 Hello, today we are here with probably one of the last Patreon reviews for a while. Uh, this is The Eyes of the Oracle. It was requested by Samuel Nevin. And, uh, I can't say this is the worst thing I've ever read, but it was very difficult to follow. And I'll be honest, I didn't like it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So, before I get into the actual review, I just want to take a brief moment to talk about changes to my Patreon page. Specifically, if you're on there, then you probably saw my post that I posted a little while ago about how I am getting rid of the $20 and $40 cheers, which are the cheers you use to request reviews. And there's a couple of reasons I'm doing that. The big one is just that it's a lot of work for not that much money. Like, for example, if you spend, if you give me $20 and request me to read a book and that takes me, say, 10 hours to read, which is not a particularly long one, then that's like $2 an hour that I'm working for, which is, you know, not great. And granted, when I post it, I do, you know, get views and add sense money from that. But usually not that much because the books people request me to review are more of a niche. And so, they just don't attract that much attention. So overall, I'm not making that much money from it. And it got to the point a while ago where I'm pretty sure it was negatively affecting the health of my channel because, you know, views and subscriber counts and stuff were really, really low for a couple of months there. And then around February is when it started to pick back up for a little while. But then I had a huge blitz of Patreon requested reviews. I had like eight in maybe six weeks that I had to do or maybe a little bit longer than that. But it was a lot all at once. And while that was doable, all the reviews that I posted just didn't get much attention. And I'm pretty sure because the algorithm is a fickle mistress, I'm pretty sure that that contributed to even other videos that I made not doing as well. I'm not saying that was the only reason, but that was most likely a contributing factor. And so throughout all of this, I don't want to just put my channel in the direction of what's popular and what'll make me money, but at the end of the day, I do have to eat. So that was just the main reason that I got rid of those tears. It wasn't worth all the trouble. And like I said, I did get hit with a huge blitz a little while ago, and that pushed back a lot of stuff that I actually wanted to work on. And I know that a lot of my regular viewers were probably kind of bored of seeing that over and over again. Because I mean reviews, I'm trying to move away from just doing reviews anyways, because those don't get much attention. And it is kind of boring to do the same thing over and over. And I'm pretty sure it's boring to watch the same thing over and over. And so just there's a lot of reasons here. And I might bring back the 20 or $40 tier patron stuff in the future if I can think of a better way to do it. But for now, it's just it's not going to happen in the near future. So this one, and then there's two more patron requests after this that I've already agreed to do. But for now, just that I'm not going to be doing that with that out of the way, the eye of the Oracle. So this, I'm not totally sure how to describe what this is about to really, because it's it kind of has, well, I suppose there is one overarching storyline sort of, but it's split into like three sections. There's book one, which is like in biblical times, I believe it's a very long time ago, because it references, or it does more than reference, it talks about like Noah building his Ark for the world being flooded, like God floods the earth and all that. And then it skips forward a couple hundred or thousand years to the fifth century CE, excuse me, it says AD in the book, but I usually say see in real life because that's just more academic. But anyways, the fifth century CE, and that's when we see like King Arthur and Merlin and they're doing their thing and fighting dragons and shit. And then it skips forward again to the 20th century. And that has multiple smaller time skips until the book ends in like 2002, I believe throughout all of this were basically just seeing dragons and humans and fallen angels and like Lucifer and stuff. We're seeing them all fight. And the reasons for why they're fighting are kind of out of my reach. Now, I didn't know until partway through this book that this is actually a prequel to another series. Now, if I had read that other series, I might have understood this world a little better, and I might have understood what was going on and I might have cared more. But I didn't, you know, this was what was requested of me. So this is what I read. And I mean, if you're a fan of that other stuff, and you come to me saying like, well, actually, the world is this and you explain something. Well, that wasn't in this fucking book. So don't get angry with me. Okay. But yeah, that's the big thing about this is it's kind of similar to Malazan, or at least it feels similar to Malazan, in that it kind of just throws a bunch of pieces at you and pieces of like world building and story and all that. And it says, okay, assemble it yourself. Like it does very little explaining about what's going on. Like at the beginning, it was relatively simple to follow because I knew, okay, yeah, there's some fallen angels, and they're trying to take over the world using this evil plan, which I can mostly understand. It's like, okay, yeah, I get what you're saying. It's pretty simple. But then it just keeps introducing new facets of the world, which without properly introducing them, if that makes sense. Like, at one point, it's just like, oh, there's dragons, and the dragons are intelligent, and they have their whole own society. But we don't know much about their society. So when they say like, okay, we're coming on to the Ark, we're going to help out humans, like, wait, why exactly are you helping out humans? And if this is supposed to be biblical times, then it's more like biblical fanfiction in some ways, because there's like, witches and magic and, you know, dragons, like I said, so it's a bit different. And you should probably take a little bit of time to explain all that and how it's different and why it's different and why you went with this, but they never really do that. And you may like that storytelling style. Like, I know a lot of people like Malazan. I read the first book a couple years ago, I did have a review of it. And I thought the first book was okay, but I just wasn't that into it, because I didn't quite understand this world and how it worked, and how there were all these different, you know, races that interacted with one another, because all the books didn't really explain it all that well. And while there were, the story was easier to follow in Malazan. In fact, if I had to compare the two more, I would say the world is harder to really put together and comprehend in Malazan, but the story is much harder to follow in the eyes of the Oracle. Because in Malazan, at least in the first book, it was relatively straightforward, like this emperor or this empire is conquering some stuff, and people want to stop it from being conquered. Like, there's obviously plenty of smaller details there, which change it up, but that is the, that is the gist of it. Whereas in Eye of the Oracle, it, you