 Alright, I did it. I finally finished Throne of Glass. I got through the last book, Kingdom of Ash, and honestly, it's still really bad and really boring, but it's not even bad in a fun way. It's just bad in a, yeah, this is done terribly way. Let's get started. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So quick reminder, like I said in the last video, I left off at book 5 and apparently book 6, Tower of Dawn, is not really necessary to continue the series. There are a couple of plot points in there that I didn't know about and I didn't totally understand this book, and so I'm not going to criticize those because it wouldn't really be fair. Like, there was an explanation given at some point. I just didn't read it. But for the most part, all you really need to know about it is that Kale went off to a different continent to get his legs fixed because at the end of Queen of Shadows, he was made paraplegic. And then while he was there, apparently he left his girlfriend and started seeing another girl and they're married now and she kind of sort of healed his legs. Cool. That's really all you need to know. So Kingdom of Ash starts with Alen still under Maeve's control. She's trapped in an iron coffin. She's getting tortured a whole bunch and I mean, that's kind of all that happens. Like, it's just, there's this dude that works for Maeve who really enjoys causing pain. He's total sadist. And he's like, ha ha ha, you're hurting now and then they heal her and her fey blood makes her heal so she doesn't die. And they're just trying to get Alen to tell Maeve where the two word keys are that she has and also swear a blood oath to her so that she'll control her forever. It's, you know, standard stuff and the whole time it's like, I'll admit that the torture is pretty hardcore because I've said that before and I'll keep saying it. Like this series does get pretty hardcore with the violence at times so I'll give it credit for that at least. But Alen just doesn't seem all that affected by it, at least not at first. And so it doesn't seem that bad. You know, it doesn't seem like she's going through all of this horrible pain and anguish and despair, feeling like she'll never get out of here, but she, there's just something inside her that won't break. Like, it doesn't feel like that. It just feels like, ah, this hurts, but whatever, I'll shrug it off. And then at some point when Maeve takes her out of the coffin and says, submit to me, wah-ha-ha, I'm evil. Alen, by the way, I did do this one as an audiobook as well so with the bad prose and everything, I don't have like direct quotes that I can read for you because it'd be pretty much impossible for me to go back and find them. So I'm going to be paraphrasing a little bit but, you know, it still gets pretty bad because there are points where I really remember it. But anyways, when Maeve pulls her out and says, ha-ha, submit to me, Alen makes a quote obscene gesture as foul as any she's made before. And I'm just like, Sarah, Miss Moss, this book has plenty of swearing in it, okay? They say fuck a couple of times. They say shit. They say twat. Like, oh, there's horrible violence. There's graphic, graphic sex in here. Like, just say she flipped her off. You're not doing anything. Like, if this was really a kid's book or more of an old school YA book where they didn't really think they could get away with much, like say the last couple of Harry Potter books, I could understand them just saying obscene gesture and in your head you're like, oh yeah, I know what they're saying. But in this, this is trying to be darker and more adult. Like, just say she flipped her off. Jesus Christ. So then it goes back to the other continents where, like, the forces of Terrison and Aedion and all of Alen's friends are fighting against Erewan and the demons, as well as, you know, some of their allies that they have, because, you know, they had like the assassins and all the people that were not brought up before, but apparently Alen asked them for help. And I will say, there were people in the comments of the last ones mentioning that, like, people like Ansel, the queen that came out of nowhere and the silence assassins that came out of nowhere and such like that. They were apparently mentioned in the prequel book, but the thing is about that you shouldn't have to read the prequels in order for things to not feel like they came out of nowhere. Okay, because they did come out of nowhere in the core series, and so that doesn't really help anything. You know, just whatever. I don't think there are too many people that disagreed with me on that, but I did want to put that out there. But anyways, all of Alen's friends are back on the continents. They're fighting the demons, they're fighting Erewan, and there's a bunch of battles actually. And, you know, I had this later in my notes, but I'm just going to say it now. None of the battles are good because it's difficult to tell what the consequences are for losing. Now, obviously on the small scale, the battles are pretty bad too. Like, we don't understand what's going on. It's just soldiers are in formation. Demons are fighting them. They're losing, and heroes rush in to try and help. And usually they wind up, like, losing the battle at the end, and they're like, okay, we gotta retreat. But the thing is, strategically I don't understand what's going on with these battles. Like, why