 I think it's very very good. It's making you worry. I still care. I just personally don't care. Well then I guess the answer is no you shouldn't read it. I am impressed by it but I do not enjoy it. Should you read The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Leo? Maybe? There are book series that there's probably nothing that I could say wholeheartedly you know anyone watching. Are you watching this video? Read this book. No one would hate it. Everyone would love it. There's probably but there are definitely books where more than others you're like. It is very much a matter of whether or not this is your taste versus something that like most people would like or a lot of people would like. This is one of the series where I think it is very important to know what it is, what you will get, what you will not get, and what how to assess whether or not this is going to be your kind of thing or not before going into it because I think it's very very good. Spoilers I think this is a great series. I wouldn't be filming a should you read this horror series that I don't like which I never really thought about before but yeah if I hated something I would have supposed to review slash I would not finish the series. But should you read this video I am hoping to explain kind of like what expectations to set, what kind of hurdles to expect, and just to like prepare yourself adequately for it if you do decide to pick it up or if everything that I'm saying that about what you would need to prepare for is something that sounds like your worst nightmare. Well then I guess the answer is no you shouldn't read it but I think it's good to know that because you know it saves everybody time and money. It saves the author a bad review and it saves your time if you don't pick up a book that isn't the right book for you. So anyway trying to be helpful today we're going to talk about dandelion dynasty spoiler free as much as possible like basically I would say spoiler free but I know some people are very precious about spoilers and think that like telling the name of a character is a spoiler. So you know if you're that kind of person I don't know that I'll be able to meet your exacting standards but I will keep this spoiler free according to my definition of spoiler free. So what is the dandelion dynasty? The dandelion dynasty is I believe it was originally intended to be a trilogy but the third book got so long that it got split into two so it wasn't originally meant to be a quartet. It is now though so it is a so the dandelion dynasty is a quartet and I was told that it was important to know the last two books were meant to be one book that it reads like that. I personally don't really agree with that because I have read books where that's the case and I'm like yeah you can't really blame them but it does feel like it here. I mean if you tell me that I'm like yeah I guess I see that but I don't personally feel that it really reads that way but you know FOIA passing it along the warning about that because apparently other people do feel that it feels that way. But so the dandelion dynasty is one of the most sort of epic and scope stories that I have read especially for it being only originally intended to be three books and now being four books. In terms of the cast of characters, the world that is built, the years that it spans, it definitely earned the name epic fantasy. That being said epic fantasy tends to be also associated with epic amounts of magic. The series does not have epic amounts of magic. What the series has is epic amounts of speculative engineering and if that is making you worried fair warning there is a lot of engineering in these books and that is one of the things that I both think is the most impressive about these books and also is the least appealing about them. So Ken Liu as far as I know this is secondhand information so I might be wrong but I believe that if he doesn't have an educational background in engineering he does at least have a very deep personal interest in engineering and he has experimented with actually making the things that he talks about in these books and in books and in what he writes in general. There is a great great deal of time and thought and page count devoted to explaining and describing this fantasy engineering and I find it impressive slightly more impressive than annoying because of the fact that he has actually thought this through in a way that as much as is possible to ensure that this is something that would in theory function. So when he's explaining to you the mechanics behind something that's going on or something that's been invented or something that's being utilized you know he's not just completely pulling it out of his ass so for that reason I respected a great deal and it is quite impressive how much invention has gone into these books. I personally am not that all that interested in engineering so I personally do not feel that interested in those parts of the book so I can appreciate them at arm's length as like that's impressive that you did all that kudos to you but I would just assume you just told me that it works and I'll believe you that it works because that's how I live my own life. I don't know how the technology I use works and I'm pretty okay with that. So if that's gonna bother you I would say you might still like these books so don't go anywhere because like I just said that does kind of bother me if I'm honest like I don't enjoy reading about that. On some level I enjoy uh encountering the ingenuity of it. I enjoy um seeing that somebody has been this creative and has put that much thought into it like I am impressed by it but I do not enjoy it. But that's it I still like these books so if we can set aside the tech talk and ignore it when we read it these books also are hugely expansive in terms of history and politics and other other aspects of world building culture building food traditions gods lore all this sort of thing is also very meticulously crafted. Those are things that interest me a great deal more so when the books get heavily bogged down in tech talk they lose me. Well when they get heavily bogged down in politics when they we start talking about the various factions and of all the political situations and the way that navigate that and the gray areas of that and the no right answer that happens when you have competing interests and like not everyone can get what they want but no one is really in the wrong and no one is in the right um something like that I love that stuff and it has lots of that in the series so that's more my speed and I am well satisfied by those aspects of these books and again the