 The beginning of Tongue of Silver was really really great. It introduces the main character in a way that I've never quite seen before, but it immediately makes him fascinating. And it also has an interesting magic system and one or two interesting aspects to the world that are shoved right in your face at the beginning, which made me really hopeful for the rest of the book. I kind of just wanted to say something nice about the book before I started bashing it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so full disclosure, I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. And my honest thoughts are that it wasn't really that good, but it did have a few genuinely interesting creative cool ideas. In fact, I'd say it was bad, but it had a couple of good ideas. This book takes place in a world where certain people have magical powers which were granted to them by these creatures called beings. And they never really explain what the beings are, but I'll get to that in a few minutes. And so they make a deal with these beings and the beings will give them power in exchange for something else. And so years and years before the story starts, it used to just be that the nobles would get some powers and the commoners would not, and that led to a giant civil war and eventually the beings decided, okay, you know what, we're going to start giving powers to everybody, however they can only use their powers during these things called games. And they set up these very complex, well not very complex, but they set up these rules for games and like when people can use them and just things like that. And so basically you can only use magic in very specific circumstances. And so the main character of this story, Edison, at the beginning he is now old enough to try and have this thing called the dream, which is where people gather together in this one chamber and go to sleep and a being might come to them and offer them a deal to give their powers. And Edison's being, the being that Edison meets offers him power, but he has to kill someone. And the being does this thinking, haha this kid is going to kill himself and just, he thinks it'll be funny, excuse me. But then immediately afterwards Edison kills another kid. The being is kind of hissed off by this though, and so Edison winds up getting his leg crippled. And then after that stuff just sort of happens. Yeah that's probably the biggest problem with this book overall is that there's not much of a plot. Like the beginning part like I said is actually really good because it's a neat introduction to Edison's character and to the world. But after that there are just some events that happen and there's not really any build up to them. There's not a lot of foreshadowing, there's not even really much of a thread connecting them all. It's just things happen and then there's some action scenes and then something happens at the end which is kind of cool. But overall there's just really nothing of the plot to talk about. Like I don't even want to say it's bad or anything, it's just not there. And the same goes for the world. Now at the beginning you do get an info dump about some of the history of the world. And some people might not like that it's so much exposition right at the beginning but I was actually into it. Like the way it was told I thought was pretty good. Like I've seen much much worse info dumps there. But then after that we never really get that much of a sense of how this world works or what it's like. You know I never got much of a sense of culture from the world. I'm pretty sure it's not like medieval level technology but they don't go into a whole lot of detail about that. I don't even remember the name of the country they were in or this other country that they visited near the end. And as far as I can tell they're pretty much the same thing. Like there's just no sense of scale to this world, there's nothing there. It's just like the plot, there's very little there. The only thing that gets much detail are the powers and even then there's not that much. The way the games work and that little bit of history. And there's also a cast system put in place but that's not very well explained either. Like there are still the nobles and the commoners and then below the commoners are the peasants. And so at first the way the characters are describing the peasants is that they're too lazy to work and so they just want handouts and are trying to steal. And so at first I was thinking that that was some iron rands, libertarian and cap horseshit. But then near the end it seems like it's trying to say okay that's just what the characters think that's not actually what's going on. So that was okay yeah. Because for a while that was the only part of this book that I genuinely hated. Now the one area of this world where not having a lot of detail actually works pretty well is I think the beings. Because think about it they never really explain what the beings are or what they want or why they're doing what they're doing. And they could be gods, they could be demigods, they could just be some sort of demons. I mean it's never really explained. But the upside to that is that whenever they're around they seem creepier and more unsettling. So if I were to write this I would honestly give the beings less screen time. I would give them much less screen time. I would try and make them even more alien and even more mysterious. Although I would probably give them names as well because a lot of times in this book it just refers to them as like the large being or the female sounding being and things like that. Like I would have given them names but beyond that left them way more alien and way more mysterious. And the way this book is written is I mean it's sparse to say the least. Like there's very very little detail put in anything other than the action scenes. And even then there's not that much. Like all of the character descriptions are very bare bones, very basic. All of the descriptions of like when they're traveling or the settings that they're in or what things look like or what the characters are feeling even. It's bare bones or it's just not there at all. It really feels like almost an abridged version of the story. Like when I was a kid I had these abridged children's versions of classic books like The Three Musketeers and The Prince and the Popper and stuff like that. And so it would be like half to a third of the length of the original book because it was just cutting out so much of the detail to it. And also it would cut out some of the violence and sex and stuff to make it more child friendly. But still this feels like it was written to be kind of like one of