is it a bad thing that they're losing? Are they losing control of this road that they need? Are they losing control of cities that they need? Are they losing control of important resources? Like, all it's saying is that they're being pushed back. And their army doesn't even seem to be taking all that much damage, really. So what this turns into is just two mobs smashing into each other, and apparently not even hurting each other all that much. Or rather, the demons are taking really heavy losses, but somehow they're able to recover those or something? I don't know. I'll get into that later. But, you know, there's just a bunch of battles throughout this book, and it starts off with one and the other side. They're not good. And later it just introduces these characters, and it's like one of them asks a question, and then it has, like, long paragraphs explaining them and their backstory. And then the answer. So by the time we got to the answer, I had to stop and remember for a sec. Like, wait, what? Oh, right, right, right. So, you know, just more bad pros, whatever. And then a messenger comes in and he gives them a message about how, hey, if you win the battle, do this. And they're like, wow, how'd you deliver this message so fast? The news couldn't get here, and he's like, oh, I have two messages. One for if you win and one for if you lose. And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense, because if you lose, you can lose in a bunch of different ways. And if you win, you can win in a bunch of different ways. And if you don't know precisely how they won or lost, how are you supposed to give them proper orders? That doesn't make any sense. Like, okay, I get that this isn't a military-focused story. And I'm willing to bet that Sarah J. Moss is not particularly well-read in areas like military history or military theory or anything like that. And I wouldn't expect this book to be really in-depth about that sort of thing. But for fuck's sake, could you at least try? Could you at least try? So Dorian and Manon are kind of off doing their own thing while this is happening, you know, they're flying around, finding shit. Yeah, okay, cool. And anyways, they find a giant talking spider who I don't think I mentioned it, but in part one in the third book, I believe, Manon did talk to one of them. So, you know, those exist. They didn't come out of nowhere. But, you know, they talk to one and she's like, oh, I'll guide you to where the Crockins are. And the Crockins being this other witch clan, which Manon found out that she was a part of and they've been hunting down and yeah, all that stuff. So they get there and Manon is like, hey, I'm your queen. If you join with us, we can destroy the demons and all that. And you guys can go back to your kingdom and we can live and be happy. And they're like, I don't know. I don't think we trust you. Which is, you know, fair, honestly, considering that she was participating in a genocide against them. But also, this whole book is basically just people arguing. This whole series is just people arguing and it's, God, it's so boring. Like, I honestly, I wish there was more in this last book that was like just so crazy over the top bad that I could laugh at it. But there's not even much of that. It's just boring. So Lissandra, who remember is pretending to be Eileen, has her identity discovered, not by the majority of the army, but by a couple of people. And they're like, oh, we're mad at you now. Anyways, Kayle and his girlfriend go to meet his dad and they're like, hey dad, you should help out the army. You know, the one that's going to defeat the demons that are trying to destroy the entire world. And his dad's like, okay, but I'm gonna be a dick about it. And the thing is that as they're walking around his castle, they specifically describe that it's in disrepair and like it's falling apart, basically. And Kayle says, yeah, my dad says that if it hasn't collapsed, then you shouldn't spend the money to fix it. So basically it's saying that they have the money to fix it, but he chooses not to. And I'm just thinking, Kayle, your dad is supposed to be a warrior. He's supposed to be an amazing battlefield commander and stuff. You'd think he would understand the importance of defensive fortifications. Like if your shit's in disrepair, then your enemies can destroy it. Like again, I'm not expecting Sarah J. Moss to have a fucking master's degree in military science or anything, but could you at least try? And yeah, anyways, his wife Irene is also pregnant and Kayle doesn't know about it, but his dad figures it out just from the way she's carrying herself and like doesn't like she's sick and all that, whatever. Like his dad figures it out and he's like, okay, I'm not gonna tell him, but you know, whatever. So then we come back to Alen and Maeve. And Maeve does that thing where she takes her out of the coffin and she tells her like, I'm gonna tell you a story. And then she's like, oh, there once was a girl who was doing this in this land. And then she kind of, and it's like very obvious that she's talking about herself. And honestly, like just once I would like for a villain to give their backstory like that, but they just, they're honest about it. You know, they just say, hey, I did this, I did that rather than pretending it's a story about another person because it's just such a cliche at this point. But that said, I