 Fourth wing? What is that? That looks pretty. It's a pretty edition. Why have I never heard of this book? Why have I never seen it? Is this like a TikTok book? It's like fantasy. I'm so confused. Why are there all these books I've never heard of? A special edition. It's a very beautiful edition, but I've never heard of this. There's many questions to be asked here. Guys, this is not real. Bart and I bought a shilling out for squats on my top. I'm the best. What? So, um, awkward. I filmed that video and I've never heard of fourth wing and then immediately the next day I am bombarded for months with fourth wing everything, okay? Everyone's reading it for the fourth wing. Everyone's obsessed. Everyone's reading it, right? And for a long time, I've been like, I'm not gonna read it, right? When these big fantasy releases come out, I usually don't read them. I feel like the closest equivalent we had to this last year was maybe the Atlas VI and I didn't read that. And I was like, yeah, I'm not reading it. I'm not reading it. I'm not reading it. But then I just started to feel like I was missing out and I saw a couple people who I usually have similar reading texts to love it. So I've decided we're gonna read fourth wing. We're gonna read it. Oh my god, okay, it's happening. Everybody, stick on. What's the procedure, everyone? What's the procedure? Stay f***ing gone! I'm going into this with like very mixed expectations, right? This has got two, like over 200,000 ratings on Goodreads. It's got a really high rating from what I can remember. Like, I'm kind of like, okay, if that many people are reading it and that many people are enjoying it, there has to be something going on here. But also, this kind of TikTok recommended book I have never really enjoyed. Me and Booktalk have very different tastes, okay? And we can just agree to live with that. I'm also kind of going into it thinking that I'm just gonna find it a bit meh. I don't think I'm just gonna hate it. I'm kind of going into it thinking like, it's gonna be okay, you know? So we're gonna read fourth wing together. I'm gonna take you along with me. I'll probably check in with you about every 100 pages. It is quite long. It's almost 500 pages. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like this kind of fantasy isn't really my thing. I don't like Sarah J Maas. I don't like from Blood and Ash. I don't like, do you know what I mean? I feel like a lot of the fantasies of being comped to is not a fantasy I enjoy. But I now have to know. I have to know what the hype is about. I cannot wait any longer. So let's just get into it and start reading fourth wing. Oh my god, I feel like I'm about to throw up. I don't, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to- Okay, I got 100 pages into fourth wing Tuesday night. Right, the last thing Tuesday night. Too late to film. I was like half asleep. It is now Friday evening, afternoon evening, and I haven't spoken to you. I've been putting it off and I don't know why. I don't want to. I've been sitting here for like 40 minutes, not filming out of, I don't know, fear. I actually feel sick. I got a headache at the idea of speaking to you about this book. I do not want to comment. Why? Why? Okay, vague synopsis, vague synopsis. I'm sure you've heard this book synopsis many times. The following main character, her mother's like, her mother's someone very important in the country. Right. And girl, he was supposed to be a scribe. She trained all these years to be a scribe in the library and then her mother's like, no bitch, you're going to be a dragon rider because her dad was like the scribe one and he died. Mom's like, he's like to see it. He gives a fuck. So she enters this like academy for the dragon riders that exist. Dragons are a big thing in this war that the country's in. Typical fantasy world, typical fantasy war. This book is stupid. It's already annoying me with some of its logic and some of the things that happen. Okay, I don't think it's bad. I want to point that out to you now. I have had no inclination to read it. Like I have had no desire to pick it up. But I don't think it's terrible. There's a scene. I don't even want to be seen talking about this. There's a scene. You must, if you've watched people review this, I haven't watched many people like step by step review this yet because I wanted to go into it fairly, you know, once I decided I was reading it, I wanted to not have my ideas tainted. But there's a fricking scene where basically this child that they, they like love people dying in this academy. Can my phone shut up? They love people dying, right? So there's a trial right at the start to get into the academy where you have to like walk this tightrope thing and those people fall off and die, right? Stupid logic. Why? Why? Why? Why? Because a lot of people... Okay, okay. You know what? I don't understand it. But our main character, in order to get through the stress and like how anxious she is about this situation, she's like, right, I have to calm myself down. What calms me down? Oh yeah, let me recite all of the key information about our world that the reader needs to know because I'm a