 So at the beginning of the year slash end of last year, I had a video it was either my planning video or my priorities video editing me will know and we'll put I probably don't still have the thumbnail. I don't know whatever I'll put the video here-ish. Basically to read a bunch of books that like I have owned or have wanted to read for forever I just make it a project of 2023 to get through them. So I decided after I posted that video to like make a vlog of it to kind of keep myself accountable and in the 11th hour I did accomplish that feat so this vlog will be me reading the books from that video quick refresher so you don't have to go back and watch that video. I should make you watch that video but no I won't make you watch the video. The books were- if you want the reasons for the books being I guess on the list go watch the video but they were the books two and three from the inheritance trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, the unlikely escape of your eye heat by H.G. Perry, the Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, Demon Voices by Philip Pullman, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell, When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill, Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee, The Ninth Rain by Dren Williams, The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman, and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. And without further ado here is a year of me getting through those books. The Essex Serpent I hated it. Oh man what a freaking letdown this was I tried so hard to like it too the whole time I was reading it I was like any minute now I'm gonna fall in love with this any minute now I'm gonna like see the point of this and it never happened and I freaking hated it so much and I finally admitted that to myself it was so hard to like read it and feel this like no I like it I I'm sure I like it I'm sure I will like it at any any any minute now I will and like once I accepted that I didn't and I stopped trying to make myself like it stopped trying to convince myself that I do I was like no it was awful it was terrible this and this and this stop no it was bad it was so liberating um ranting is so awesome so like um half part of the reason why I was so committed to liking it is because okay cover gorgeous like 10 out of 10 no notes I love this cover book should look like this all the time um actually does the naked book look pretty I have no idea oh like it does it does not at the end pages look pretty nice anyway yes love the book look aesthetic and the adaptation of it I was determined to to watch until like and I also I I did start it um and I will not be finishing it for not maybe the reasons that you would think it's kind of weird why I'm not going to watch it hey stop it so is my camera crooked what's going on anyway um okay so the Essex servant is upside down the Essex servant cats what is wrong with you what are you doing you want my attention you have it it's very cute the Essex serpent it's it's so bad okay okay where do I start it's historical fiction which I knew that's fine it takes place when does it actually take place 1893 there you go can't get more specific than that well you could could know the month in that day anyway it's um a youngish widow who is interested in like natural science and stuff like that and she hears about now that her husband is dead it's just her and her kid and and it's this very close personal friend of hers that's a female so she's you know not money and and liberty and she hears about um in Essex there's this town where there is a legend about this serpent but people think they were seeing it they people think it's around and she's like I bet it's not like I bet they're seeing something but I bet it's not this mythic serpent maybe it's even a new species like I'd like to go investigate check it out there's a doctor that is in love with her and he treated her husband who then died that's why she's a widow and then so when she goes to Essex like friends of friends or whatever like tell her or or introduce her to the local um like the minister of the church um so it's they called a minister curate priest not priest not catholic vicar vicar is the word because what does it matter with you um so she meets and is introduced to and stays with the family of this vicar um he has got a wife and kids and yeah um so she goes there and and is trying to figure out what's going on with this serpent and the vicar is dealing with like the trying to be a good shepherd to his flock she's like pretty agnostic slash atheist so she's like well what if I tell you I don't believe in god and he's like okay um I obviously do believe in god but you know do you but she is just such a modern woman so he you know falls head over heels in love with her even though he's got a beautiful kind devoted wonderful woman as a wife who he very much loves and his wife has consumption which we learn over the course of this book and the wife of the vicar in this book was done so dirty not just by like the characters in this book but by the author of this book I'm so mad okay so Cora that's her name right yes Cora Cora Seaborn is the worst I hate her and it's not like um a story where you're supposed to hate her you're clearly supposed to like her and I am so sick of first of all anachronistically modern attitudes from historical women because that makes them hashtag feminist it's like women had independent thoughts women had independent feelings women thought that they were being mistreated even women were intelligent women sought out opportunities for education long before you know modern understandings of feminism came into common parlance so having a woman walk around and be like and just acting like she has first of all modern day attitudes about these things like not just thinking women should have rights and should have equality and should have asked us to education and should be listened to and should be taken seriously like that's all fine um women if thought that for centuries but to speak about it in ways that one that we do now and two to act like it's an assumption that everybody like that it's that they are surprised and act like it is unusual to find someone that doesn't feel that way if that makes sense because like society was much more patriarchal like just the laws on the books were more patriarchal like you didn't own property you didn't have access to education like that was just how it was so like being surprised and shocked that somebody wouldn't think that women should have those things when like no one thought women should have those things that was the problem you know what I mean like it's like a modern person being transported back in the day and being like what do you mean women don't get educated like you know what I mean like you can think that that's wrong but acting surprised that society be like this when it's been that way your entire life it's it doesn't ring like it doesn't make sense it's super modern and it doesn't like fit the time period and it also it often creates these these conversations that are like this is not even how like issues of feminism work nowadays Cas why are you eating your kibble right now you're so noisy like so people talk about oh like feminism isn't an issue anymore and the reason they say that is because like well you do legally have the right to vote you do legally have the right to own property you do legally have the right to like work the same jobs and make the same money that men can you can hold all the same offices they can't there's nothing you can't do so what do you mean like how can feminism still be an issue how can people still be sexist because like men don't go around saying you're a woman and therefore you're stupid so sexism is over because sexism is a lot more insidious than that sexism is a lot subtler than that and books like this will have these types of situations where a character is like what a woman can't and then our hashtag feminist main character will be like how dare you think that's just because I'm a woman you think I cannot do this I have a brain I have thoughts and it's just like that's not that's not what feminism looks like that's not what misogyny looks like that's not what sexism looks like it's it's almost never that on the nose if it's honestly a lot I wish sometimes it was that on the nose it's a lot easier to call out it's a lot easier to say you're being sexist right now because you literally said you are a woman therefore you can't like ding ding ding ding we have a sexism so sexism is way subtler than that even back then but certainly in the modern day so it's just like I'm just like what is the fucking point of this like whenever a book does that I'm like who is this for what point are you trying to make are you are you illustrating feminism for people who don't understand feminism because I guarantee you this won't help and if you're doing it for people who do know then those people do know that it is a lot more subtle and insidious than this so who the fuck is this for anyway that aside we're supposed to root for Cora because she's a hashtag feminist modern woman in the olden days where she's going to go her own way she's going to study she's going to whatever and that's why you're supposed to root for her because in actual fact she's actually a terrible person she's cruel she manipulates people she takes people for granted she is a terrible mother um she's just an awful person but the book doesn't frame it as like oh how complex or like this is a complicated main character or like no everyone's in love with her falling her head over heels for her like you're supposed to think she's great and independent or whatever and she's she's not she's awful she's like she's like the female equivalent of the main character from Norwegian way it's not that bad it's really not that bad but um okay so like I guess mild spoilers but you can see the writing on the wall for this like the moment you start reading it so like I don't think it's that big a spoiler she like you know starts fucking the the vicar and I mean she's not married so like I guess that's fine for her she's a widow she could do whatever she wants but he's married and his wife's still alive and has consumption and she's like kind and patient and loving and beautiful and he loves her very very much and she loves her children she loves her husband and she just wants him to be happy and she doesn't want to be a burden she doesn't want her illness to be a burden on anyone and what is he doing he's fucking this horrible character named Korra who's just shown up and been like I'm feminist therefore I'm the main character and I'm great and you should root for me and it's like but why that's nothing I mean she also while she's fucking the vicar she's like leading by the nose this doctor who is in love with her and very obviously in love with her and writing her letters and like she like toys with his affections and uses him and manipulates him and just like leads him along because like she enjoys his attention and when he asks for more and is like look I I don't know if you'll ever be in love with me but like you gotta know like I am in love with you and she's just like how dare you ask for more of me you can have what I give you and like be happy with that like that's literally what she says to him and he doesn't take it super well and and she's just like oh darn like I guess that upset him I feel bad about that now and it's like great and then her female like best friend who's also clearly in love with her she again she just kind of like strings along uses her uses her for her own comfort doesn't it doesn't reciprocate isn't kind doesn't show any gratitude for that her her son it's clear in the novel that he's coded as like being in some way neurodivergent it's that it's not clear in what way because of course we they wouldn't have had a name for it back then if they'd bother to diagnose it at all but it's like said over and over again you know that he reacts to things strangely or unusually and the Korra when like when people are like around her son she's like oh he's a little different um like he doesn't react the way you would think that he would but she like doesn't try to engage with him or try to understand him she's just like he's weird um I don't know what to do about that and then like when he does kind of like show an interest in something she's like oh okay well for once you're fucking interested in something so cool but she just mostly neglects and ignores him and is like well he's weird so what do you expect me to do like she's a terrible person I'm just like if she was like terrible but interesting because like there's a lot of flaws and I've never read the book but Gone with the Wind Scarlett O'Hara is a terrible person she's a terrible person if she's coded that way when you're watching Gone with the Wind you're supposed to go oh my gosh Scarlett Scarlett oh that's that's that's pretty bad that's pretty naughty you're quite something but she's like interesting to follow and it's clear from the way at least there is in the movie maybe the book's different I have no idea but in the movie it's very clear that you're meant to think that Scarlett is behaving in ways that are like not great that you're meant to go oh oh honey that's oh no Korra behaves like that and it's painted as like but she's an independent free thinking an intellectual female at a time when this is frowned upon we stan we do not stan Korra is the worst in addition to that other characters around her and she even hurts herself it's just like not very interesting as a character there's not much to her as a character it's just like what you do get of her she's a pretty terrible person but there's like no deep layered passion between her and the vicar because like