 So, Throne of Glass. It is, um, no secret that I hate this one. Uh, you can watch all my previous videos on the subjects. It is not a good one, okay? The main character is an ungodly Mary Sue. The story stretches on forever and ever. It becomes actual... Yeah! Partway through. You might have to censor that word. It's early in the video. We'll see. Most of the romances are obnoxious and take up way too much time when they're not outright toxic. The world building is lazy. It's just, it's not a good series at all. However, this series was a massive success. Like, even 10 years after it came out, it still sells reasonably well. And basically, every young adult fantasy that has come out recently has tried to be Throne of Glass. Like, they are all just trying to copy that success the exact same way that everything tried to be The Hunger Games for a while and before that everything tried to be Twilight. It was, it was, it's annoying, okay? Like, I don't get why they're all trying to be Throne of Glass because, again, it has all these issues. I find that weird. It has the ultimate Mary Sue protagonist. Well, okay, with the exception of House of Night. House of Night does have a worse Mary Sue protagonist, but still. The story structure is odd, the world building is thin, etc. But that said, I do see some potential in this story. And I was thinking for a while, like, okay, let's do another rewrite video. And I decided on this one. And while I was going back over the story and going back over my old videos on it and stuff, I was realizing I don't think I would need to change all that much to make this story passable at least. You know, because, again, it's just a couple of big issues that if you tweak it, then that makes the whole thing substantially better. I see some potential there, so let's exploit it. And if you're unfamiliar with this series or this format, basically the format is me taking books I've read that I think are pretty bad, like I've done it before with the Onision trilogy and Trigger Warning and Lightlark, and I'm just changing it to make it better. However, the idea is to make it a better version of the story the author was trying to write, not to make it into a story that I would write instead. So I'm trying to change as little as possible, and I'm trying to keep the basic story intact as much as possible, trying to keep the basic character personalities and archetypes intact as much as possible, et cetera. And if you're unfamiliar with the series itself, it is about a girl named Selena Sardothian, aka Alyn Galathenius, which is amazing names, by the way. I swear these are beautiful, who is a famed assassin who was caught a little while before the story began. And then the king of the country they're in, Otterlin, comes out and tells her, hey, you can be my champion if you win this tournament, and then the first book is the tournament, and then after that it becomes a matter of her fighting against the evil king. And I don't want to go into a lot more detail than that right now because of spoilers, but the rest of this video will be very heavy, spoiler heavy, so just be aware of that if you don't want them, then goodbye. I don't think you should read Throne of Glass, let's be clear. It was originally intended to be a trilogy, but it got stretched out to be eight freaking books in total. Like it is ridiculously long and there's not much there that makes it worth reading, but it's only fair that I warn you about spoilers. So before we get into the summary of the series and talk about major changes, just a couple of minor changes that we will just keep throughout the whole thing. Number one being that Selena slash Alyn will be an assassin. She will not be a warrior because that was one of the things that made her an obnoxious Mary Sue is that even without magic at the beginning of the series, because if you haven't read it, the first couple of books there is no magic in Otterland. Like it just disappeared a few years before the story began, and no one knows why, and we'll get into that in a little bit, but even without magic Selena can take on like 20 armed men by herself and kill them all without getting a scratch on her, and she can just fight all kinds of experienced warriors and everything. And that that kind of annoyed me because she's an assassin. She's not a warrior. Like she knows how to fight. Okay, that's grand, but shouldn't she really be good at like infiltrating, you know, sneaking into places she's not supposed to go, getting access to things she's not supposed to have access to, and then taking out her target and leaving without anyone even noticing she was there. Like to me, that's what an assassin should be. Like if you're a famous assassin, you're probably doing something wrong. Like Lee Harvey Oswald is a very famous assassin. He didn't do the best job. Like he took out his target, sure, allegedly, but he also immediately got caught and killed afterwards. So he only did that one target. So I don't know, I just feel like we should make Selena more of an assassin. You know, she can be a decent fighter, but she's not like world class. And she's more good at sneaking around infiltrating, disguising herself, things like that. Number two might be my most controversial change here, but we're going to split this into two series. Because like I said, this was originally supposed to be a trilogy. And if you read it, book one feels like a prologue. And then books 234 feel like they're structured like a trilogy. And at the end of book four, they actually take out the evil king. And like that is the end of that conflict. But then they decide, oh, okay, actually, there's an evil demon king to that we got to fight. And the rest of the series is