way that he describes culture building as well like the differences in traditions in world views in faith systems in the languages in in language not just in spoken word but also in written word and how different forms of writing and the educational barriers and the levels of privilege that are inherent in the ability and access to those forms of writing and those forms of communication all of that stuff which is a lot more anthropological than engineering is just a lot more my speed and something that I'm interested in and something that I enjoy reading about so if that's something that appeals to you these books have a ton of that and if that appeals to you less but you love engineering you know you can feel about the culture parts the way I feel about the engineering and we can both enjoy these books just for different reasons so the it's it's kind of difficult to explain you know the sort of like story of these books because they are so expansive and they covered so much in so many years so many places so many conflicts um you know with Lord of the Rings you'd be like oh well you know there's an evil entity evil entity has a ring and ring must be destroyed in order to defeat evil entity and people are trying to do that like it's you know it's pretty straightforward to explain the Lord of the Rings the dandelion dynasty by contrast cannot be summed up in even a handful of sentences but I'm going to try like I said it covers a pretty large span of years so the people that are followed in the first book are not necessarily the people that are followed in the fourth book but what we have what we sort of see happening across the span of these books is the shifting of political power um and they're sort of there are central figures and central families around which this kind of saga revolves you see the fall of a previous form of power you see the development of a new type of of political power you see when that kind of the new power then is also in turn challenged you see clashes between neighboring nations you see clashes within the same nation and and competing interests within that nation and you watch various people who are all in some way in a position to affect change or to be affected by this change navigating the situations and making decisions and every percussions for how this then goes on how this moves forward where the where the power lies where it will lie how that is remembered uh these books deal a lot with not just history and how history unfolds but with how history is told and remembered and how history is shaped by the teller and is written by the victor and not just by the victor but because that's we've seen we hear that a lot that history is written by the victor but not just by the victor it is also written according to a wide array of biases that influence how a particular person is remembered in history um whether or not they were the enemy so there's a lot there was if there's one thing I could say that these books are about and I was talking to my patients about this because we did buddy read these books together is how identity is tied to story um and how the story of who you are is who you are and who you are changes depending on the story that you tell others and the story that you tell yourself about who that is this applies to the individual it applies to the family it applies to the community it applies to the nation and so throughout these books we see how the narrative changes now by narrative I don't just mean like you know the narrative of these books I mean the narrative of the identities of these individuals and these communities and these nations and what it is that they believe defines them what should define them what has not to define them what can never define them what changes would make their identity disappear altogether what does it mean to have your identity disappear is it simply a matter of telling a different story things like that so that again is why even though there is so much of the engineering which again credit words do is impressive as hell and it's just I just don't care I just personally don't care all of the stuff to do with identity and culture politics history the telling thereof that stuff is equally well crafted and that stuff is brilliant and he approaches these topics to so many different lenses so many different povs in terms of the characters so many different opportunities to explore what those themes mean on a case-by-case basis so we explore through war we explore through food we explore it through religion we explore it through politics we explore through education we explore it through systems of writing and storytelling we explore it through romance and familial relationships we even explore it through engineering and invention because it's I mean there's a lot of tech talk but that is still a part of it as well traditions of making and building and how the willingness to adapt and the willingness to change how you are building and shaping things can create a possibility and but that might threaten your identity does it throughout I would say if there is a thesis or a theme to these books to me anyway in my reading of it feel free to disagree it is that it is the nature of identity and how that is tied to story and the nature of story and how that is tied to identity so again those are themes that I think are really rich to explore and I'm so pleased to see them explored in such a complex and layered way books are quite wieldy and expansive as I've said several times so I think the best way to judge if these books are for you beyond what I've just told you about what they're about like what I've just told you they're about and the kind of stuff that's in them does sound good to you but you're still you know not exactly sure you want to dive into these massive books I think the best taster the best way to kind of try on for size this writing before you pick out these books to see if it might be your cup of tea I recommend you pick up the Paper Menagerie also by Ken Leu and I mean in general I recommend you pick this up because I read this first and this made me a fan of his like just by itself so just as an aside read this book because it's great but specifically back to my advice for assessing the dandelion dynasty and whether or not you would like it there are two stories in the Paper Menagerie that I think if you read those two stories they give you a good sense of the type of storytelling you're going to encounter in the dandelion dynasty because there's a pretty great variety of storytelling types in this book which is one of the things that is also really impressive about Ken Leu is his ability to write