 Hey guys, it's Liana. I'm here today with another Read This Not That. I have done this a couple of times before. Essentially what this is is instead of read-a-likes, this is like the opposite of that. So if you read a book and you wanted a specific thing out of it, you're looking for a certain experience, a certain type of story, a certain type of vibe, whatever it is, and if that book didn't deliver on that thing, then I have an alternative recommendation for you. As I've said both other times that I did this video, just because it's on the Don't Read This list does not mean I don't like that book. It just means that there's a particular aspect of it that I think may not deliver on. It may not adequately fulfill a particular need or it may not deliver on certain expectations. I think that makes sense? Okay, so a lot of times if it's on the Don't Read List, a lot of times it does mean I don't like it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. Cool, cool, cool. I wrote my list in reverse order again. Well, whatever. They're my lists. I know what I'm doing. How many do I have? I have 11 for you. That thing that's the most that I've ever had. I think it's because I've been writing this list over a period of time instead of just trying to do it like two minutes before filming this video. What? In no particular order, these aren't best or worst. Can you have a best or worst one? It's like, well, whatever. I think you know what we're doing here today and if you don't, you'll pick it up as we go. My first pairing is if you didn't like Serpent and Dove, but you were looking for a book that had this sort of enemies to lover situation where honestly specifically, a witch hunter and a witch. That's what Serpent and Dove reports to me about and is about. You have a witch hunter and a witch who fall in love and despite the obvious differences and obstacles between them. I really, really hated Serpent and Dove. I thought it was really surface level. I thought that that interesting dynamic of having those conflicting feelings between what you were taught to believe and who your people are versus the love you feel, like the romantic love you feel. I feel like that's a really rich situation that would have so many conflicting layered feelings that could be such a fascinating character study. I think it was handled so poorly. It was boring and it was really two dimensional and I was like, so much for that rich premise. So if you are looking for a witch hunter and a witch who, despite those differences, love each other very much, you should read The Six of Crows duology by Lee Bardugo. They aren't the only characters in it. They are the main focal point of the story. But two of the characters represent a witch and a witch hunter. This is the Grishaverse, so the witch is a Grisha and the witch hunter is a Druskell, who they're sort of like a Nordic inspired people and they are like these Nordic witch hunters. So that's his mission and goal in life from who he is and how he was raised and she is Grisha. She was born with this power and she comes from Ravka where she was trained to use her power instead of suppress it or hate herself for it. And they are in love and it is messy and complicated and there's a lot of it. It's just it's really, I think, done extremely well in that book. And even though arguably there's less time given to those characters because they aren't the only characters you follow, unlike Serpent End of, I feel like the portrayal of the the characters themselves and the situation they're in is more nuanced, despite having less representation in terms of page and word count. Lee Bardugo just, the bits that she includes, absolutely nails it in terms of giving you really this feeling of how messy and complicated the situation is for the people involved and really making you feel for them. Benina and Matthias are just so much more interesting and lovable and I ship them so much harder. I mean, I can't possibly ship Lou and Reed in Serpent End of because they don't even seem like characters to me. They seem like a Barbie doll and a Ken doll. Like a Barbie doll and a Ken doll have more personality. So yeah, recommend Six of Crows. Next, if you picked up Deadly Education by Naomi Novick because you wanted to read about a school that had deadly magic in it and you really wanted to read something that had fantastical elements but that really was dark and really kind of if not scary then at least gave you a sense maybe of dread of something ominous but had interesting magic as well and had that academic setting and Deadly Education was horrible because the world building was terrible and because of the constant deadliness of things, there was absolutely no suspense. The main character had no personality. The main character was really just a vehicle for info dumping. It absolutely failed to deliver that atmosphere and experience. So, TBQH, read Harry Potter. But J.K. Rowling's cancelled and it's a kid's book, so we're not going to do Harry Potter as the official recommendation. Read Ninth House by Lee Bardugo. I didn't mean to have back-to-back Lee Bardugo recommendations. I really didn't. The rest of the recommendations on my list