scholar. And so she's like, this place is split into these regions. And it's, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? An info dump when faced with death? It is the worst info dump I think I've ever read. I hated it. It made me laugh. Like what? But it wasn't like because it was the basic level info we needed to know about the world, it was like if I was in that situation, me going, like if you're a scholar, if you've trained your life, you'll be thinking like niche facts, like exciting interesting things, not going, tomatoes are red. Do you know what I mean? Like it's stupid. And it got me thinking about something I feel like with a lot of modern fantasy series is that I feel like a lot of modern ones feel the need to info dump all of the world and the magic system on you straight away. Old school fantasies did a good job, for example, of not info dumping everything about the world and the magic system on you in that first book. The world expands, the magic system expands. We learn new things that don't counteract what we knew in the first couple books, but like we get new information. There's this new part of magic that we didn't know before. And I feel like modern fantasy just wants to fucking cram it all in in the first book and then all the later books are just storylines. Whereas I think it's beautiful. I love when a book and a magic system expands throughout a series. A key example for me of this is The Bear and the Nightingale, a modern example of The Bear and the Nightingale series by Katherine Arden. That book starts off really tight in just a village and then we move to a city and then we move to a world and the magic keeps expanding. And I thought it did such a good job of that. And a lot of the modern fantasy that I feel like a lot of people haven't pick up, you just get all the information crammed into the first book. And I just, I don't vibe. I don't vibe, frankly. I don't know. I feel like with this book, I feel like, we're paying on the head again, no we're not. I feel like the perception of what I've seen, like people so far, either love it and are obsessed with it or hate it and think it's terrible. And I don't necessarily think I'm gonna fall on either side of that. I think this might just be like a methory star for me. And so we feel like I'm not pleasing anyone. I feel like I'm not praising it and like getting into the hype with everyone. And I feel like I'm not gonna be like critiquing it too, well, I feel like I already am. But like too in-depth, I'm just gonna be like, it's fine. And I feel like I'm not pleasing anyone with that perception. I don't know. When I read it, I enjoyed it, but then I've had no desire to pick up and I think it is stupid. If you're gonna read this, you have to go into it acknowledging that yeah, it's stupid. It's whack-a-doodle time. It is whack-a-doodle time. It's stupid. It's stupid. Like why is, I mean, everyone kills each other. Like the grad, the... I can't even speak. The students at the school, yeah, sometimes in the fighting scenes, they just, they kill each other with no repercussions. Why? Because it increases the stakes of the story. No other reason, no other logical reason for a school, a military school to allow that. Anyways, and there's a love story. There's a love triangle already. I think Alahunga Games and I already know who's gonna be the main love story. And I don't think I'm into that. I think I like that one more. But on a plus side, I can see why people love this because it is nostalgic, right? I feel like I didn't read a lot of those dystopian... I think it has a lot of the same tropes as those dystopian Hunger Games, I imagine, esk-books, but with maybe a dragon fantasy twist. And I can already tell this is gonna be made into a freaking movie. It does do imagery quite well, I think. There was this one scene where there's a dinosaur, a dragon in front of her, and it blows her nostrils and it blows her hair and whatever. And I can just really... That scene is so vivid to me. I know if it's a film, how they're gonna film it. It's gonna be a film, and it's gonna be successful. I know it already. It's gonna be a film. So I can understand why people like it in that regard. But yeah, let's read another hundred pages, shall we? I'll try and read that tonight, but... I'm gonna be honest, I'm not... I'm not desperate to, I don't know. It's fine. We'll see how we get on. Maybe it'll win me over, but right now I'm just like... Hello, friends. There's something about when I read a book that I'm not having. It makes me ill. I'm fully blaming on this book. Oh, we've gone red. We've gone red. Let's speak to you in a few seconds. I've gone red. I've got some kind of sickness bug that started on Monday evening, and I was hoping to be gone by now. It's like Wednesday evening now, and it hasn't gone. And my hay fever has started making appearance just as I've put myself together enough to film for five minutes because I have not been in a state conducive to filming. Oh, that's just Tom's back massage gun. Ignore that. Ignore that. That's suspicious. That's weird. Anyways, I'm 200 pages into fourth wing. The first thing we have to talk about is the