actually really like Maeve's backstory. Because what it is, is apparently she is actually a demon from another world and she got married to another demon and was just reading through library and stuff and found out, oh, hey, you can go to other worlds. And so, excuse me, she did and she came to this world and she is basically a spirit. So she like created a body for herself, which is her fey form, fey form. Even in that body, like other demons couldn't recognize her and she went into the minds of the two fey queens who are dead now, but they were around before and convinced them that, oh, yeah, there were always three of us. So she became their ruler. And then the three demon kings that came over from the world were into this one and almost destroyed everything. They were looking for her, including her husband. And so Arawan, the one who's still here, is her brother-in-law. And honestly, I just like this backstory, you know? It's actually a good twist. I mean that. Like, I didn't see it coming. It makes total logical sense. And it forces you to look at Maeve's character from a different perspective. So now you know, like, okay, so she is a power hungry bitch, but she also, like, is in this world because the other one sucks and she never wants to get dragged back there. Like, that, you know what, that makes sense. And even if it's not told all that great or in the best place, I will say, yeah, that's good. So Aylin manages to escape, but she also still has an iron mask and gauntlets locked onto her. And the thing is that while all of this is going on, some of her friends are planning to help break her out and she just kind of winds up escaping on her own because they leave her, like, very sparsely guarded for a little bit and then she's able to break out and run away. And the thing is, like, that's also a cliche at this point. Like, characters are trying to break somebody out, but they're already breaking out on their own and then they meet up and like, all that, whatever. That's also a cliche, but like, it's not a huge deal. The problem is that you could have had some fun with this. Like, you could have had a very intelligent escape plan or something and you didn't. You know, you could have had an intelligent escape plan with her friends breaking her out. You could have had an intelligent escape plan with her managing to break out on her own, but it was just, oh, they left me weak, or they left me weakly guarded for a minute, whatever. They left me weak and guarded for a minute and I broke out. Like, that just makes the villains look like dumbasses rather than making the heroes look cool or smart. There's just so many things like that in these books where, like, you could have done something with it, but they failed completely and it also makes all the stuff with her friends trying to break her out mostly pointless because I know I didn't mention it, but they spend quite some time on that and it's really annoying that it's all for nothing. Also, Aylin comes across as kind of whiny when she meets up with her friends. She's like begging them, take off the mask, take it off, take it off, which conflicts with her, like, not breaking before. Like, before she was just thinking, haha, I am strong. I will never do what they say and now she just transitions to, like, no, no, this broken, like, I feel like it would have been easier to understand if they had actually had a transition there, but whatever. So Dorian somehow manages to summon the spirit of Caltain, like the dead spirit of Caltain, and he's like, hey, where's the word key? And she tells him it's with Erawan somewhere at Morath, and Dorian is basically saying, okay, I gotta go get that. So then there's more battles where they're fighting the demon army and also some witches thrown in there, and I really only bring this up because at one point they mentioned that weavers are swinging their tails around and they describe it as a phalanx of poison, and I was like, that's not what a fucking phalanx is, guys. This is a phalanx. Look at this. That's what a phalanx is. Just use words properly. And Lissandra, in her form where she's still pretending to be Aylin, manages to grab a sword and fights a little bit and almost gets killed and kind of inspires the troops, which is an all right moment, because I'm like, I do like Lissandra. I really do as a character. There's not all that much to her, but she's pretty badass when she's a shifter, and even when she's not a shifter, she can still do neat stuff. And then her and Aideen argue some more, and then they apologize, etc. I'm sorry if this sounds confusing, then I'm going back and forth, but this is kind of how the book does it, and it's... Well, it's not that great, but whatever. So Dorian is talking to Menon, and he's like, hey, I should go get the word key, and she's like, that's suicide. And apparently he's also a shifter now, which is... Okay, this is the problem with not explaining very much about how your magic system works, because up until this point, it seemed like being a shifter was one, super rare, and two, something you had to be born with. And Dorian was like, you know, he's a very powerful magic user. He can do a lot of crazy shit, don't get me wrong, but shifting was not on the table before this. It was never mentioned that, like, oh, you can just learn to be a shifter if you're powerful enough. If they had just said even a single line