I don't frankly even mind infidelity that much in books like I don't I know some people that like that really really bothers people there's infidelity in books I don't actually care that much um it just like depends on the situation in this particular situation it bothers me a great deal just because of like this specific situation with like who's involved and who is who's the victim of what's going on but just like infidelity in like writ large by itself doesn't necessarily bother me it just depends on the specific characters so here it bothered me okay and so then all of that aside right so then we've got the Essex serpent right that's what brought her here we have in theory going to be this like this clashing of like faith versus science the clashing of um empiricism versus um uh so um superstition like having this woman of science versus this man of god like that's what this book is going to be about right except it's not about that like we hardly ever talk about the Essex serpent other than in passing as like that's her reason to be here and then once in a while we get these like these moments where we suddenly get poetical about it but it's like not earned and not built up to and it's not really affecting anything else in this story and it's not at the heart of what's going on in most of the story and we we have this like grand poetical revelation twist ending related to the serpent that's just again totally unearned just not thematically significant the like poetical flowering of the language is really just like it's just so masturbatory on the part of the author i hated it so much and it feels so good to say that and to admit that because i was like um maybe it's fine it's like it's not fine i hate it it's so much okay so the adaptation i did start watching it i watched one episode of it and i shan't be watching more um because it fixed these things which i know doesn't make any sense but listen listen listen i didn't say it was rational i never said it was i started watching it and i was like oh in this show they are doing things one to make kora seem more like a human being they're making her have emotions they're making her pay attention to the people around her they're showing like claire danes the way she plays the role does seem to care about her son even if she is not like vocalizing it like the way that she's interacting with him and looking at him and like seems concerned about him um we have we've already much more strongly introduced the theme of like god versus science of like empiricism versus uh what's wrong with superstition like the first episode created a layered complex situation it was a little bit of like on the nose feminism dialogue that's really anachronistic but it was like much less and it was like a little more tastefully done and it it did the like brooding sinister drug because like at no point does the esic serpent stuff feel like brooding or sinister ever there's no atmosphere to be had which is zero so there's already in the first episode of the show a great deal of atmosphere and tension surrounding the serpent and you can see why the vicar would be like having this struggle with his people that are like fairly afraid of it and really superstitious about it there's already quite a connection that's pretty apparent between her and the vicar when they first meet anyways what i'm saying is the show seems to already be fixing all of this in the very first episode and it made me mad that people would watch this and give the author credit for it i know i know that's not a rational reason not to watch it but it just made me mad because the entire time that i was watching the first episode i wasn't enjoying it i just kept going yeah well if the book had done that yeah well if the book had had that yeah well of course had been like that in the book but she wasn't it didn't that wasn't there and so i was just getting angrier watching the show because it kept reminding me of how none of that was in the book so yeah i'm gonna be watching this for the show because it's it's much better than the book at least in the first episode it seems to be costumes beautiful sets amazing score great so yeah no no hated this so much okay i'm done that's it see you for the next book wolf haul by hillary mantel or mantel twice winner of the man booker prize i hated it it's not going well hopefully i like some of the books in this project um but so far so not good um so i um i i truly i do not understand why this book is popular why it won awards listen i love tutor history actually i'm kind of sick of tutor history if i'm perfectly honest because i have seen so many documentaries adaptations dramatizations like i'm quite familiar with tutor history like without being a historian like i i don't claim to know as much or more than hillary mantel she's clearly researched a lot um but i know more than the average person is my point i know more than the person the guy on the street about tutor history and i found it difficult to follow this and to care about this because nothing is explained and like i'm i'm pretty all for um the kind of like immersion method storytelling of like well if this character wouldn't think it if this character wouldn't notice it then we're not going to hear about it um which is fine except that usually necessitates a fairly character-driven story because i'm like well i don't necessarily know what's going on but i'm i understand what this character is feeling and going through right now and that will help me to piece together what is going on we are in cromwell's head for this book without being it's not a first person narrative although i really feel that it ought to be and it's told in the present tense which is kind of weird for historical fiction but it's not first person the amount of times that he is used as opposed to a name makes it legitimately confusing like you do not know who she's talking about because there's a bunch of he's in the room i don't know if we know this but history has like a lot of dudes in it and in fact a lot of dudes have the same names like that because they they all just use the same names over and over again in this time period not that they don't know but like even more so because people were naming people after each other as like a way to honor them so it is legitimately written like so confusingly where you're like you're doing this on purpose you could have said who's talking right now instead of he and there was this like amazing instance of a sentence where like you literally would not know what she is saying because it it's talking about cromwell but it's a sentence that's like on the morning that he was to be executed he went to go see blah blah blah now wouldn't you assume that in that sentence it means that the person who's getting executed is the one that's now going to see blah blah blah or go do blah blah yeah well no that's not what that sentence means cromwell is the one that's the he that's going to go do something so the morning that thus in such person was going to be executed he went to blah blah blah you're just meant to intuit that the he in question is not the he that was formerly referred to in that same sentence it's cromwell like why is it written like that could you not have used his name but anyway like we we whiz by a lot of events and like it is never explained why these things should matter to us like I happen to understand the religious conflict at the heart of this period of history um and why it's happening and what the sides are and why this is significant and why it would like shatter the nation none of that is explained none of that is discussed it's just assumed that you already know who anbelin is you already know about why the church would like be having a fit over what's going on none of it is explained ever and so I mean for me at least I do know what's happening and why this is happening because I know history but because it's not explaining it in the book then it's very difficult to understand how these characters are feeling about it because usually in a scene where something like that is being discussed or explained you are getting a sense of how these characters are feeling about it how these characters reacting to it um and because there's not happening then it's just events like I swear to god the documentaries that I've watched about this time period are more like I'm more emotionally invested in them because documentaries do more to dramatize humanize and kind of like storyify what's going on than this fucking novel did this felt like a documentary minus like the interest because at least in a documentary when we learn that cromwell did thus and such that anbelin did thus and such um so we're not going to have a scene dramatizing that because it's a documentary but you will have historians talking about how so in this time period it's actually quite scandalous to be seen doing blah blah blah so the reaction as you can imagine was like this and this and um there are we have some sources saying that like there was like these comments were made at the time which of course would have been quite titillating and like they'll add all that flavor and color to it by just kind of telling you about it and you'll be like oh yeah I see what you're talking about or that's very interesting here well we're we don't have anyone telling us this stuff because this is a novel but we don't have any scenes like that either so it's literally just the events from history with no color no personality and like cromwell himself like the events of his life and the choices that he makes and the situations that becomes a part of it's fascinating how did you make him boring how did you make him be a flat lifeless cardboard character when we're seeing it from his perspective and he's such an interesting person like why are we not getting more out of him are you that worried about cramming historical detail into this because lord knows she did her research so we have lots and lots and lots of history in here but none of us explained that's the thing it's not explained it's just like these people doing these things making these decisions writing these letters this is a decision this was the meeting this was the whatever just like a litany just a list with no feeling no emotion no no narrative no heart no no pizzazz like nothing and it's it's hard to understand hard to follow and hard to care about and also just again hard to understand the pros who is he half the time i don't know so i'm like i just i just don't understand why this is getting praise and the pros is not that pretty either when people are like oh she writes so beautifully wear wear like there are some moments when like suddenly i don't know where cromwell starts thinking poetically about something we're like reflecting on something in a kind of purple way and there are our glimmers once in a while an interaction with king henry the eighth will be kind of a little bit interesting we were like oh we almost have something right there and then it's gone as very quickly and we're back to slogging through events of history i just i'm just so baffled who is this are people just so impressed with how much research she did and we're like well if she researched it that much and must be good irrespective of whether or not it's actually enjoyable to read because like i've said this before about other books not usually quite for these reasons but like babel by rf quang i was like go write some nonfiction because you are not good at this novel thing and people love babel so maybe the same people that love babel also gave the manbooker prize to wolf hall and i am not those people i do not understand these people because sure she did a ton of research there's a lot of like she's on display as her knowledge of history but that does not a good novel make i don't understand i didn't get beautiful writing out of this i didn't get amazing characterization i didn't get lush vivid historical detail where i felt transported and immersed to this other time period where these complex issues come to life none of that happened i feel more that way watching a fucking documentary than reading this novel i don't understand people say the adaptation of it is really good and i could easily see i haven't watched it i could easily see an adaptation of this being better because it would breathe life into these scenes that are so lifeless so devoid of characterization just by like virtue of an actor being charismatic and like conveying to you how they're feeling with their face this was not it i i don't i don't understand not only this is popular but it's a one awards i just i just so yeah i own the whole trilogy both in hardcover and in paperback which is devastating to me because i have no interest in reading the next two books unless someone can tell me that the next two books are like oh yeah she just fixed all that it suddenly becomes a novel she she stops using he so much like if you can tell me all that's fixed maybe i'll give it a go but i don't so yeah um did not like when women were dragons i dnf'd it this is really not going well i can tell you that i have started another book on this project i have not finished it yet but i'm loving truly loving that book so there is there is light in sight but yeah i dnf'd this because i could very quickly see where this was going and what kind of book this is going to be and i was like that's what i was afraid of and i just have no interest in pushing through with this the other two like i was like well i own all of the hillary mantel's trilogy so like i'm hoping this turns around or like sx serpent i was like weirdly committed to liking it and i was like no i'm kind of like this and i'm gonna like the adaptation it's gonna be great and i was just like oh maybe it's because i hated those first two and i'm just tired of pushing through