fact that it's taking me a week to read 100 pages of this. So you can tell I have absolutely no desire to read it. When I read it, like when I pick it up and actually read it, I don't hate it. But I really do not care about any of this. If it was. You better f**king take that back right now. You better f**king stop right now. I don't know. I'm going to try and make myself care more. I'm going to try and read about 100 pages tonight and hopefully check in with you first thing in the morning. We're going to speed this up because we can't take like five weeks to read this book, which is our current trajectory. Here's the thing. The dragons have just turned up. I don't feel like that's a spoiler. You know, the dragons are going to turn up at some point. It's a lot earlier than I thought would happen. We're moving a lot quicker through the plot and through the kind of stages of the book that we've been told would happen. The dragons are fun. Okay, I like the dragons. The dragons are a tick for me. I like the dragons. I will say it's still pissing me off with how stupid some of this is. She's still well-dumping in the most stupid, like, high pressure situation. She still, you know, takes the time to give us some great info-dumping. Thank you because I would be lost without it, obviously. And the author has done something that's pissed me off. Pissed me off. Pissed me off. Bear in mind, I have very little tolerance right now. I'm not feeling well. She's done the thing where there's a lot of triangle, right? But our author is obviously rooting for one person, the love triangle. And so she's made the other guy in the love triangle annoying and stupid and infuriating and irritating. Oh, he kicks our martyrs, that gazer. We're only changing pages into the first book. This is gonna be a five-book series. How is a love triangle supposed to sustain itself? If 200 pages in, you have made this guy the most irritating person on the planet. I was rooting for him at this start. I liked the other guy. I could tell that he was not the guy we were gonna go for. We were gonna go for the other guy, okay? Because the other guy had more fantasy romance tropes about him, you know? But he is just irritating. Every second, he is trying to undermine her and get her to change her mind about things. And he's just a little annoying little rat. But he was who I was rooting for. And I'm like, why do that? Just don't give me a love triangle then. If you're so set on one person in the love triangle, just make it a fucking romance with her and him. Why? There is no need for this love triangle. If 200 pages into the first book, you're gonna make him so irritating that it's obvious where we're going, like... Oh, God. So that's where we're at. I think it's quite bad on the whole. But it is. I can understand why people love it because it is easily readable and it's kind of fun, you know? And it's playing up on a lot of what we love about other books. Like I said, it's gonna be a fucking movie. You know, we can cast it already. Fan cast it right now. But I'm not loving it. I'm not hating it. It's maybe like... I'm probably getting like a three star of enjoyment from it when I'm actually reading it, when I actually force myself to read it. But it's probably on quality, like a 2.5 at the moment. So anyways, we'll see how it goes. I'll check with you and I'm 300 pages in. All right. 300 pages into fourth wing. I've taken the just jacket. Just, just jacket. Can the car outside stop making noise, please? Here's the thing, right? Here's the thing. When you're gonna read a book like this, that has been so popular, you have to go into it with a certain mindset. You either have to go into it. I remember thinking, I'm about to beat this bitch up. Genuinely hoping to enjoy it and trying to enjoy it or going into it to read critically and to like come up with clever things to say about it, right? I'm trying to enjoy this. It might not seem like it, but I'm really trying to enjoy this. I feel like if I was going in with that critical evaluative mindset, I'd kind of be going in to just hate read it and that's not what I want to do. I want to love this like everyone else is loving it. Genuinely, when you look at the bar on Goodreads, it's like everyone has given this five stars. We're not gonna give it five stars. Let me tell you that. I think if you're gonna enjoy this, you just have to accept that like the world building, you know, you have to buy into it. You have to believe in the fantasy. You have to suspend your belief. If you're disbelief, suspend. You have to suspend logic, right? In all fantasy when you read a fantasy book, you have to suspend logic because fantasy isn't real. But usually I can do that. You know, I love fantasy, but I can't do it when the world building is the stupidest fucking world building ever to exist. Like there's just so much about this school, this magical death dragon school that makes zero sense. Zero, I can't get over everyone having to die all the time just so that the stakes are raised. It's so... guys. I actually can't take it. I can't take it. I have been pushed to the limit with this. You know, the writing's not great. The dialogue