are not Lee Bardugo books, I promise. But yeah, Ninth House by Lee Bardugo is Dark Academia with Magic, which is what Deadly Education said it was going to be and technically, Dark Deadly Education is that it's just horribly executed. Ninth House by Lee Bardugo takes place in Yale, so it's a real school but the secret societies at Yale who have sort of necromantic magics that they wield in our main character, instead of being a vehicle for info dumping, is actually a weird, complex, messy and somewhat unlikeable main character. So, there's just a lot more to unpack. The rules of the magic are a lot more interesting. They're delivered a lot more organically. The main character is, has a personality, which is, you know, that's awesome. Apparently, that's a high bar. Even though it's not a fake school, Yale's a real place. The sort of secret underworld of these societies within Yale makes it kind of feel like a school within a school and instead of being, you know, a magical boarding school for high schoolers, it's university. But I mean, the difference between a 17 year old in high school and an 18 year old in university is not that big. So yeah, I would recommend Ninth House by Lee Bardugo. Next, if you Red Rage of Dragons and you were really frustrated because you really like a revenge story and in theory, like a character driven by revenge and motivated by revenge sounds interesting and compelling and it really should be. But you found Tao extremely one-dimensional and boring and his relentless pursuit of revenge to be monotonous and really somehow managed to make a revenge story boring. So if that's how you felt about Rage of Dragons, then I recommend Bessie of Cold by Joe Abercrombie. That is a hardboiled revenge thriller like none other. And it is a very compelling revenge story. The main character, Monza Mercado, she is determined to get revenge on the people that killed her brother and tried to kill her and that is her entire motivation and her entire goal throughout the book. However, this doesn't translate to Monza just doing a massive training exercise so that she can be a killer and then go kill these guys. She assembles a crew with unique skill sense, which a lot that she has to do to kind of play the long game in order to get their revenge she seeks. There are seven people she wants to kill who she holds responsible for the killing of her brother and the attempt on her own life. But there's this really fascinating dynamic with these amazingly unique personalities that Joe Abercrombie created for this book. And the breakneck pace, instead of just being training and training and training, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, there's a huge variety of circumstances, all of which are kind of high stakes, quite violent, quite dark. And the pace of the book because it's a standalone is breakneck. There's constantly the next step in the revenge plan. And the next step isn't just the same thing over again with a new person, it's always a slightly different circumstance, slightly different problems in the way of their plan, slightly different hitches with the dynamic between the crew themselves. It is an intricately woven, fast paced, incredibly layered, messy and dark as fuck violent, gritty, grim, dark revenge story like you have never read before. It's it was my favorite Abercrombie book until I'm his new series. His new series dethroned it. His new series, Shrub's Kiss. The best serve coal is a hard boiled revenge thriller that delivers everything that Raided Dragons completely failed to deliver. Next up I have Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I didn't mean to have two Naomi Novik books on here, but there you go. If you read Uprooted because you were looking for a story that would really kind of put you in this sort of dark magical forest that would really give you this feeling and these vibes of a magical forest that is perhaps a little dark. That's really all I was looking for. Uprooted had zero atmosphere. I felt like the magic was so poorly explained, so poorly executed. The characters themselves were so flat that I did not feel any of the atmosphere that I think that I was meant to and that I've heard people say they get out of Uprooted. I don't know how. So instead, I would recommend Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh. This is actually, I guess a novella. There's a second one. I haven't read that yet. And I like to kind of describe it as a queer town bombadill. It's shorter obviously, slurs us, it happens, but it's got this really atmospheric dark forest that the sort of man of the woods, who's kind of like Tom Bombadill only queer, he lives in this forest and kind of is its caretaker and he is sort of centuries old. And the way that the forest is described and the way that the reader is brought into the world of this forest and the way that the darkness of this forest kind of becomes manifest and sort of slowly kind of creeps into the reader's awareness. I guess I don't know how else to explain it. It is so much more atmospheric and dark and amazing than Uprooted. It's everything I wanted Uprooted to be. Ironically, Emily Tesh actually mentioned that she was inspired