 So afterlifes have fascinated humans for as long as humans have been around. You know, that's basically the whole basis of religion is what happens after we die. We've thought about good afterlifes, bad afterlifes, reincarnation, where it just starts over again. And obviously there is this sweet, sweet draw of oblivion where we no longer have to think and no longer have to realize how small we are in the grand scheme of things. Now usually in fiction, even fantasy fiction, which has carte blanche to really talk about this sort of thing, it's more of an afterthought if it's explored at all. You know, it's just kind of, oh yeah, we think this is what happens and it can be interesting for world-building and all, but it's not really thoroughly explored at all. And stories that are straight up about the afterlife are pretty rare, if I'm being honest. And it's even more rare if you subtract all the stories that are about like ghosts or people in some sort of purgatory who are trying to pass on to the real afterlife. Like, you subtract those, there really aren't that many that just focus on the afterlife, what it's like for people after they die. And Guards of the Shadowlands is one of those rare exceptions. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Specifically this series is about going into a bad afterlife, going into hell, and trying to rescue a loved one who has trapped there. Kind of similar to the story of Orpheus from Greek mythology. If you've never read it or anything about that. Basically, this guy's wife died and he's super sad. So he went down to the underworld and convinced Hades to let his wife back up. But the one rule was that he couldn't look back while he was climbing back out of the underworld and that the last second he looked back and saw his wife and then she disappeared and he never got it back and it's like sad and stuff, I guess. At first that's what Guards of the Shadowlands is about, but it does change quite a bit later. And that's what really makes the story work, though. Is that, yes, there is action, there is danger, there is adventure, there is like saving parts of the world, but what makes it work is the relationship between the main character, Leela, and her friend Nadia, who she goes to hell to save. Like, if it weren't for that one specific thing, I don't think I would have liked the series very much, but that is done extremely well and it forms a foundation for everything else. Like, so often when people are trying to write stories, especially like big epic ones, they either forget about or neglect the human element of it, which is, you know, it's the foundation. That's what makes us care about any of this. And that's also why I'm frustrated by so many stories being about saving the world or so many stories being about just saving a huge area or something because it forgets about the human element and smaller scale stories really can't forget about that, so they're often times better. To start with the first book, we are introduced to Leela and how much her life sucks. Like, I won't go into extreme detail, but it is awful for a variety of reasons. Like, her mother abandoned her when she was about four years old and so she's just been in foster care this whole time. She has, like, no family, no real close friends. She had just gotten out of juvenile hall for crimes which were kind of justified but in the eyes of the law that doesn't really matter, unfortunately. And I mean, to give you an idea of just how she does not have any connection to her family and she has no friends, near the beginning she mentions that she thinks she's Puerto Rican but she doesn't actually know for sure and she doesn't have anyone who can tell her. Like, I don't know why, that's such a small detail, but it really just broke my heart. I felt bad for this girl. But she meets Nadia pretty early on and they become friends. Like, she becomes her connection to the wider world and she realizes, okay, life is not super awful. And I should note that at this stage, Lila already knows about the Dark City which is the afterlife where people who commit suicide go because she attempted suicide a while before the story began and she could see some visions of it and obviously she survived but she continues seeing visions of it in the present day. So that's her motivation to not kill herself. She realizes, well, there's nothing great after this life so I may as well make the best of it. However, pretty early on in the story, Nadia kills herself and Lila as well as all of the other people around her are heartbroken by this because, you know, their friend killed herself but Lila especially is heartbroken because she knows where Nadia is and she knows it's terrible there. And through a series of events which aren't that complicated but it's not that interesting either, Lila winds up in the Dark City herself and she decides, you know what, as long as I'm here I'm going to rescue my friend and that's where the bulk of the story takes place. I'll tell you right now, this is a fantastic setup. It's great. It's awesome. It's insert other positive adjectives here because it's very focused. You know, we are in this horrible place. The Dark City is awful. Like, it's full of all these souls of people who committed suicide and so they're just depressed or angry and just wandering around and in addition there are demons everywhere, killing people, both the souls that were there and anyone else who might wander in like Lila. But it's really just about her trying to rescue her friend and all these are obstacles in her way. We have a very focused goal that we want the main character to succeed at and the villains are getting in the way of that. Like, there are too many stories that just get this backwards where the hero is just kind of chilling and then the villains decide to do something evil. Like, they want to take over the world or they want to destroy the world or something and the heroes just decide, okay, I'm going to stop them from doing that. And while this isn't inherently bad, if you're not careful, having a reactive protagonist can make them a boring protagonist and that's not a problem here. It's great. Like, when Lila is fighting through Mazakin, the demons here are called Mazakin, we'll get more into them in a minute, or