books i hate but okay so i was kind of afraid this would happen but i held out hope that i might not be but i thought very easily this could be that kind of like really on the nose feminism that is just like what is the fucking point of and that's what we got here except it was like kind of worse than i thought it would be now i thought perhaps the reason i had hope is because okay so the concept is like it's on it's in the title when women were dragons so it's like women becoming literal dragons is like the metaphor being employed or like that's like a metaphor for like female rage and like how we don't uh female sexuality and how we don't talk about it and like the dragon of women is like not discussed it's unmentionable it's very clear what it's what the dragon is doing and i held out hope that because it's so on the nose and obvious and so aggressive like there's like no subtlety to that right like literal dragon so because it's so on the nose i felt like it was possible to actually have some quite subtle commentary um i'm trying to think of an example of something that did this i know i've seen it we're like because something is so absurdly over the top um and we just like lean into that so hard to the ridiculousness of that premise that well okay like stepford wives stepford wives like they're literally robots like we're taking the idea of like men wanting their women to like be like dolls like be like what they want them to be nothing else just pretty things that cook for them and it like takes it to this utter extreme of where they're literally like these these robot dolls which is horrifying and also because it's so so extreme like it opens the conversation weirdly um to go to places that i don't know how to explain it but it's like by going so far in that direction um it like passes the point of being on the nose and enters the territory of brilliance i don't know if that makes any sense so like i kind of hoped that yeah like if you're gonna be this on the nose about it then stop pretending to be subtle because that was my big problem with it like the book was acting like we're just telling a normal story and we're going to be subtle about it and we're gonna like i don't know how to i don't know i don't think i'm gonna do a very good job explaining this i'm like no like you have women turning into fucking dragons like lean into that like lean into that just like um or or maybe like okay animal farm animal farm maybe is a better example animal farm like it's very clear the commentary it's making the political commentary it's making but we're like animals on a farm and so like when we have the animal saying that like oh we're all equal but some are more equal than others like it's like going so far into that that it it's it's like by being so absurd and ridiculous it's really actually shining a light on this because you're like well we've made this extreme and ridiculous but what's extreme and ridiculous is the fact that this isn't actually that extremely different from what is really going on i don't know if that was a better explanation i think it was so like if people i don't know if the way that women dragon was talked about and handled really really casually by people um in a way that it's like it's even more ridiculous that people would treat that casually than the way people treat women's issues now casually because it's like a fucking dragon staring you in the face and like how hilariously darkly absurd that would be that you know does that make any sense so yeah yeah i guess i'm kind of reminded of um this line from Neverwhere where it's like um Richard Mayhew did not believe in angels and he was damned if he's gonna start now but it was a lot easier not to believe in something when it wasn't staring you in the face and saying your name so like if it was like men dismissing women's issues but it's a fucking dragon breathing fire on them right now and they're like nope nothing to see here i don't know what you're talking about like how ridiculous that is then i'd be like yes this is brilliant like well done but instead it's like this like subtle and and dark and dystopian like women are dragonning but no one talks about it it was the great dragonning but no one talks about it and i wasn't allowed to speak to my mother about it and it was all it's just like so like serious in this way that it's like missing the point and opportunity of a premise as in as over the top as this one is and i saw that it was doing that and i was like forget it this book is going to be it's totally squandering this opportunity to say something in a way that is meaningful or significant or really taking advantage of its own premise and i just don't care i've seen this done so badly so many times at this point um this is not like helping the issues of women it's really not um so yeah i'm just tired of it i'm i'm really really sick of it so i just was like like i'm not i'm not reading this i'm doing nothing yet i don't care this is not going to get better i know it's not going to it's just going to make me angry um and so i dnf'd it i think i mentioned maybe i didn't but i was like uh oh punny karm is the author of lessons in chemistry blurb this that does not bode well lessons in chemistry another book that failed in this same way um but i did finish that book um yeah no dup dup dup known for me but i am like i said enjoying the book i'm currently reading that's from this project so my next clip should be a happy one unless something really something really goes awry so yay the unlikely escape of urai heave so far this is the best one to pull up because i hated the first race it's not a high bar admittedly yeah so i think again in the original video i said i wanted to read this because hg perry wrote the shadow histories and ever since reading the shadow histories i was just been like well this is the only book i believe that she had out this was her debut um and then like so after reading the shadow histories i like bought her backlist which is this and pre-ordered her next book and i have it now um the magician's daughter any hoosies i'm happy to report that i very much liked it i think the shadow histories is better but and i think that i liked the first half of this better than the second half i didn't hate the second half but like when i in my previous clip i was like i'm loving my current read um i was in the first half still and i was like this is gonna be like five stars i might like this more than the shadow histories and that's not the case i think it's like four four and a half so still very very strong um it's just the end kind of got a bit much like i i think if you've watched my channel for a while you know that i tend to struggle with like when magic and magical things kind of just like get too crazy and wild and involved have like too much going on i have a big problem with that when i read um pita jelly clark so um the concept kind of got too big and there was like too much going on by the end um was what what keeps this from being five stars for me but the concept and the majority of the execution chef's kiss confirms hg perry's an autobi author for me uh love it and also the uh acknowledgments or the afterward or whatever it's called i could look anyway um acknowledgments also like made me like it even more so yeah um this book i think from the cover slash premise like you can gather it's about literary characters stepping out of the pages of the books they're in i hadn't i literally hadn't read any of these blurbs on the back at all until right now uh my eye was caught by the words neil gayman it says a rolliging adventure that thrills like neil gayman's and everywhere mashed up with penny dreadful in the best postmodern way one of your most fun reads this year i would pretty much agree um so yeah the in the acknowledgement she said this kind of an ode to um literary criticism which it certainly is uh evident in the book so what i did not realize um going into it was that it would take place in the modern day which it does so it takes place in australia or new zealand one of the two i could look blah blah blah the first few pages i think i want to say australia but now i want to say new zealand just dang it well it's prince albert university of wellington where is wellington new zealand or at least that's where the university is anyway forgive me um ossees and kiwis that i mixed you up i'm a californian what do you expect um so yeah it takes place in the present day and it follows two brothers one of whom is able to pull literary characters out of the books he reads and the other brother who's our main pov is just like a normal person is the older brother of the brother that can do this so yeah chaos ensues when i was reading when i was like uh talking to somebody about this when i first started reading it i uh compared it to texts from jane air by mallory ortberg which they are no longer mallory ortberg but that's where the cover of my book says what do they call it now so much googling i should have done this before daniel m lavery lavery okay anyway um the book is texts from jane air and uh texts from jane air isn't all about jane air if you've never heard of it or read it it's like a series of um it's like tons and tons of like text conversations so imagine text conversations between literary characters so there's like um it's like a ton of them so there's like texts between heath quiv and cathie uh there's texts between characters from greek tragedies there is texts between shakespeare characters um just like tons and tons and the joy of reading texts from jane air is the way that like if you've read or you're familiar with these stories and these characters the way that it's like paying homage to while gently ribbing and parodying them and so that's like basically kind of like the vibe of unlikely escape because there's all the literary characters running around and first it like is a like the first layer of meaning and amusement is just how like it's poking fun at these characters right you know like that mr darcy living and breathing and walking around like you know it's a character of the ideals of mr darcy and what he represents um and many many other literary characters um but the second layer of amusement and meaning is how like these characters are shaped by not just like what the author wrote about them but how the characters read them like that is also present in how they like manifest so it's like it's a comedy and literary reference and meaning seption so i just found it like a really joyful experience to read it because of that because like i was i felt in on the joke and it felt like it wasn't like uh it's not cruel it's it's very like we who love these characters and these books can laugh at ourselves a bit we who analyze these texts can laugh at ourselves a bit while also telling like a really engaging suspenseful mysterious like action-packed magic adventure story yeah i would highly recommend this like i said it's more just it's probably more of a me thing too i feel like most people don't actually mind that much when like books get like kind of crazy and magic-y most people actually tend to like that so i would say most people well other people may not like all the literary references as well as i do but they'll probably like the magic part better than me so i either way i'd recommend this definitely i guess i would say if you're not familiar with with characters from classics um like not at all i think you'd be bored and confused and unamused um but like you don't have to be like a scholar i think like if you have like just kind of like a vague cursory knowledge where like you could recognize the names if you have some idea of like who Heathcliff is who Dorian Gray is who David Copperfield is who Uriah Heap the eponymous Uriah Heap is if you know like just kind of like the biggies like if you vaguely know the cliffnotes of like who they are and what their stories are about like you should probably do just fine it's not that like deep into like exploring each of these characters like it's it's there's a ton of characters and there wouldn't be time to do that and that's not learning what the book's about it's kind of in passing um that you can kind of like laugh at these characters yeah i think it's so cleverly done um i think it's quite heartfelt and heartwarming and it tells a story that's like um aside from all the literary references like about its own characters that you care about and has something to say in that regard so i just feel like there's so many layers of enjoyment and entertainment and um emotion and i yeah hg parry did it again i definitely definitely recommend this book i think the shadow histories shows progress because this was her first and as a debut i mean holy moly like amazing debut but i also feel very gratified in the fact that uh so in reading the acknowledgment so um i've said that people who like johnathan strange and mr norrell should read the shadow histories which is hg parry's um work after this the what got me to be a fan declaration of the rights of magicians and a radical act of free magic i often say hey if you like johnathan strange mr norrell you should read those books so i felt very gratified that in the acknowledgments for this book um she actually says something about johnathan strange and mr norrell being like one of the inspirations slash it's it's mentioned the point being like i'm not mistaken in like comparing these or seeing a similar you know what i'm saying i don't know i completely lost my ability to speak so yeah um i don't have that as much as hey about this because i like it that's that's ain't that just the way i can rant for an hour but i like something i'm just like i like it i have no notes ten out of ten so i guess my only note is that the end is a bit like big in the like magic showdown portion that just