by Uprooted and that she recommends Uprooted for people who like her own book and I'm like, oh honey, your book's so much better than Uprooted. And it's shorter. Uprooted was such a slog. God, I hated it. Anyway, yeah. So Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh. Next up, I have a dangerous alliance by the author's Janicki Cohen, I think. I don't know exactly how to say that name. It purported to be the sort of light Austin inspired kind of adventure with some minor espionage, I guess. It was terrible. I didn't expect a huge amount of historical accuracy or even for the style of the writing to be similar to the style of the writing of actually Jane Austen. I expected a lot of sort of cheeky references to Austen, which you kind of get, but they get tiresome really quickly and the main character is so annoying and the plot is so stupid that it's not fun. It's not compelling. It's not like a light fun romp. It's just dull and stupid and the anachronisms are even more irritating because you're not swept away by this kind of fun quirky story. So if you did want something like that, though, but good, I would recommend My Plain Jane by a trio of authors. Let's see if I get them all right. Brody Ashton, Jody Meadows, and Cynthia Hand. They had a series of sort of Jane retellings. That's the only one I've read. This one is a retelling of Jane Eyre that features Charlotte Bronte in it and it's sort of Jane Eyre meets Ghostbusters. And it is absolutely sort of this like quirky fun romp where you can't really take it too seriously, but it is charming and it is funny and it has these really quirky little nods to both the life of Charlotte Bronte and the Brontes in general and to Jane Eyre specifically. And like Ghostbusteriness kind of makes it kind of Doctor Who-ish. So like the episodes of Doctor Who where he needs a famous author, a famous historical figure. It has that quirky vibe where like it's obviously going to be anachronistic because it's kind of a silly comedy, but it works. And it is actually funny and amusing and whimsical and kind of sweeps you away on this fun little silly adventure that obviously couldn't possibly have happened. Next up I have Gwynevere Deception by Kirsten White. If you pick this up because you were hoping for a unique take on the Arthur legend, something new, something fresh, bringing something new to the table, a new way to interpret the Arthur legend. Possibly feminist. My recommendation I can't say is especially feminist for my alternate, but a new fresh lens through which to view the Arthur legend. And you found Gwynevere Deception to be childish, stupid, two-dimensional, boring, flat, nonsensical, and not all that true or reverence of the Arthur legend. If you felt that way, then I recommend Biforce Alone by Lavie Tindar. Biforce Alone is adult, not YA, and it is very adult, so be warned. However, I think it is actually a genuinely fresh take on the Arthur legend. It is kind of a very strange book. I accused Gwynevere Deception of also being really strange, but it wasn't strange in a way that was a fascinating interpretation or bizarre idea to now explore. Gwynevere Deception just made some really odd choices where I was like, that's just fucking weird. Why is she like this? It's not a compelling interesting nuance to take on an alternate way to tell the story. It's just this bizarre character choice out of nowhere where you're like, but what? By Biforce Alone, it is arguably strange, and that strangeness may not be to your liking. However, that strangeness is actually an idea that is being fleshed out and explored really thoroughly. It's not just kind of this weird throwing in of a weird thing where you're like, oh, why? So the way that I kind of described it in my review was that it's kind of like if Joe Abercrombie decided to write an Arthur story, but he had just watched Stranger Things. So there are some absolutely undeniably strange elements to Biforce Alone, but I do think it is a fascinating look at sort of the birth of a legend, as well as possible interpretations of the clashing of science and magic. Can they coexist? Are they mutually exclusive? Are they different words for the same thing? How the telling and retelling and legendary quality of our collective oral history, how that comes from something almost unrecognizable as being the legend that we've come to know. How starkly time, retelling, and people's wish to believe something else can shape a legend around something that, if you really saw the thing that it's based on, would be unrecognizable. So I think Lauri Tadar did an amazing job delving, exploring, analyzing, and telling this strange and violent story that it's kind of a meta discussion on Arthur more than a story almost, but a fascinating one, nonetheless. Next, I have Malice by John Gwynn. If you read this, because you were looking for something that would kind of put you in mind of Vikings, Viking-y dress, Viking-y culture, Viking-y vibes, without being actually a Viking story, but where you'd have the sort of warrior people, maybe sort of in the north, maybe carrying more like weapons that you associate with Viking, something kind of with those vibes, something