about fighting him. So I would just say, make the first four books its own series. And then the last three books will just split that off. And that'll be like a sequel series, you know, it'll be the same characters, but it'll take place later. And they're fighting a different threat and everything like nothing wrong with that, it'll make it a little easier to keep track of for people. And it'll also make it so that if you just stop it before you won't really feel like you've missed anything. Number three, this one's a little vague and I apologize, but we're just going to trim a lot of the subplots, particularly, particularly the romance subplots. And a lot of these, you don't even have to get rid of them entirely, like you can still keep them there. But they just last so ungodly long and take up so much time. Like the last book is pushing 1000 pages. It's freaking ridiculous, man. We don't need hundreds of pages describing side characters going on these long ass journeys and falling in love with each other. Like at that point, if you really want to add that, like make a spin-off story or something, a spin-off collection of short stories where you can show all these subplots that you liked and they won't distract from the main story. And I genuinely think that even if you don't get rid of these, even if you just trim it down a little bit, remove the unnecessary bits that aren't contributing that much, then I think you could make this entire series like 30% shorter in total. And believe me, when a series is this obnoxiously long, making it 30% shorter is, it's a godsend. It really is. And I know a lot of people try to say that anything that doesn't directly contribute to the main story is filler. And that's not true. That's not what I'm saying here. But in the case of throne of glass, a lot of it really is filler. And finally, number four, we're just not going to put any porn in there. Like really, I, this is a young adult series. So I just don't think that should be there to begin with. Like if you want to put that in adult fantasy, go for it. Have fun. I don't have issues with that. But I don't think it should be in stuff that's being aimed at kids and teenagers. I just don't. And on top of that, it's obnoxious that it comes in halfway through. Because if that was just there in the book from the beginning, then like I think a lot of people, myself included, would just go, eh, this isn't really my thing. And then just head off and do something else. But the fact that it takes four and a half books before we get to the hardcore sex scene is really obnoxious. Like I believe I mentioned this in my review of the original series, but I was actually listening to the last couple of books as audio books. And I was at the gym with headphones in when the first hardcore sex scene came on. And I felt so awkward. Never in my life have I felt so uncomfortable and awkward in a public setting. But I don't know. Okay. So that's all the minor things that'll just go throughout the book. So just assume that that is being said whenever we go through this. And now we'll start. So like I said, in the original series, we start off with Selena already in prison. And she is brought out by the prince whose name Dorian and a guy named Kale who is the captain of the royal guard. And they are there on behalf of the king of Otterland. And they just say, hey, if you fight in this tournament, then you on behalf of the king, then you can be the king's champion and we'll let you out of prison. And then after I believe it was 10 years of service, you can go and be free. And like I said, it's weird that she is an assassin who's so well known and so world class and the best in the world. But she's already been caught and arrested. And she's like on the verge of death. And it's mentioned that she tried to escape a few times. It's implied that her last escape attempt was more of a suicide attempt really. Like she was hoping the guards just kill her on the way out. But they don't really go into that much detail about it. So in this altered version, we're going to leave it more or less intact. Like she will still be in prison and people will still come to get her. But the thing is she'll be in hiding. Like she's not going to be there under the name Selena Sardothi. Again, this name is just beautiful. I don't know why so many young adult series have characters with ridiculous names, but it's beautiful. She's not going to be there under Selena Sardothi and she's going to be there under a different name. And specifically, she's there hiding because she's trying to get to a target who is in prison. You know, maybe she's trying to kill the warden or some criminal person she was hired to kill or just somebody, but like she's there on purpose because that makes her look a lot smarter and more competent. You know, it makes her look like more of an assassin. And then, oh, okay, the king just found out who she was and these people are here. And they also have that implied threat of, hey, if you don't come and help us out and do what we want, then you're just going to stay here. Like we're going to lock you up and you will never see the light of day again. So in the original and obviously in this version, she will agree. So Kaol and Dorian will take her to the king, they will meet with him briefly, and then the tournament will begin. And in the original book, the tournament is really just a cover, like they're actually sacrificing all of the fighters in the tournament to demons because the king is working for demons that will get into that more later. But it's really just an excuse to kill all these people and sacrifice them. And Selena is doing well in the tournament throughout the whole book. But it's also