is pissing me off. There's this one scene where her and this guy were like talking things out. He's been a shit to her. They've been arguing, right? And they make up. She's like flashed him a cheeky smile. Firstly, I can never imagine uttering the words like, I give him a cheeky smile. What in the fanfic? Not even good fanfic. What in the shitty fanfic? I give him a flash. I turn around and flash him a cheeky smile. It's... I hate it. Fringe! I don't get it. This is what you guys are obsessed with. This is it. This is it. This is what has everyone in choke hold and like everyone on their knees like praising. I don't understand. I will say it is good to see chronic illness in this. The main character has what I believe is Alice Downlose syndrome or at least very similar traits and symptoms. But I can't obviously speak on whether that is good chronic illness rep or bad chronic illness rep. I just think it's refreshing to see that in a book that is so, you know, widely read and so popular. But yeah, anyways, let's stop talking about the book and guess, where am I going? Where am I going? Where am I going? Come on, Bobbie. Let's go party. Ah, ah, ah, yeah. There's no way I could have guessed. There's no way I could have guessed. We're going to go see Barbie. It came out last weekend for me. Well, for everyone, but I'm just situating you in time. But last weekend, every single cinema, unless you want to sit on the front row, near me was sold out every single showing. Each of them had like 10 shows a day. They were all sold out. Essex is crazy for Barbie, obviously. So we're going to go see Barbie. I mean, I'm excited. I'm excited for a bit of respite from fourth wing because God knows we need it. So I didn't actually film a lot. We went to the cinema. Here's the cinema. I spotted a magnitude sign. I was like, oh my God, me. So here's a picture of me getting eaten by the shark. And then we tried to get some sweets and then went into the film. We were running late, okay? Barbie was a five star. It was a five star. It was a five star. I think that's the first film I've watched this whole year. But I put my pink pajamas on in solidarity. I'm about to go take my makeup off. It's too late. I'm not going to read any more tonight. But I want to try and finish this tomorrow. In fact, I have to try and finish this tomorrow. I'm not letting it go any longer. So we've got 200 pages of this tree tomorrow. We're going to do it. So I'll see you in the morning once I've read up to page 400. But yeah, Barbie, that's more fun. They needed it. My brain needed it. I don't want to spoil anything. If you haven't seen it yet, you should go into it blind. Because there's stuff that I kind of knew about but didn't know about. And I just will say I felt particularly called out by, if you've seen it, the Pride and Prejudice reference. Because I love going fast, BBC Pride and Prejudice. So I'm just going to say that. I felt particularly called out by that because growing up, I always watched that whenever I was sick of school with my mum. Every time without a fail. And I still watch it all the time. Probably one of the things in the world I've watched the most. So anyways, I'll see you in the morning. We have to read. We have to finish this. We have to finish it. We have to be done, be free. I looked at it and I want to cry. Almost done. We are almost done. We're almost done. I don't know why I've just put hoodie on. It's hot. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm going to get changed out of this after this. But okay, 400 pages in. We're almost at the end. I'm exactly on page 400. This ends on page 498. We have 98 pages left to read. There's something about the writing that's pissing me off. I don't know how to explain it, but it's like everything is either terrible. It's like the end of the world or it's the greatest thing ever. Like a sword has been immaculately crafted. Hoed to perfection. Everything is on its eyes. It's that kind of writing. I don't like it. I don't like it. I think this is why I don't read like other fantasy romance because everything is just kind of like just the phrase on its eyes. I was ready to square up. Like, I'm ready to go. It triggers my flight or flight. Flight, flight or flight. There's that. But there was we have, it finally got spicy. It finally got spicy. I thought this was more spicy than it has been, but it finally got spicy. The spicy scenes were okay. You know, they weren't the worst ever read. They were all right. Actually, there could be more. I wouldn't be mad if there was more. I feel like maybe this needed more of that because it's just felt like a slug. A slug? Slug. Slug. And some people say they flew through it. At this point, I have been reading this for like almost two weeks. And I don't think I'm going to continue on with the series. But also there's a part of my brain. It's like sunk in cost fallacy. I've spent so long with these characters that it's like when the next book comes out I'm kind of going to feel like, oh. Even part of me is like, you know, I couldn't pretend it. I like the dragons. The dragons and the spicy scenes are probably my favorite part. But it just feels