she's joining up with the guards that patrol this area, which is where the name of the series comes from, Guards of the Shadowlands. We know that that's just a side story or maybe side story is not the right word, but it's more of a distraction for her because she is going after her friend. That's what she's here for and she never loses sight of that even when other maybe more important story elements are happening. And Lila is really a great character to follow. You know, she has some horrible trauma in her past and that affects her, but she's not defined by it. Likewise, she starts a romance pretty early on in the story with one of the guards. His name is Malachi. It sounds like a spoiler, but it's really not. It's just, it's not. It's pretty obvious where that's going from the beginning. And again, that informs her character, but she's not defined by it and she changes over time, too. Like, from the beginning, she's, like, tough just because she's gone through so much shit in her life, but she's not invincible and she can fight, kind of, but she's not a warrior. You know, she's not someone who's been training for decades or millennia in some cases, like the guards have been doing. She's just someone who has been in scrapes in her life and she knows her own limitations. Like, pretty early on, like, the first thing that happens in the story is she does attack this dude, but rather than just beating him up, which would be possible for her, she intimidates him by pretending she's friends with gang members and that's how she gets him to leave both her and Nadia alone. That's, like, the first thing that happens in the story. And so we realize, okay, she knows her own limitations and she's intelligent and that informs her throughout the rest of the series as well. And that works really well. And her romance with Malachi is... fine. You know, it's not bad, but it is a bit superfluous. And, I mean, again, I'm not gonna complain. It's just... it's superfluous. You know, it didn't really need to be there. And Malachi himself is fine as a love interest. You know, he's not abusive or anything like that, which honestly puts him above, like, 80% of love interests, but it's not even getting into that. But, you know, he's just kind of the love interest with his own tragic backstory and he's not a jerk or anything, which is nice. He's a part of Gold, he really does. But there's just not a whole lot to him beyond his backstory, which is pretty good, I think. And a lot of the other characters there range from being fine to being good. You know, they have their own backstories about how they wound up committing suicide and how they wound up in the dark city. They have their own personalities. They have their own skills, their own strengths. Like, it works. It works pretty well. And after, you know, fighting through hordes of Mazakin and going through this whole terrible dark city, which is, like, really a horrible place to be and I wouldn't want to spend eternity there, I realized, near the end, that this whole thing is just a metaphor for helping loved ones with mental problems. Because, you know, near the end they just come right out and say, like, hey, you can help Nadia all you want but at the end she needs to get her own shit together. And, yeah, that is true. Like, I don't know how many of you have had loved ones with very bad problems, whether they have like a drug problem or depression or whatever. Like, you can be there to support them and you can be there to help them and that is invaluable for them but at the end of the day, they have to fix themselves. And, I mean, having known people who have wound up dying from this sort of thing, it got me. I don't know if it would be the same with other people, especially if you haven't been in that situation, but when I realized that, it made me realize that this whole book is a lot smarter than it seemed at first where it was just a simple adventure story and it just... it hit home, you know? And that's all great, but that's also all only the first book. My problems, up with the first book and not even getting into my problems with the series as a whole, would be, I wish we got some more focus on Nadia's depression. Like, they really gloss over it, you know? They talk about how she just felt like she was an empty, fake person and there was nothing to her. And, like, okay, I get that, but that's, like, the start of understanding her and her pain and her dilemma. We don't really get much beyond that, unfortunately, which is very... Well, I already said it's unfortunate. And the other major issue I have here is that the rules of this world are strange sometimes. Like, there are multiple different afterlifes. The Dark City is where you go after you commit suicide and we only really see four afterlifes and only two of them are explored in any detail. We'll get to the second one in the spoiler section, I think. But the Dark City, people go there because they committed suicide because they reached, like, the point of despair where they just saw no point in existing anymore. And there's a character who's mentioned in the first book, doesn't actually show up until the third book, named Takashi. And when we learn his backstory, it turns out he was a samurai a couple hundred years ago who was betrayed by his liege lord and he was forced to commit sepaku. Which, if you're unfamiliar, that was when samurai would stab themselves and make a cut across their belly and then there would be someone else nearby who would cut their head off. And that's the thing to note, because if you just cut across your belly, like that, it'll kill you, but it'll take some time to do so and you're gonna be sitting there suffering for a while, which is why you had your friend nearby who would chop your head off. Like, so the guy who killed Takashi was the one who landed the final blow, number one. And number two, he was forced to commit sepaku. He didn't do this of his own free will, so I don't think that counts as suicide. You know, he was executed, essentially. Like, in fact, sepaku was a form of execution that was used in feudal Japan and it wasn't outlawed until the Meiji era, which was, like, I don't know, 1880, I think, is around the time it was outlawed. But, like, this was a thing. People weren't doing it