really not focused on that much. Like there's one part where it mentions that the contest was knife throwing, and it happens completely offscreen. And then in like two sentences, it just says, yeah, Selena won. In the rewritten version, Selena will instead be brought there by the king specifically to eliminate threats to his power. Like he'll still be having a tournament and he won't be possessed by a demon. Okay, he'll be working with the demons maybe, but he will be like on his own. He'll be more of an ally with them than a subordinate. But he specifically wants to eliminate threats to his power. That's why he's bringing in all of these nobles and their most powerful servants. And some of their most powerful servants are also like their family members and children. And he's specifically going to have Selena eliminate them one after another. And he's telling her like, hey, if you win, you get to be my champion. If you fail, then you'll die anyways and it won't matter. And he'll make her the same deal like a 10 years of service after this. And then you get to go free. And she will maybe be hesitant for it. But at the end of the day, she's like, well, I don't have much choice here. So she agrees to kill all these other people in the tournament. This will make the king look a little bit more competent and maybe more evil to be honest. And Selena will have a variety of options available to her. You know, she can take them in straight up fights sometimes she might again sneak around and kill them while they're sleeping, or she might drug them to make them easier to take out at other parts of the tournament. You know, you could do a lot with this again, she's an assassin. She shouldn't be somebody who is like super morally conflicted and going, Oh, am I doing the right thing when I kill these people who are also kind of evil? Like no, she should just be a cold blooded killer, or at least mostly a cold blooded killer. Like if you're going to have your main character being an assassin commit to it. Also in the original book, Selena was treated almost like a royal guest. You know, she got this super nice room and she was constantly going to the library and reading tons of books and she got nice dresses and all the best food in the world and everything. And it was a little weird. So in this version, we'll have her be treated well, but not like royalty. You know, she'll get like her own room, which should be like windowless so that she doesn't try to escape. And it'll have like a nice bed and everything, but that's about it. She'll be properly fed, properly cared for, but she's not going to get a whole bunch of luxuries because that again, distracts from the fact that this is not a super pleasant situation for her to be in. And so from this point forward, Selena falls, like she kind of seems to be falling in love with Prince Dorian in this first book. And then in the second book, they just forget all about that and have her be in love with Kale. It's weird. And then later on, they have her switch to a different guy again. And so I think that in this will keep it more or less the same. Like she tries coming on to Dorian, doesn't really work because he's just not interested. So then she immediately switches over to Kale, like in the first book still. And we will have it be so that we actually focus on her needing to feel like she's loved. You know, like she is just constantly going from relationship to relationship and possibly having a ton of sex, maybe not. Doesn't really matter. But she's just going from relationship to relationship because she needs to feel loved in some way. Because again, once we get to her backstory, she has lost a lot of loved ones and everything she has been used almost like a tool. So she's really people only want her around because she's useful, it seems. And so this will be almost like a pathological need. And this is just how she goes through life and keeps herself sane. And we can actually bring attention to it and focus on it a little bit. And then all the love dodecahedrons and shit that happened in this series will be a little bit less self indulgent, I suppose. After that, we'll leave the story pretty similarly. You know, she'll fight opponents, she'll uncover sinister plots, she'll maybe spy on the king a little bit and wonder like what's he up to, things like that. We will also leave some hints that she might be the lost princess of another kingdom that was conquered a while ago. And we'll return to that later. But like, again, spoilers at the end of the second book, it turns out she actually is a lost princess and that's why she's called Eileen Galathenius as well as Selena. But we're actually going to hint at it this time so it doesn't come out of nowhere in the second book. Like I said, without the obnoxious subplots and the obnoxious length, like 70% of my problems with this book series would just disappear completely. So yeah, like I don't have a whole lot of specifics to say here. Like obviously there's still some improvements that could probably be made. And I don't think that this would be an amazing book if that happened. But it would be much, much better. It would be at least decent. And eventually Selena will win and she will be named the champion and that'll be the end of book one. And then we go on to book two. So originally book two is basically just Selena killing a whole bunch of people on behalf of the king. She is at the very end revealed to be a princess of another kingdom who was thought to be dead and is also part Faye. She loses one of her friends and Kale is partially responsible so that's why she just kind of falls out of love with him. Admittedly that part does make sense. You know, it's not like she just