of dialogue like that before, this would be fine, but... Like, yeah, he's a shifter now, and he's trying to learn how to do it. He's teaching himself how to shift, and it takes a while, actually, which is kind of weird, because Lissandra was able to do it automatically. And I know she said that she practiced when she was a kid, but she also hadn't been able to do it for 10 years, and she just immediately went back into... All right. So, yeah, Menon manages to convince the Krokans that, like, hey, you should work with me, as well as a couple of iron teeth, which is the clan she's from, remember, who defect, and they're like, yeah, we can't work with the demons. They're insane, all that. And then the Matrons attack her, including her grandmother, and she fights them and does not kill her grandma and just makes her run away in shame. And at first I was confused, like, well, why didn't she kill her? She kind of hates her at this point, and it would be better for their war effort. And a little bit later, they explain that, you know, it's better to let her go because her being humiliated kind of undercuts her as a leader, and so a lot of iron teeth are probably going to, like, defect now or just fight amongst themselves, whereas if I had killed her, it would have united them against us. And, you know what? Sure, that makes sense. I'm not disputing that, really. I think that's actually a good explanation. I just wish I had been given at the time, so I wasn't spending however long. It was a couple of chapters, I think, before we actually got the explanation, and I was spending a little while just going, well, that's stupid. Why didn't you just kill her? So they're, you know, fighting more battles, and then the demons go off and they break this dam, which was not really mentioned before. Nothing is mentioned before it's necessary in these books. And then they're going to break the dam and flood this whole valley area, and it's going to, like, kill all the allied armies and, oh, that's so terrible, you know, all that. And Lorcan is, like, caught up near the dam while the others are running away, and he's, like, trying to hold it back, and Elid is, like, no. And so she runs off to save him, and she manages to do it, because, obviously, there's no major characters that are going to die in these books, or no major good guy characters, I should say. And, like, you know, it could have been an all-right moment, but it's not. Anyways, Elin comes back, and her and Rowan manage to stop the majority of the water from hitting, because she has, like, so much fire in her that she'd been storing up for a couple of months at this point, and Lorcan has, like, you know, wind and ice, and just, yeah, no one really important eyes. And I'd like to take just a quick moment to talk about this series and its emphasis on suicide, specifically its emphasis on painting suicide as some sort of selfless and heroic act. Because, like, okay, I've talked about this a little before. That bothers me. All right, like, in this we have Elin, who is, like, she has to sacrifice herself in order to seal the gates where the demons came through and keep them from coming into the world, which is, you know, that's not too bad on its own. And in fact, Elin does mention at a couple of points, like, yeah, I don't really want to do this, but I kind of have to. And, okay, that's not a huge deal. But then we have stuff like Elid going off to save Lorcan, and she's like, even if I die, at least I'll die with him. And she's like, well, even if I die, at least he'll be safe, or just things like that. And then there's bits where characters say, like, if you die, I'm going to kill myself. Like, they're not saying it in that many words. They basically say, I'm going to throw myself into battle until I die, which is, you know, not a healthy way to have a relationship at all. And then Dorian, who, I'll talk a little bit more about this in a minute, but basically he destroys a bunch of shit at Morath, and as he's doing that, he's like, I'm probably going to die, but it's okay. I'm destroying all this stuff. I don't really want to live anymore. Like, it's just very uncomfortable. There's like a weird emphasis on it, and I just don't like that at all. So Dorian manages to go to Morath, and he, you know, sneaks around there, doesn't get caught, and as he's watching, he finds Maeve has gone there, and apparently her old kingdom is kind of rebelled against her. Like, they don't want her in charge anymore, which is fine, you know? I kind of wish they had shown it. And honestly, I'm surprised that it didn't happen sooner, because Maeve is, by all accounts, just an awful leader, but whatever, you know, she's there, and she offers up some of the Talking Spiders as hosts for other volg princesses, which are like, you know, just powerful demons that Aeroan can bring into this world, and he's like, okay, cool. And as Dorian is seeing this, Maeve like notices him, and they kind of wind up making an alliance, because Maeve is like, hey, I don't really like Aeroan either. I think if we can get rid of him, I'd certainly be happy, which, again, makes sense, given her backstory and her personality and all that. And so they just agree to work together a little bit. And as Dorian is watching them, he notices Aeroan, and he's in a new body now. He's in a body that looks like a woman, and they specifically say she's not traditionally