you don't have anything to say feel free to comment as well That's that's also great. Anyways, I'll see you later. Bye