gets bored with him and then moves on to another guy. Like he does something pretty bad to her and she's able to forgive him for it but she's all the romantic feeling she had her gone. And then at the very end she leaves the continent and goes to the kingdom of Wendlin across the ocean which is a Faye kingdom ruled by her great-grandmother and then it goes to the next book. And I would say we leave it pretty similar. However when we get to the twist about Selena really being Eileen Galathenius the lost princess we will have her be a bastard child instead. See like at the very end of the book originally Kale actually finds out who it is and he like rushes to the docks to try and stop her but then she has already sailed off and he's too late and he's like oh okay well I guess yeah she was Eileen Galathenius all along. We just didn't know. But rather than her just being a plain old princess we'll have it be a little bit different. So there will be Selena who is just a bastard child. Like her father was fooling around with one of the maids or something and then she was born. And also we'll have it be so that the Faye side of the family is her father's side rather than her mother's side so that she can actually keep that ancestry. And then there was Eileen Galathenius her sister her half sister who who is true born and was born at about the same time. And then as they grow up they realize like hey you two look exactly alike and Selena is treated decently enough but she is never going to inherit anything that's made very clear. And she gets along great with her sister and all that. But then one day they'll realize that Eileen the true-blooded princess does not have any of the crazy magic powers that she's supposed to have and Selena does so their father and their father for whatever reason just can't have any more kids. So they'll just say okay Eileen or Eileen and Selena are going to switch places. So now Selena is going to take the name Eileen and she'll be officially she'll be the true-blooded princess but she really won't be and then her sister will be forced to live as a bastard and then the whole shit will go down where their kingdom is conquered and the original Eileen will be killed as along with the rest of the family and so Selena the bastard will escape and she'll start going by her old name again but really she is still the lost princess sort of. So she's almost like two people at once like she's trying to keep her own real identity while also pretending to be her sister's identity. And this will probably put her under an immense amount of stress and it would make sense why she might have some mental problems going forward as opposed to just in the original book where it's yeah my family died like what what a fucking baby am I right? And at first when Kale finds out that she is the princess he'll think that she's the original one but then she'll she'll clarify later like no no I I am a bastard in fact that could be almost like a secondary twist to this like at the end of the second book we could all be like oh okay she's the lost princess and then in the third one she could come out and say like no not exactly and then explain the whole backstory so it's like a double twist almost that that would be kind of interesting I think and it would actually again it would put a twist on the oh the main character's a lost prince or princess trope you know because that is something that has been done a lot and so many times it and it just again is one more thing that makes Selena seem like an ungodly Mary Sue whereas this changing it around a little bit will be somewhat different and also she's just going to be called Selena the entire time because for the first three books in the original series she's called Selena and then after that they just decide okay she's Alen now and she just starts going by Alen it's annoying I think in this we'll just call her Selena the whole way through and maybe publicly she'll be known as Alen but privately her friends will all just still call her Selena and the narration will still call her Selena because that way it's not obnoxious and difficult to keep track of and other than that yeah book two will keep mostly the same except for the minor issues I brought up earlier and again when you trim out the subplots a lot of the problems are gone so then we go to book three and in this one it's probably the best in the series but it's still not it's still not good it's mostly just Selena training her powers becoming like the air of fire she learns to like take out entire armies with her massive walls of fire etc she finally accepts who she is and she accepts her position as the princess or well now that her family's gone she's the queen she also meets a fey named Rowan and they fall in love and they are like together the rest of the series and then meanwhile back in Otterland some others including Kayle and Dorian and them are planning a rebellion against the king and they realize that all the magic is gone because the king put up these three massive towers around the continent a couple years ago and they realize okay if we just destroy one of them then that will break everything in magical return and then the king finds out about this and Dorian the prince winds up getting this collar put on him so he's possessed by a demon and then that's the end of the book we also introduce a new character named Manon who is a witch and witches are actually their own species in this world and they're pretty interesting like Manon is not an amazing character but she's better than most of the rest and in fact her storyline is very disconnected from the others in this book it only comes in the next one it comes with the others but whatever we'll again