kind of like gets a little wild um and untethered and i didn't really care about that because i just like never do that's just my least favorite part of books as a fantasy reader weirdly what i'm saying is it's great i'm not disappointed hg parry remains a favorite of mine and i'm even more excited now to read her newest the magician's daughter but yeah definitely definitely like this i would not be at all surprised if at the end of this whole project my favorite of all of the books will be this one i did only give this four stars so perhaps that does not bode well but oh no i do have some jemisin okay jemisin might end up being favorite who knows we'll see we'll find out together but anyway yes this definitely definitely love it the broken kingdoms by nk jemisin the second book in the inheritance trilogy i i didn't really like this at first i did the beginning i was like pretty into it not well not super into it obviously because like uh well i shouldn't say obviously it's obvious to me because like i didn't uh it wasn't like unputdownable i would say a hundred thousand kingdoms was more so like unputdownable as was the fifth season so like the beginning i was i was intrigued and then like sort of like put it aside just because like i was busy with like other obligations and whatnot um and then i got the audiobook from the library because i started reading it physically and then i got the audiobook from the library thinking okay well that'll make things speedier and i listened to at least half of it but like the middle half so like i've read the beginning physically then read like you know like this much or something uh the audio and i was like i'm really not liking this and i was like maybe it's because of the audio maybe because the audio is just not working for me because the beginning like i remember like mostly liking so then i stopped listening to an audio and read the rest physically and that helped a little so like i definitely did not like the audiobook so that's for sure but it definitely didn't save it it wasn't like as soon as i switched back to reading physically that i was like ah yes there it is this is so good i know i still didn't really like it that much it this felt much more like shallow and cliche and it's weird to use words like cliche for this because like the the world building and the situation in this book is still quite kind of like out there and and you know connected to the first book which i have to say there were definitely things in here where i was like i feel like i'm supposed to remember this thing from 100 000 kingdoms and it kind of came back to me as they talked about it but i was like i think i'm supposed to know what it is that they're referencing or that they're getting wrong about this but i can't remember because it was like two years since i read 100 000 kingdoms i really liked 100 000 kingdoms and even though it had like slightly cliche things in terms of like sort of the character dynamics here and there um overall i felt like it was really inventive whereas here it wasn't that inventive it was mostly like cliche and shallow and kind of wishfulfillmenty and the main character was a bit of like a mary sue author insert type of deal like not the worst i've seen like definitely not the worst i've seen but too much of that and i was mostly what i was getting at it i was like i'm not feeling like this is a deep and layered and complex depiction of like a complicated speculative moral hypothetical blah blah blah blah blah it felt more akin to like the what people are getting out of like these like vampire and fey romances with like the immortal aloof dude who's inexplicably in love with like the ordinary human who's also kind of like a super special ordinary human who's our main character so like that was the vibe of it more than anything and like the situation like more overall more broadly than just like the main character and her like deal um wasn't that interesting to me um i don't feel like it expanded on the first one in a way that was interesting and it didn't i suspect based on how this ended um i i suspect that i know what the third one's going to be about or at least who the third one's going to be about i can't say that thrills me that's also on my list for this vlog project is to finish this trilogy which means i have to read the next one after this i have it i'm definitely not going to listen to an audio because audio is not working for me well i guess i should i should check if it's the same narrator i would imagine it's the same narrator yeah this is a big letdown which is like nk gemisin has been like nothing but hits for me because the the broken earth trilogy um the first one was my favorite but still the entire trilogy i was like mind blown and k gemisin is on a different level from everybody else and then hundred thousand kingdoms was like really different from um broken earth while still like playing with some themes and i was like ah i think these are just like themes she's generally interested in because like even though the situation of these books is quite different or this book is quite different um i can see like as anke she wrote it before broken earth you'd like start to see her like play with some ideas that kind of like more become like front and center in broken earth so it was like really interesting to read it kind of like watching the author and how the author is playing with ideas and changing and growing but for itself as well hundred thousand kingdoms was really interesting and well written and really compelling and really the kind of like unputdownable this was like ah nope what what happened this felt so bad and there were so many times when like the conversations like the dialogue the like emotional situation felt so like like a c w show and not in a fun way because i watch c w shows because they're fun so this was like c w but taking a c w show that thinks is on hbo and you're like no you're a c w show so just lean into your camp because you're not actually good that's how this felt and it was so painful to feel that way while reading it because i was like this is nk jemisin i was like what so i'm hoping we kind of like bounce back with the next one because i'm going to read it but this is like a two stars that i might round up to three because it's like two and a half i guess it doesn't it's definitely not the worst thing i've ever read some of the world building is kind of cool but mostly mostly not i don't feel like there was an interesting exploration of theme or character or like world building or politics or anything like it was just i feel like we were only here for the wish fulfillment of the main characters like personal story and i didn't feel like the main character had a personality outside of like well she just didn't have a personality other than like her specialness and the love interest if he can be called that well i mean yeah he can't be called that but like it's a little untraditional in that sense but if the the love interest is has somehow less personality than the main character and that the fact that i'm supposed to feel some kind of way about these two like i don't even have to like feel like romantically about them this doesn't have to be like a you know um escapist ideal ideal version of like oh if only i like what an amazing couple like like goals dreams whatever like no like i would i love reading stories about people who are just like interesting and messy and their relationship is complicated while they're in high it's um if you think anything is ideal about kathy and heathcliff no so and that was more how i felt about 100 000 kingdoms where i was like this doesn't feel like wish fulfillment to you like a romance not a lot it feels like this is a really interesting complicated emotionally complex scenario and so like it's interesting to to like uh contemplate it here it was not interesting or compelling or like honestly wish fulfillment to you it was just it was just so boring and shallow which again i'm like am i am i missing it because this is nk jemisin and everything else i've read from nk jemisin i have been nothing but impressed on on like basically every level characters politics story world building emotional stuff thematic stuff like i was like where is any of that in here so i kind of hated this that really hurts me so really really that's the third one what's it the kingdom of gods um it brings it brings it back again at the very least kingdom of gods will be benefiting from my much lower expectations because going into this i mean i was like nk jemisin is four for four like can't wait to read another amazing nk jemisin book and i was like what so now my expectations for nk jemisin are like as low as they've ever been so going into the kingdom of gods now i'm like well i expect like very little of you now so you like can benefit by like from that and you can impress me by being better than this so yeah i'm yeah i'm an empty reading experience i just i felt nothing i did not feel emotional investment i didn't feel interested i didn't feel touched i didn't feel fascinated i didn't feel anything i just absolutely nothing so yeah that's unfortunate hoping it'll get better from here well i finally finished jade a legacy meaning i finally finished the green bone saga and it was just as good as i thought it would be it was not um how to phrase this because it a lot of things happened it was a really stressful reading experience but the way people talked about this book um and the like reactions to it um when it came out and everyone being like devastated and being like fondly how could you and all this kind of thing i think i was over prepared um so i'm not disappointed i didn't think i was relieved that things didn't go worse um i really thought they would go worse for the characters so like again not to say things that went super well uh yeah not to say that things went perfectly or well or everything was actually just like totally fine and happy the whole time um i certainly do not mean that but yeah i think i was ready for more devastation and perhaps i would have felt more devastation if um i hadn't been expecting it but i also think so like it is partly that like the way people talked about it but it's also having read the previous two books that like i guess i wouldn't have been over over prepared like i was but i would have been prepared i think for the level of like what we were getting in this because for the final book in this series i think it's exactly like at the level of like a ratio of tragedy to success um as i think i would have expected going in with no going in with no preset expectations other than what i would have from reading jade city of jade war anyway fondly amazing i absolutely want to read anything she writes um i do still have they're not on my list for this project um but i have the jade setter of jan loon and whatever the other novella is that's also in the green bone universe i don't know when i'll get to those soonish though uh jade setter is it's a novella it's it's short definitely compared to this it's very short i as i as predicted for as i predicted i feel you know like oh it's over now um but i don't feel as devastated i thought i would be both devastated and be like and it's over so there's no like hoping for better to come so it's i'm sad that it's over but i don't really feel any kind of like devastation i think it was pretty much exactly what it needed to be not that i like predicted anything in particular but like yeah like this felt right um the ending so yeah absolutely like now having finished it yeah i i wasn't really um i i didn't have any doubts really like i was pretty confident in saying the green bone saga is like one of my all-time favorite series and i can highly recommend it even though i hadn't read the third one yet i did not really like doubt that it would deliver i was like worst-case scenario maybe i feel like the third one is like you know pace badly or something but i was like i doubt i will read the third one and be like oh man that was such a good series and then she like really dropped the ball with the third one i really didn't think that would happen and it didn't um i would say the only problem i really had with jade um legacy if i had a problem was pacing related um and it's definitely not bad or anything i still give this five stars and it's still really really really good and considering how much time passes and how much happens in this book like it's paced fairly well but so much time passes in this book that we constantly have time skips and it's a little bit like kind of hard to get a flow and a little hard to kind of like feel like you're sinking into like the situation or to like the character like feelings or whatever because every time you like start to sink into the situation they're like and it's been two years and it's been five years and it's been another two years so like i just felt like we were kind of like skipping along and i kind of wish like instead of trying to cover all of this time in this last book that we had lingered more on those moments and made this two books if need be um because this is already really long so i don't really think you could reasonably reasonably make legacy longer and keep it one book but i would be very happy to have it be two or three books um just so we could like linger a little bit in some of those moments and kind of see there were several times when there was like a really life-altering paradigm shifting like intense thing that would occur and i would kind of expect to like see the aftermath of that and to see them kind of like grapple with having to deal with the ramifications and aftermath of that and we just didn't because like the thing would happen and it would be like in the immediate sense resolved um but like and that you can see like there's going