of their own free will all the time. So, I don't think that counts as suicide. Which makes me wonder, like, are the people from Jonestown here? Because a lot of them did not drink the poisoned Kool-Aid. They were forced at gunpoint to drink the poison Kool-Aid. So, like, again, that doesn't really count as suicide. I don't think. It's an odd decision. An odd choice. But, you know, there's a couple other small issues like that with the world, but I don't know, that's, like, the biggest one. And it really, really bothered me. And the worst problem with this series that I have, like, the biggest one by a huge margin, is it feels like this was intended to be one book because the story really is wrapped up by the end of book one. And then they just decide to go in a very different direction for books two and three. So it feels like it was very stretched out. And I don't know if this was the author's intention or if, like, the publisher encouraged her to do it or what, but whatever the case is, it really should have just been one book. Like, that first book where it's just about saving one person that Lila loves is great. But once we get into the second and third ones, and it becomes more about just saving the world as a whole, it's a lot less great. Or, at least until the third book where it changes up a little bit again, but that's spoiler section. So I just, I don't know, by the end of it, I was really, really just begging for it to be over. I was thinking, oh my god, I don't care anymore. Please just get to the end. Like, so overall, while I don't hate the second and third books, the first one is the best. Like, the verdict here is that this is a great short adventure followed by a much less great, much longer adventure. And I don't know, if the premise of the first book sounds interesting to you, I think you should check that out. But if you really don't care beyond that, and by the time you get to the end of that, you're like, okay, I'm done with the story. I don't need to know what happens next. Then, yeah, you can just stop there. What happens next is not really important. Just pretend, yep, happily ever after. And that's about all. So I will get into the spoiler section now. If you don't want to see any of that, then goodbye. Up yours, woke moralists. We'll see who cancels who. All right. At the end of the first book, Leela reaches Nadia and they are able to help her out. Basically, they go to the judge who is the person that decides where you go in, or what afterlife you go to after you die. And is also kind of God, but kind of not. I mean, this series definitely draws inspiration from Christian mythology, but if you can tell by the multiple different afterlifes, it doesn't follow it all that closely. So just, I don't know if that's worth mentioning, but it's there. But anyways, they find Nadia, they bring her to the judge, and basically, the judge says, okay, we will let her leave this terrible dark city after life, and she can move on to the countryside, which is, I don't know, we don't learn that much about it, but it is like the nice afterlife. And it's also, at this point, we realize that people who commit suicide aren't sent to the dark city as punishment, they're sent there so that they can have a way to work through their problems and get it together so that they can actually enjoy the afterlife and be worthy of being in heaven. And I should note that the dark city does a terrible job of that, but that was an interesting twist for me. And from this point forward, Nadia is no longer in the story. Like, Leela succeeded, you know, she got her friend out of that terrible place, and she knows that she's somewhere better, so she finds her own closure with that, and she knows she'll see her again one day, but there is nothing else to do there. So instead, they go, in the second book, they go back to Earth, Leela, and Malachi, and a couple other guards, and they have to fight the Mazikin because Mazikin are coming up into the world and attacking people. And I should say right now that the villains of this story are terrible. I barely remember anything about them. They have very little personality. They feel very unthreatening. There's nothing interesting about them. They're just, they're there, you know? And even though the Mazikin can, like, possess people and take over their bodies, they don't do anything super interesting with that. And at least until the third book, kind of, it's just, once they possess you, your soul goes to the Mazikin realm where you get tortured for all eternity. And now they're coming up and they're making trouble on Earth, so Leela and the other guards have to fight them. Which is fine, I guess, but then there's a weird amount of focus on high school drama and, like, there's an obligatory love triangle, which at least it doesn't last too long. It does get resolved relatively quickly and then Leela and Malachi are just an item for the rest of the story. And Leela's also the captain of all the guards up there for some reason, which is really dumb because she's been a guard for a couple of weeks and the others have been doing this for decades, if not centuries, but okay. As much as I'm complaining about this, I don't think it's terrible. Like, I mean, I've read worse stories in this vein, like, you know, that have a large focus on high school drama and stuff. I didn't actively hate any of the characters involved, at the very least, so it could be worse. But anyways, by the end, Malachi gets possessed by a Mazikin, which means that the demon has taken over his body and is going to make trouble on Earth while his soul goes to their realm and gets tortured for all eternity. So Leela decides at the end of the book, you know what? I'm going to go there and I'm going to rescue him. And at the beginning of the third book, she goes up to the judge and she's like, hey, send me to the Mazikin realm so that I can rescue Malachi. And the judge basically says, okay, I will send you there, but you have to do something for me. You have to, one, kill the Mazikin queen because the queen is like the one who births all the Mazikin. You know, she's like an aunt or a honeybee or something. Like, without her, they can't make any more. And number two, she needs to destroy the portal that the Mazikin use to