we'll just trim down on that a little bit and other than that I think we'll leave the witch stuff mostly alone because honestly again Manon is a better character than most of the others and the witch stuff like seeing their own unique culture and everything is much better than most of the rest of the series like I'm not joking it's it's pretty good stuff so again we will just leave that more or less as is throughout the series so as for changes we will make it so that Maeve who is Selena's great grandmother who is like this ultra powerful fey who never seems to age ever even though like they are supposed to age they just do it slowly but Maeve has lived much longer than any fey should for some reason and no one knows why we'll also have it so that Maeve knows that Selena is a bastard like she might try to pretend to be the true alien at first but Maeve will know because she's just you know she's that powerful that knowledgeable and in the original story fey really should have taken over the world because they are just so much more powerful than humans and when they uh interbreed with humans then even generations later those humans still have a bunch of fey powers and fey I don't know features in them so it really seems like the fey and the demi fey I believe is what they're called should have like almost outbred all the humans at this stage and absorbed them uh into their their own race really uh in this version this alternate version will have it be that the fey have not done that because when they leave Wendland they get much weaker like they they might still have some powers like when they go to Otterland and such normally but but now like the magic there is gone completely obviously uh but they're just much weaker like there aren't a whole lot above humans like if they leave Wendland and live in Otterland then they'll start aging like humans uh their powers will be on about the same level as humans and it's only once they return back home that they will return to their full strength so in that way uh it would be pretty much impossible for Otterland or anyone else to like ever invade them or take them over but simultaneously it would be very difficult for them to go out and invade and take anybody over and it would also make it so that even if they intermarried with like other royal bloodlines and stuff they wouldn't completely take over uh those countries will also make it so that Dorian the prince has a good relationship with his father the evil king of Otterland because see originally Dorian was like oh my dad used to be kind of nice but now he's just evil and cold and everything brah but that that's just because he's possessed by a demon and that's like a really lazy cop out I think so I think rather than doing that we'll have something a little bit more um just just more interesting and cooler and more realistic where Dorian and his father will have a good relationship like he'll be a good father to his kids and maybe even a good husband to his wife we don't know like he might just be a nice guy personally but he is still an evil king who is willing to kill torture murder steal and conquer other places like he will be a nice father in private and then in public he will be perfectly willing to like execute anyone who stands against him and that is a real thing that a lot of like nasty dictators and stuff have had like some a lot of them have had good relationships with their kids and such and so it'll take Dorian years and years to actually realize this and it's only like once the story begins that he realizes you know what my dad really is evil we need to get rid of him and at the end when Dorian finally stands against him and says no I'm going to try and overthrow you the king will still like collar him it won't possess him but with a demon this time I think it'll just be something magical that allows the king to control him directly and it will break his heart to do it like he won't just be totally cold-blooded like okay I'll enslave my son forever that's fine like it'll hurt him a lot but he'll also feel like okay I have another son who can take over after me and if I let Dorian do this then everything I've tried to build is going to come crashing down and like again we're making him he'll be evil but he will be a human being like there's going to be a person underneath all the psychop- underneath all the psychopathy that's a hard word to say and then we go to book four which will be the end of the original series remember and uh originally uh Selena who from this point is just now she's just referred to as Aylin which is annoying to uh just to uh she returns to otterland to overthrow the king there's a bunch of drama like a bunch of interpersonal drama and love triangle shit there's a couple of action scenes they they come across Selena's old boss and they have to fight him which is a very long obnoxious subplot and eventually they they win they do defeat the evil king uh but at the very last minute he reveals that oh yeah I was actually possessed by a demon the whole time I was good and nice and then he just dies which is like that is a twist that is straight out of every shitty jrpg from the 90s and I despise it so much so obviously that won't be there and obviously they take down one of the magic towers which allows magic to return and then it just stays there the rest of the series like you know they and then they find out that okay the evil king was being controlled by a demon the whole time like just all that standard stuff happens in the original series and then it moves on to them fighting arrow on the evil demon lord in this alternate version we are going to remove a bunch of the interpersonal drama not get rid of it entirely like I think