that was kind of cold and brutal and war-centric. And then you found Malice to be really, really childish. I feel like this one is just for me, because I feel like I'm one of the only people that didn't like Malice, but that's the reason I didn't like Malice. It felt like really childish, boyish, wish fulfillment that I found boring and nauseating. So if you want a good book that kind of gives you this like warrior people, cold, norse vibes without actually being about Vikings at all, I recommend The Wolf by Leo Carroll. The Wolf is one of my ultimate favorite books of all time ever. I've read it three times. It is an imagined history fantasy where it explores what dark ages would have looked like if more than one humanoid species had survived the ice age to farm language and culture. So we follow largely the Anakim who are these sort of people that I would say are kind of Viking-y, even though they aren't even human. They are Neanderthal who developed language and culture. They live in sort of geographically what we now would consider the north of England slash Scotland and their culture, their aesthetic, their approach to life, their setting, their food, they're just their vibes are very Viking-y. Obviously again, they are not Vikings, they are Neanderthal, but they are this warrior people where like that is bred into them in a way that we kind of associate with Vikings. They live in this sort of austere climate, they thrive on how austere it is and how tough that makes you. They refer to the Southerners kind of as sissies, Southerners being homosapiens, they drink birch wine, they have berserkers, they are very Viking-y. The only thing that's extremely unviking about the Anakim is the fact that they do not want to leave their land. Vikings were known for raiding, for constantly leaving their land. The Anakim are very much homebodies, they want to protect the land they have. They are kind of like hobbits in that sense, like they don't really want to leave their land, leave us the fuck alone. So it's more about them defending from invasion, that is very unviking of them, but otherwise absolutely viking vibes hardcore. Next up I have the left-handed booksellers of London by Garth Nix. This is what I picked up because it sounded like it would be really quirky and fun. And if you too picked it up because you were like, this sounds quirky and fun and like a whimsical little adventure, kind of a la Doctor Who, where it takes place in sort of 80s magical London where there's sort of these this quirky magical underworld, maybe perhaps never wear vibes, all things I like. But if you found it to be really two-dimensional, boring, flat, lacking in charm, lacking in the whimsy that it really struggled and tried very hard to have. But if you want something fun like that, where you have sort of our modern day meets with a magical secret underworld where things are kind of deadly, but also kind of quirky, kind of funny, but dangerous, like lots of adventure and high stakes, but also have a laugh. And you did not find that with left-handed booksellers. I recommend Skelduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy. That's exactly what Skelduggery Pleasant is, and I think what left-handed booksellers was trying to be. Skelduggery Pleasant follows a main character who's like a regular kind of human person who kind of falls into this magical sub-underworld of, this actually takes place in Ireland, and the sort of her sherpa is Skelduggery, who is this literal skeleton who's also kind of like a magical PI kind of thing. And he's very dry-witted and sarcastic. He's literally a skeleton, and there are jokes made about that. And it is filled with the charm and humor and whimsy, but also darkness and danger and magic that I absolutely was hoping left-handed bookssellers would have, and it didn't have. But if you want that, Skelduggery, absolutely perfect. Next up, I have Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. If you read this because you were really excited about a very feminist fantasy, but you found Red Sister to be so ham-fisted about its feminism to the point of being nauseating and kind of male gaze-y despite its overt attempts to not be that way, it's trying so hard to be so mega hashtag feminist that it's really missing the mark and is frankly boring. And it's just not how women behave or how women would write about women, and it makes women seem like caricatures of badassery rather than actually fully fleshed out characters. If you thought that way about Red Sister, which again, I'm suspecting I'm the minority because I know Red Sister tends to be quite a fan favorite, especially people who like feminist stories, feminist characters. But if you did not find it to be all that feminist, we're trying too hard to be feminists to the point where it missed the mark, it overshot the mark, I guess you could say. But you would like a badass feminist fantasy that is quite stabby. I recommend The Wolf of Oren Yaro by KSV Yoso. This is a Filipino-inspired fantasy, the author herself is Filipina. It's from the Philippines. And it is the first book in the saga of the bitch queen, I think, or the bitch queen saga, or bitch queen is involved