attractive, but then they say, with her jet black hair, pale skin, and ruby red lips, she's stunning. And I'm just thinking, so what you're saying is that she's not traditionally attractive, but she's attractive in a traditional way. So Dorian manages to find the word he takes it. He betrays Maeve. He destroys her ability to move through portals between worlds because, you know, she had that, and using the word he does that, you know, and that, like, makes sense, and then he kind of destroys Morath, and that's the bit I was talking about before, where he's like, oh, I think I'm going to die, and he manages to survive kind of by accident, really. But he, you know, destroys Morath, and it's kind of cool, but it's also repetitive, because, you know, we've already seen people destroy Morath, destroy Morath, and so just... So Aelen and Elid and them come across Elid's evil uncle, who was working with the King of Outerland, and they just lock him in a tower with no food or anything, and there's no one there to take care of him, so it's basically saying, yeah, he's going to starve to death in a couple of days, and that's, again, kind of hardcore. Kind of cool. So by this point, Aelen has not met up with the whole army yet, and a large chunk of it has fallen back to Orinth, which is the capital of Tarrasyn, and they're under siege, and that pirate dude that they spent, like, 7,500 goddamn pages trying to get on their side, returns with some help, and then they argue about Aelen forging the lock, and Rowan is... Okay, apparently Dorian might also be able to do it, which is not really explained, and Rowan specifically says that, like, hey, you should just let Dorian do it, he wants to do it, like, I guess kind of makes sense, because, you know, he's in love with Aelen and not with Dorian, but also makes him look like a massive twat. Yeah, and then he specifically says to Aelen, you can't make our decisions for us, but at the same time, he's telling her that she can't sacrifice herself to make the lock, and that she has to let someone else do it, so he's kind of trying to make her decisions for her, and that should speak for itself. I don't know why I was slapping my neck there, but, you know, that should tell you how stupid this is. So, before they go to Orinth to save everybody, they decide, you know what, we should just make the lock now, prevent any reinforcements from ever coming through, yada, yada, yada, and okay, that makes sense strategically, that's a good idea. And then so, her and Dorian kind of work together to make the lock, because they have the three words she's now, remember. And so, okay, okay, so basically they make the lock and they can kind of sense or see all the gods that are in this world, which remember, gods are just beings from another world who are kind of on a higher plane that humans can't really see, whatever, and Mala is the goddess, I should say, that gave Aelin all of her powers, or the majority of her powers. And so basically using all the word keys and working together, they kind of just shut Mala and the other gods, they shove them into their world, and for that reason, then they shut the door and Aelin doesn't die. Yeah, because Mala was the source of her powers, but Mala also wanted to sacrifice her or something. She doesn't die and she also becomes immortal. Alright, so basically the one thing that this character would have had to sacrifice in order to save the day, she didn't wind up having to sacrifice. It just came, at the 11th hour she has discovered, oh, I actually have all these cool powers that I can use to get rid of the gods and then they can't kill me. And I mean, she loses most of her power after this, not all of it, but her army destroying fire was a gift from Mala, so she can't do that anymore, but nonetheless, that is just, do I even need to explain that one? So we go back to Orinth and there's a bunch of battles there with the witches helping and demons and all that, and I just gotta say, and I promise this will be the last time I go into the military aspect of this, but how are the demons winning? And I assume it's mostly just numbers, because when we see the demons and the main characters fight them, they don't really have any trouble against them, even large numbers of them. And remember, even back in the second book, before Aelyn had her magic or anything, she could fight like 20 dudes without much issue, so I get that the main characters are super big badasses, but because of that, we don't know where normal humans stand in relation to the demons. Like, can a normal human fight like five demons and come out on top? I couldn't tell ya. I would assume not because they're trying to make them super tough and everything, but again, when you have the main characters able to do all this damage to them without even really breaking a sweat, I find myself wondering, well, how did they pose a threat at all? And again, it's numbers is my first thought, but they don't really go into detail about that, and if it is numbers somehow, I don't know how they would be replenishing those numbers, so the Wheel of Time had kind of a similar problem, because the main force that the bad guys used were Trollics, and Trollics are, you know, pretty big and tough, and they could kill humans without too much trouble, but they're also really dumb and clumsy, so if you are a skilled warrior, then you can take them out without