the stuff between kale and selena slash alin uh is actually decent because again he's upset with her for lying to him about her being a princess and she's like why the hell would I tell you you're working for the guy that murdered my entire family and would probably kill me if he ever found out what happened and in addition you got one of my friends killed so what why would I do that and then he's like okay that's fair enough but I'm still a little annoyed with you and so again they like are able to forgive each other for doing unpleasant things because they both get it but also the the love they once shared is it's just gone now all the romantic feelings are gone and they fall in love with other people so like I think that could be left pretty much as is again maybe trimmed down a bit but a lot of the other drama doesn't need to be there instead we will focus on arabin who is the crime boss that selena used to work for uh he's the guy that actually raised her after her family died and trained her up to be an assassin and he's and okay it's not implied he just straight up is a child rumor and he is kind of has this creepy possessive love of selena now that she's an adult and it's uh it's uncomfortable and unpleasant but it's supposed to be uncomfortable and unpleasant so we'll leave that as is but he's just going to be the big focus throughout most of this book see in the original book they do fight against him and they do kill him but the what they do is they just have one of their friends who is a prostitute that arbin has sex with a lot they just have her wait for him to fall asleep and stab him to kill him and it's just it's just that easy uh and they also replace his will where it's being held in a vault so that everything gets left to them instead of who it was supposed to originally be left to uh but that all happens completely off screen like it just comes up oh oh yeah by the way selena being the ungodly mary sushi is just went off and did this off screen and like i even mentioned in my original review that that could have been a really cool subplot to follow like just the heist where they have to number one make a condensing forgery and then number two break into the bank uh replace the will without getting caught and then leave and then they could kill arbin like that could have been really fun but the story was more concerned with making selena look cool and look smart than it was with telling a convincing story or not convincing a compelling story and that really is the problem with uh mary sues at the end of the day like it's more concerned with making them look good than with making everything else good so in the altered version again we will focus a lot more on arbin we'll keep his relationship with selena more or less intact so that they can still have that weird rivalry where he's creepily in love and possessive of her but we're just going to spend a lot more time with the characters doing all that stuff i just mentioned like they're going to say okay we need to kill him but that's not going to be easy and moreover we need like all the resources that he has in order to take down the king so we're going to have to replace his will in order to steal all that so they will come up with this whole long plan and i'm not going to go into a lot of detail of it here but again just use your imagination make it a heist story uh where first they have to make a convincing forgery of the will then they have to find a way to break into the vault where it's kept and replace it without getting caught and then once that's done they're like okay now we have to kill arbin and so they have to go through a whole long process to do that and i think selena should be the one to kill him like it doesn't have to be that way but again she is an assassin we're trying to make her look like one of the greatest assassins ever she should be the one to assassinate this guy and again we can go into uh parts where like oh shit the plan didn't work out and now we have to improvise and have some action bits and everything and it'll still be a lot of fun but it shouldn't be as easy as it was originally is what i'm getting at in the original there's also a scene where selena pretends to be a ballerina and she like is perfectly able to do all these dance moves and everything despite not training for months or years like real ballerinas have to do which again that annoyed me a lot uh but in the again in the original story she does it perfectly and it works out great in this will have a very similar scene but it fails like she doesn't pull it off and gets caught and they have to improvise and after that the alternate version will be very similar to the original like there's a final battle where they break the tower and restore magic and then they fight and defeat the king uh only now instead of him being possessed by a demon and him getting kind of redeemed at the end right before he dies we just have it be like hey he was just an evil dude okay maybe we could still have it so that he's working with demons but he was just a greedy power mad conqueror who was going out and doing a lot of evil stuff because he thought he just wanted to do it and he had the power to do it uh and they'll also like break Dorian's collar so that he is no longer controlled by his father and maybe we could have a moment where his the the king apologizes to his son right before he dies and maybe they could reconcile somewhat but he's not going to be totally redeemed and Dorian will just have to live with the fact that yeah my father loved me but he was a terrible person because that's just much more interesting and much more compelling both as uh character development and as story development than just