in the title of the series, I should have looked it up. And unlike Red Sister, it actually delves really deep into the layers that a female in a position of power, a quite misogynistic culture and society has to navigate how to maintain authority and power while also kind of having to deal with the egos of men, having to be woman enough, but man enough to be taken seriously but to not emasculate them, how to protect herself, protect her family, protect her people, while maintaining authority and power, also maintaining her own morals and dignity. And it's so good. And it's really, it takes some really intense turns that I was not expecting. It's a really engrossing read. It's quite an adventure. There's some really excellent side characters that are also fascinating to follow. It's an all-around great book. And it absolutely delivers on the representation of like a feminist badass in power and how that would actually go and how that feels and what is all involved in having to hold these like multiple conflicting identities at once. Soon we're in the home stretch. My second to last one is Wilder Girls by Rory Power. If you read this because you were looking for once again a sort of like feminist thriller where you were hoping for like these sort of girls who would be messy characters and friends maybe, but a group of girls in a messy, horrific situation and how to navigate that and who they are as girls as well as this kind of truly chilling, horrific, thriller-y story and situation. And Wilder Girls was boring and the characters were too dimensional and were not at all finding what you were looking for with it. Then I recommend Sock Hill Girls by Clara LeGrand. Sock Hill Girls is so, so good. Characters in it, all three females in it. They're really layered and complex characters. They're all entirely different from each other and none of them is exactly likable, but they're still fascinating to read about and the way that they interact with each other is interesting. And the sort of horror, thriller, supernatural elements to the story is truly kind of chilling and scary and kind of heart thumping when you read it. It's really engrossing. Sock Hill Girls is just a masterpiece. It's everything that I feel like Wilder Girls I was really hoping would be and absolutely wasn't not. And last but not least, if you read Akatar, because you wanted a Beauty and the Beast retelling that had a really solid romance that would be kind of grown up, because this is a new adult in OIA, so a Beauty and the Beast for grown-ups. And Akatar is a childish fuck and dumb. It doesn't make any sense and it feels like a CW show. But if you still want that, I recommend Treat Me by Grace Draven. This is actually an adult fantasy romance, so it does have... I mean, Sarah J. Mass also has R-rated content, so if you are willing to read Sarah J. Mass, you should have no problem with Grace Draven. And Treat Me is a Beauty and the Beast retelling that it kind of takes place during Winter Solstice. The main Beauty and the Beast characters in it are actually a widow and the father of this really handsome young man. So they're brought together because her younger sister and his son are in love and she's the sort of chaperone and it's his house, the cursed beast one. So they're kind of hanging out while the young ins are off, being all romantic, but not allowed to do anything because they're not married yet. And our main characters, it's kind of hate to love, which you'd expect with Beauty and the Beast, but they're mature adults who kind of already had lives before, so they're not like first love and what. They kind of know what they like. They know what to look out for in life. They have other priorities, other things going on in their lives, but they do fall for each other because they're kind of comfortable with each other. They both have kind of snarky, incredible banter and she's accustomed because of her previous life to seeing less pretty things. So she's not really alarmed by his appearance, which is, you know, nice for him because he's accustomed to terrifying everybody encounters. But she's like okay with it and then, you know, is able to look past it as you get with every good Beauty and the Beast story. And it is a unique take on the curse, a unique take on the situation. And they're really compelling characters that have a really compelling and believable romance. And I absolutely love that book I've read multiple times. It's the best Beauty and the Beast retelling that I've ever read. So how do they recommend that? Let me know in the comments down below if you've read any of these books, if you agree or disagree with me with the way in which that I compared them. If you're going to be picking up any of the ones I recommended, always let me know that. I'm always excited about that. If you want to see me do a video like this again, let me know because it's kind of a fun one. I like to do it. I just have to read enough books both good and bad to have more to add to my list. But let me know all the things. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times as well, but definitely Saturdays. So like and subscribe and I'll see you when I see you. Bye.