know, it starts off simple enough, but then they start adding new stuff, and then it gets weird, and I'll be honest, by the end I was lost. In fact, I would say around 25 to 30% of the way through this, I had just kind of accepted that I was never going to understand it, and I kind of stopped caring, and I still read all the way through it, but I'd be lying if I said that I remember every little detail. Because, you know, there were points where something came up and I was a little confused, and normally I would have gone back and tried to check on something to see if like, okay, did they mention that or explain a little better earlier, but I didn't do that with this one because, you know, I just didn't care. And the thing is, you, this could have made me care had the characters been a little better, had they made a little more sense, but honestly, the characters are similar to all the various aspects of the world, like all the various kingdoms and kings and such that they throw out there. The characters, they just kind of throw them out, and we don't know much about them or what they're like. Now that's not to say they have no personality. Most of them have at least a little bit, but they, they don't have much that makes me care, and it's a huge cast, or not huge, but it is a pretty big cast, and a lot of characters will like come in for a little while and then go and then be replaced by someone else, and we don't know much about that person, like who they are when they're introduced. Like, hello, my name is Tim, and I am a guy from London who really likes to cook, and I'm here to save the world or something like that, you know, just basic stuff, so we get a little bit of a sense of why this person is doing this and just who they are, you know? For example, King Arthur, when he shows up, he's a likable enough character. I kind of, I think he's kind of cool in this, but there's not much to him. He's just kind of the stoic warrior, the honorable king who always keeps his word, and he's doing the best for his people, and that's not bad by any means. It is at least a character, but that's all we have, you know? There's nothing else to him, and there's a lot of big plot moments that just sort of happen, you know? There's no build-up or anything so that we understand the ramifications of this. They just sort of happen. Again, like with King Arthur, there's a scene where his friend is telling him, hey, I sense some danger coming from your sword. There's something up with that, and then Arthur like slams it on the ground and it breaks right away, and he says like, oh, okay, yeah, my sword, if that had happened in battle, then I would have been screwed, so thank you for warning me, but now I need a new sword. Where am I going to get a new sword? And then literally right there, the door's just open and the lady of the lake comes in and gives him Excalibur, and it's like, well, okay, so nobody had to work for anything, so there were no real consequences to this, and it just sort of comes out of nowhere. There's no build-up to it, so we can go, oh wow Excalibur, that's a big deal. Like obviously most people who read it will be at least somewhat familiar with Arthurian legends, so we're going to go like, oh yeah, like Excalibur, I know that. That's the sword he has in the legends, so I guess this is important, but in the book, in the context just of the eyes of the Oracle, we don't know why this is a big deal or why we should care. Again, this is probably important in the regular series that this is a prequel to, but I don't know anything about that because I haven't read it. And most of the world is pretty similar, you know, like, oh hey, there's fallen angels and they're trying to create Nephilim and stuff, like okay, I guess that's a thing. Like it just, it's brought in and it doesn't really sink in why that's a big deal until later, which by then I kind of stopped caring or like, hey, there's dragons here because this is Bible fan fiction and the characters don't treat it like it's a big deal, you know. Usually in fantasy stories when you get to the more fantastical elements of that story, the characters will treat it like it's a big deal too, not always, but that's why for example in Aragon, you know, we have a main character who's just from a rural village in the middle of nowhere, so when he goes to, say, Farlandur and he sees like, wow, this gigantic mountain big enough to hold an entire city which itself is big enough to hold the entire race of dwarves and then he sees like magic and stuff, like to him this is just as fantastical as it is to us and so we're right alongside him learning about it and we're right alongside him with all of the awe that that entails, whereas Eyes of the Oracle doesn't really have that, so it never really captured me as a fantasy world, it never really captured me as a story, there weren't really any characters that I liked and this might all sound much harsher than I'm intending it to and that's mostly because there wasn't much in here that I liked to balance it out, you know, like normally with reviews I talk about stuff I like, stuff I disliked and usually there will be some sort of balance that those two reach, like obviously it's weighted one way or the other most of the time, like I, there was more good stuff than bad or there was more bad stuff than good and in this case the bad stuff really isn't the end of the world, I just, I didn't care for this book but I gave it two stars on Goodreads, it's really not the worst thing I've ever read, but I just, I was thinking about one or two things in this that I might like and I I was kind of just drawing a blank, you know, the only thing I can think of is that it's kind of neat to see Christian mythology and Arthurian legend mixed together like this because I haven't really seen that before and granted it shouldn't surprise me that much, I feel like we should see this before because in the original King Arthur legends Christianity is kind of a big deal, you know, like they're literally searching for the Holy Grail and stuff but in most modern adaptations that's not the case, so I shouldn't be surprised to see this but it is still kind of neat and kind of nice, so at the end of all that, would I recommend that you read the Eyes of the Oracle? If you're just going right into the series right now, then no, I would not recommend this as an introduction. If you are familiar with that other series, I don't even remember what it's called, I'll put it up on screen, but if you're familiar with that, if you've already read through that, then you might like this one more than I did because it talks about like the origins of stuff and like what leads into the story that happens, at least I assume it does, and if this idea intrigues you, if the idea of Arthurian legend and Christian mythology being mixed together and evil fallen angels trying to take over the world by creating Nephilim and also there's dragons, like if that sounds neat to you, then just check out the other series, I think it's called The Firekeepers, just check that out first and then come back to this one. here or just help support my channel and also get access to things like early videos and voting on polls to determine what I'll do next, then consider giving me money, or if you can't do that, then just share this video around because the YouTube algorithm, just I don't think I need to explain anything else at this point. Bye.