having it be like oh yeah he was actually good the whole time but he was being controlled by an evil demon like again i hate that twist so much that might be my most hated part of the series and we will end the original series there okay we we will just have it be like yep uh Otterlin will restore Selena to the throne of her kingdom and Dorian's in charge now and everything isn't perfect but he's gonna try and fix things and that it will be like mostly happy ending but there will still be some sequel baiting where it's like hey uh the evil demons are out there and they might come in attack soon and like i said earlier it is kind of surprising how little it takes to fix the early books in this series like i still hate them don't get me wrong but they're more clumsy and self-indulgent than anything else you know like a lot of the events that happen are awkward but they're not the worst things ever and like the later books do get worse and part of that is because the later books get stretched out way way more than the original books already were but they're just i don't know like the original series looking back on it i i hate it but i don't hate it as much as i could have so then we go to book five which is empire of storms and honestly i think this is the worst in the series uh these the worst in the original series because it's not as long as kingdom of ash the last one but i don't know at least kingdom of ash was the end or is empire of storms i got to the end and i was like well fuck i still got more books after this uh so this one is our one the demon king attacking and taking over and destroying stuff and it's just them trying to fight back against him and largely though it is just romance bullshit it is smut again this is the first book where like actual porn starts coming in and a huge chunk of the book is just selena and her friends begging a pirate for help and at the end mave uh remember selena's great grandmother super powerful fey comes in and captures selena and her friends just immediately after she's captured they just have an army now because apparently selena sent out word to her her other friends who had armies who we had never heard about or at least you could have heard about it if you read the prequel book but you shouldn't have to read prequels to understand the fucking story you know that that's the same issue i have with stuff like kingdom hearts like it just brings up these plot ideas and rolebuilding elements completely out of nowhere and if you haven't played literally every game in the series you won't understand it like that's a similar issue here like her friends just gather an army off screen and then it'll be like okay uh yeah that's that's the end of this book we'll see you next time and it's just unsatisfying because even if the characters put in effort to do this we don't actually see any of that effort so instead this version of the book will keep it similar don't get me wrong uh but i think it should be a couple of years later like not forever later but maybe three years four years five years just something like that so these people could have uh moved on with their lives started rebuilding from all the previous carnage that had happened uh and you know selena could be getting used to being queen for a little while dorian could be used to getting king uh but they may not be totally satisfied with their current lives but they are getting used to them you know so it's years later and the book will be largely about selena traveling from place to place and gathering allies to fight against arawan and the demons you know because maybe you could start off with like oh shit a portal is now open and they're all coming through what are we gonna do like dorian gets uh overthrown very early on in the original book and he's just not king anymore i think we could do that with him we could also maybe do it with selena we'll see uh but yes this book is the altered version of the book is going to be them going around gathering allies and just trying to convince people hey we should work together like we could still have the bit with them trying to convince the pirate to help them but that won't take up nearly as much time and it'll be like we'll go there get him to help us we'll go somewhere else get him to help us go somewhere else get him to help us i i'm aware this is just the plot to dragon age origins but fuck you i like that game so yeah we're just making this dragon age origins and the end will be pretty much the same with selena being captured by mave but now at least when they're like okay well we we have an army it they at least had to work for it book six is tower of dawn and this one is actually like more of a spin off than an actual entry in the series because see at the end of book four kale got injured and lost the use of his legs so they he just goes to another continent to try and find a way to do it and tower of dawn takes place around the same time as empire of storms and it's just kale regaining use of his legs and honestly i didn't read that one and like i admitted to that in my original review so i just didn't talk about it much i was like hey maybe it's good maybe it's terrible i'm not commenting on it much uh i assume it has a lot of the same issues as the other books where it's just like ungodly stretched out when it doesn't need to be so we'll just apply all those issues here are all those same solutions here and other than that i'm just not going to talk about it because i don't think it'd be fair for me to talk about something i haven't read then finally we reach book seven kingdom of ash and this one is largely the same as book five where yeah there's some battle sequences there's some action stuff and it's