in all these different ways but so there's more there's just the one kind of way more or less in dandelion dynasty so if you read the Paper Menagerie there's a lot of types of storytelling in here that you might be disappointed to not find in the dandelion dynasty so the two stories in Paper Menagerie that I think were again a good indicator or a good sample of the writing style you will find in the dandelion dynasty are called Good Hunting and All the Flavors. Good Hunting is going to give you a good sense of the the sort of nature of the prose that you will find in Grace of Kings it is more arm's length it is more sort of legendary saga-esque it's got that sort of like mythic you know more akin to something that you find like in Tolkien things like that it's you know it sounds it's a story of a long time ago far away kind of storytelling it's not such close third person as a lot of newer books nowadays are told so Good Hunting will give you a sense of what his writing is like when he's doing that and All the Flavors is doing a sort of like history mash-up and nested storytelling there is a lot of nested storytelling in the dandelion dynasty and it sort of jumps around and flips you in and out and back and forth and you tell you about this and then how we got there and you tell you about this and then the the myth that goes with this and and we kind of get this like mosaic building of these books where it keeps giving you pockets of information and pockets of story that come together to form the whole so All the Flavors though it is a short story not you know a 500 page tome it does that so if you read Good Hunting and All the Flavors and they both work for you then and everything else I've said appeals to you then you should absolutely read the dandelion dynasty I will warn you while I was warned and then because I was warned I think I was not disappointed but like over prepared I was warned that by the end of the series in particular Speaking Bones the fourth book is basically Grimdark and I don't think that that's incorrect but because of like just the I don't know the emphasis of which people said that they're like oh man I got so dark that like by the end that's basically Grimdark I was like who and it again don't get me wrong it is quite dark like they're not they're not wrong to say that it's probably a good warning to give people but for me I was like okay I mean yeah I guess I get why you would say that about this um but but you had me expecting a lot more so now you'll be under prepared I apologize for that because Speaking Bones does have quite a bit of dark content I think maybe the reason I didn't feel that dark to me is because as I said the storytelling the nature of the storytelling in the series is like that in the short story good hunting it is more arm's length and for something Grimdark to really feel Grimdark to me for with some exceptions usually has to be very close third person where I feel that I am side by side with this character experiencing this and I don't feel that very often in these books it's just like not the kind of thing that they are. It is not a character driven narrative it is not close third person narrative it's not like that it's it feels a little bit more like if you read the George R. R. Martin's books there's a difference between the song of rice and fire and fire and blood and these books are more like fire and blood than they are like the main series because they are more uh again an arms length overview of many different things happening and you being told all about them and seeing how they come together than about you being close with a character and what's happening to them day to day and I love fire and blood I really really do but people find it dry and this isn't as dry I guess as fire and blood it's not written like an actual history textbook which is how fire and blood reads but it is on the drier side which is why I do recommend picking up the short stories first and seeing if that storytelling works for you because that's what this is like it's it's a little dry it's a little arms length it's expansive and huge with a lot of information a lot of tech talk nested storytelling lots of history and myth woven into a narrative like it's it's doing a lot that's why it is deeply deeply impressive but they aren't like casual reads so if you're looking for just like an escapist fantasy that you can just kind of chew through then don't read the dandelion dynasty because the dandelion dynasty demands of you that you pay attention and it demands of you that you engage with the ideas that it's playing with and if you're not willing to do that or you're not wanting to do that it's probably not the book series for you but if you want something that will challenge you and not just challenge you in terms of you know like this is a tough book to follow like I have a tough time keeping up with who everybody is like because there's a little bit of that but I mean more that it challenges you in terms of making you consider troubling topics making you engage with those topics making you ask questions like well which is right is anything right can I condone what's going on is is it right is it wrong is this moral is it immoral is there such a thing as right and wrong I mean it deals with a lot of kind of heavy topics in that way and so it is a very rewarding read and it's very rich for that reason but like rich food it can be quite entertaining to consume so I do recommend the dandelion dynasty but I just think that it's good to be prepared for what it is because again if this type of storytelling doesn't work for you or if you're not wanting to be challenged by something or if you don't care about politics or engineering like both of those you hate then you probably shouldn't read the series because there's a lot of both which I think is to its credit but only if you like those things only if that's something that you do want to read about the world building is fantastic it is elaborate and expansive and well done it's well crafted it's quite anthropological at times in how it's crafted which is my jam and I did recommend these books to my father who was an engineer because I think he'll love that part of it and so we can all find something in it to enjoy let me know the comments down below if you've read these books if you want to read these books if you never want to read these books if you try them and hated them if you try them and you love them whatever you want to let me know episode videos on saturdays other random times well-adulting saturdays well i can subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i'll see you when i see you bye