so... meh. I don't understand why this has you guys by the throat. I don't get it. I don't get it. I'm not that girl. I'm evidently not that girl. Also, I don't think we need to get into a discussion around... I just think it's a fantasy world, right? So if I was thinking deeply, I could have a discussion around some of the discussions we've had in this last 100 pages around killing people and the morality of that in war. And if we want to get into a discussion about how I believe the author's a military wife and like, you know, but it's fantasy. So I don't feel the need to get into discussions around the morality of that. And like, rooting into this. Because I feel like every fantasy book is kind of like death is just... and killing people is kind of like part of the course. But I can see if someone was reading this with a critical eye, they would point at that and be like, you know, the justification of killing people in war. Basically, you know, you could side-eye if you want, but it's fantasy. So I don't really feel the need to do that because every fantasy book is like death is part of the course. So anyways, I'm going to go finish it. Wish me luck. Um... I almost don't want to put this video out because I'm scared people are going to be really mad at me. Well, we finished. Are we ready? We're ready. I'm going to give it two stars. Two stars. Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave? Now I just want to say, if you love this, you can leave. You can leave. You don't need to listen to what I have to say. The last page of this made me realise like this book actually has nothing moving the plot forward, right? There is nothing that is exciting about what is happening. The whole book is just her going to this dragonriding school and we're just moving from challenge to challenge from obstacle to obstacle. Basically wondering whether she can like overcome that challenge, but knowing that she probably will because she is the protagonist of this book. She doesn't overcome it. It won't be like fucking world ending. Do you know what I mean? There is nothing. There's no intrigue. There's no, you know, every book has a mystery or should really have a mystery at the core of it that we are unpacking. Well, not every book, you know, but like every, I think, commercial fiction book, let's say will have something that is moving the plot forward and it doesn't have that. It doesn't have that. Okay, this is the bottom line. Everybody was thinking it. I just said it. I'm giving it two stars. The one added star from a one star is because it's not the worst thing in the world and I can understand what other people like it. Even though I'm dunking on it and I'm giving it two stars, I can understand why a lot of people enjoy it. Not why so many people enjoy it and to that extent no, I don't have to say it. There's a little twist at the end on that last page and they got me. They kind of got me because I was like oh, you know oh, um, it's like Stockholm Syndrome. It's like I hate it. It's held me hostage for two weeks but like, the thing happened at the end, I was like ah, maybe I could read the second one. I'm not going to add it to my series spreadsheet but if a video if you guys wanted me to read the second one for a video or a video came up where I had to read it, I would not, like I'd be up for it. This isn't fun. Why am I doing, but I feel like yeah, I'd be up for doing that again even though I didn't enjoy this. I don't know what's wrong with me. What is wrong with this girl? What is wrong with this girl? Everyone else loves it. I kind of knew going into it that it wasn't necessarily going to be my thing. It was alright. Was it? It was two stars. I've tried to make this as spoiler free as possible for those of you who haven't read this. I could make this video like three hours long if we sat down and just went through every ridiculous thing that happened in this book. Like it is stupid. The plot is stupid. The world-building is stupid. The rules are stupid. The insta-love is stupid. Everything in it is stupid. Right? We could go through example. Someone's probably already done that. We could go through example after example and we would be here for hours. Like I don't know how to explain enough to you how many lines I wear that made me roll my eyes and how stupid. Like it makes no sense. There's so many plot holes. This is like fucking holy cheese. You know what I mean? It's just... I don't know where to begin. But I've read it and I know what all the hype is about. And I, you know, I sometimes I question whether you're all okay and then I realise no you're not. So there we have it. I hope you enjoyed watching me read this. The wind just made my door shut and I'm home alone. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. I hope you enjoyed watching me read this. Please let me know what you thought of Fourth Wing because I know I'm in the minority by not loving it. So if you've read it, please let me know. If you got into the end, comment a dragon emoji. I mean we're here. I love the dragons. I love the dragons, but it was a two star. Anyways, I love you guys and I will see you soon in another video. Bye.