 Hello everybody! Today I am here to talk about the first book of swords, which is the first entry in the Books of Swords series, which is Not not a great name. Yeah, like it's a trilogy. It's just the first book of swords the second book of swords and the third book of swords That's those are really lazy names. I gotta be honest like we find out pretty early on That the gods are playing some sort of great game with all the swords Like that's why they were created because they just wanted to watch what would happen if they threw them out into the world So why not just call the series the great game of the gods or something? Yeah, that's just that's better. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long The series is about these 12 swords which are created in the prologue by the god vulcan and some human helpers that he gets and they are just Magical and extraordinarily powerful and the gods like throw them out into the world to see what would happen And people, you know, again are fighting over them because they're very useful very powerful There's like warlords and stuff that want to get their hands on them to continue Warlording and be better at warlording But then also it turns out that the swords can kill the gods so the gods start saying, okay Let's go get those things back now and then just mayhem ensues and the story unfolds from there Now that's a really good setup for an epic fantasy story And normally when I review series, I will read the whole series and then come back and review it all at once partially because I feel like just having the whole series Together and in my head gives me a better perspective on the whole thing and partially because If I just review them one at a time then the views on those videos drop precipitously So I figure might as well just do the whole thing all at once and The problem though, I only read the first book of swords, you know I didn't read the sequels and the main reason for that being that The first book is not a first entry in an epic fantasy series It is the first half of the first entry in an epic fantasy series Or it feels like the first half of the first entry in an epic fantasy series I mean at first the book is progressing normally, you know Like the normal way you would expect an epic fantasy story to go It's not super quick-paced, but you know, it's it's building up to stuff We are meeting new characters. We are finding out about this world all that sort of thing But then once you get to like the last third of the story There is so much that's happening that is either unexplained or is happening off-screen that I felt like I I had skipped over something by mistake and I was like, well wait what's going on here Like that that character is back and like just oh, okay That that other sword that we haven't heard about is suddenly introduced into things like and it's treated like it's always been there Did I miss something like no, it's just not very well written like a bunch of interesting stuff happens completely off-screen And we are just supposed to accept that it happens and a bunch of stuff comes up Which is not super well explained and granted this is the first book in a series But it's stuff that should still be explained by this stage And that's a shame because I think the beginning of this book is pretty good You know, like we have the prologue, which is where Vulcan Creates the swords along with some human helpers and one of the helpers is a blacksmith named Jorg and Vulcan cuts off his arm and in exchange for that he Gives him one of the swords and as far as he knows it's just a regular sword It's a very nice one, but he doesn't understand it has magical powers So it just stays up on the wall in his house in his house And he never uses it for anything and then 13 years later his son mark Is introduced and he's just a regular village boy Who gets into trouble and he winds up getting thrust into adventure along with the sword And from there most of the book is just focused on mark's journey And mark's journey is pretty good for a while. You know, again, he he runs into trouble He has to flee the only home he's ever known. He fights dragons He runs into evil warlords who want the sword just Things like that things you would expect from an epic fantasy story But then like the last half to third of the story, they just throw in a whole bunch of stuff Again without any explanation without any fanfare like just suddenly it's there So even the stuff that is kind of cool or interesting. It's impossible to really Get hyped by or get into how cool or interesting it is because they throw in a bunch of new swords Even though like in the first chunk of the book we're only introduced to two And each of those seems like a really big deal like they just throw in A whole bunch more without again any fanfare or explanation. They're just they're just there now And then we get new evil armies like we've already been fighting one evil army But it's the army of this evil duke that's been chasing after mark for a while And I guess the author just thought okay. No, that's that's not enough We need a second evil army. So they just throw one in Kind of again out of nowhere. It's just there's an evil queen as well We're introduced to godlike beings that live out in the swamp like just a whole bunch of stuff suddenly thrown in And I really wouldn't even mind that if time was taken to Explain these and develop them and build up to them But they're just throwing in there that Seemingly out of nowhere and it's not like this book didn't have time to do that It's a pretty short book or not super short but it relatively short book especially for fantasy like you could make it probably twice as long and People would still read it and then we have a big climax and after the climax a bunch of the characters just sort of Run off and they don't have any plan They don't seem to have any clear indication of what's going to happen next or what they're doing. They're just They're just going off now somewhere And so the end result is that this doesn't feel like the first entry in a series It feels like the author just got bored and didn't want to write anymore So he just said okay throw in all that crap so I can be done with it And then like I don't know the hero's run off and go somewhere else and just that that's what it feels like It feels like he got bored and just didn't care anymore Now I know that the books of swords are connected to another series written by the same author called empire of the east And I believe that takes place in the same world And I also know that the books of swords have a bunch of spin-offs like side short stories and novellas and stuff that fill in some of the gaps and stuff But I don't know if those will fill in like the gaps in this story like explain why oh, okay Here's where this character was when he was off screen doing cool stuff and now now he's back Like I don't know if that's there and if I have to read all of these spin-offs and prequels and whatever In order to understand and fill in all the gaps and know what information is I need to know in order to read this series. Then that's another problem like a bit of advice If information is important to your audience to make them understand the story Put that information somewhere in the story Otherwise your audience won't understand it It's kind of odd that I have to explain this to somebody but apparently I do Like I shouldn't have to ask around and consult a flowchart in order to know what to read and in what order You know, like when I pick up a fantasy series or any book series really I want to be able to read it One two three four, you know in order just just that's all and if you want to do something weird or experimental with it Then that that's fine. I have nothing against that Uh, and if you want to