to be long-term consequences for this that they need to figure out but instead of like watching them figure it out we'd be like it's been five years and then in like five years later while we're learning what's currently happening we also get like the recap of like and that other thing that just happened this is how they that's how they resolved it in the last couple years and it's like okay like kind of wish i'd seen that but that being said like for that kind of like constant skipping it's still kept me hooked and was still paced very well and i feel like for a book that is gonna have to do a lot of telling over showing if it's gonna cover all that and it like i mean it did tell a little bit more than a show and definitely more than the previous two books for that being the case um it was like still really really good and like the best version of that so like the best version of telling the best version of exposition the best version of like time skipping so not ideal from like the pacing perspective but still really really really good really good um yeah absolutely worth the hype the whole series i think jade city remains my favorite reading experience it was the most like sucked in cannot put it down ever oh my god this is my entire personality now um and the second and third books love them but like the second and third books never reached quite that level of like mania for me where i'm like you know plan is my blood and the pillar is it's what is the i don't remember i don't remember the phrase see this wouldn't have happened in jade city um but yeah i love it love it love it so so so so good so glad i read it and was well i was forced to read it not because i didn't want to read it but because i would have kept kept putting it off indefinitely but my patrons did force me to read i mean i would have forced myself to read it this year because of this vlog project so like but i might have like it might have been a december thing instead of like a mid-year thing so anyway glad to have read it now i just have to wait for the next great thing because damn all right so i finished another book but when i was going to sit down to film this clip i realized that i never actually filmed a clip for the last book that i read and it has been months since i finished that book so um real quick to the best of my ability several months back i did read the secret commonwealth by filipulmin which is the sequel to the book of dust and um i really enjoyed this from what i remember from a few months back my i there was something in this book that's quite spoilery so i won't say what it is that i i don't know why it's there um and we don't have a book three yet and there's no like date or like projection for when we would have a book three um so i don't know like the point with that being that like maybe they're the reason for the inclusion of this kind of weird thing um would become apparent um in the third book so far i'm like i don't know why this was necessary this is just kind of making me uncomfortable and not in a way where because like filipulmin's books um or the his dark materials books in particular they um they often deal with kind of troubling topics in a way that feels like it's intentionally meant to be troubling like they like to live in the moral gray and that's one of the things that i love about filipulmin's writing is because it especially for like books that are kind of more geared towards children these ones don't really seem to be but like the his dark materials certainly are like sold and marketed at least in part as like middle grade books i think it's great that like you kind of introduces kind of darker harder things for um a kid to begin to contemplate so i don't mean that like oh this book is in the gray and that makes me uncomfortable because it is i mean certainly it's in keeping with the filipulmin tradition of doing that um no this is more a thing where i'm like maybe that is why it's here because he was like this will make you uncomfortable um but well mission accomplished it did it just i don't right now see a reason for his inclusion like i can't think of a reason for including it it's just weird anyway that being said it's a relatively small part of the book in terms of like um page count um this is a pretty long book it's even longer than the book of test uh or i'm sorry this series is the book of test the first book is label sauvage sauvage sauvage i don't know how you're supposed to say it but and then the secret commonwealth is the second book in the book of test it did leave me wanting to read the book three like immediately and i was like as soon as i finished it i was like where's book three is there i've been an announcement there has not um i think the last update from him was from like a year ago of him saying that like he was hoping in the following year to like finish it and well he has not so anyway i i liked it a lot it's one of the better books for this whole project um it's mainly just that kind of one thing that was like i don't know about that but this so if you don't know anything about it so um label sauvage um in the first book in the book of test is a prequel to his dark materials and then the secret commonwealth is the sequel to label sauvage but it takes place also as a sequel to his dark materials so his dark materials before it is label sauvage um and after it is um the this one secret commonwealth um but they are books one and two so book one in the book of dust has like a big big big big gap before book two which is this one which takes place after this whole astrology so it's kind of weird in in like the timing of that i guess yeah i think i don't um i don't recommend reading it in in in chronological order i think you should definitely read in publication order like i don't think you should read first label sauvage then his dark materials and then the secret commonwealth definitely read his dark materials first and then go back to read label sauvage and that's secret commonwealth yeah so this book follows a much older lyra so lyra is the protagonist from his dark materials and so she's like um a per teenager i don't think she's in her 20s yet or if she is like very early 20s but i think she's still a teenager but she's like functionally an adult like she's not a child anymore um so it's much more mature um than his dark materials and his dark materials is pretty mature already so yeah it was really really wonderful to be back in this world um i like prefer his dark materials when it's like i like the first book is my favorite book which takes place almost exclusively in lyra's world um and when we do the world hopping all the other stuff there's some interesting stuff in there and i still enjoy the series but like it loses me a bit and i think the book kind of loses a lot of it um but the label sauvage and secret commonwealth they both fully take place in lyra's world and i prefer that so i like being back in the world but like specifically the world of like northern lights or golden compass or whatever you want to call it the first book on his dark materials it feels most akin to that which is my favorite part of his dark materials this has some like heartbreaking stuff in it and not the weird thing i mean like there's like there's lots of stuff in here that is like emotionally complex so like i really don't understand the inclusion of the weird thing um but any who's these i i've definitely definitely enjoyed this and i continue to be a fan of filipin but anyway the book that i read just now that i just finished that was not great that was ninth rain um it won the patron book buddy read book club thing so i just read it with my patrons and i have the broken binding editions which are all stunning with like um you know beautiful beautiful books so i wish i loved it i really really do books two and three equally stunning possibly more stunning because i like the colors better um this was not the worst book i've read not the worst um not the worst this year until the not the worst ever a lot of the times especially in my patron vlogs when they like pick a book for me to read um that i'm like i don't know about this quite often in those vlogs it'll be a book that i don't like but um in the beginning of it i'll be like well the writing is clunky and the world building is clunky and it's really like heavy on the end vote on being an expository dialogue but i'm willing to forgive those things if it turns out to have like a worthwhile plot or some worthwhile world building that like it won't be a it it will still lose points with a bad writing but i can overlook bad writing if it's doing other things exceptionally well and i'll say that a lot about books but then like nine times out of ten when all is said and done i'm like well it it sucks like it didn't have good enough world building or good enough plot to like make up for the bad ride um this was the rare example where it did have some good world building and some interesting things with the plot and characters um but like a lot of the what my patrons and i talked about was that there was so much missed potential and missed opportunity and i'm so sorry for the noise there was like a festival in the park next to me yesterday and i think they're doing it again today which is devastating anyway to quickly wrap this up because the noise is getting worse and i'm sure you can hear it oh my gosh um so much missed potential missed opportunity missed everything like there's there's the seeds of some really complex interesting character work and world building that is why i still give it credit i think i give this three stars because i was like some things actually were executed decently and a ton of things could have been executed really well but like the author just like didn't quite know how to do it i guess or or something i don't know it was just like oh you like had a thing here you like you set it up you like teed it up to have something cool here and then you just like didn't um so i don't think i'll read the rest of the series um but it's not the worst and that is the worst of the noise okay whatever um back to finishing this project well i finished kingdom of gods gods not the gods kingdom of gods by nk jemsons which concludes the inheritance trilogy that's right it's called right now the inheritance cycle is something else anyway um i did like this slightly better than um broken kingdoms kingdoms the second one but both the second and the third one just included i are nothing like and don't hold a candle to the hundred thousand kingdoms maybe if i reread a hundred thousand kingdoms i would hate it i hope that that's not true i i don't plan on rereading it anytime soon and i have a pretty good memory of it um i meant in terms of like goodness like quality uh not like detailed memory but i feel like i remember it decently well i just feel like the second one in particular felt very like heavy on like light i mean i talked about it in a clip this one had some of that definitely more of it than i want less of it than book two thematically this one felt like it had kind of like more going for it um but even then it like i just really struggle with like immortal beings and godlike beings and inhuman things um when when books and movies tv shows will be like well the only way that we can make this relatable is if we make them actually be kind of like undeniably human in some way or like they'll make some point about how like it's like they they can't conceive of something that doesn't have the kind of feelings that we might recognize and sympathize with and i just i find that extremely frustrating particularly if a book is not just kind of like a wishful-fulfillmenty romance if it's a wishful-fulfillmenty romance and okay the immortal being who's like actually like in love with a human like it's not particularly what i want to read but like i get what the appeal of the appeal of that is is you know you're reading this for escapism and and imagining like oh wouldn't it be lovely if you know whatever like that's that's what it's doing um again not my dream but like i understand why that would be something someone would want to read but this is like a more serious book this is more and well i shouldn't say more serious that sounds very value judgmenty but like you know this is like purports to be something that's not about like wish fulfillment that's not about it's not about it's about something more or different or i don't know something that is is trying to tell a story that doesn't make its decisions story wise based on what would be the most again wishful-fulfillmenty for the reader so when it does stuff like that um like there's just like a lot of that in books two and three and i feel like the first book the hundred thousand kingdoms one of the things that i really liked about it or at least that i remember liking about it was that even though it involved kind of like immortal godlike beings having some kind of more human foibles or human desires or human feelings it was still done in a way where like they felt still so alien and so so inhuman in how they would go about that that it still really worked for me um and i feel like books two and three are not that way um where i just yeah i i just really struggle with that as as like a way to write a story in the first place and then i don't think it's done especially well here i feel like it's pretty info dumpy and i feel like the the narrator like the first the first person pov who's like narrating story to you it like over explains a lot and tells instead of shows and it's like trying to like couching it in this kind of like oh well i'm a godling and you're humans and i always forget that humans need things explained to them so that's right i should tell you blah blah blah blah and i'm like that's still info dumping you like bookended it with these