too much trouble. And over the course of the series, most of the main characters become that, but even more so, they become, or some of them do, become very powerful channelers, which, if you don't know, that's basically just magic, and so they can take out like entire armies at once, but they manage to mitigate this by, one, just making Trollic armies unfathomably massive, like just millions and millions of them, and they'll desert Russia, and two, they also have other types of shadow spawn, like Drachar and Merdral and stuff, and those ones do pose a much bigger threat, because they're much more powerful, and three, like the leaders of the shadow spawn, like the Forsaken and the Dreadlords, those guys are also super powerful. Those are on par with the most powerful magic users on the good guy's side, so overall, I get how the armies could pose a big threat to the good guys, whereas in this, we have like Erowan and Maeve at the top who are a threat, but they don't really do anything until the end, and all the rest of the guys, we don't really know what's going on with them. So Aelin arrives and starts fighting with Maeve, well, I say fighting mostly, they're talking, they seriously, like, I got to this point and I stopped for like a day, and then I went back to it the next day and I saw that in the audiobook, there were still four hours left, and I was like, well, how the hell are there still gonna be four hours left? This must be a long battle. It's not a long battle, there's just fucking 18 monologues in the middle of it, on both sides, like Aelin has a bunch of monologues, Maeve has a bunch of monologues, and God, it's awful, but anyways, they're talking, or they're talking, yeah, that's mostly it, and Erowan goes off and does his own thing, and I found it a little weird that even though he was in a woman's body, he's still referred to as he in the narration, and I feel like Erowan being a demon doesn't really conform to male or female things, so that just felt a little off to me, like I'll admit that's a small thing, but it still distracted me, and anyways, he's killed by healers including Irene, who remember that's Kale's girlfriend who was only introduced in the fucking sixth book, because you know, if you're gonna have the big bad of the series, obviously he shouldn't be killed by any major characters or by any sort of epic plan that they have, he should be killed by a character who comes in the last minute, and also he's killed by healers because I guess he's an undead in D&D, and healing magic hurts him, whatever, and okay, so Aelin sets up a plan offscreen again, which we were never privy to, and they show it to us at the last second, and he's like, oh look, I'm so fucking smart, I hate this book, God. Anyways, she teleports Maeve away, and then she kills her, and that's it, whatever, and so the evil demon army collapses, Nezrin continues to get cucked by Irene, and the day is saved, and at this point there were still two hours left in the audiobook, so I was left thinking again, well what the fuck is going to happen? A whole lot of nothing, okay, it's a whole lot of nothing, mostly, everyone's happy, no major characters were killed, the one character that was killed that they tried to make us feel bad about is Gabriel, who I didn't even mention in the past two books because he's not a fucking major character, or I didn't mention the last two videos, whatever, I didn't mention him because he's not a major character, and I don't give a shit about him, so the majority of this is like, uh, Lissandra finding out who her dad is, and apparently he's rich, so she gets to inherit all his money, and now she gets to be wealthy and happy. Okay. And then other characters are like, oh, I love you, and I've tied my life to yours, so that I'm no longer immortal and we're gonna die together, and then there's a bunch of them saying goodbye to their allies, and every goodbye takes forever. It's like, I don't know how many of you have big families, but if you ever had like a big gathering and there's like 20 people, and you all have to say goodbye, it takes like an hour and a half to get everyone out the fucking door. Um, just, yeah, everything's super happy, and apparently Eileen is going to set up a sort of democracy in Terrison, and here's the thing about that. If this series had sort of built up to it in some way, then, like, she's basically saying that they're going to have elected representatives from the different regions of Terrison to come to her court and talk to people, whatever. Like, that's, if they had set that up in any way before this, it could have been reasonable. And if they had done something like what Game of Thrones did, where they just kind of say like, hey, Absolute Monarchy is kind of awful, and Absolute Hereditary Monarchy is even worse, then it could have maybe worked as well, whereas this story actually leans really heavy into the Divine Rite of Kings, which I mentioned in the last part, and I already did a whole video about that, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but it leans really hard into Divine Rite of Kings and how Eileen is just chosen. Like, she's destined to do this, and if anyone else tries it, then things are going to go bad. And this is confirmed in the epilogue when there's like blooms of a whole bunch of this type of flower, which they mention a bunch, and they say, oh, it only blooms when a good