largely romance bullshit it's like there's just not that much to say like that is the biggest problem with this is that it is just so ungodly long and stretched out but it feels like there's very little happening there so we will leave it largely intact we will still have selena escaping from captivity with mave although it's just going to be selena escaping herself we're not going to spend a whole lot of time with her friends also planning on how they're going to break her out because that was an annoying part like we had a really long section of her friends planning how they're going to break her out and preparing for that and then we had a really long section with selena breaking herself out and then she breaks herself out and so all the stuff with her friends wound up being pointless like we'll we'll just cut that out uh we'll again cut out the porn uh and it is revealed that her great-grandmother mave is not actually a fay she's actually a demon and part of the reason why arawan is invading with his army is to take her and drag her back to their demon realm and she doesn't want that and i actually liked that twist i think it's a pretty good one although i think we should just hint at it a bit more throughout the rest of the series like hint at like hey something's up with uh mave like she's not weakened when she leaves wendlin like she should be what's up with that you know things like that i also think that selena should be hinted at to not quite be fay either like there'll be something wrong with her and something wrong with her powers that people just aren't sure about and it's because she's actually part demon rather than part fay so just again that that would be a little bit more interesting a little bit cooler and other than that like the main change that i would bring to this one is that uh at the end of this book selena kind of for whatever reason she just brings democracy to her kingdom and like i'm not saying that's a problem but it completely comes out of nowhere like she says yeah i'm gonna be queen but i'm also gonna have people from different areas elect representatives to come to me and tell me about their problems so that i can help fix them better and be a better leader and like again i do think that's genuinely a good thing to to put in here like it'd be a good change for the people living there and everything it's just odd because it comes again completely out of nowhere so i think throughout the whole series we could have selena mention it and bring it up earlier because again she is not a true princess she is a bastard she lived as a commoner for however many years before being forced to switch with her sister and then after her family was killed she was forced to live as a commoner again so she understands like how the system screws people over and so this series rather than just being okay we put a good person on the throne and then everything's better like there is actually some change being made to try and help make things better like i think that would work it just needs to be brought up a little bit earlier and hinted at you know before when doing this rewrite stuff i've had to gloss over the problems with books because they're just too bad or too confusing and there just like isn't much of a way that i could make it work without going in and completely rewriting everything which isn't really the point of this exercise and here i also had to gloss over a lot of changes and be kind of vague but it's not because it's too bad or too confusing to fix it's because it's just dull and repetitive you know like i don't want to say the exact same things over and over and over again so that's why i just said like and trim out some of the subplots and everything like again the final book kingdom of ash is around a thousand pages originally i think it could probably be 600 maybe 700 and tell basically the same story so i don't know it just like i said it gave me a little bit more of an appreciation for the series although i still hate it let's be clear i do not like thrown of glass trying to go through all that crap was miserable for a variety of reasons but i'm like the events for the most part are not awful they're just awkward and stretched out and yeah that's about it like that's how i would rewrite thrown of glass to make it decent you know it would be a decent young adult fantasy series i don't know if it would be as successful as it is now maybe it'd be more maybe it'd be less maybe other ya fantasy would not be trying to copy as much and they'd be doing other stuff i don't know that's young adult stuff is very very susceptible to trends but whatever the case is this would be a much better version of the story so are there any changes that you would make that i didn't bring up here or any different changes that you would make are there anything is there anything i brought up here that you think would actually make the story worse i i don't know just let me know down in the comments below because i'm just i'm just curious what other people have to think and if you hate thrown of glass as much as i do or less and also go to the link in the pinned comment so that you can sign up for email list and get access to this super cool limited edition plushie again limited edition if you want your own little mini version of james in your room then uh you're you're gonna have to sign up for it anyways that's all uh subscribe like the video comment on it all all that stuff you're supposed to do and uh follow me on social media stuff goodbye hello and aloha to everyone who watched this far i appreciate you you see all these names here yeah these are the names of my patrons they're the people that 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