cutesy oh for you mortals here's some info dumps but it's like that doesn't make it better it kind of makes it worse which is just so surprising to me because like if there's one thing that the broken earth is known for um it's that it doesn't hold your hand that it doesn't info dump that it kind of drops you in the middle and expects you to kind of swim and that's one of the things that i love so so much about it and then to read this which just constantly hand holds info dumps and wishfulfillments and i just i feel like two different authors wrote these books there are certain things about it that i'm like oh these are themes she's interested in so like i do find like nk jemisin in there but it's just so wildly different from both what i experienced in broken earth and what i want to read so i still love the broken earth and i still think it's brilliant this is not it for me so i still want to read more nk jemisin um again this not what i'm looking for but you know hopefully the pendulum swings and um for example the dream blood duology maybe it's more akin to broken earth i have no idea i have not read it i will find out what i do read it so anyway that's not on the list for this tbr project but i am frankly relieved to be done with this i this took forever to get through and i hated pretty much every minute of it so that's unfortunate well i finished this a few days ago actually um but i've been sick which you can probably still hear so i was truly incapable of speaking without immediately coughing uh now i can speak for a little bit without coughing so this book um i started reading it when it came out technically like the day before it came out because my books were added early and i was so excited for it so i started it and then um read like a hundred pages of it which like is barely scratching the surface um this is where this bookmark has lived for like four years i haven't taken it out because like it's just i don't know it feels like it's been there so long that like it would be sacrilegious to like remove it like that's where it lives now um which it won't live there for much longer because i'm gonna get rid of this book because i hated it so i did i do like this bookmark so i want to keep it but for now it still lives there um anyway this book is terrible um this book is one of the worst books that i've ever read um made all the worst by the atrocious length of it which it is in no way justified um i would hold this book up as uh an obvious example of like all the things that you should not do as an author so it's quite disheartening to me how popular this book is that it's got like a quite high aggregate rating on Goodreads i think if it didn't win it was certainly nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards which granted doesn't like mean all that much so the Goodreads Choice Awards is is whatever and awards in general is you know who knows how much that means about anything ever um but in general like when i hear people talk about this book it is mostly praise or people being like ah it was a bit long and boring it's not maybe my favorite book ever i was a little disappointed but i don't really see anyone saying oh my god that book is garbage like i'm not saying i'm the only person to say that certainly not there is a smattering you know one star reviews on Goodreads something like there's not a single one but like it's it's it's like uh i read something like this knowing how well it was received and i'm like well this is why we can't have nice things because if people read this and think this is good writing how are we ever going to get good writing if people are happy about this i feel a little if you've ever seen this book is enormous i'm putting it down um david michael who's one of my absolute favorite comedians i mean the british comedian not the author which is kind of confusing sometimes um david michael's rant about downton abbey um i didn't feel that passionately about downton abbey so i don't really care but i did know what he was talking about like i understood where he was coming from and is how i feel about other things um he has this rant that i'll briefly summarize he's much funnier um when he doesn't but he was talking about how the season one of downton abbey was like nothing to write home about but like you know entertaining enough pretty well written pretty well acted you know costumes are nice it's you know shot um well you know like it's it's well put together and the story is decent and like there's nothing really to complain about too much like it's it's perfectly fine and you know enjoyable um and then season two came out and not only did it continue to please people people like did just as much as if not better than season one and he's like horrified and appalled by this because he's like well apparently it doesn't matter if you have a good quality writing or good quality storytelling or good quality whatever because apparently people don't give a shit so like what's the point of even making an effort to make something quality when they in fact like it better when it's less good quality and he like goes into detail about like why season two of downton abbey is like a shit show um from like uh from writing continuity and historical um like uh credulity um perspectives and it's quite funny when he does it and again i don't care that much about downton abbey like i never really like i liked the show i think i watched the first two three season something like that um but not like i wasn't paying that much attention to it like it was just like vibes you know and i will talk about priority in a second but to me i didn't really pay that much attention to it i was like oh it's like butlers and cakes and and naggy smith being naggy smith so i am actually kind of the person that david mitchell is ranting about because he's like apparently people don't care if it's good they just want like you know old timey hats and and naggy smith being you know um sarcastic and i'm like that is what i watched it for um i wasn't actually like that invested in it there's other stories that i care that much more about and if they go off the rails game of thrones then i care a great deal um so anyway um that being said when he's like you know can't understand how people like you know it seems that they approve of quality because they like season one of downton abbey but then when downton abbey is bad they still like it so quality wasn't the thing and this is why we can't have nice things so that's how i feel about priority orange tree and i know it's slightly different because it's not like book one was good and book two sucks or something i'm obviously not going to read book two um which is a prequel i believe which never bodes well it is stunningly gorgeous just like i mean this cover god i wish i liked this book this is one of the most stunning books i've ever seen fantasy books should look like this like this is what i want on my shelf i mean i love the color orange is my favorite but also just like the dragon and the foiling and the oh like this is just so stunning i want this to be my favorite book because i want to display it prominently on my shelf but no it's awful and book two's cover is also stunning so why does priory suck so much for a lot of really really basic reasons like there's i am thinking about doing a whole separate video just about priory sucking um so i don't know i might do that let me know if you care um that might influence my decision um but basically like it's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing like having a book that's that long it needs to justify its length and i think a lot of people were like well because it's a standalone rather than a series and like oh isn't that nice for once it's not a series like well then it needs to be like pretty monstrously long to kind of like cover all the ground that normally a series has the space to do so like 800 pages is like not that long if you think of it as like a trilogy that's all in like one book or something like that and like broadly generally hypothetically like yeah i don't care if a book is 800 pages i don't care if a book is 2000 pages as long as like there's a good reason for it to be that long there's it's it's rare that i think that a book needs to be that long i think quality writing tends to be shorter i think that like knowing what you need to say and saying it efficiently shows more talent than just going on and on but that doesn't mean that i never think like basically i think that a book that's a thousand pages it should be a thousand pages because that is the shortest possible length that it could be because like it was 2000 and it was chopped down to the very essentials which is a thousand pages if that makes sense i don't want a thousand page book because we just kind of like didn't cut anything like that i don't like and as much as i will complain about books that you know show rather or that tell rather than show which is like an easy thing that everyone says um like obviously you know you should show not tell um but having something just take 800 pages does not mean like i don't there's like a i kind of hate additives like that just because like there's a time and a place where people misunderstand it or misconstrue it it's like oh well that means i can't just like sum up something that's not that important i have to spend 100 pages showing this thing because then i'm showing and not telling it's like yeah but is it significant enough to warrant 100 pages or is it something that just kind of like generally might be good to know um and once we know what we can kind of move on it's like when people say show not tell they mean like if a character feels sad you should show them in various scenes behaving in a way that indicates to the audience that they're probably sad rather than having your narrator say this character is sad like that's what that means it doesn't mean every single thing in your book you need to like show it and supposed to ever telling anybody anything and that's the thing that kills me too is books that misunderstand it so badly they also tell instead of showing the things that they should be showing so there is an egregious lack of character development in here and there i mean there's a ton of characters i suppose just in terms of like the number of individual people but like actual characters that you're supposed to care about they're like who are like point of views or significant or like main characters there's not actually that many and i can't tell you anything about them other than like the bullet points of like where they are what their job is who they have a romance with like they're not people they're not like driven motivated feeling things and like if they are those are the things that are told to us rather than shown like there's there's a sapphic romance in here that i knew of i knew that was one of the many not the only reason but one of many things people cited as like why this book is so good and that like oh we love a sapphic romance in a high fantasy how great and like again hypothetically sure yeah an 800 page book that like needs to be 800 pages because it's so dense and that has a sapphic romance and dragons like sure that sounds fantastic but even though i knew this romance existed and knew therefore to be on the lookout for like okay so who's it gonna be uh even though i was pretty sure i did know um it comes out of nowhere and not in a way where i was shocked um like actually shocked i was just like yeah like i knew to look for this and i still didn't like like see the signs for it and so when it happens it's not like it's it's felt like it's been burning and and finally happening it's like it literally was like the author was like oh and now is the time when we have that happen so the so the the characters like realize it in this scene because i need them to um so it's just badly done and for people who are calling this book feminist okay no just because there's a queen in your book just because there's a sapphic romance in your book that does not make a feminist i would frankly argue so people were okay this also drives me insane um it drives me insane that people compare everything to Game of Thrones because that's ridiculous but also specifically this one like more than i think other books more intentionally compared itself to Game of Thrones or at least i'm not saying that like Samantha Shannon did that but like that was part of the discourse wasn't just the like oh every book gets stamped with oh this is Game of Thrones meets whatever people were saying this is like a feminist response to Game of Thrones like if you like the like um world building and lore and politics and and the death and the complexity of Game of Thrones but like George R. R. Martin is like a misogynist and you want like the feminist version of that which again sure um in general if like that's the project of something that sounds like it has potential um i would argue that Robin Hobbs or Robin the Elderlings and fits that bill more than this but i would also argue that frankly George R. R. Martin's song of ice and fire series has more actual feminism in it than this because in order for something to be feminist it's not again just having a female character in it and then you gave her a dagger or you made her a queen but your society is extremely misogynistic your female characters are shallow and have no depth or personality they have nothing driving them nothing to make them compelling there's like complexity in this world is simply just like over description and tons of like unnecessary detail about things that does nothing attributes nothing it doesn't sound believable the way that the story the politics the world building the characterization is is conveyed to the reader is through characters walking around like like cardboard