king is on the throne of terrorism. So, like, it's specifically saying, yeah, the universe is good for her, so it just, it clashes with that angle of democracy. And, well, in my notes here, I wrote Just End You Wordy Bitch, because, like I said, it's going on forever. And then they have Eileen's Coronation Ceremony, and every time they mention her full name, which is Eileen Ash River, White Thorn Galathenius, and they do that several times, but every time they said, Eileen Ash River, White Thorn Galathenius, my mind just immediately said, Ebony Darkness, Dementia Ravenway. And, well, yeah, again, it just goes on forever, and there's like eight different points where it could end, but then it keeps going, and then it stops. That was the end. That was throwing a glass. Okay, so what I will say is that this is, this series as a whole is a little bit worse than Blood Rose Rebellion, but not quite as bad as Elixir, because the main thing about it is that I didn't hate the main character quite as much as I hated her in Blood Rose Rebellion, and this series does have, you know, like a plot and a couple of cool moments in there, like, and one character that I liked, I liked Lissandra, so it would be better than Blood Rose Rebellion, but it's just so fucking long. I mean, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but my God, there's just so much shit in every single book that doesn't need to be there, and so just the misery of having to go through all of these is so much worse than Blood Rose Rebellion, so yeah, this one's worse than that, but Elixir also had, like, no plots and no likable characters at all, so that one's still worse than this. So I also want to say that I did a little bit of research into this, and into Sarah J. Moss, and apparently this book was, one, it was supposed to be a trilogy originally, which I talked about a little bit, and, you know, it's pretty obvious that it's trying really hard to be stretched out, and that's why the story structure is so awful, but even more than that, it was originally like a take on Cinderella, like, Cinderella instead of just going to the ball to dance with the prince was there to kill him, like, that was the original idea, and I honestly see none of that in this series as DNA, like, yeah, you, I seriously don't see any of that, yeah, no, like, I don't see a fairy godmother character in there anywhere, I don't see how Eileen is Cinderella at all, and she's also not there to kill the prince at any point, so, yeah, yeah, there's just nothing Cinderella here, I'm not even sure why she would say something like that, that's weird. So let this series be a lesson that not every story needs to be an epic saving the world quest, okay? Like, when this series started off, it was just an assassin being forced to work for somebody that she hates, and you could do some stuff with that, okay? Like, if it was just about the fate of this one city or this one country, then you could have a lot of fun with that, but this series pretty quickly jumps the gun and goes straight to, demons are going to take over everything, they're going to destroy the world, we have to stop them, and then it also goes into, Eileen is like this demigod who can destroy entire armies just by thinking about it, and so, like, it feels almost like two different series at that point, and it just doesn't mesh well, and it tries to be epic by just being long and wordy, and, well, there's more to it than that, like, we need to learn more about places, and we need to learn about more people, and we need to, well, we need to care about them all, but we also need to really feel that this is going to be the end of the world if we don't fuck, if we fuck this up, and, well, until this last book, they don't even really have all that many battles or anything against the demons, they're just sort of this presence in the background. Let this also be a lesson that not every character needs to be put into a romantic relationship. My God, like, there are so many in this series because every character has one, and every relationship gets way more screen time devoted to it than they need, okay? Like, I don't know about Kale and Irene because, like I said, I didn't read that book, and I will never read it, by the way, and maybe that one's good, but, like, in this book it gets a fair amount of time devoted to it, and it doesn't really affect anything about the plot or the characters. Aalen has multiple romances, which all get way too much time put in them. Just all the main characters, even the ones that don't really seem interested in romance at first, get at least one, sometimes two or three relationships, and, like, it just... it doesn't mean anything after a while, okay? It ceases to have any sort of emotional impact when you do that, and quite frankly, in addition to patting out this series like crazy, it really drives home how bland these characters are and how personality-less they are outside of those romantic relationships if they had, like, let's say Dorian, for example. Like, he falls in love with Sorsha, and then later he falls in love with Manon. And if we had just taken out all that stuff from him and instead taken that same amount of time and devoted it to him having weird thoughts about his dad because his dad is kind of an asshole and raised him to be an asshole but he turned into a good person. Like, if we just went into more detail and