those books. Now the one area left in this book that could have maybe saved it for me was the characters. But even then most of them are just like the plot and the world. It's just sparse. It's bare bones. It's hardly there. Now Edison at the beginning I thought he had a fantastic character introduction because think about this kid, he wants power so bad. He wants to become a player so bad that he's willing to murder another person for it. I mean that's fucking heinous and that's our introduction to his character. So I was immediately intrigued by him. But then after that opening scene he doesn't have much of a motivation after that and he doesn't have a whole lot of personality either. And his powers at first I thought they were kind of cool and at first I thought they had a neat limitation which I won't spoil because it's actually a little bit of a plot twist. And I thought that he had his leg crippled so there's no way he'll be like too overpowered and watching him overcome these limitations and these handicaps that sounds really cool. But he does wind up overcoming them and dare I say they never even really bother him that much. By the end of this story Edison is just way too powerful with very little effort and I mean he has one short training montage that kind of comes out of nowhere but I mean even then that doesn't give much of an excuse for why he's so powerful right off the bat. Like honestly this is a character that should have had less powers or weaker powers rather than more powers because at the beginning when he was weaker I thought he was much cooler. And like I said he just has no motivation after the beginning. He just sort of goes along with things and again that also ties into there being literally no plot to this book or essentially no plot to this book. Like he doesn't want anything he's not trying to do anything. He just sort of exists until like I said the end the very very end which is again a little bit interesting a little bit cool but it does not save the rest of this book. Like the other characters as I mean I only remember like three or four characters of note besides Edison. There's his two teammates that he meets up with Anna who is just a generic girl character like I don't remember much about her backstory. I don't remember her having a distinct personality. There's just there's not much there. I mean she finds out that Edison murdered a guy to get his powers and at first I was thinking okay so how's this going to affect their relationship but it doesn't like she just agrees to keep it secret and that's it. And again going back to Edison for a second he has that secret and he seems to feel a little bit guilty about it but they don't focus on it nearly enough for it to be interesting the way it was at the beginning. The second teammate of Edison's is this guy named Ralph and he could have been kind of interesting because the thing about him is that he got his powers in a very unique way and he kind of feels like he didn't earn them but they also like right after they introduce his character they explain oh yeah he got his powers in a unique way and he feels like he didn't earn them and he just says that straight up like it's not subtle they don't build up to it there's no foreshadowing he just says that and then the other characters say hey come on man you got this you got this and he's like you know what yeah you're right I got this and then he's fine with it and he has no development for the rest of the book. If I were to have written this book I would have probably made it at least twice as long because not only is it sparse on like details and individual scenes like I mentioned that already but there's just a lot of important stuff left out I mean there's pretty much no foreshadowing for any of the plot points as few as there are there's no build-up or foreshadowing to them so when they happen they just sort of happen you know we're not excited or scared there's no tension there's no time for the characters to just like sit down and talk and develop their relationships at all things again just sort of happen there's there's not a whole lot of backstory for Edison like you know we know he wants to become a player and he wants power so badly that he's willing to kill someone for it but we don't really know why that much like we don't get a sense of what his life was like before the story starts it seems almost like he just popped into existence one day and in fact all the characters are that way okay I'm going to talk directly to Andy Nadir here for just a second Andy I can tell there was a lot of passion put into this book I can tell you put a lot of work into it I can tell you had a couple of good ideas I can tell you have some genuine skill as a writer but this was not ready for publication like not even close this feels like a first draft okay like you need to rewrite it you needed to revise stuff you need to add stuff and take stuff out you needed to have an editor look over it because there are grammatical mistakes in here and quite frankly when there's something that small that can be fixed that easily in your story it feels really really unprofessional as it stands though there is probably something worth salvaging in here it's definitely building up to a sequel I would say spend a very very long time working on that one before you release it though like I mean go through multiple drafts try and retcon some of this earlier stuff from this one some more detail about character backstories and everything because this this book overall it just feels unfinished that's about everything I have to say though I mean this book it's not even close to the worst I've ever read like there's nothing worth hating in it it's just like I said it feels unfinished there's a lot of stuff missing there's a lot of stuff that needs to be expanded on and there's one or two neat ideas the beginning is kind of good but there's really no reason to read this so unless you think the idea of magical characters participating in almost tournament like fights is a cool idea and you really can just turn your brain completely off while you're doing it you might enjoy this as for everyone else no I'm sorry there's really nothing there's nothing here for you so be sure to subscribe and like and comment and blah blah blah blah blah blah this video is not over yet so in the time since I filmed the last one I have made both a discord page where you can just come talk and hang out with me and some others as well as a patreon page so if you want to help me create more stuff like this and also just well create more stuff like this yeah that's about it but anyways yeah just check out the links down below