leave their realm. And she's like, okay, I can do those two things and then rescue Malachi. That sounds great. And it was at this stage I realized this story starts off with a teenage protagonist who can see and is aware of the afterlife and then one of their loved ones gets taken away to the afterlife and they have to go there themselves in order to save them from a horrible fate. And then, after they've saved their friend, they come back to Earth and they have to fight these demonic entities that are appearing and attacking people. And then after a while of that, a different loved one gets taken away by the demonic entities and taken to a different afterlife and then they have to go there and rescue them again. This is the plot of Bleach. Now, I like Bleach but the storyline is probably the weakest part of the whole manga. You know, I mostly read it for the artwork, the characters, and the action, all of which are pretty good most of the time, but like the story gets repetitive. If you've never read it, it follows that exact pattern I just mentioned. Like there's a really long story arc where they rescue someone and it's great and then there's a different really long story arc where they rescue somebody else and at that point it gets repetitive. Like, bad? If you look at it as its own thing but it is annoying that it's just the same thing again and that is what turned a lot of people off of Bleach back in the day. And here, yeah, it's the same issue. Like, okay, we're more focused you know, like Lila's going there to save her loved one and then there's some other stuff but she doesn't care about that as much. That's just like her ticket to coming back to Earth afterwards because the judge won't let her back otherwise. And, I don't know, it's a very odd revelation for me when I realized that. Like, I was not expecting... I don't know if it's a rip-off per se but I wasn't expecting to come across that again. But after the not very interesting stuff that happens in the second book, the third one does get off to a pretty strong start. Like, it's about them going to rescue Malachi and then when they find him they go after the Mazakin Queen and they try to destroy the portal. And I loved exploring the Mazakin realm. Like, it's quite a bit different than I would have expected because all of the humans that they possess over the millennia have been down here. So there's millions of them and they're all enslaved by the Mazakin. And there's also... it's like a giant city just like the Dark City, but this one has a big dome over it so they can't escape. And, like, whenever the sun comes out it gets focused through the dome and it becomes unbearably hot and if you stay outside too long during the daytime it'll probably kill you. And because when Mazakin possess people they also take all of their knowledge and memories they are able to build technology, you know, like factories and cars and stuff. So they're more advanced than you might expect and they also, you know, have all these slaves that they can use to do the labor with, you know. The point is, this world is different than I anticipated and it was kind of neat. I liked exploring it. So that was good. The thing is they kill the Mazakin Queen halfway through the book and at that stage I was like, well where exactly is the story going from here? Well, it turns out a new villain appears. Like, yeah, one of the humans who they teamed up with to try and kill the Mazakin Queen and overthrow the Mazakin order, let's say, he decides he doesn't want to escape. He doesn't want to destroy the portal and destroy the dome, which would release all the souls and allow him to escape. He wants to rule over it himself now for all eternity. And then I was like, okay, I guess this is kind of dumb, but I guess the rest of the story will just be about fighting him. But no, they pretty quickly just get a forced together and fight him and destroy the portal and destroy the dome and then all is well. And then like the last, that's pretty short though, the last like 30% of the book they go back to Earth again and Lila has to fight the last couple remaining Mazakin that they left behind at the end of book two and like that's the last chunk of the story. Which is dumb because before you had her fighting through like entire armies, entire hordes of demons and just trying to rescue her loved ones whereas now there's like 10 guys there and that doesn't seem like much of a threat by comparison. It's just, it's not smart. I didn't like it. So like I said, by the end of this I was really just begging for it to be over and yeah, I don't have a whole lot else to say beyond that. It was a pretty good series at the start but then it really got stretched out especially the third book. It genuinely feels like the author didn't know what she wanted it to be about because there's like three different climaxes and each one of them feels like it should be the end of the story but it's not. So it's just, it's not super well put together and I maintain that it should have just been the one book at the beginning and you could maybe have made it longer and spent more time like really fleshing out all the parts of this world and all the parts of the characters, like especially Nadia but I just, I don't know. If any of that still sounds neat to you then I guess you could read the whole series. If not, then just read the first book like I said. The second and third ones aren't awful. You know, I'm making it sound like I think they're awful but that's just because I'm focusing on the problems. You know, I still think that the characters are decent. I still think Lila is good to follow. I still think some of the action is fun and I still think that at least for the beginning part of the last book where they're just focused on saving Malachi, it is again a very focused story but it has a lot of problems and so I don't know what dramatic title I'm gonna give to this one but it it made me feel a lot of things. It's better than a lot of books I've read here. Anyways, see you later. Goodbye. And thanks to everyone who watched. If you want your name on here, consider donating. If you don't feel like doing that, then you know, just rate the video, comment, subscribe, share it around, annoy all your friends with the spam. Goodbye.