that happened, or if we went into detail about how... and we get a little bit of this, but we went into detail about how he still kind of loved his dad even though his dad was a terrible person, except he wasn't actually a terrible person because he was possessed by a demon, but that was already stupid. Like, we could go into more aspects of him and he would become more of a well-rounded character. And honestly, Dorian has very little personality throughout all this. Like, he's not annoying or anything, very big nothing most of the time, but what I mean is that if you had done that with most of these characters who have unnecessary romances, then we could have had a cast that was maybe not amazing, but at least I would care about them and if one of them had died, which again, this kind of series is not going to do that, but if one of them had died I might have given a shit. But that leads me to my final point. Now, when these books were coming out, they did them one per year. Sometimes more than one per year because, you know, you had the prequel thing with all the short stories and all that. And they're very long, like I said. And Sarah J. Moss, in addition to writing all these, also was writing different series at the same time. Like, she started a court of thorns and roses, and she started her adult series, which just came out a couple of weeks ago, I think. And so she's writing multiple projects, which are all really, really long. And honestly, like, you just cannot do that much stuff at once and have it meet any sort of level of quality. Okay, and I know some people are going to be saying, like, oh, what about Stephen King or what about Brandon Sanderson? Brandon Sanderson takes very long time to outline his stories and outlines them very thoroughly, let's say. And he still took an entire year to write just the first draft of Stormlight Archives 4, which is coming out in November, by the way, I'm really excited. And he's taking the better part of a year to do other drafts and other edits. And people like Stephen King, well, yeah, he writes really fast, don't get me wrong, and he does do editing and stuff. But also he's reached a point in his career where publishers will just throw anything he has out the door without really putting effort into making it better. And Sarah DeMoss, there's no way she's going to be able to write that much and be able to properly edit it all and make it better. And it feels like because she's popular enough, the publishers are kind of doing the same thing as with Stephen King. They're pushing out the door, not giving a shit. So in a sense, I feel kind of bad for her because she's kind of screwed from the start. But at the same time, she's the one that's writing smut in books that are ostensibly for teenagers, so I don't feel that bad for her. And at the end of the day, you couldn't make these good without a page one rewrite. I really mean that. Page one of the first book, total rewrite. That's what you would need in order to make these good. You could do some edits to make them passable, though, and it's kind of a shame that that never happened. So now on to the future real quick. I am not going to read a court of thorns and roses, guys. I keep saying throne, whatever. But people have brought that up in the comments a couple of times. Like, I hope you read this one. And apparently that one's actually a lot worse than Throne of Glass because Throne of Glass at least tries to do, like, role building and have something of a plot. And a court of thorns and roses is apparently a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which I would imagine there's no beast in that version because if this is what Cinderella is and whatever. But, like, yeah, I'm just never going to read that, okay? Going through Throne of Glass is one of the most miserable experiences I've had related to this show. I really mean that. And there are, you know, obviously other young adult series that I'm still going to read and laugh at because, like, House of Night is going to be probably next. I don't know exactly when it's going to come out, but I also have Michael Bloomberg's Daughter's Horsebooks, which you can see I've already started on this one, but I got, like, 20 pages in and I had to stop because it's just exhausting already. So I'm definitely going to be reading some stuff I actually like for a little while. And then I'm going to... Well, we'll see which series it is. I don't know. It's one of those two. And, well, that'll be a few months in the future. I'm not going to make any promises that I can't keep. It'll just be, it'll be a while. And, well, that's all I have to say, so thank you for watching my almost three-hour-long journey through this shit. Thank you for watching this part in particular because, hey, a lot of people don't finish these things, whatever. Thanks to my patrons, Oppo Savilainen, Christopher Hawkins, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinton, Joseph Pendergraft, and, of course, Tobacco Crow, and, of course, all these names. You guys are cool. You helped me get through this. You helped me get through whatever. And please like the video, comment on the video, subscribe if you haven't, although if you're watching, like, part three of me ranting like this, I would imagine you already subs. Like, I imagine you're already a fan, but whatever if you're not, please do that and I'll see you later. Bye.