like Have spin-offs and go into expanded universes and stuff again, that's fine I have nothing against that But each of those individual series if you're doing expanded universe need to stand alone Otherwise, they're just not going to be very good. Like that was my problem with the final Mistborn book Like it just tied way too much into the wider Cosmere and as a result it didn't work as well And if I truly do need to read like 12 short stories in novellas just to understand what's going on in the books of swords Then this is not an epic fantasy series. This is just a literary equivalent to final fantasy 15 That's not a compliment like if If you don't understand that joke just ask someone in the comments will explain it because Trying to understand the story of final fantasy 15 is an undertaking in and of itself But that's just if I have to go outside of the main series in order to understand All of the information Or excuse me in order to gather all the information needed to understand the story and what's going on Like if the information just isn't there and the author didn't write it Then that's just straight up bad writing The first entry in a series is always supposed to like get you hyped and make you want more and make you Want to know like okay, what's going to happen next where where Is the journey going to lead these characters that I've grown attached to and everything and While the first book of swords is not the worst thing I've ever read The fact that it just felt so unfinished and so rushed and like the author just didn't care about it by the end And at first I thought that like maybe the author died partway through and this was like the unfinished version that he published But no he he lived for a long time after finishing this series Like I think the last book was published in the 90s and the author didn't die till 2007 so like he he had time to work on this he just this is what he wanted to put out and I mean if that's the case then I just have zero interest in the second and third books in this series Like maybe they get better, but I just really don't care because I have so much other stuff That I want to read and I don't feel like taking time away from that in order to spend more time reading this series Because this series feels like it doesn't care. So why should I care? However, despite the overwhelmingly negative tone of this review so far I really don't think that The first book of swords is horrible. Like there is some good stuff and in the interest of fairness I want to talk about that like um, I did like mark who is the protagonist in this story like he's He's not amazing and like again, it is an epic fantasy story. So they they do cut to other characters quite a bit. So he just feels like Slightly more prominence than everybody else. But you know, he he is the protagonist and he felt like a real kid You know, he's 13 years old when all this goes down He loses his family. He loses the only home he's ever known and he has to run off and take part in this horrifying adventure and try and keep this sword away from evil warlords and stuff and so it's just You know, he reacts like a real kid would to that, you know He he is traumatized and he is hurting emotionally, but he doesn't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on that and also Kids in all sorts of fiction are often just very stupid and annoying Like they're constantly wandering off doing dumb shit to get themselves and others into trouble And mark doesn't do that. He feels like a more realistic kid because again, he's he's 13 He's old enough to have some awareness of what's going on around him Even if he is naive and even if he doesn't have a lot of experience He's not stupid enough to like go trusting everybody willy-nilly or anything like that But at the same time, he doesn't just feel like a adult in a small body where he has all the exact Thinking and experience of an adult which I have read books That are like that before which is just over correcting from the annoying kid archetype And you know mark avoids both those pitfalls, which is good The world that this takes place in is pretty clichéd But it also feels like the author really thought stuff out and understood how all the different pieces would connect together And there are a couple of interesting bits like this is vaguely medieval european inspired world, which is something that Admittedly wasn't as overdone in the 80s back when this book first came out But you know by now we've just seen that so much in fantasy that people typically Desire something a little different or a little more And it's also like our world after an apocalypse, but again number one that wasn't as Prominence back then it wasn't as overdone back then and number two. It's not a big twist at the end of the story It's just something that the characters know about and they make it clear from early on that Yeah, there was an old civilization technologically advanced and then the world got destroyed like it happens And there's a couple of interesting bits in there too like the swords themselves are kind of neat And apparently demons are like the results of nuclear bombs going off like I don't know exactly how that worked, but apparently when nuclear bombs went off at some point they All the power and radiation just coalesced into evil spirits and like that's That's demons that that's how demons came around. You know, I haven't seen anything quite like that So that was that was neat The 12 swords are all kind of cool and they all have very distinct unique powers So I like seeing those and we only see I think five or six in this first book But I mean admittedly I am kind of curious about what the rest of the series has in store for these odd Swords and what sort of powers they have and what sort of unique uses heroes can find for these powers But as it stands we got like one that makes people really lucky one that makes it really easy for them to hide one that Heals people instead of hurting them. So like if you have a wound just stab somebody with it and it'll heal their wounds Like, you know, it's it's kind of interesting. There's some neat stuff And I do want to say that the final battle at the climax is pretty good You know, it's like a big siege at a castle Like we've seen stuff similar to that a hundred times in epic fantasy, but it's still good. It's still enjoyable I still liked it and Yeah, I don't have a lot else to say like I I don't hate this book But I am very annoyed by it and I am very annoyed That it just felt like the author didn't care by the end, you know, if they if this had gone on like another 20% longer and he had Uh dedicated time to like really fleshing out and explaining all the new stuff that he just throws in at the end Then maybe it would have been much better and maybe I would be here reading the second book of Swords and after a couple weeks, I'd come back and tell you the whole series was amazing. You should go check it out But as it stands I just all all my interest in it was lost by the end. So As for do I recommend it? Um, if you do like fantasy, then I guess you could check it out and see if the problems bother you as much as they did me But I would check out a lot of other different fantasy series before I Would recommend this one like I hell I'd recommend light bringer before I recommend this and that one just completely falls apart by the end But that's about all See you later Please subscribe like the video follow me on social media and stuff to get updates and that that's all see you later. Goodbye Wow, you you're still watching. I I mean, I guess I appreciate it, but I'm not sure why I mean at this point all that we have left is All these names here. These are my patrons And including my ten dollar and up patrons. 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