cutouts who just like just come out and say what their motivations are come out and say what their political position is and what the various factions are and why they align with a certain one and like that is not how people work that is not how politics works in fact people who are engaging in politics will the one thing they'll never do is tell you what they actually think and the fact that these characters are walking around being like well this faction is this over here and i'm in this faction and therefore of course the thing that i believe is the opposite of this and i will stand for that and die for that and we're doing politics right now like no little finger in a song of ice and fire is doing politics whatever he tells you you can be fairly certain that what he actually thinks it may not be the opposite but it's definitely not what he just told you that's politics that's machinations that's complexity because people even people who are not as conniving as little finger in a song of ice and fire people rarely themselves know exactly what's driving them or exactly why they feel the kind of way that they do in order to be able to just come out and tell you that um be it about personal relationships and feelings be it again about politics or about there's supposedly religious complexity in in this book but again one is conveyed clumsily in these kind of like these like infodumps where someone is like you know oh yes person of this religion who believes this yes i am of this religion but what i also believe is this like it's no one talks like that no one things like that that's a horrible way to do your exposition um but again there's a lot more religious complexity in a song of ice and fire where there are multiple religions that all have like interesting um kind of uh cognitive dissonances and the way they kind of coexist and how people can kind of like have a foot in both camps sometimes which is a lot more kind of like reminiscent of real history when people when there are countries that are kind of going from one religion to another or when two cultures are clashing and so these religions have to kind of coexist like the way people make that make sense for themselves be it in terms of like politics and like law making or just the individual who's trying to relate to other people the way people make that make sense isn't to be like the thing i believe is this but what i make allow in swissivore is this because that's compatible with my belief like people don't think like that or talk like that it's like i i just it's it's awful and then the plot itself like the plot in this book does not take 800 pages it would take 100 pages like a good writer could knock it out in 100 pages and i would be delighted by an extra 700 pages of quality intricate fascinating characterization if that's what this is because like arguably um the first law by joe abercrombie that plot for the all three books could also be knocked out in like one to 200 pages um but what we get is like glorious in-depth characterization and that's what most of the page count is devoted to and actual politics um and i'm so here for that so again 800 pages that's like maybe not terribly like maybe there isn't 800 pages of plot i frankly would be exhausted by that um but is 800 pages that's justified because it's doing something with it um i'm here for it but this is not it and if people think this is good if people think this is what a feminist version of a song of ice and fire is like please like you're like insulting feminism because just because you stuck some women in it does not make it feminist there is a female queen in a song of ice and fire so you know same that makes it feminist right actually there's more than one so it's more feminist um yeah i just i'm tired of those comparisons in general and this was truly one that again it's not like senator shannon was like hey guys look what i did i wrote a feminist response to like she didn't as far as i know do that but that that's the rhetoric that was surrounding this book i remember people said that also about outlander when the show came out that like i think it was more about the show than the books where they were like because this is a big like um like premium cable type adaptation um like prime time that like oh outlander the show is like the feminist response to game of thrones the show which is also like again a song of ice and fire game of thrones is more feminist than outlander is i'm sorry um again an insult to feminism um so yeah uh not for me this was i'm glad i did it i guess this feels like an achievement but i do not recommend and um shan't be reading the other which is stunning god it's so pretty it almost makes me want to read it because i'm like maybe this one's better but it's i know it's not i know that um so yeah let me know if you want a more in-depth video about this i'm happy to do it but only if people want to see it so um but yeah this was not it demon voices by philip pulman i think is my favorite book from this project is that true yes that's true because i've mostly hated all the books but like i really liked your eye heap and this one what else did i read for this project oh jade legacy okay no jade legacy is problem i really do love this though i don't know point is this is so so so so good um i just scratched myself um demon voices as it says on stories and storytelling this is nonfiction this is similar to the view from the cheap seats by neil gaiman which i adore i like the view from the cheap seats a little bit better than this i also like neil gaiman's like war i just like neil gaiman as an author better than philip pulman um so stands to reason but i really enjoyed this collection so so much because it's a collection of like um you know four words and essays and speeches and articles and things then um he does sometimes repeat himself that also happens in view from the cheap seats um because oftentimes you know similar topics call for similar anecdotes or points so he like recycles some of his points um which wouldn't be apparent to anyone that wasn't reading it together you know if you were just at those speeches or reading those four words then you wouldn't be like hey you just told this story um so and that's not like constantly redundant it's like a little redundant here and there but yeah i i just i love this so much so he kind of covered just like with view from the cheap seats there's kind of a wide variety he does less um view from the cheap seat that didn't mean this to be just a comparison between the two but they are similar view from the cheap seats has far more um like four words for other books so neil gaiman talks a lot more about other books and other authors philip pulman certainly does both because there's four words for other stories or speeches he gave in honor of other authors in this collection but also because he just personally you know he has his own passions and influences so he brings them up if in one necessary like anyone that's read his dark materials will be unsurprised to learn that he brings up paradise lost more than once this didn't give the kind of like um reading view from the cheap seats made me want to pick up every book that neil gaiman was talking about here that was like less of less of the thing in here at all um that's not really so much what's going on in this um but yeah his some of it is musings on like writing craft like how to approach writing his ideas of what fantasy or speculative fiction is and isn't should or should not be why he does and does not like it um about philosophy about his own kind of like journey on the faith spectrum and morality and its role in storytelling whether it should be there it shouldn't be there if it is there how it should be there etc etc etc so i just found it fascinating compelling interesting thought provoking some of the things that he's talking about here it's stuff that like i've kind of like talked about with people you know in lives and podcasts and videos and stuff um some of it is stuff that kind of like i was like oh i like talked about this with people but he said like he went further or he said it better or he said more um and it kind of made me it kind of like crystallized things that i kind of like danced around a little bit um i love his metaphor um for storytelling being like um like the world is the wood and the storyteller is like writing the path through the wood um and he the way i just said it probably doesn't sound that great but he brings comes back to that metaphor a lot um and i really really think it's um a good way of thinking of it not the only way certainly but it also hearing him talk about kind of his approach to storytelling and what he does and does not value in it um it's if you have read his dark materials which i recommend you do if you've never read his dark materials i don't think you should read this first because he does feel um at liberty to spoil his dark materials because then what's in here is you know like responses to criticisms about his dark materials or like articles when people ask questions about it when he's like responding to like people who are like what was your point like what were you trying to say with his dark materials and him like trying to respond to that um but yeah i i feel like i'm going to return to this kind of like with maybe more so view from the cheap seats i think i enjoyed more in terms of just like um just as a reading experience like i was very emotional and it was thought-provoking certainly um so i just felt very immersed in it and it's like lovely to be with neil this book immensely enjoyable but i think is more one that i'll return to in a more practical sense like his approach to storytelling his approach to world building his approach to character building his approach to the speculative whether or not to include it um just so many things like that that are i mean he talks about them quite conversationally but they're quite um instructive ways of thinking about things not that you have to adopt his methods but just to consider his approach to it and think about what that might mean for how you would approach a story as a reader or as a writer um and so i think i will find myself coming back to this both for enjoyment and for um you know for again for practical reasons um to improve my writing craft and reading craft if it can be called that um because how you approach a story how you dissect it how you value it um is shaped by kind of like what you bring to it and he talks about that a lot as well um so yeah i also i mean i've read his dark materials twice this kind of makes me want to read it a third time um again i don't think you should read it before having read it but having already read it and now hearing kind of some of his thoughts on what he wanted to do with it what he ultimately did do with it things that he would do about it differently now um to reread his dark materials kind of through that lens now i don't think that's like he himself would object to that being the only lens to which to view something he's very much against the idea of like the author being the final authority on the meaning of a text um which i tend to gravitate towards authors who have that attitude towards have the attitude that that's not the attitude to have it yeah who who remove themselves from the analysis um as much as is reasonable um it's not the death of the author i don't think that's appropriate and i don't think he does but that the author is just like one of the many people who have a perspective on what the text means that it can be engaged with like kind of democratically like um you can take into consideration what the author has to say about what they wanted to do thought they did etc um and take it or leave it you shouldn't like categorically ignore it and you shouldn't take it as gospel like it's just another piece of the puzzle of what you think this text might mean um so anyway i thoroughly enjoyed this thoroughly recommend it um and he's quite clear about what his positions are about things but i don't feel preached to in this book if that makes sense like he makes good arguments or he makes strong arguments or those are all kind of value judgments that he makes maybe forceful arguments i would say for what he personally feels um what his experience has been the conclusions he's arrived at but i don't think um i get just like with he doesn't believe that he is the author is the the um ultimate um authority on what his text means i don't think he regards himself as the ultimate authority on any of the questions that he engages with these are his perspectives these are his conclusions and um i think of anything this is an invitation to debate with him um not obviously like literally inviting you over to his house to debate with him but you know it's an invitation to engage with these ideas he's like here's what i think about this and i'm not going to be like well this is what i think he's like look this is what i think and i you would would have to can have a strong argument to convince me otherwise this is what i think but i don't again feel like he's saying i have you think something different from this you're stupid like that is not the vibe in fact um in one of the uh i forget if it's a and i say or a speech but um after each piece he also provides like a little afterward about the where this came from or what he was writing it for or whatever um and in one of the pieces that got into a little bit more you know like religious subject matter um he talked about um the archbishop i think at hoxford is that the right title slash place i don't know a real very like a religious office holder that he had a good relationship with and how that was one of his favorite people to debate with so presumably based on that person's occupation they would hold if not the exact opposite view but definitely an opposing view to his um which i think the inclusion of things like that is basically again him saying look this is what i think and i think it's fun to debate it and so if i'm debating it with you like here are my positions here are my arguments but you know sure like if you've got a better one if you think differently lay it on me um so yeah i yeah i found it very thought provoking very enjoyable found it very thought provoking very enjoyable and i do recommend it and i do again for anyone that um feels about things very very differently from philip polman i don't think that precludes you from reading this book i don't think he would want it to preclude that um he's just telling you what he thinks um i don't think he's making a case for him being the authority because he's very much against the idea of any one person having the right idea um so yeah i think if you're at all interested in his ideas and his approach to storytelling and generally um the subject of how does one approach storytelling he talks about sias lewis and tolkien pretty disparagingly am i'm honest and he's pretty upfront about that like one of um the pieces in particular where he goes after tolkien he pre like at the big outset of that piece he's like i'm gonna be talking some shit about tolkien he doesn't phrase it like that that's basically what he's saying he's like hey buckle up like i'm about to be talking shit about tolkien so y'all gonna be super pissed at me but you know i'm just telling you what i think and what my experience has been so again i don't think he's making an argument for the fact that tolkien sucks and you should think he sucks and that anyone likes tolkien's an idiot that is not at all the um impression that i get from it it's just that this is his experience of reading tolkien and why it did or did not work for him or what it was lacking for him or what it would be that he would specifically not want to emulate in his own work etc and i think it's valuable to hear that other perspective i think so many authors like tolkien are kind of treated um with kid gloves where like they're just um they're such like pillars of the genre they're uncauchable and if you dare to criticize them it's like oh well you weren't smart enough to get it but clearly fantasy isn't for you and he'd be the first to say fantasy is not for him uh and then he but he's written quite a lot of speculative fiction um and that's kind of his point and he's like it's a little bit like abracromi um although abracromi does really like tolkien um philip pulman being saying that he thought that he didn't like speculative fiction because he didn't like tolkien and is like well that's supposed to be like the big one the best one and i don't like it so i don't think i like fantasy um and his realization that like oh it it doesn't have to actually mean that and actually a lot of the fiction that he does like is actually speculative it's just like not what you think of when you say like fantasy but he has actually no objection to speculative elements he just didn't like a lot of the range so i think it's refreshing to hear an author feel free to be like i don't like tolkien like and that's okay it's okay to say that and it's okay to disagree with that so yeah it it feels very it feels very authentic and unvarnished and very true um this is what he thinks and feels and how he approaches things and that's just it is what it is um and he invites you to engage with that as a perspective so i again i highly highly recommend this um even if you i don't agree with everything i like um i like the lord of the rings but hearing why he dislikes it gave me food for thought about like a new way to look at lord of the rings and and to um you know wonder like is that actually maybe a flaw in it maybe it's a flaw that's not as important to me uh so i can overlook it or do i disagree do i think that that's not a flaw that's present in lord of the rings but invited me to engage with that subject with the lord of the rings in a way that i hadn't before and even if i don't reach the same conclusion as phillip wome and the the opportunity to kind of get this kind of uh blowing the cobwebs off of lord of the rings and and actually looking at it a little bit differently is not really something that you get much of a chance to do because the book is closed on that the lord of the rings is a masterpiece that's agreed and that's just there's nothing further to be said about the subject so it's interesting to kind of like revisit it and be like hey no wait a second what if what if it's not perfect so yeah highly highly recommend and the last book i just finished leviathan wakes by james s a quarry which i believe if i'm not mistaken at least one of the it's a duo of authors it's a duo of authors one of which i believe is daniel abraham is that his name um the author of the long price quartet which i did not like uh and then another author i don't know who the author is i'm pretty sure that's the case any who's these um yeah i wanted to read this for i mean the whole this whole project was books that i'd wanted to read for one reason or another but this uh i guess priory might it be like the one that has like been around on my want to read list for the longest but this might be second longest um i owned the audiobook for the last five years or so and then i thought i think i said this in the original video that i got the physical copy as kind of like a one is a reminder that hey that's a book that you have that you want to read and also because i struggled to get into the audiobook um so i thought i should maybe try reading it physically so i read this partially physically partially on audio um so i started like like to get into it i did it physically and then like once i got my bearings then i could do the audio as well and i enjoyed this um i do want to continue the series i don't love it like it's not like my new favorite um as far as sci-fi series go um i probably prefer with the senator and red rising and even mickey seven um i really like mickey seven um but that being said i think this is really good um i think my main issues with it are just kind of like things that that are much less bad than in the long price quartet um things about like how the narration is done um that i i guess i blame daniel abraham um like the the exposition and the characterization is a bit clunky a bit telling over showing um things like that like the way that the world building is conveyed is often quite like and then he made a gesture that was indicative of like where he comes from a gesture that nobody from this other place would ever make like it's just really clunky when it does stuff like that and takes me out of the story that being said in the long price quartet um it's been no minute since i read well i only read the first book but i remember not only was it clunkily delivered but i also thought it was quite dumb and like the world building didn't make a ton of sense um neither like in isolation nor like as a cohesive whole that's meant to work together um so it was like the double whammy of like you're telling it badly and then what you're telling me is don't so here i think you're kind of telling it to me badly but it was it was more interesting and more like it made more sense um in terms of how the world might be still a few things here and there that i was like uh i don't know i don't know that's how that would be um and like again kind of nitpicky things like things about characterization where like um to to in order to like make the point that a character is not reacting emotionally in a situation that another that more that the majority of people either would react emotionally to or would think that you would react emotionally to that character has to like self-awarely observe that like wow they're being unemotional about this when other people would be really emotional which is not a thing that people would necessarily do certainly not in the moment maybe after the fact but like it's more likely something that someone else would remark on or notice because they themselves are emotional or we're emotional or we expect to be and are looking at this person and going wow you're not emotional so having the person themselves being like uh you know like uh he like observed to himself how unemotional he was about this thing and it's like what do you know like someone who's not reacting emotionally to something doesn't tend to observe the fact that they are reacting unemotionally to something you know what i mean like it's just it's just weird like it just feels like the author wants you to know this thing and is like clunkly inserting a way for the character to have thought about it or to have pointed it out it's kind of like the thing of it wasn't doing this necessarily but it's kind of the thing of characters that talk on and on about how badass they are and everything that they've done um when in fact like characters that probably have like killed a lot of people probably wouldn't want to talk about it um unless they're like it's doing a sales pitch for work as a mercenary or something which is something I think that like don't ever crummy haven't brought him up in a minute does quite well you know where characters that actually are really lethal killers kind of like downplay it and like don't talk about it and characters that like want to have their reputation of that talk about it all the time but like when it comes down to it they actually aren't that like lethal or experienced or whatever which is like more not like a hundred percent of the time i'm not saying there's never been a person who's a killer that wanted to brag about it but that's the kind of thing where it's like well how do I tell the reader that this character is such a massive killer unless they're like bragging about it or like reflecting on it or whatever it is and it's just almost never feels authentic um to either what a character would say or do or or it like makes me not believe that about them makes it feel forced so the book was guilty of that type of thing quite a lot where characters are like being weirdly self aware of things and pointing it out to the reader so that you know that about them and I just wish authors in general would just trust that if you show the character doing these things in these various situations that the reader themselves will notice it or at the very least have other characters be the ones to notice it to be like wow he's not reacting emotionally to this which is like kind of creepy or weird or unusual not have the character themselves do it um so like that's just it's not always to do with like emotions but like that's the type of thing that this book constantly does where the a thing that a character is feeling or experiencing or or how they're what they're saying what they're doing what their thought process is on something they themselves comment on how it differs from the norm or how it differs from the lay person or whatever it is and it's just like it's weird and it feels clunky again that being said I did think the situation and the politics and the world building of this like space opera was like quite intricate and compelling and the way that the kind of mystery we would kind of like peel back the layers of the onion of what's going on I think is is very interesting and also I think there's a lot of moving pieces to it and I think maybe that the very very outset when you're like totally don't have your bearings which was me when I first started the audiobook and couldn't do it um because you just like don't know what the status quo is at all so you're learning all new information but like that being said I think once you're kind of into it I think it does a pretty good job of like telling you this story in a way where you can keep track of the factions and you're not kind of like lost in the mire of like who is who are the interested parties so yeah I think it's well done overall despite my nitpicks and it makes me want to read the next one I know there's like 10 books I think people have said that they're not all like there's like I don't know if it comes back up again but I know that this was really kind of a drop and hopefully it comes back up again I don't really know but um yeah I liked this um um and I'm glad to have finally read it um yeah and that is the last book that I had for this project I did it in the 11th hour but I did it and that feels um great I thought their first second that I wouldn't be able to do it but I but I did it I did it so you know I hope you enjoyed this video um it has been basically a year since my first clip what was the first book I finished Wolf Hall I think plus or Essex Serpent one of those two I think um it wasn't a super great um in terms of like finding books that I like and I think the majority ended up disliking let's see I like Leviathan Wakes that's a good note to end on but um and I liked the unlikely escape and I liked Jade Legacy which we all knew that I would and I liked The Secret Commonwealth and um I liked uh the other Pullman um Demon Voices so like not quite half but nearly half so not half by page count because Briary you know really tips the scales but yeah glad to have done this and like gotten some things off of off of the list knocked them out be done actually once I dislike because now they're not crowding my shelves so yeah um yeah let me know things stuff I don't at this point I don't remember what all I've said about all the books as I finished them but whatever your thoughts are about my reactions to them if you agree with me or disagree with me whatever um if you like this style of video I didn't anticipate but take me like the full year to get this done but you know here we are so um if you'd like other such projects in the future let me know and um yeah I'll see you when I see you